Spatial Identities and Glissantian Detour: Narrative Strategies in Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove

Titre: Spatial Identities and Glissantian Detour: Narrative Strategies in Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove; Symposium
Titre du volume: 2
Volume: 69
Date: April 2015
Issn: 00397709
Résumé: This article analyzes narrative strategies in Maryse Condé'sTraversée de la mangrovein light of Édouard Glissant's theory of “detour.” The novel revolves around the death of a stranger in a small Guadeloupean village and the testimonies of those gathered at his wake. A traditional reading of the text points to an orderly, contiguous time frame (dusk-night-dawn) setting limits for the action of the text. Multiple narrators, however, form a tapestry of spatial identities whose relations are porous, tangled, and overlapping, ultimately refusing to be constrained by the boundaries of the imposed structure of the narrative. The result is a text fraught with temporal and spatial discontinuities, gaps, and absences. Ultimately, these narrative strategies of resistance perform a textual detour, creating openings and fresh perspectives from which to reexamine assumed connections between Antillean identities and the past.
Creator: Lauren A. Brown
Subject: 1928-2011IDENTITY (Philosophical concept)NARRATION (Rhetoric)TRAVERSEE de la Mangrove (Book); 1937-GLISSANT; CONDE; Edouard; Maryse
pages: 87
short title: Symposium; Spatial Identities and Glissantian Detour
doi: 10.1080/00397709.2015.1038946