Caribbean Discourses

Abstract

on the radio is the one that gives the death announcements intended for those who wish to pay their final respects to their loved ones. I heard a young black American minister preach, very dynamic and "new look." It was an Adventist ceremony and the nonbelievers in the congregation appreciated as enlightened novices his approach to the world beyond. Someone on this occasion confided to m e : "Really I would willingly become an Adventist, since their burial ceremonies are much more moving." ___ H I ST O R Y-Histories-Stories _-The Quarrel with History Reading the paper "The West Indian Writer and His Quarrel with History" by Edward Baugh allows meto p u t forward the following observations. If it is ridiculous to claim that a people "has no history," one can argue that, in certain contemporary situations, while one of the results of global expansion is the presence (and the weight) of an increasingly global historical consciousness, a people can have to confront the problem posed by this consciousness that it feels is "vital," but that it is unable to "bring to light": because the lived circumstances of this daily reality do n o t form part of a continuum, which meansthat its relation with its surroundings (what we would call its nature) is in a discontinuous relation to its accumulation of experiences (what we would call its culture). In such a context, history as far asit is a discipline and claims to clarify the reality lived by this people, will suffer from a serious epistemological deficiency: it will n o t know how to make the link. The problem faced by collective consciousness makes a creative approach necessary, in that the rigid demands made by the historical approach can constitute, if they are n o t restrained, a paralyzing handicap. Methodologies passively assimilated, far from reinforcing a global consciousness or permitting the historical process to be established beyond the ruptures experienced, will simply contribute to worsening the problem. The French Caribbean is the site of a history characterized by ruptures'and that began with abrutal dislocation, the slave trade. 51,1: historical consciousness could n o t be deposited 1. Paper presented at the Carifesta colloquium (Kingston, Jamaica, 1976). The cultural and literary problematics in the anglophone Caribbean is concerned with these concepts primarily. The historian aspoet (for example , Brathwaite), the novelist as historian (for example, Naipaul), history and the project of writing (for example, Lamming): the recurrence of the theme is constant. The meeting points between Caribbean literatures (anglo-phone, francophone, hispanophone, Creole) do n o t result from a decision on the part of those who produce this writing: they are still hidden traces of the same historic movement, of an adherence to the culture.