Small places, then and now: Frantz Fanon, Jamaica Kincaid, and the futures of postcolonial criticism

Abstract

In this essay, I consider Frantz Fanon’s legacy by placing Fanon in conversation with the Antiguan‐born novelist and essayist Jamaica Kincaid. I argue that this conversation has the potential to help us re‐imagine ways for postcolonial criticism to more effectively address our current moment of globalization. This means not only reassessing the insights found in the work of Fanon and Kincaid but also reassessing the larger potential found in imaginative writing to help effect transformations in the postcolonial political situations we face today.

Keywords:

• Frantz Fanon
• Jamaica Kincaid
• Caribbean literature
• postcolonial criticism

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this essay were delivered as part of the Seminar in the Social Sciences and Humanities Series at Koç University in Istanbul and as part of the “Frantz Fanon’s Legacy” panel at the 2009 Northeastern Modern Language Association Convention. I thank the audiences at both presentations for their questions and comments. I would also like to thank the students in my English 12 classes at Kingsborough College for our many thought‐provoking discussions of Fanon and Kincaid. Most of all, I wish to thank Rukiye Sahin for her invaluable comments on, questions about, and encouragement with this essay.

Notes

1. Many critics have addressed the mother–daughter relationships in Kincaid’s work, although the connection with this issue of “mother country/mother tongue” has not always been so central to their analysis. Patricia Donatien‐Yssa provides a particularly fascinating reading of this trope.

2. As Corrina McLeod has noted, regarding A Small Place, “The Library of Congress has labeled the text as biography, travel, and the ubiquitous ‘homes and haunts.’ But on the bookshelves in bookstores, the text appears under autobiography, travel literature, fiction, and essay” (77–78).