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Caribbean Women Playwrights: Madness, Memory, but Not Melancholia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Judith Miller
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Extract

Ina Césaire and Simone Schwarz-Bart are among the most arresting Frenchwomen writing plays today. They are not, however, among the most studied, nor are they of ‘La Metropole’. One cannot even count them among the myriad ‘French women playwrights’, bom in Algiers, Oran, Cairo, or St. Petersburg, who now make Paris their home. Césaire and Schwarz-Bart are Antillean, Frenchwomen of colour, at this point in their lives returned from Paris to their respective islands—Martinique and Guadeloupe—after prolonged stays in the French capital, because, as Ina Césaire relates, life in Paris has simply become ‘trop méchanic’.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1998 , pp. 225 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1998

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References

Notes

1. A few articles examine Schwarz-Bart's theatre; Césaire's is virtually unknown. See Larrier, Renée, ‘The Poetics of Exile: Simone Schwarz-Bart's Ton beau capitaine’, World Literature Today, Vol. 64, No. 1, (Winter 1990), 57–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKinney, Kitzie, ‘Vers une poétique de l'exile: les sortilèges de l'absence dans Ton beau capitaine’, The French Review, Vol. 65, No. 3, 02 1992, 449–460Google Scholar; Miller, Judith G., ‘Simone Schwarz-Bart: Re-figuring Heroics, Disfiguring Conventions’, in Laughlin, Karen and Schuler, Catherine, eds., Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics (Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995), pp. 148–59.Google Scholar

2. The playwrights alluded to are Simone Benmussa, Hélène Cixous, Andrée Chedid, and Nathalie Sarraute.

3. In an interview with Judith Miller in New York, October 1993, Césaire referred to the growing ‘meanness’ of French society because of the influence of the fascist Front National and its impact on racism.

4. Delphy, Christine, ‘The Invention of French Feminism: An Essential Move’, Yale French Studies, No. 87, 1995, 190–221.Google Scholar

5. Key texts of French feminism as defined in this essay include Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, La Jeune Nee (Paris: Union Générate d'Editions, 1975); Irigaray, Luce, Ce sexe qui n'est est pas un (Paris: Minuit, 1977)Google Scholar and Speculum de l'autre femme (Paris: Minuit, 1974); and Kristeva, Julia, Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1977).Google Scholar

6. For an excellent analysis of Marguerite Duras's theatre, see, for example, Diamond, Elin, ‘Refusing the Romanticism of Identity: Narrative Interventions in Churchill, Benmussa, Duras’, in Case, Sue-Ellen, ed., Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 92–108.Google ScholarKristeva's, JuliaSoleil noir: Dépression et mélancholie (Paris: Gallimard, 1987)Google Scholar gives a splendid reading of Duras's writings. Her work has helped orient this essay.

7. Benmussa, Simone, La Vie singuliere d'Albert Nobbs (Paris: des femmes, 1977).Google Scholar For remarks concerning Simone Benmussa's mises en scene of Cixous's early plays, see Benmussa's production notes to her staging of Portrait de Dora in Benmussa, Simone, Benmussa Directs (London: John Calder, 1979), pp. 9–19.Google Scholar Elin Diamond's piece, ‘Refusing the Romanticism of Identity’, examines Benmussa's work on La Vie Singulière d'Albert Nobbs as does Sue-Ellen Case's ‘Gender as Play: Benmussa's, SimoneThe Singular Life of Albert Nobbs’, Women and Performance, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 1984.Google Scholar

8. References to Cixous as writer of the body and inventor of échture féminine are based on her contributions to La Jeune Nee.

9. In Le Discours caribbéen (Paris: Seuil, 1981), Edouard Glissant calls for a rethinking of history in these terms: ‘Pournous, reconquérir le sens de notre histoire, c'est connaitre le discontinu réel pour ne plus le subir passivement … Les histoires des peuples colonisés par l'Occident n'ont dès lors jamais été univoques’ (pp. 158–9). (‘For us, reconquering the sense of our history means knowing its real lack of continuity in order not to submit passively to this lack … The histories of people colonized by the West have never, given the situation of colonization, been univocal’ (my translation)).

10. Glenda Dickerson in ‘The Cult of True Womanhood: Towards a Womanist Attitude in African-American Theatre’, in Sue-Ellen Case, ed., Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, refers to the ‘true myths’ of the colonized in her suggestions about how to create a nonstereotypical black theatre.

11. See Mohanty, Chandra T., Russo, Ann & Torres, Lourdes, eds., Third World Woman and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana, 1991).Google Scholar

12. See Allan, Tuzyline Jita, Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics: A Comparative Review (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

13. Ibid., p. 5.

14. Walker, Alice, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1983), p. xi.Google Scholar

15. Ibid.

16. Kristeva theorizes madness in the writings of Marguerite Duras in the final essay of Soleil noir, ‘La Maladie de la douleur’. All references to this essay will be placed in parentheses in the text.

