Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean by Jason Herbeck (review)

The identities of Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe are often indiscernible, their artistic and cultural productions infused with intangible properties whose structures and forms have evolved under the successive forms of domineering powers. Architextual Authenticity explores the process by which the identities of these regions have been 'constructed' through the various colonizing and Western thought systems. Herbeck's two-pronged critical approach examines fictional works, first in terms of the literary elements and influences that structure the texts: in other words their metatextual construction or 'architexture.' The second approach concerns the physical or 'literal' structures within these same texts, the 'architecture.' The term 'architexture,' borrowed from Genette, signifies the presence of external influences combined with vernacular sources that give shape to a text. To illustrate the elusive authenticity of French Caribbean narratives, the opening chapter looks first into an example of actual architectural structures, Haiti's Gingerbread houses, which are adaptations of French and Victorian styles to the Caribbean milieu. The builders of these houses acclimatized the architecture to the specific conditions of their environment, thereby making them uniquely Haitian. Subsequently, the chapter examines how the construction of French Caribbean literary expression derives from the natural topography as well as human landscapes. Therefore, Herbeck does not approach the construction of literary identity from the perspective of genre and aesthetics as most studies do but from "more open, autonomous beginnings" (57). Significantly, all the novels examined in the book prominently feature a house. In the first novel, Édouard Glissant's La lézarde, the landscape informs the characters' views and actions as well as revealing their conflicting interests and perspectives. La maison de la source's architecture and the novel's structure exemplify the tensions and contradictions in attempting to define French Caribbean identity. The debate on authenticity continues with Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove, a narrative highlighting the spatial context and constructed as a composite expression of racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse individuals. Traversée embodies what the author defines as "vernacular architexture." Multiple stories are told which result in an instable narrative meant to reflect an authentic Caribbean expression and identity. In Daniel Maximin's L'île et une nuit, the house as a protective and confined space during a cyclone is a fundamental component of the story, triggering the protagonist's self-reflection and negotiations for survival. As the storm progresses, the house becomes a dynamic space of construct: a creolizing structure. Finally, Yanick Lahens's two post-earthquake novels provide a counterdiscourse to the narratives of disaster that have cast Haiti in a negative light from the time of colonization to the 2010 seism. According to Herbeck, Failles and Guillaume et Nathalie offer an authentic Haitian approach to the literature of reconstruction. Both novels constitute a framework for reassessing and rebuilding the country's physical structures, leading in turn to a revitalized literary identity. Architextual Authenticity is a commanding work on French Caribbean criticism. Herbeck's scholarship is impressive and his close readings, which focus on demonstrating the 'architexture' of French Caribbean texts as expression of an authentic Caribbean literary identity, are persuasive.