Abstract
In her article Odile Ferly considers the literary movement of Créolité. This arose in the French Caribbean in the late 1980s and is characterised by the use of a French heavily influenced by the Creole language. Ferly examines how the linguistic project of Guadeloupean writer Sylviane Telchid has many similarities to those of the créolistes in its elaboration of a border language that recreates the rhythm and imagery of Creole, while remaining accessible to non-Creole speakers. She considers how Telchid succeeds in gendering her text, thereby challenging the sexist assumptions of many of her male counterparts – in particular the leaders of the créolité movement – that men are the main producers of culture in the French Caribbean.
Highlights
The fiction of the Guadeloupean Sylviane Telchid truly celebrates Creolisation
As Ina Césaire explains to Suzanne Houyoux in an interview, while both men and women tell stories, there has traditionally been a division of roles
Given this division of gender roles, what is highly revealing is that the créolistes should imagine the archetype of the founder of the regional culture as a father figure, thereby only acknowledging public, male storytelling. This minimises the contribution of the Caribbean woman in the emergence of a local culture: as Arnold puts it, the conteur ‘ becomes the gendered ancestor of all creole culture’.5. It is men – who until at least the 1950s had exclusive though limited opportunities of ‘escaping’ creolisation via education, power and emigration – who are envisaged as the primary founders of Creole culture
Summary
The fiction of the Guadeloupean Sylviane Telchid truly celebrates Creolisation. Her work displays a linguistic métissage characteristic of the French Caribbean movement of créolité. Because the author/narrator and main characters of the novel are female, this culture passed on through proverbial wisdom is naturally associated with women in the text.
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