Passes et impasses dans le comparatisme postcolonial caribéen: cinq traverses (review)

The premise of this book is that, while the various literary traditions of the Caribbean have received (especially in recent years) a great deal of critical attention, few efforts have been made to bridge the linguistic and cultural barriers that have long divided the islands of the region: ‘l’insularité et la balkanisation demeurent en ce début de nouveau siècle’ (p. 14). Kathleen Gyssels’s goal in this work of comparative literature is therefore to provide contrastive analyses of ‘des auteurs publiant en anglais ou en français, mais abordant les mêmes problèmes’ (p. 356). The ‘cinq traverses’ of the subtitle are five pairs of writers (one francophone and one anglophone) to whom are devoted the five chapters of Passes et impasses, each one of which is associated with a major thematic or critical issue: Maryse Condé and Toni Morrison (revisiting the slave narrative genre), Léon Gontran Damas and James Baldwin (confronting taboos linked to gender and homosexuality), Dany Laferrière and Edwidge Danticat (the diversity of the Haitian Diaspora), Jean-Claude Fignolé and Madison Smartt Bell (assessing the historical legacy of Toussaint Louverture), Édouard Glissant and Wilson Harris (post-colonialism, Antillanité, Créolité). It should be noted that Gyssels has included in her wide-ranging corpus authors who are not originally from the Caribbean (Morrison, Baldwin, Bell). While her own critical presentations give equal weight to francophone and anglophone authors, Gyssels reminds us that the reception and level of influence of their works are language-sensitive: ‘si tous les francophones sont traduits en anglais, l’inverse n’est pas vrai [...] Les franco-Caribéens semblent assez désavantagés dans une littérature de plus en plus anglophone’ (p. 351). Bringing together such a large number of authors separated not just by language but also by generation and geographical origin constitutes an ambitious analytical project. As the outcome of an impressive body of research, Passes et impasses consistently provides challenging reading, including often sharply critical assessments of some of the authors, their texts, and their public personas (particularly in the case of Laferrière). In another instance, many readers will not tend to agree with the author’s largely negative evaluation of Maryse Condé’s works. In all cases, Gyssels’s evaluations are based on close readings backed by a solid grounding in critical theory. Unfortunately, this text is burdened by an unusually high incidence of typographical errors and stylistic infelicities. Some examples: ‘une conscience caribéenne peine à submerger’ (p. 12), ‘faute de ne pas avoir’ (p. 15), ‘prétendument homologuer des ouvrages’ (p. 15), ‘personnage torridonien’ (p. 41), ‘O. G. Simpson’ (p. 43), ‘platitude inégalante’ (p. 57), ‘décartons ce scandale’ (p. 102), ‘ses deux confères’ (p. 155), ‘kicks on the road 66’(p. 192), ‘have’s and have’s not’ (p. 197), ‘si le Canada est finalement différent de l’Amérique du Nord’ (p. 197), ‘la capitale québécoise, Montréal’ (p. 197), ‘divergentsensiblement’ (p. 220). However, this lack of consistency in terms of proofreading and editing should not detract from the scholarly value of a well-documented study that breaks new ground in several areas of Caribbean literary and cultural analysis.