From roots to routes: double consciousness in the Francophone Caribbean novel

A comparative treatment of two twentieth-century Francophone Caribbean novelists, Jacques-Stephen Alexis of Haiti and Simone Schwarz-Bart of Guadeloupe, demonstrates how Caribbean authors have been using the discourse of the marvellous to move toward the creation of a sense of identity based on what Paul Gilroy calls a process of movement and mediation as opposed to a search for roots and rootedness. Alexis felt torn between what he perceived as his intellectual debt to Europe and his dedication to the development of a national Haitian literary form. His desire to transcend European literary influences is expressed in his work through issues of authenticity. Schwarz-Bart's work reflects more recent theories of Caribbean identity by demythologizing the very concept of the authentic origin. She uses the narrative technique of magic realism as a way of bringing together opposing discursive systems without evaluating them according to criteria of truth or authenticity. The result is a multiple voice which, like the larger voice of the Black Atlantic as a whole, can be described as a form of antiphony in which, in Gilroy's words, the original call is becoming harder to locate.