Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction. Inhabiting Haiti
- 1 Jacques-Stephen Alexis. Janus in Limbo: Urbanization, Exoticism, and Creolization
- 2 René Depestre. Internal Exiles and Exotic Longings
- 3 Émile Ollivier. Passing Through
- 4 Dany Laferrière. Master of the New
- 5 Edwidge Danticat. Home Is Where the Hurt Is
- Conclusion. The Missing People: Theorizing Haitian and Caribbean Exiles
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion. The Missing People: Theorizing Haitian and Caribbean Exiles
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction. Inhabiting Haiti
- 1 Jacques-Stephen Alexis. Janus in Limbo: Urbanization, Exoticism, and Creolization
- 2 René Depestre. Internal Exiles and Exotic Longings
- 3 Émile Ollivier. Passing Through
- 4 Dany Laferrière. Master of the New
- 5 Edwidge Danticat. Home Is Where the Hurt Is
- Conclusion. The Missing People: Theorizing Haitian and Caribbean Exiles
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I am not too crazy about the notion of fixed nationalities. I think all that is changing with migration, especially in our region. Nothing is as rigid and permanent as it used to be. (Edwidge Danticat)
Like Danticat, few contemporary authors or theorists are “too crazy” about fixed, immutable notions of nationality, race, or identity. This is especially true in the Caribbean, where diverse histories of exile have engendered a quite singular, fluid, and evolving relationship between place and subjectivity. On the “outside,” too, postmodern theory tends to celebrate cultural and identitary hybridity as open-ended manifestations of a world where traditional ideas of nation and home are increasingly discarded in favor of less fixed, ever-multiplying understandings of what it means to belong in the contemporary age. The world, as Édouard Glissant constantly reminds us, is creolizing. But does this mean that we can now talk of a universal experience of exile? And how do the Haitian exiles analyzed in this book finally relate to other contemporary narratives and theories of exile, both from the Caribbean and from the wider world?
Exile in European and North American theory
Let us think of displacement. Displacement does not only signify the loss of one's place, but also a more authentic way of living, of inhabiting without habits; exile is the affirmation of a new relationship with the outside. (Maurice Blanchot)
Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile's life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. The achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever. (Edward Said)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Exile and Post-1946 Haitian LiteratureAlexis, Depestre, Ollivier, Laferrière, Danticat, pp. 249 - 261Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007