Derek  Walco+,  Henri  Christophe  Aimé  Césaire,  The  Tragedy  of  King  Christophe  

Arts  One  Jon  Beasley-­‐Murray  November,  2013  

The  Citadelle  

A  Brush  with  the  Archive  

•  Ruins  •  Archive  •  Context  •  Postcolonialism  •  Sovereignty  •  WriPng  

Three  literary  canons  are  built  on  the  ruins  of  Sans  Souci  and  the  Citadelle  La  Ferrière:  the  LaPn  American  Boom;  Francophone  Caribbean  literature;  Anglophone  postcolonial  literature.    The  hemisphere’s  literature  replays  a  legacy  of  violence  and  dominaPon,  reimagining  the  material  traces  of  a  history  of  revoluPons.  

RUINS    

On  the  road  to  Milot  

“Ti  Noël  sat  down  on  one  of  the  cornerstones  of  the  old  mansion,  now  a  stone  like  any  other  stone  for  those  who  did  not  remember.”  (106)    “The  ruins  threw  a  pleasant  shade  over  the  abundant  grass,  and  if  one  dug  in  the  dirt  a  li+le  it  was  not  unusual  to  find  a  marble  ear,  a  stone  ornament,  or  an  oxidized  coin.”  (156)  

Ruins  

•  Absence  •  Presence  •  Trace  •  InterpretaPon  •  ReconstrucPon  •  Sign  

•  Hinge  between  Past  and  Present?  

Ruins  

•  Modernity  and  modernizaPon  built  on  ruins  •  CreaPve  destrucPon  •  Ruins  are  cajoled  into  underwriPng  power  •  But  they  are  also  a  reminder  of  temporality  •  Ozymandias:  warning  or  boast?  •  The  permanence  of  impermanence  

More  Resources  

•  Roberto  González  Echevarría,  Alejo  CarpenPer:  The  Pilgrim  at  Home  

•  C  L  R  James,  The  Black  Jacobins  •  Peter  Fritzsche,  Stranded  in  the  Present  

•  h+p://artsone-­‐open.arts.ubc.ca  

Ruins   I met a traveller from an antique land Who said:-- Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp’d on those lifeless things, The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. (Shelley)

 

ARCHIVE  

Archive  

•  Canon  vs  Archive?  •  A  collecPon  of  texts,  deposited  intenPonally  or  otherwise  

•  Material  from  the  past  •  Text  as  object  •  Hybrid,  many  genres:  visual,  cinemaPc;  object  as  text  

Archive  

•  Should  we  only  read  “great”  books?  •  To  what  uses  can  the  archive  be  put?  •  How  should  it  be  ordered,  organized?  •  How  is  it  brought  to  life,  and  why?  

•  The  archive  as  unconscious,  as  ruin  

CONTEXT  

Context  

“The  play  was  first  produced  by  the  St  Lucia  Arts  Guild  at  St  Joseph’s  Convent  in  Castries,  St  Lucia,  in  1949.  [...]  It  was  later  produced  at  Hans  Crescent,  London,  in  1952.”    “The  Tragedy  of  King  Christophe  was  first  performed  by  the  Europa  Studio  at  the  Salzburg  FesPval,  Salzburg,  Austria,  August,  1964.”  

Aimé  Césaire  

•  1913-­‐2008  •  MarPnique  •  1944:  HaiP  •  1945:  French  Deputy  •  1946:  Department  Law  •  Notebook  of  a  Return  to  the  NaPve  Land  (1939/1947)  

•  A  Tempest  (1969)  

“HaiP,  where  negritude  rose  for  the  first  Pme  [se  mit  debout  pour  la  première  fois]  and  stated  that  it  believed  in  its  humanity.”  (Notebook  of  a  Return  to  the  NaPve  Land)    “This  people,  forced  to  its  knees,  needed  a  monument  to  make  it  stand  up  [qui  le  mît  debout].”  (The  Tragedy  of  King  Christophe  45)  

Derek  Walco+  

•  1930-­‐  •  Saint  Lucia  •  1959:  Trinidad  Theatre  Workshop  

•  1992:  Nobel  Prize  •  Omeros  (1990)  •  What  the  Twilight  Says  (1998)  

