"Toutes ces eaux!": Ecology and Empire in Patrick Chamoiseau's Biblique des derniers gestes

Patrick Chamoiseau's latest novel, Biblique des derniers gestes (2002), is a staging of the tension between the defense of local particularity and immersion in what Hardt and Negri call Empire. This tension is explored most visibly through Chamoiseau's literal and figurative uses of water. The protagonist's relation to water constructs Martinican particularity, but it also catapults him into Empire, the network of interests that govern contemporary global relations. Water and other liquid forms also function as figurative models of political action and cultural identity that productively resolve some of the contradictions at the heart of contemporary postcolonial literature.