The Stealers of Fire: The French-Speaking Writers of the Caribbean and Their Strategies of Liberation

and Claire-Solange, cme africaine never becomes the erotic book it might have been. Some 20 years later, in 1948, Mayotte Cap6cia (1948/1997) arouses the wrath of Frantz Fanon by writing Je Suis Martiniquaise (I Am a Martinican Woman). We are all familiar with the famous condemnation that appeared in Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), published in 1952: One day a woman named Mayotte Cap6cia, obeying a motivation whose elements are difficult to detect, sat down to write 202 pages-her life-in which the most ridiculous ideas proliferated at random .... "Je suis Martiniquaise" is cut-rate merchandise, a sermon in praise of corruption. (1952/1967, p. 42) What exactly was Mayotte's crime? The heroine in the novel is possessed since childhood with one obsession-to put a little Whiteness in her life with the help of men. After having fallen in love with her priest, she finally meets Andr6, a French naval officer. Much to the fury of Frantz Fanon, she portrays him as such: "Was Andre handsome? All I know is that he had blue eyes, blond hair, a pale complexion and I loved him" (p. 118). Even though the war separates them, she has a son by him whose complexion consoles her. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.152 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:13:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Conde / THE STEALERS OF FIRE 161 Michble Lacrosil published three novels, one after the other: Sapotille ou le Serin d'argile in 1960, a Caribbean bildungsroman; Cajou, in 1961, whose neurotic heroine commits suicide after her marriage; and Demain Jab-Herma in 1967, a historical novel that is in sharp contrast to the other two. It is difficult to pigeonhole these various narratives. There is no declaration of a common objective. There is no desire to create a literary movement or school. Yet we may very well ask ourselves what these apparently dissimilar texts have in common. The first connection we can detect is that they are real or simulated autobiographies. In each of them, except for Jab-Herma, the subject says "I." Let us recall here the question put by Doris Sommer (1988) in Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography: Is [women's autobiography] a medium of resistance and counter discourse, the legitimate space for producing that excess which throws doubt on the coherence and power of an exclusive historiography? (p. 111) When we first read these disparate works, we are tempted to parody the title of the African American anthology All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave (Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982). In these novels, the men, who are won, fought over, or lost, are all French and White. Claire-Solange, Mayotte, Sapotille, and Cajou have only White men on their mind and feel a genuine hatred for the Black man, portrayed as being materialistic, violent, and a womanizer. It is significant that Mayotte only manages to make peace with her father at the very end of the book, when old age has symbolically castrated him and he can no longer think of seducing her girlfriends. Added to this is a generally negative vision of Caribbean society, which is seen as being mean spirited and obsessed with color prejudice. At the end of Je Suis Martiniquaise (Cap6cia, 1948/1997), there is an edifying scene where Mayotte goes to Guadeloupe to see Andrd and, caught up in the whirlwind of political events, tries to find lodgings: This content downloaded from 157.55.39.152 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:13:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 162 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / NOVEMBER 2004 So I went to a hotel and spoke to the owner. A negress, she looked at me, and then at Franqois' pale face and finally told me in a guttural voice: I ain't got a room. I'm sick. I have to stay someplace. I don't give a damn! I won't put you up with yo'old white man in yo' arms. (p. 142) It is only right to point out that Frantz Fanon did not understand Mayotte Capecia. Like her sisters in writing, she deplores, in fact, the emasculation of the Black man, reduced to a penis, frantically seeking the phallus-that is, authority and power-and she finds herself forced to turn to the White man. In other words, these women writers are in mutual agreement when it comes to denouncing, each in their own way, alienation and cultural dependency resulting from colonial domination. What does the second generation of French-speaking Caribbean writers, such as Simone Schwarz-Bart, Myriam Vieyra, and Maryse Condd, have to offer? Except for Simone Schwarz-Bart, this generation confronts Africa-first the shameful face of Caribbean identity, then the womb, the mother lode, thanks to Negritude. Going one step further than Cdsaire, they undertake a physical journey back to the continent. Mother Africa, alas, is nothing but a wicked stepmother. Their search ends in disillusionment, bitterness, and failure. Such is the meaning of the last lines of Heremakhonon by Maryse Conde (1988/1996): I got it wrong, I got my ancestors wrong, that's all. I looked for my salvation in the wrong place. Among the assassins. (p. 176) As for Simone Schwarz-Bart, she stayed put on the island and tackled another side of motherhood-physical motherhood. In Pluie et Vent sur Tilumee Miracle (The Bridge of Beyond), published in 1972 (translated in 1982), Tl1umde is incapable of bearing a child and loses her adopted daughter, Sonore, to the Angel M6dard, the Angel of Evil. Lest we get the wrong idea, this bitter destruction of myths-the myth of the spiritual mother, the myth of the biological motherThis content downloaded from 157.55.39.152 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:13:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Cond6 / THE STEALERS OF FIRE 163 aims for total liberation. Another similar sacrilege is C6saire's poetic and dramatic writing, which bears the trace of the Maroon fleeing the world of the plantation in search of his Negritude. Edouard Glissant systematized this theme to make it the keystone of Caribbean history. Maryse Cond6, however, inconveniently recalled that the famous Maroons were nothing but opportunists. In Jamaica, for example, they turned themselves into servants and informers of the English to safeguard their freedom. "Myth," writes Edouard Glissant in Caribbean Discourse (1989/1997), "is the first state of a still-naive historical consciousness, and the raw material for the project of a literature" (p. 71). No, retort the women writers in their own individual way. We have to rid ourselves of myths. They are binding, confining, and paralyzing. Mankind must only be too aware of the wickedness in this world. In this way, it will be better armed to fight back. But it is Gisele Pineau who undertakes the final subversion by following through the treatise of eroticism, hinted at by Suzanne Lacascade, while ridding it of its didactic aspirations. In Chair Piment, published in 2002, Gisele Pineau portrays a heroine obsessed with sex. We would be wrong to see it as cashing in on the present vogue in France for sexuality in literature, especially female sexuality. We must look further. Sex, which made a discreet entry into Frenchspeaking Caribbean literature, especially in the novels by Raphael Confiant, no longer appears in a playful, even obscene, mode. Suddenly, it is thrust under the spotlight and operates as a factor of individual, subjective liberation of the characters. It is meaningful that only sex manages to deliver the heroine from her sister's ghost and cure her of the memory of a personal tragedy. Elle consommait le sexe dress6 des hommes. En redemandait. En r&vait parfois. Et se r6veillait en sursaut, au milieu des des nuits, avec l'envie d'un corps d'homme ajust6 au sien. Fallait qu'elle soit prise, poss6d6e, travers6e. (Pineau, 2002, p. 17) She devoured the erect members of men. Asked for more. Sometimes dreamed of them. And woke up with a start in the middle of the night, longing for a body to fit into hers. She had to be taken, possessed and pierced. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.152 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:13:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 164 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / NOVEMBER 2004 At the same time, the eroticism debunks the text by carnivalizing it. As for the writer, she no longer believes she is invested with a higher mission, such as taking her people back to a lost Africa, taking stock of their resources, and appropriating them. It appears, therefore, that the victory of the women writers from the French-speaking Caribbean is a pyrrhic victory. By appropriating the fire behind the writing, they set light to themselves and destroy the role and position that their brothers were bent on taking. Is this the price to pay for the ultimate liberation?