Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant by Nick Nesbitt (review)

As Nick Nesbitt notes, approaches to Caribbean writing in French to date have tended to follow a few familiar modes: writing as poetics, as literature, or as history. The great originality of Nesbitt’s book is to propose a new mode: to conceptualize all such writing as ‘critique’, a model that, he says, permits the reader to grasp the essential characteristic of a diverse range of works; that is, the way in which they ‘cry out in insubordination and aversion to the state of the world’ and ‘seek to articulate the promise that another world is possible’ (p. xi). As such, the book fills an important gap in francophone Caribbean studies, which has always had a strong theoretical component but, arguably, has not previously been subject to such a rigorously philosophical critical treatment. What drives Caribbean Critique, and indeed Nesbitt’s own critical engagement, is an enduring sense of outrage at Caribbean plantation slavery and colonialism, the lingering effects of which render this project all the more significant and timely. Much of the righteous energy of Nesbitt’s own critique derives from his reading of the Haitian Revolution, which is seen rightly as a foundational event in the history of Caribbean anti-colonialism, and also as a seminal moment for Caribbean Critique, in that it marked the beginnings of written responses to colonialism and slavery. For Nesbitt, such written responses—letters, memoirs, essays—demonstrate that from its beginnings Caribbean Critique was concerned less with the fate of particular human groups than with that of humankind more generally, and with the universal concepts of rights, freedom, equality, and justice. In Nesbitt’s reading, subsequent French Caribbean writing has remained attached to these principles, even as postcolonial history has complicated the idea of resistance and has perpetuated certain colonial modes of being and thinking, most notably those related to colour and class divisions. The further definition of critique as a mode that refuses the abstract separation of theory and practice leads to a particularly committed form of analysis and a singularly energetic engagement with the dizzying array of works and thinkers addressed in the various chapters: Nesbitt weaves a particularly rich set of references, from Victor Schœlcher and Tocqueville through Aimé Césaire, Maryse Condé, Édouard Glissant, Frantz Fanon, René Ménil, Baron de Vastey, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide. To his credit, Nesbitt does not shy away from controversial topics or figures, such as the role of violence in the colonial and postcolonial history of the region, or the complex figure of former Haitian president J.-B. Aristide. Certainly, some of his arguments are contentious, but they are the signs of a particularly engaged and erudite critic whose latest study will prove to be a landmark, indeed seminal, work in Caribbean Critique.