Conversations on Creoleness (review)

Créolité and Creolization: Documenta 11_Platform 3, edited by Okwui Enwezor, Carlos Basualdo, Ute Meta Bauer, Susanne Ghez, Sarat Maharaj, Mark Nash, and Octavio Zaya. Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2003. ISBN: 3-7757-9084-5

The most innovative curatorial and artistic project in recent years has been Documenta 11, under the guidance of its artistic director, Okwui Enwezor, and his co-curators (Carlos Basualdo, Ute Meta Bauer, Susanne Ghez, Sarat Maharaj, Mark Nash, and Octavio Zaya). From March 2001 to March 2002, Documenta staged four "platforms"—theme-based interdisciplinary lectures and panel discussions—which were held at different global sites, on four continents. The fifth platform was an exhibition of 116 international artists in Documenta's hometown of Kassel, Germany. The first four platforms provided forums for intellectuals, cultural critics, writers, and artists from around the world to participate in a global intellectual exchange of ideas drawn from an impressive range of disciplines and knowledges. Platform 1, "Democracy Unrealized," was held in Vienna, Austria, from 15 March to 20 April 2001, and it continued from 9 to 30 October 2001, in Berlin, Germany. Platform 2, "Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation," was staged in New Delhi, India, from 7 to 21 May 2001. The third platform, "Créolité and Creolization," occurred in St. Lucia between 12 and 16 January 2002, and the fourth platform, "Under Siege: Four African Cities, Freetown,Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos," was held in Lagos, Nigeria, from 15 to 21 March 2002.

The proceedings of the first four platforms have been published, thus affording the general public access to a treasure trove of exemplary critical thought on contemporary global, cultural, social, and political concerns. Créolité and Creolization is the third volume in this series, and it offers a refreshingly eclectic series of conversations on the cultural politics of the phenomenon of creolization. Its fifteen contributors include academics and cultural practitioners from around the world, a fact that undoubtedly accounts for the cosmopolitan flavor of the essays and discussions, as the ideas presented navigate the slippery spaces of cross-cultural, transnational, and transdisciplinary formulations of Creole spaces, languages, and cultural practices.

The collection essentially follows the format of the platform, and it is structured around the discussion of five general themes that allow contributors to discuss créolité and creolization in terms of their ethical, theoretical, political, cultural, global, and diasporic modalities and effects. Each general theme is served by three essays followed by open sessions, which allow for stimulating intellectual conversations and exchange. In fact, the inclusion of the open sessions is one of the strengths of this collection, since many potent insights and propositions, and useful caveats and interrogations are contained in these exchanges. The overall interplay of essays and discussions acts as a ready-made aid for the reader who might find herself on unfamiliar ground. The eclecticism of the collection is surely one of its strengths, as art historians and curators are juxtaposed alongside filmmakers, cultural critics, educators, and scholars of linguistics. More interestingly, each theme is addressed from different cultural and linguistic perspectives, thus enabling a truly transnational approach that incorporates the specifics of region, language, period, theme, and methodology into our understanding of créolité and creolization. The politics and poetics of creoleness and creolization are examined within the Caribbean and Latin America, the Indian Ocean islands, and black British culture.

The essays fall under three broad categories: synoptic and schematic overviews; analyses of specific cultural practices and the politics of cultural production; and discussions of the linguistic and literary politics of writing Creole. Despite the diversity of the contributors, the collection, surprisingly enough, has a certain consistency derived from a collaborative and conversational working through of the political and critical purchase of the concepts and processes under scrutiny. This consistency emerges as a theoretical and artistic consensus on the potent instrumentality of the concepts of créolité and creolization in a global milieu where identity is no longer thought of in fixed, static terms...