Writing Wilderness and Civilization in Léon-Gontran Damas's Retour de Guyane and Black-Label

Abstract

In 1934, Léon-Gontran Damas travelled from France to his native land of Guyana, having been commissioned by the Trocadero museum (now the Musée de l'Homme) to write an ethnographic report about the descendants of the slave maroon population who lived in the rainforest. In addition, the young ethnographer decried the French colonial administration with notes which were later compiled to form published journalistic essays, and eventually Retour de Guyane in 1938. Damas's well-known quotation '[.] coloniser la Guyane ou l'évacuer' served as a sarcastic remark aimed at France to encourage his own vision for Guyana: 'Il faut libérer la terre et la faire fructifier'. By contrast, Black-Label (1956) displayed a fictional intoxicated narrator's historical and transnational consideration of the situation of black diasporic migrants. This article explores how colonialism and its legacies are evoked through the imagination of wilderness and civilization in Retour de Guyane and Black-Label.