Abstract
This work is a comparative analysis of four postcolonial novels by Caribbean writers that resist Western power domination and dictatorships: Texaco (1992) by Patrick Chamoiseau, Le cri des oiseaux fous (2000) by Dany Laferri¿¿¿¿re, El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998) by Da¿¿¿¿na Chaviano, and Nuestra se¿¿¿¿ora de la noche (2006) by Mayra Santos-Febres. My study incorporates authors from both the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean, signaling a shared intense critique in literature that links these authors directly to their nations’ political control. My principal task in this dissertation is the examination of characters’ creation of non-violent strategies of resistance. I argue that, even though their maneuvers do not alter the course of history in each society, they question, destabilize, and undermine the autocratic governments in which they evolve. My theoretical framework draws from a wide, trans-regional variety of critics in Spanish, French, and English. Using in particular the critical thinking developed by Michel De Certeau and ¿¿¿¿¿douard Glissant, the study explores how characters are subjects always “in motion”—in both the literal and figurative sense—who simply do not accept the physical and mental limitations imposed by the autocratic regimes, and take rebellious detours that allow them to produce their own rules that seem troublesome for some, but inspiring for others, who decide to imitate them. As a result, characters become the opposite of what their dominants had in mind: they become dynamic, flexible, and complex subjects.
Even though the literary works were written at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century, the past moment of narrativization allows me to demonstrate how political oppression is represented through situational constraints, such as racial discrimination, class distinction, and gender inequality in four distinct historical eras: The French departmentalization of Martinique in 1946, the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier who ruled Haiti from 1971 to 1986, the Cuban revolution in 1959 with Fidel Castro coming to power, and finally the military rule of Puerto Rico under US officials in the first half of the twentieth century. The study of these historical events allows me to identify the treacherous conditions created by political oppression in the urban spaces of Fort-de-France, Port-au-Prince, Havana, and Ponce. These cities are labyrinthine worlds where characters feel trapped in an impossible in-between. Nonetheless, the urban spaces are also sites of creation and challenge due to their sense of fluidness, not having borders, and openness to influence and change. Since these cities are, on one hand, controlled by autocratic governments, and on the other hand, sites of creation, my research examines the ways in which characters escape and protect themselves from the incongruities and dissonances of the problematic environment, and how they create their own spaces in which they transform, adapt, and feel secure.