Penser la perte radicale dans l’Atlantique Sud

Authors

Christian Uwe, University of Minnesota

Abstract

The metaphor of the mangrove captures an aesthetic issue common to works of Glissant and Condé: how to write the geography of a radical loss and an unexpected digenesis. As Drabinski (2019) remarks, the Glissantian mangrove is the paradoxical place of an aesthetic of the abyss, which tries to capture the fragile birth instead of a loss without traces. Condé, for her part, makes the mangrove the symbol of a silent writing (Lachman, 2014) as well as of a land trapped in its own alienated history. As a recurring image in Caribbean literature – to the point of problematizing, most often, the west shore of the Atlantic – the mangrove contrasts with the long absence, on the east shore, of an African counterpart, that is, the long silence of African literatures on the Slave Trade. However, some recent works have broken this silence in a way that invites a comparative reading of the geography of the Atlantic chasm. Among these are Léonora Miano’s La saison de l’ombre and Wilfried N’Sondé’s Un océan, deux mers, trois continents. For each of the authors cited, the slave trade causes a protean loss affecting family ties, political sovereignty, geographical and cultural landmarks, language, and the very legibility of History. The total nature of this loss leads to a defeat of language, which questions aesthetics and its limits in the face of what must be called the collapse of a world. Taking this aesthetic problem as a starting point, this essay draws some theoretical implications regarding the ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics of loss.

Recommended Citation

Uwe, Christian (2021) "Penser la perte radicale dans l’Atlantique Sud," Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature: Vol. 96: No. 1, Article 10.
Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/pf/vol96/iss1/10