The Impossible "Return to the Native Land": Exile, Loss of Memory, and Identity in José Pliya's Play Nous étions assis sur le rivage du monde…

José Pliya is a very atypical Francophone writer: he is one of the rare, if not only, African writers living in the Caribbean and his theatrical work is clearly situated at the crossroads of the African, the Creole, and the European cultures. Pliya defines himself as a writer of the "entre multiple," the "multiple in-between."¹ Born in Benin in 1966, he has lived in several parts of the world: in France, where he grew up and studied French literature (he wrote his doctoral thesis on Paul Claudel and Bernard-Marie Koltès), in Cameroon, where he worked as the head of the Alliance Française, a position he also held in Dominica in the West Indies, and finally in the French Caribbean, where he has now been living for about ten years, alternately in Martinique and Guadeloupe. He was appointed Director of the Scène Nationale L'Artchipel, the National Theatrical Stage of Guadeloupe in Basse-Terre in 2005; he is also the founder of the theatrical association Ecritures Théâtrales Contemporaines en Caraïbes (ETC Caraïbes), which works for the recognition and promotion of young Caribbean playwrights from both the Francophone and Creolophone regions, as well as the English and Spanish speaking Caribbean islands. José Pliya's dramatic work, as a reflection of his own life, expresses an unstable and changing identity, never defined or confined, and constantly evolving. The questions of exile, space, and territory—of belonging and wandering—are addressed by Pliya in his play Nous étions assis sur le rivage du monde… (2004), which offers multiple intertwining layers—personal and collective, physical and psychological, racial, social, and historical—that I would like to explore in this article.² Staged in 2006 in Guadeloupe and in Montreal by the Canadian director Denis Marleau, head of the Theatrical Company Ubu,³ the play was acclaimed by both the Caribbean and the Canadian audiences.

José Pliya succeeds in creating dramatic tension through a simple conflict whose intensity increases throughout the play. A Woman arrives on the beach of her childhood, the Shores of the World, to meet with friends whom she has not seen for a long time. Born on the island, she has left to work in a big city—certainly in France—and is now back to her native land for vacation. When she gets to the meeting point, her friends have not yet arrived and she meets a Man who forbids her to stay on the beach which is now private. The woman refuses to obey, ignoring the authority and the orders given by the Man who must use physical violence to make her understand she has to leave. Although We Were Sitting on the Shores of the World… is a one act play, the action takes place in three stages: the first moment introduces the conflict between the Woman and the Man alone, on a beach which seems to be removed from time and space; the confrontation ends when the Man slaps the Woman in the face and disappears into the sea. The second part begins with the arrival of the friends, one female and one male, who try to convince the Woman to leave without revealing to her the reasons why she is not allowed to stay; they represent the irruption of the outside world and reality into the timeless and nearly mythical initial setting. From now on, we are back in the real world, and when the Man returns to the beach in the third and last part after the friends have left, the dialogue is anchored in the social, racial, and historical reality of an island whose secret is to be revealed. We are gradually understanding why a beach that was yesterday open to the world is banned today, why the Woman no longer has the right to stay on the Shores of the World.

The first part of this article examines how a power conflict linked to the possession of territory progressively evolves into...