Re-Imagining Diversity and Connection in the Chaos World: An Interview with Patrick Chamoiseau

We have all heard the rhetoric of politicians and corporate leaders on the topic of globalization. Meanwhile, fierce controversies are arising all around the planet about just what, exactly, globalization means, what its implications are, and who it serves. And then, there is the ugly paradox: even as global cultures seem to be merging more closely together, we see ethnic/racial/linguistic conflicts erupting on nearly every continent. With the old identity structures breaking down and amid ardent appeals to maintain the boundaries by returning to religious and cultural fundamentalisms, what progressive alternatives do we have? How do we, both individually and collectively, re-conceive our identities and our places in the world?

For a group of forward thinking Caribbean writers who grew up within a post-colonial society with a history of slavery going back to the 17^th century, returning to the past is neither possible nor desired. So it is not surprising that some of today's boldest thinkers on the subjects of diversity and re-imagining cultural identities should come from tiny islands located between worlds. Both Patrick Chamoiseau and Edouard Glissant (cited often in the interview) come from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, situated geographically between the two Americas; demographically between Africa, Europe, and Asia; and historically between a genocidal past and an uncertain future. In this region of the world, which has seen two Nobel laureates in literature recently–V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad, 2001) and Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia, 1992)—issues of racial/ethnic identities, native territories, and linguistic communities have never been easy. Yet, while keeping their eyes open to present dangers, writers like Chamoiseau and Glissant believe that it is possible to persuade a troubled world with the beauty of another vision.

Patrick Chamoiseau (b.1953) is a novelist and essayist, known internationally especially for his multi-generational fictional history of Martinique, Texaco, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1992. With a style as rich and thick as a Creole gumbo, Chamoiseau writes tales of working class struggle, unrequited love, marronnage, sorcery, zombies, and politics. Though many readers associate him with the créoliste movement, the writer's ideas have evolved to become more complex on the subject of identities that are both post-colonial and transnational, as can be seen in his essay, Ecrire en pays dominé/ Writing in a Dominated Land (Gallimard, 1997). The author lives in Fort-de-France, where besides working fulltime as a counselor for young adults in the court system, he is a public spokesperson and activist for the preservation of local culture and the environment.

Photo of Patrick Chamoiseau

Throughout the interview, Chamoiseau refers to terms and ideas by Edouard Glissant. Born in Martinique, trained in Paris, Edouard Glissant (b.1928) is a novelist, poet, and essayist who has emerged as an influential theorist of transcultural hybridity and complex relational identities, frequently inventing his own poetic vocabulary—such as the "Tout-Monde" [Whole World] or the "Chaos-Monde"[Chaos World]—to describe the changing cultural landscapes of our time. Specifically, Glissant adapted Deleuze and Guattari's notions of root/verticality versus rhizome/horizontality to re-examine the ways we define our identity. Do we define ourselves through the idea of rootedness, a connection to a single line of ancestry, a single place of origin? If so, then we will tend to exclude the Other, maintaining a fundamental sense of separation between ourselves and those whose origin is elsewhere. Or, do we define ourselves in rhizomatic terms; that is, our identity arises out of an unfolding series of connections across places and times? This view of identity privileges contact and relationship with the Other; it acknowledges travel and exchange. It is this "poetics of relation"¹that both Glissant and Chamoiseau write about, seeing it as providing a new, more positive framework for both speaking about our individual identities and for solving our collective problems. The interview that follows deals with these ideas in a Caribbean context, but it is evident that they are applicable...