| Marked by hybridity and syncreticity, recent Antillean literary and theoretical production engages the problematic of multiplicity in totality and the conceptualization of an open, non-exclusionary, non-hierarchical totality, defined by interrelation rather than amalgamation. Problematizing the theorization of plural identity, this writing reveals the tensions of a discourse that seeks to counter both essentialism and universalism. The theoretical work of Homi Bhabha, Edouard Glissant, Francoise Lionnet, and Toni Morrison provides the conceptual framework for the discussions of representative works of two generations of Antillean writers.;Although Glissant's use of genealogical narrative, mimicry, and parody critiques totalizing discourse, deauthorizes universalist conceptualizations, and illustrates Antillean heterogeneity, his metaphoric use of woman reveals the contradictions of antillanite, contradictions further manifested in the narrativization of creolite. Whereas Chamoiseau's discourse of resistance tends to homogenize the very diversity it proclaims, Conde's depiction of a divided Creole community critiques unitary constructions of identity. Furthermore, the representation of violated maternity and its use as a vehicle for rewriting the past represents a challenge to universalist conceptualizations of motherhood. Conde's work illustrates the polyvalence of maternity and Maximin's challenges essentialist and monolithic conceptualizations. Finally, by encoding literary imagination as a hybrid, interrelational terrain, literature itself suggests a global metissage of cultural forms. Glissant's polyphonic narrative strives to reactivate collective consciousness and to establish history as continuum. Conde unearths the strategies of literary and historiographic imagination, reclaiming presence where it was denied. Maximin's dialogic narrative suggests a counternarrative to monologic constructions.;Beginning with Glissant's specifically Antillean challenge to a "Western" universalism and ending with Conde's and Maximin's suggestion that the "dominant" is itself a heterogeneous weave, the readings draw connections between a multiplicity of social and communicative practices. As the discussion of Antillean challenges to universalism concludes, anti-essentialism is difficult to sustain, particularly when articulated within the wider context of counter-hegemonic or oppositional discourse. |
