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Introduction On the lower floor of the Musée Départemental d’Archéologie Précolombienne et de Préhistoire in Fort-de-France, Martinique, there is a large genealogic tree. The tree is part of an exhibition called “Our Amerindian Heritage” (Nos héritages amérindiens), and it traces the roots of a woman by the name of Magdeleine Luraine back to 1654, when the French colonized the island. She is assigned this consecrated space not because she herself is famous but, rather, because she is one of the few Martinicans whose ancestry is Amerindian. Through the intricate pattern of the branches representing her heritage, a part of the Martinican past is rooted in Martinique’s soil and is linked to the people that inhabited the land before colonial presence. The exhibit shows the visitor that this heritage is still relevant, but the time lapse tells another story. Luraine died in 1904, more than one hundred years ago. In today’s Martinique, clearly, the roots of her tree are cut. Magdeleine Luraine’s ancestry is not only supposed to show evidence of Martinicans’ original inscription in Caribbean space; she also represents a piece in the larger mosaic that constitutes Creole culture as it is presented in the exhibition. As strange as it may seem, next to the filiations displayed by the genealogic tree, Martinique’s “plural patrimony” and “rhizomatic identities” are praised. Since discussions about Caribbean identity have, to a large extent, focused on the population’s African heritage, remembering the Amerindians and their legacy is a step in the direction toward considering and honoring each part of Martinique ’s culture. Yet wanting to find roots and at the same time embrace cultural crossings as a fundamental element of the Caribbean experience are indeed contradictory aims. Perhaps more than any other region, the Caribbean has a traumatic relationship with the past and a difficulty in articulating identity, both individual and collective, as a consequence of 2 Introduction colonialism and transplantation. In this context, it comes as no surprise that the desire to connect with ancestry is particularly strong, but in the place of clear roots is hybridity. A genealogic tree may give a sense of relevance in today’s increasingly interconnected world. Yet most of all it reveals a complicated relationship not only to the past but also to the present. If the roots do not even exist, how are people to link the past with the experience of living in Martinique today? And are the roots really cut because a genealogic tree tells us so? In any case, in the last thirty years or so Martinicans have shown an increasing desire to reconnect history with cultural practices. Whether dancing to remember the slaves’ sufferings, creating “memory years,” or organizing historical walks, Martinicans seem to be exploring ways to look at themselves and to make sense out of their reality. But although the exhibition reassures that, here, the island’s cultural heritage is presented by Martinicans for Martinicans in Martinique, the sponsors to this commemoration, at least most of them, remind us that we are in France. If it is not Musée de France, then it is the European Union that has opened its pockets. Martinicans are bound to search for selfexpression within frames dictated from the other side of the Atlantic. Desiring rootedness and embracing a hybrid identity while depending on a former colonial power is indeed a daunting task. This very dilemma of an evolving rather than a static hybrid identity seems to be at the core of the Martinican experience. The issues of Martinican identity the exhibition brings up can easily be contextualized by exploring the ongoing search for Martinican self and reality within Caribbean and Martinican literary history, a search that is always tied to the outside. Looking at literature from the island, authors have continually explored the notion of a self that is shaped in such a heterogeneous yet dominated environment like the Caribbean, but they do not write to define Creole identity once and for all. This complicated, if not paradoxical, process of searching for and expressing internal knowledge about the self and the environment is the topic of this book. In fact, Martinican literature tends to use the connection to the outside to better account for the Caribbean experience. One of these “outsides ” of particular interest is ethnography. Ethnography is not only a scientific discourse outside of literature; it is, at least in its traditional shape, a European discourse of knowledge...

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