17. ‘Discourse of dulled pain’, from Roudiez, Leon, trans., Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 226.Google Scholar

18. Condé, Maryse, ‘Order, disorder, Freedom, and the West Indian Writer’, Yale French Studies, Vol. 2, No. 83, 1993, pp. 121–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Schwarz-Bart, Simone, Ton beau capitaine (Paris: Seuil, 1987).Google Scholar Translated as Your Handsome Captain by Harris, Jessica and Temerson, Catherine in Kourilsky, Françoise and Temerson, Catherine, eds., Plays by Women: An International Anthology (New York: Repertory Publications, 1988).Google ScholarCésaire, Ina, Mémoires d'isles: l'Histoire de Maman Net Mam.au F (Paris: Editions Caribbéennes, 1985).Google Scholar Translated as Island Memories: The Story of Mama N and Mama F, in Makward, Christiane and Miller, Judith G., eds., French and Francophone Women Playwrights: A Critical Anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.)Google ScholarCésaire, Ina, Rosanie Soleil, unpublished MS, 1992.Google Scholar Translated as Fire's Daughters by Miller, Judith G. in Kourilsky, and Temerson, , eds., New French Language Plays (New York: Ubu Repertory Publications, 1993).Google Scholar All references to the original French versions of these plays will be placed in parentheses in the text.

20. ‘One more word, a small bit of advice. Be sure to rest now throughout the days that God gives us. Don't trouble your soul, if you want the child to come into the world with a good start. Chew your food well, keep your heart joyful, and drive all ugliness out of your sight so that he won't be born with a crooked nose or mouth. Remember I want that child as beautiful as an angel’, from Harris and Temerson, trans., in Kourilsky, and Temerson, , eds., Plays by Women, p. 248.Google Scholar

21. Joan Day an discusses the importance of female devils and goddesses in the Caribbean in her very interesting essay, ‘Erzulie: A Woman's History of Haiti’, Research in African Literatures, Vol. 25, No. 2, Summer 1994, 5–32.

22. ‘FIRST SHE-DEVIL. Lordy, lordy! What are we, my friend? SECOND SHE-DEVIL. Women outside of time, my friend! FIRST SHE-DEVIL. And outside the ages, by God! TOGETHER. All these years we've strutted and danced … SECOND SHE-DEVIL, picking up the phrase. The grand vidé …’, from Christiane Makward and Judith Miller, trans., Island Memories: The Story of Mama N and Mama F, in Makward, and Miller, , French and Francophone Women Playwrights, pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

23. ‘That's when our little Smoke broke away at top speed, flying at more than twenty knots an hour, eyes plunged into the cyclone's, twisting and turning to beat the band. She flew over the volcano, flipping the bird and rakishly thumbing her nose, then zoomed off, ziiiip, into the crimson east, way up above the ugly memory-laden Atlantic (suddenly slowing down) until she got to the forgotten land of forgotten Ancestors’, from Miller, Judith G., trans., Fire's DaughtersGoogle Scholar in Kourilsky, and Temerson, , eds., New French Language Plays, pp. 17–18Google Scholar

24. ‘It's surely the hobgoblin that's stalking our house now, Neighbour … So light your pipe and come tell me the tale of ‘The Unknown Princess’. Night's already fallen. Can't you see? And we can talk without harm’, Miller, , op. cit., p. 41.Google Scholar

25. See Gates, Henry Louis, The Signifying Monkey. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

26. ‘Grave hands are raised, brandishing flaming torches and the Haitian forest becomes a kaleidoscopic gathering of human fireflies suing for justice’. Miller, , op. cit., p. 45.Google Scholar

27. ‘Wilnor, I wish I were a boat sailing to Guadeloupe … I would take you to a country far, far, far away… where people don't look at you as though you were less than nothing, driedout coconuts’. Harris, and Temerson, , Plays by Women, p. 234.Google Scholar

28. We can hear the creaking of a bed across which a body has thrown itself. Malvina stands up slowly and leans over the bed. She raises her arm; is it a gesture of love or aggression?’. Makward, and Miller, , French and Francophone Women Playwrights, pp. 58–9.Google Scholar

29. ‘I love to dance, I love to sing’. Harris, and Temerson, , Plays by Women, p. 12.Google Scholar

30. They hold hands. Immobile, they listen to the Assotor resonating in the footsteps of thousands of bare feet which are approaching under the flickering lights of bamboo torches. Miller, , op. cit., p. 47.Google Scholar

31. ‘He who eats cassava bread without having had to grate the manioc root keeps his skin soft’. Miller, , op. cit., p. 35.Google Scholar

32. ‘The sea … It's like a horse: beautiful to watch, proud, but perverse, too!’ Makward, and Miller, , French and Francophone Women Playwrights, p. 74.Google Scholar

33. ‘Someone said … maybe the Bible …' Life is a valley of tears’. But I say: ‘No!’ A valley is a hollow, and life's like a hill. You have to climb up. The end is when you get to the top of the hill. You say: ‘I'm here, I got here all by myself!’, Makward, and Miller, , French and Francophone Women Playwrights, p. 70.Google Scholar

34. See Spillers, Hortense, ‘Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book’, Diacritics 17, 1987, 67–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. See hooks, bell, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press, 1989).Google Scholar