Abstract

Abstract:

In the inaugural essay of Poétique de la Relation, “La barque ouverte,” Glissant dares his readers to “Supposez, si vous le pouvez” the conditions under which enslaved Africans were held captives in the hold of the ship, thus emphasizing the impossible yet crucial task of imagining the unimaginable experience of the Middle Passage. In the historical bande dessinée Les esclaves oubliés de Tromelin (2015), I argue that French graphic novelist Sylvain Savoia takes up this Glissantian challenge. By so doing, he extends knowledge of what Christopher Miller has called the “French Atlantic” to the Indian Ocean, especially to Madagascar.

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