Khal Torabully. “Coolies” and corals, or living in transarchipelagic worlds

ABSTRACT

Khal Torabully creates poetry and a poetics for those forgotten by history, a theorem and theory which construct a tangible and sensual landscape, allowing for an empathetically shared experience and expressing the dramatic climax of the third phase of accelerated globalization: a project that would be unthinkable without the cultural theory we now have at our disposal in the present surge of globalization. In his poetic and theoretical texts, he has paid a literary tribute to the Coolies, usually from India, but also China and many other countries. Given Torabully's Mauritian roots, but also the worldwide migration of the Coolies themselves, the world of Coolitude is culturally and linguistically extremely diverse, making the act of translation very relevant and giving it multiple meanings. Literature brings these forgotten lives back to life and allows us to share this experience thanks to its aesthetic force. It traces the movements, which sketch trajectories functioning to this day as palimpsest-like vectors of our own paths and trajectories. The author of Chair Corail, Fragments Coolies breaks the chain of mutual exclusions, replacing it with a type of writing belonging to a wider array of expressive modes which in diasporic situations unleash polylogical and archipelagic imaginaries.

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude goes to Khal Torabully for supplying additional information.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For more information on his work, see Bragard, Transoceanic Dialogues: Coolitude in Caribbean and Indian Ocean Literatures.

2. In my book TransArea. A Literary History of Globalization I argue that that globalization has been a continuous process that has gone through four phases acceleration since the early modern era (7). The phases can be classified as follows: (1) Colonial expansion at the start of the early modern era; (2) mid-eighteenth century–early nineteenth century; (3) nineteenth century–1910; (4) 1980–2020.

3. Cf. in this context the chapter “The Coolie Odyssey: A Voyage in Time and Space” in Marina Carter and Khal Torabully. Coolitude. An Anthology of the Indian Labour Diaspora (17–44).

4. For a more detailed discussion on the concept of living-together, see Ette, Konvivenz: Literatur und Leben nach dem Paradies.

5. The term is repeatedly used in the closing chapter of Carter and Torabully 215 and passim.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ottmar Ette

Ottmar Ette, born in the Black Forest, Germany, has been chair of Romance Literature at the University of Potsdam Brandenburg since 1995. He wrote his dissertation on José Martí in 1990 at the University of Freiburg and his Habilitation on Roland Barthes in 1995 at the Catholic University of Eichstätt, Bavaria. He received the “Young Scholars Award for Romance Literature” for his book José Martí (1991) and the “Hugo Friedrich and Erich Kühler” award for his work on Roland Barthes (1998). His publications on “Literaturwissenschaft als Lebenswissenschaft” triggered wide-ranging reactions and discussions all across the world, thus renovating the field of literary studies for good. Furthermore, he has also received much attention for his work on and editions of the writings of Alexander von Humboldt and is considered a leading specialist on Humboldt’s original scientific approach and extremely prolific work.