Odious Caribbean Women and the Palpable Aesthetics of Transgression by Gladys M. Francis (review)

Francophone Caribbean women writers and artists have been creating a prolific body of work for a very long time now; yet their work continues to be, in many instances, negated the recognition it very well deserves to have, not only in academia, but also in the daily construction of paradigms that defy those imposed upon the Francophone Caribbean experience (in general) by Eurocentric discourses and perspectives. Although this is not a new issue, it continues to be urgent to put forth the incalculable contribution of Francophone Caribbean women writers throughout the 20^th century to this day. Dr. Gladys M. Francis is a Caribbeanist scholar adamant in leading us to explore the body of work that some of these female authors have created; in an attempt to emphasize and expose the ways in which their creativity separates them from the exoticizing paradigms established when Caribbean literary and visual productions are defined by the Western academic, historical, economic and political mainstream discourse.

The author points at how diasporic performances have been denied the significance, and importance, that they have as archival materials in documenting a history that has been consigned to memory. Francis emphasizes the importance of "performance and ekphrases writing as sites of embodied knowledge that avow, as archive, mnemonic transmissions and expressive behaviors" (p. xii). Francis also revisits these important questions: What belongs in the archives? And who is deciding this? She states that: "We must shift away from such factional orthodoxies that perpetuate the invisibility of the myriad of forms through which non-Western societies have created and continue to create knowledge" (p. xii). Francis evidently refers to the ways in which imperialistic frames of reference have continued to keep non-Western knowledge, in general, out of the "official" archives and historical documents. These expressions of knowledge, perpetuated through orality (oraliture), music, dance, art and belief systems, in Caribbean cultures for instance, must be made visible. Furthermore, the author sets her inquisitive queries precisely upon the ways in which these texts challenge and contest the "hegemonic" archival system itself (p. xiii).

According to Diane Taylor, quoted by the author in her introduction, performance leads to "cultural belonging and political agency" (p. xiv). Francis thus tells us that she proposes to study this embodied knowledge as it is manifested through storytelling, songs, riddles, cooking and other artistic and cultural texts. All of these expressions and manifestations put forth the invisible, voiceless, silenced and excluded history and memory of the Caribbean experience as a whole. Francis is also intent on putting on the forefront, not only, the contributions of Francophone Caribbean women writers, but she also incorporates visual and performance arts, as texts in her analysis. In the author's view, these cultural texts contribute significantly to our understanding of Caribbean idiosyncrasies, identities, cultural politics, among other aspects of the Caribbean experience; in order to demonstrate this, she navigates through an extensive body of theoretical and aesthetic work to support her arguments.

The first chapter of this book focuses on "issues of dis/placements," as well as "imprints of colonization" in terms of the construction or conceptualization of identity in the "sociocultural and political contexts of Guadeloupe and Martinique" (p. xviii). These constructions are conceived "within a multifaceted" combination of factors, which include the African, Creole and European components (p. xviii-xix). This chapter is mostly devoted to the analysis of literary works by Dambury, Pineau and Kanor. Expounding on the cultural politics of identity, particularly what she calls impossible citizenships. The author studies ekphrases writing, which "deconstructs and re/constructs" the body. This also speaking to the use of the word "odious," in her title and throughout the text, pointing toward what she describes as the "repulsive embodied depictions used in literary texts, visual productions, and performances, that is, the (non-verbal) practices of ritual, cooking, dance, theatre, funerals…" (p. xiv). Taking her analysis beyond the mere "paradigms of content and subject," the author...