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ABSTRACT
Since its publication in 1950, Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism has remained influential for its incisive reframing of the European “civilizing mission.” Nevertheless, feminist interventions have problematized the masculine nationalist project upon which both the essay and the wider Négritude movement rest. The recent surge of critical interest in Suzanne Césaire demonstrates a desire to—recuperate-as Kara Rabbitt phrases—it-the “missing mother” of Martinican cultural genealogy. In this paper, I will reckon with the gender gap separating the two Césaires, thinking through poetics as a gendered political epistemology in their essays. Beginning with Aimé Césaire and Discourse on Colonialism, I focus on his central rhetorical device of formal repetition, specifically anaphora, and draw on the work of Brent Hayes Edwards to argue that the anaphoric line is entrenched in a masculinist narrative of freedom, rhetorically foreclosing on gender consciousness. From there, I undertake a close and comparative reading of selections from Suzanne Césaire's oeuvre against Discourse, noting divergences in their varying figurations of colonized and racialized women. Considering new scholarship on Suzanne Césaire's influence and ecopoetics, including the work of Anny-Dominique Curtius and Lauren Nelson, I propose her posthuman ecopoetics as a source of gendered epistemology.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to my colleagues in the 2022–2023 Publishing Practicum cohort (Queen’s University) for their comments on drafts of this paper, and to Drs. Leslie Ritchie (Queen’s University) and Adam Hammond (University of Toronto) for their encouragement, expertise, and generous contributions to my thinking throughout the writing process.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Maximin, “Introduction,” xxvii.
2 Ibid., xxvii.
3 To avoid confusion between the two Césaires, this paper will use the name “Césaire” to refer only to Suzanne, while Aimé Césaire will be referred to with his full name. When additional clarification is required, both authors are referred to by their full names.
4 Ibid., xxvii, xxix. Admiral Robert served as High Commissioner for the French overseas territories within the Western Atlantic, including Martinique, during the Vichy regime. Robert notably refused the 1940 resolutions made in support of Free France by the General Councils of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and additionally replaced the elected officials of the Martinican Council with appointees drawn from the island’s small white population.
5 S. Césaire, “Malaise,” 33.
6 Wilks, Race, Gender and Comparative Black Modernism, 109. See especially chapter 3, “Surrealist Dreams, Martinican Realities: The Négritude of Suzanne Césaire.”
7 Rabbitt, “In Search of the Missing Mother,” 37. “Les fils de Césaire” are Martinican writers, scholars, and créolistes who proudly locate their intellectual heritage in “Papa Césaire,” particularly Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant.
8 Wilks, “Revolutionary Genealogies,” 92–3.
9 Curtius, Suzanne Césaire, 91–2, 74–6, 89–90.
10 Wilks, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism, 111, 114.
11 Rabbitt, “In Search of the Missing Mother,” 40; Wilks, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism, 112.
12 Wilks, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism, 109.
13 I. Césaire, “Suzanne Césaire, My Mother,” 64–5.
14 Wilks, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism, 115.
15 See note 10.
16 A. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 44.
17 Somé, “The Anatomy of a Cosmogony,” 35.
18 A. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 43.
19 Vergès and Césaire, Nègre je suis, 47. I translate the passage as follows: “It is in my poems, the most obscure ones without a doubt, that I discover myself and find myself again […] Poetry reveals man to himself.” Unless otherwise noted, all translations from French are my own.
20 Edwards, “Syntax of Influence,” 1, 3.
21 Ibid., 3.
22 Ibid., 4.
23 Brown, “Strong Men,” 56. Ellipsis in the original.
24 Edwards, “Syntax of Influence,” 5.
25 A. Césaire, Cahier, 21. I translate the lines as follows: “those who knew no voyages but uprootings / those who have relaxed into their kneeling / those who were domesticated and Christianized / those who were inoculated with bastardization.”
26 While the French “abâtardissement” is used in a similar manner as the English “bastardization”—that is, to express decline in quality, rather than the literal creation of a child as seen in Brown—it nevertheless evokes the negative social value assigned to so-called illegitimate children. Césaire’s choice of this word, rather than a synonym like “dégéneration” that does not share an etymological root with “bâtard,” refracts Brown’s line.
27 Loichot, The Tropics Bite Back, 40.
28 Edwards, “Syntax of Influence,” 5. See also note 21.
29 Loichot, The Tropics Bite Back, 141.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Edwards, “Syntax of Influence,” 5.
33 Viveros-Vigoya, “Political Vitality and Vital Politics,” 485.
34 A. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 35. Emphasis mine.
35 See note 21.
36 Viveros-Vigoya, “Political Vitality and Vital Politics,” 485.
37 Curtius, Suzanne Césaire, 22. I translate the passage as follows: “Scholars of Aimé Césaire, whether due to misogyny or due to awareness of his refusal to and his pain in speaking about Suzanne after her death, perpetuate, as if in a tacit accord, a dynamic of reservation and elision.”
