Clear Word and Third Sight (review)

In Clear Word and Third Sight, Catherine John investigates Afro-Caribbean literature through the multiple lenses of negritude theory, cultural performance, and discursive practices. In her investigation, John eschews facile binary interpretations of theory in favor of fresh revisions of scholarly arguments. By challenging the tendency of theory to diverge into the polarized camps of “essentialism” and “hybridity,” John provides an invigorating perspective on the diasporic condition as expressed in Caribbean literature. Essentialist theories of Caribbean culture posit the existence of an original culture located in the motherland of Africa that is either retained subversively or eliminated in the colonial and postcolonial experience in the New World. On the other hand, hybridity theory insists that New World cultures are, of necessity, altered by the dominant culture. John analyzes the implications of these viewpoints and suggests that there is another way to locate culture. Both essentialism and hybridity suggest that culture is either irredeemably lost or mutated beyond recognition. Instead, John suggests that black culture, from Africa to the Caribbean, has proved more resistant than these theoretical debates indicate and that Caribbean literature represents the vitality of an uninterrupted cultural lineage.

In chapter 1, John identifies the First International Conference of Negro Artists and Writers, held in Paris in 1956, as the locus for the debate over black cultural identity. John discusses the seminal writers and thinkers involved with both sides of the negritude issue and their relationship to the expanding canon of Caribbean literature. John maintains that African culture persisted in the Caribbean, despite the destructive forces of colonialism, and that it continues as a force in its own right, rather than as an instrument of resistance or an artifact of an overriding dominant culture. John refuses to entertain scenarios of cultural demise and retrieval, arguing instead that black culture maintained its integrity despite colonialism.

Having made this point, John uses gender identity in chapter 2 as a point of departure for discussing the perceived influence of Western culture. She contends that it is improper to judge Caribbean gender structures by comparing them to Western norms. In making such judgments, other cultures are necessarily marginalized and Western culture is rendered central and normative. Scholarship must avoid such a limiting comparative approach. John also makes a case for the relationship of language and poetics to the “cultural worldsense of a people” (p. 71). She asserts that the rhythm and sound from originary tongues has persevered and suggests the possibilities that these features have for appropriating the colonial tongue in order to use it to preserve and promulgate identity.

In chapters 3 through 5, John discusses specific literary works from the Caribbean countries. Chapter 3 looks at writings by Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Hodge, and Earl Lovelace as they relate to themes of displacement and alienation. Chapter 4 explores the literature of the French Caribbean in terms of cultural features, such as community experience and proverbs. John asserts that these cultural constructs represent an unbroken connection to Africa and that they find new life in literature. In chapter 5, she uses the works of Audre Lord and Paule Marshall to investigate the empowerment of the narrative voice through “spirit consciousness,” which, she explains, is a form of “visionary knowledge that supersedes Western ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ ” (p. 189). The narrative voices in these works reflect the restoration of personal power through a journey of self-discovery driven by spirit consciousness. This alternate way of understanding is a road back to a cultural knowingness that restores identity and, hence, power to the protagonists.

Through the first two chapters of her book, John validates the importance of postcolonial theorists at the same time that she demonstrates new ways to use their theories to explore literature. In addition, she emphasizes the centrality of cultural and folkloric elements in the Caribbean literatures that she analyzes. John contends that oral language functions as the underlying sound and poetics of the literature, while proverbs and folktales provide a substantive base. She states...