Globalization, Créolisation and ‘Manichaeism delirium’

Abstract

My article will provide a brief overview of a plethora of terms used in the postcolonial studies to deal with the aftermath of globalization, such as hybridity, syncretism and Creolisation, all of which have been borrowed from the critical discourse on the Caribbean culture. I am going to analyze how this Caribbean taxonomy, originally used to describe the problematic entangled cultural heritage produced by fundamental inequalities of imperialism: have gradually acquired a new and positive valence. I will show how eminent Caribbean critics and writers of post-essentialist stand, such as Edouard Glissant and Derek Walcott, contributed to the strong purchase of Caribbean critical formulae in the western academia. In the main body of my paper, I will contend that the Antigua-born black writer Jamaica Kincaid engages in critical dialogue with those Caribbean intellectuals, who had faith in the vistas of creolisation as well as with another distinguished Caribbean thinker Frantz Fanon, who encouraged West Indians to throw away the burden of the past in order to face a better future, a pathway marked by cultural syncretism. Her putatively autobiographical 1996 novel The Autobiography of My Mother grapples with issues raised by Glissant, Walcott and Fanon and offers an important counterpoise to a flurry of articles and books that look into future at the expense of the past and see creolisation as a cultural program for the Caribbean region and the whole world. Kincaid puts forward a contrary view that brings home to all bien pensant academic critics the longevity of Manichean aesthetics that gave rise to present configurations of race. It seems that for Kincaid, who is well known for her criticism of sociopolitical realities in the Caribbean, the fact the world is still divided into developed and underdeveloped countries makes it evident that imperialism survived the demise of colonialism and still continues to fuel “Manichaeism delirium,” making mockery of the idea of creolisation. Amidst the welter of change that is transforming the metropolitan centers into apparently creolized societies, The Autobiography of My Mother revises the discourse on creolisation, and, by evoking and flaunting the binaries of the past that critics would like so much to topple, it serves a timely reminder that at present historical juncture it is imperative to take a more realistic stance on the issues of postcolonial humanism and creolness.