Locating the Destitute: Space and Identity in Caribbean Fiction

Index

autonomy: autonomous identity, 87, 178, 182; autonomous place, 51, 119, 182; autonomous space, 10, 86, 88; denied, 10, 78, 181; in Gilroy’s Frangipani House, 137–38, 141, 148, 185; housing crystallizes need for, 22, 51; in Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, 79, 99, 184; narrative, 24; ownership and, 23; poverty versus, 81–82; self-naming and self-regulating, 127; spatial, 79, 137; in yard novels, 56 Bachelard, Gaston, 27, 78, 86, 154, 193n3, 196n6 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 25, 155, 161–62, 163–64, 165 Benítez-Rojo, Antonio: on Caribbeanness, 31–33, 164–65; on Caribbean performativity, 17, 59; on “certain kind of way,” 32, 35, 42; on metaarchipelago , 32, 38; The Repeating Island, 28, 31–33; on violence in origins of the Caribbean, 34–36 Bhabha, Homi: on “beyond” in postcolonial discourse, 42; on cultures of survival, 5, 7, 80, 103; on house of fiction, 53, 79–80; on insider’s outsideness, 52, 80; on Naipaul, 89, 90, 103; on postcolonial project, 5–6; on right to signify, 81; on third space, 10–11 Brathwaite, Edward Kamau, 17, 54–55, 56, 64 Caldwell, Roy Chandler, Jr., 156, 157, 161 capitalism: abstract space in, 82; as challenge for spatial analysis, 160; colonial trade in, 29; exploitation, 1, 36, 49; global, 9, 30, 36, 47, 50, 53, 72, 183; as hierarchized, specialized, and abstract, 17; in Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, 83; uneven development under, 46; youth and, 134 Caribbean, the: Caribbeanness as system of noise and opacity, 164–65; central impulse of Caribbean imagination, 161; fictionalized as Edenic, 28–30; French influence in, 155–56; migration to former colonial metropole, 147; as model for world culture, 157–59; Naipaul on West Indian futility, 90; as representative of colonialism’s most alienating aspects, 40; spatial metaphors of, 20, 21, 27–47; specificity of, 31–38. See also Caribbean literatures; Creoleness Caribbean literatures: ambiguity of, 164; centrality of spatial considerations in, 22, 181–82; on endurance of colonial hierarchy, 6; as “fugitive by nature,” 33, 42; identity of, 158; interplay between imaginary and material concerns in, 3–4; lingering colonial order as challenge for, 160; persistent focus on contested spatiality, 27; slavery’s lingering effects in, 156; transcendence of actual locations in, 188–90, 191, 192. See also yard novels; and authors and titles by name carnivalesque, 160–62, 164–65, 169, 170, 178 Index 218 Index Creole aesthetic, 109; Creole city, 105, 107, 110, 115, 121; Creole identity, 33, 38, 155, 157–59; Creole language, 112, 114–17, 119, 124, 156–57, 159, 160, 162–63, 166, 169, 173, 174, 176, 178; Creole novel, 162, 166, 175–76, 179, 201n3; destitution of Creole citizen, 106; ongoing process of creolization, 127 Crichlow, Michaeline A., 34 Dash, J. Michael, 41, 42, 43, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 129, 161, 194n6 Deleuze, Gilles, 115, 122, 123, 124–25, 199n12 destitution: art versus material, 191; in Chamoiseau’s Texaco, 109–10; colonial, 96, 182, 185; in Confiant’s L’Hôtel du Bon Plaisir, 7, 52, 162, 163, 169–73, 179; of Creole citizen as sign of deviation, 106; etymological sense of, 7, 20, 85, 183–84; as exteriority, 185–86; in Gilroy’s Frangipani House, 7, 52, 137–38, 147, 149, 151–52; in Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance, 65; in Mais’s The Hills Were Joyful Together, 60, 61, 63; Naipaul on writing and, 101; in Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, 6, 22, 51, 77–79, 81–83, 85, 87, 95, 98–100, 184–85; and ownership, 184, 186–87; postcolonial, 9, 21, 95, 172; for reading postcolonial spatial exclusion, 6–7, 51–52; spatial, 7, 20, 21, 45, 57, 73, 109, 183; standing upright in order to resist, 8, 79, 185; in yard novels, 57, 72; in Zobel’s Black Shack Alley, 70 displacement: in Chamoiseau’s Texaco, 23, 109; colonial, 5–6, 10, 20, 37, 88, 95, 96; in contemporary capitalist development, 31; by contemporary West Indians, 30; destitution and, 7, 85; metaphor suggests, 39; in Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, 23, 81, 95; postcolonial subject’s historical memory of, 42; from slavery, 80 dispossession: in Chamoiseau’s Texaco, 111, 120; colonial, 5–6, 37, 182, 189; in Confiant’s L’Hôtel du Bon Plaisir, 173, 174, 176, 177; in Gilroy’s Frangipani House, 144; in Head’s A Question of Power, 125; imagination contests, 183; Césaire, Aimé, 79, 107, 125, 129, 157, 173, 175, 191 Chamoiseau, Patrick: on...