“AnPllean  art  is  this  restoraPon  of  our  sha+ered  histories,  our  shards  of  vocabulary,  our  archipelago  becoming  a  synonym  for  pieces  broken  off  from  the  original  conPnent”  (Nobel  Prize  lecture)    “There  are  broken  statues  /  On  my  tongue,  dead  stale  civilizaPons  /  Breeding  in  my  brain.”  (Henri  Christophe  99)  

Context  

•  These  texts  (all  texts?)  require  double  reading  •  Play  of  de-­‐  and  re-­‐contextualizaPon  •  “Il  n’ya  pas  de  hors  texte”  (Derrida)  •  Text  and  context  are  never  fully  in  synch  

•  What  relaPon  between  words  and  things?  

POSTCOLONIALISM  

“HaiP  was  born  from  the  smoldering  ashes  of  Saint-­‐Domingue,  once  a  black  republic  had  been  established  on  the  ruins  of  the  fairest  of  white  colonies.”  (Césaire  9)    “The  general  believes  the  price  of  freedom  is  blood.”  (Walco+  58)  

Postcolonialism  

•  DecolonizaPon  •  1776-­‐1825  •  1948-­‐1975  •  poliPcs  and  culture  •  renaming  and  refounding  

•  naPon  and  naPonalism  •  division  and  parPPon  •  past  and  present  

Postcolonialism  

•  What  grounds  postcolonial  legiPmacy?  •  What  are  the  poliPcs  of  idenPty  and  power?  •  Is  “authenPcity”  jusPficaPon?  •  What  cultural  templates  are  available?  •  Provincializing  Europe  •  What  is  the  psychology  of  the  postcolony?  

•  How  to  escape  “monotonies  of  history”?  

SOVEREIGNTY  

“Only  God  makes  kings.”  (Walco+  64)  “I  will  be  King,  a  king  flows  in  me.”  (Walco+  68)  “So,  I  am  king.”  (Walco+  72)    “By  the  grace  of  God  and  the  consPtuPonal  law  of  the  State,  we  proclaim  you  Henry  I,  sovereign  [...].  Destroyer  of  tyranny,  regenerator,  and  benefactor  of  the  HaiPan  naPon.”  (Césaire  27)  

Sovereignty  

•  Kingdom  or  Republic  •  LegiPmaPon  •  Succession  •  Church  and  State  •  ExcepPon  and  decision  •  Monuments  •  DeclaraPons  •  Chronicles  and  Archives  

Sovereignty  

•  These  are  both  “top-­‐down”  perspecPves  •  But  they  also  undercut  or  trouble  hierarchy  •  How  does  sovereignty  emerge?  •  How  does  it  crumble,  fall  to  ruin?  

•  Who  gets  to  decide  and  how?  

WRITING  

“You  know  I  cannot  read.  /  Reread  them,  are  they  intact?  /  I  hope  you  have  not  obscured  plain  fact  /  In  a  smoke  of  LaPn  expressions?”  (Walco+  51)    “I  cannot  read  it.  But  what  if  it  is  /  A  trick  of  Vastey’s?”  (Walco+  85)  

WriPng  

•  Literature  (again)  •  Baron  de  Vastey  (1781-­‐1820)  

•  dictators  and  scribes  •  sovereignty  dependent  on  the  le+er  

•  an  essenPal  supplement  •  but  power  is  patronage  

WriPng  

•  Césaire  and  Walco+  both  worry  about  wriPng  •  Is  wriPng  always  handmaiden  to  power?  •  Both  a+empt  to  leverage  the  Western  archive  •  What  to  do  with  the  textual  tradiPon?  •  Two  different  responses:  Césaire  and  Walco+  

•  Is  the  “vocabulary  of  ruin”  itself  ruined?  

More  Resources  

•  Chris  Bongie,  Friends  and  Enemies:  The  Scribal  PoliPcs  of  Post/Colonial  Literature  

•  Roberto  González  Echevarría,  Myth  and  Archive  

•  Carl  Schmi+,  The  Concept  of  the  PoliPcal  

•  h+p://artsone-­‐open.arts.ubc.ca