38 Ibid., 226. I translate the passage as follows: “[…] likely for the first and only time […] spoke on camera regarding his tight-knit collaboration and 1963 divorce with Suzanne Césaire.”
39 Ibid., 247, 259. I translate the passage as follows: “Suzanne Césaire thus gave to Aimé Césaire the keys to his remembrance-poem ‘The Sleeping Woman Rock, or Beautiful like the Exasperation of Secession,’ the keys to his Sycorax in Une tempête, and the keys to the cannibal tactic of creating a Black adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” Curtius argues that Césaire’s unpublished theatrical adaptation of Lafcadio Hearn’s novel Youma: The Story of a West-Indian Slave, entitled Aurore de la liberté (The Dawn of Liberty), can be considered the first postcolonial adaptation of a canonical text, and thus a forerunner of Une tempête.
40 Nelson, “Suzanne Césaire’s Posthumanism,” 163.
41 Wilks, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism, 118.
42 S. Césaire, “Leo Frobenius,” 5–6.
43 Ibid., 6; S. Césaire, “Malaise,” 30.
44 S. Césaire, “Leo Frobenius,” 7.
45 Ibid.
46 Curtius, Suzanne Césaire, 256. I translate the passage as follows: “[…] two faces of one mirror in which the imaginary of the poet’s wound wanders. But in another way, within the poetic imagination of Aimé Césaire, the tragic and unbearable history of the transatlantic slave trade and of the captives who died below [Morne Larcher] during the shipwreck of [an] illicit slaveship is fused with the ‘exasperation of [his] secession’ from Suzanne.”
47 Ibid., 255.
48 A. Césaire, “Rocher de la femme endormie ou Belle comme l'exaspération de la sécession,” 264. I translate the passage as follows: “Survivor survivor / you are the fallout / Of a feast of volcanoes / Of a whirlwind of fireflies / Of a rocket of flowers from a fury of dreams”
49 Catasús, “Mimicking Seas,” 54, 55.
50 Nelson, “Suzanne Césaire’s Poshumanism,” 168.
51 A. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 31. The opening lines read as follows: “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.”
52 S. Césaire, “Malaise,” 30.
53 See notes 34 and 48.
54 Nelson, “Suzanne Césaire’s Posthumanism,” 169.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., 170.
57 A. Césaire, “Rocher de la femme endormie ou Belle comme l’exaspération de la sécession,” 254. I translate the passage as follows: “A ghost still unable to perfect her kingdom”
58 S. Césaire, “The Great Camouflage,” 40.
59 S. Césaire, “Poetic Destitution,” 27.
60 Ibid., 26–27. Doudouisme is a perjorative term for French literature which relies upon clichéd descriptions of exotic vistas to render life in the Antilles attractive to the metropole. Notably, “dou” translates to “sugar” in Martinican Creole, while “doudou” translates to “sweetheart.”
61 Loichot, The Tropics Bite Back, 30, 39.
62 Ibid., 39.
63 Loichot, The Tropics Bite Back, 151. Following a visit to Martinique in 1941, Breton formed a friendship with the Césaires that resulted in the publication of several poems with reference to or dedicated to the admiration of Suzanne Césaire’s beauty. In response, Césaire published “André Breton, poète” (“André Breton, Poet”) in the October 1941 issue of Tropiques and additionally referenced him elsewhere in her oeuvre.
64 Ibid., 153.
65 Ibid., 154, 155.
66 S. Césaire, “The Great Camouflage,” 40, 43, 46.
67 S. Césaire, “Poetic Destitution,” 27.; Loichot, The Tropics Bite Back, 152.
68 See note 34.
69 Wilks, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism, 110.
70 Ibid.
71 Maximin, “Introduction,” xxvi.
72 Boni, “Femmes en Négritude,” 72. I translate the passage as follows: “[…] always […] struck by the rhetoric surrounding physical or interior beauty in contract with the frailty of the feminine body, its illnesses, or its accidents. Yet the body of Suzanne Césaire is regarded as beautiful, ‘sick,’ and reproductive—as if motherhood was a rescue operation!”
73 Wilks, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism, 114.
74 Quoted in Loichot, The Tropics Bite Back, 151.; I. Césaire, “Suzanne Césaire, My Mother,” 64.
75 See note 21.
76 See note 33.
77 Viveros-Vigoya, “The Political Vitality and Vital Politics,” 485.
78 See note 16.
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RK Li
RK Li (they/them) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Queen’s University, Katarokwi (Kingston, Canada). Their dissertation investigates racial melancholia and grief in the context of contemporary Chinese Canadian diasporic fiction. Rowan does additional work in Caribbean studies, ecocriticism, and queer theory, as well as publishing poetry and engaging in research creation practices.