Tout-monde, chaos-monde, the DOM, and Caribbean Dance: Inscribing Community Identity in Gerty Dambury’s Les rétifs

This article aims to read Guadeloupe’s labor uprising of May 1967 and its brutal suppression by metropolitan police forces by juxtaposing the rubrics of Glissant’s Relation, Tout-Monde, and chaos-monde with Gerty Dambury’s re-presentation of the event in Les rétifs. The novel inscribes nine-year-old Emilienne and her eight brothers and sisters – Emérite, Emmy, Emelie, Emilie, Emmanuel, Emilio, Emmett et Émile – as a prismatic figure seeking to understand the world around her through an innovative literary quadrille. Through these mirrored counterparts, her island’s universe unfolds before her in an attempt to engage the “chaos-world” to identify patterns of non-linear connection and relation.