Translative and Opaque: Multilingual Caribbean Writing in Derek Walcott and Monchoachi

While models of creoleness in the Caribbean reinscribe a theoretical monolingualism, thinking about regional literature as multilingual instead allows for an understanding of the ongoing relationality, conflictuality, and creativity produced in the translative modes through which literary expression negotiates between the primary languages of the region. In reading for the translative, writing that works between vernaculars or Creoles and dominant European languages, we can identify a distinctly Caribbean mode of expression. In this essay, translative analyses of Derek Walcott’s play Drums and Colours and the essays and poetry of Monchoachi show the creative engagement with a differential opacity that speaks to the negotiation of the specificities of self-determination and self-definition necessary to the postcolonial condition.