Créolisation, Creolization, and Créolité

Conceived as a contribution to a 2014 symposium reconsidering Éloge de la créolité—written by three Martiniquan intellectuals—twenty-five years after its publication, this essay draws a distinction between the French use of créolisation as a mainly philosophical and poetic concept and the more historically grounded use of creolization in the anglophone world. After outlining the various criticisms of the Éloge expressed in the author’s 1995 essay “Shadowboxing in the Mangrove” (coauthored by Sally Price), it sketches in a history of the use of the creolization metaphor in the anglophone academy, drawing examples mainly from historical and anthropological work on Afro-America. It ends by considering the limitations of the perspectives put forth in the Éloge and the potential usefulness of the creolization concept for the future.