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4 / Music and Mourning in Crossing the Mangrove and Solibo Magnificent The question of how to identity oneself and to whom is always a tricky one, involving an intricate process of communication on the part of the subject, recognition on the part of the other(s), and plays for positionality among the subject, the other(s), and multiple external agents, factors and circumstances . Questions of identity are further complicated since they tend to involve many separate but overlapping categories including but not limited to geography, nationality, ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, age, gender, and cultural and subcultural group affiliations. While this identity problematic operates in every sociocultural context, for the purposes of this chapter, we will focus on dimensions of identity in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the respective settings for Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnificent and Maryse Condé’s Crossing the Mangrove. In characterizing the islands themselves, it is difficult to choose the appropriate words without offending the taxonomic sensibilities of someone who calls Martinique or Guadeloupe home. Perhaps some of the most heated exchanges I have witnessed in academia have emerged from the question-and-answer sessions following lectures or panel discussions on Caribbean identity by prominent writers and scholars. For example, in April 2003 at the Frontières: Un festival d’écrivains franco-britanniques sur l’identité (Frontiers: A Festival of Franco-British Writers on Identity) in Paris, Guadeloupean writer Ernest Pépin discussed his ideas about Antillean identity, which rely on the notion of créolité (creoleness), a word that incites controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. The controversy behind the word seems to lie in its “creole” component, a term that has been firmly rooted in discussions of language, race, and social class in the music and mourning / 161 1. On this note, Véronique Porra has written an interesting article exploring the controversy of créolité: “Les voix de l’anti-créolité? Le champ littéraire francophone entre orthodoxe et subversion” (Porra 2001). 2. Pépin’s understanding of créolité reflects the mosaic notion of créolité set forth in Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, and Jean Bernabé’s 1993 text Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness). 3. Remember that Guadeloupe and Martinique are considered Départements Régionaux d’Outre Mer, or DROM (French Regional Overseas Departments), meaning that they are still governed by France. Caribbean islands.1 In Pépin’s view, the “creole” of créolité is not a limiting construct or category, but rather a dynamic process through which multiple mosaic identities are configured and respected. In an interview with David Cadasse, Pépin defined his view of créolité: C’est la prise de conscience de la diversité du monde caribéen. C’est également la volonté de repenser la notion d’identité. Parce qu’on ne peut réduire la créolité à la langue créole. Il ne s’agit pas que de ça. Il s’agit fondamentalement d’une théorie de l’identité mosaïque. Il existe une conception de l’identité en terme de propriété : ma langue, ma terre, ma religion. Mais elle nous enferme dans une logique d’exclusion. Il vaudrait mieux raisonner sur la base d’une identité mosaïque : mes terres, mes langues, mes religions. (Cadasse and Pépin 2004) [It is the acknowledgment of the diversity of the Caribbean world. It is equally the willingness to rethink the notion of identity. Because one cannot reduce creoleness to the Creole language. It is not a question of that. Fundamentally, it is a question of a theory of mosaic identity. There exists a conception of identity in terms of propriety: my language, my land, my religion. But it confines us in a logic of exclusion . It would be better to reason on the basis of a mosaic identity: my lands, my languages, my religions.] Although Pépin is seeking to appropriate the term creolité to respect what he views as the mosaic identities of the Caribbean islands,2 not everyone agrees with that use of the term, especially the Martinicans and Guadeloupeans, who prefer to align themselves with France.3 At the Frontières discussion, there was one woman in particular who began shouting at Pépin during the question-and-answer session. The Guadeloupean-born woman screamed, “I am French!” and then accused him of being an old man who was out of touch with the younger Frenchdefined generation of Guadeloupean and Martinican youth. If the woman in...

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