Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Introduction: The Consequences of Ex-Centricity
- Part II Shifty/Shifting Characters
- 1 Beings Without Borders
- 2 Zombies Become Warriors
- 3 Productive Schizophrenia
- Part III Space-Time of the Spiral
- Part IV Showing vs. Telling
- Part V Conclusions
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - Productive Schizophrenia
from Part II - Shifty/Shifting Characters
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Introduction: The Consequences of Ex-Centricity
- Part II Shifty/Shifting Characters
- 1 Beings Without Borders
- 2 Zombies Become Warriors
- 3 Productive Schizophrenia
- Part III Space-Time of the Spiral
- Part IV Showing vs. Telling
- Part V Conclusions
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Les Possédés de la pleine lune, Aube Tranquille and Le Peuple des terres mêlées
Because our deepest Self escapes us, the demands of History have created in the Caribbean region a schizophrenic personality that at once suffers and rejoices in creation … Celebrating ourselves as beings to be divided. Divided beings. Different. Installed in difference, without any real chance of establishing coherence (temptation and difficulty characteristic of schizophrenics) …
—Jean-Claude FignoléWhere Frankétienne makes use of the zombie, both literal and metaphorical, to emphasize the fundamentally dual and often conflicted essence of his characters, Jean-Claude Fignolé and René Philoctète might be said to have embraced schizophrenia as a principal configurative point of departure. Though perhaps less directly issued from Haiti's popular culture, the schizophrenia presented in the Spiralists’ works strikes individuals who exist and struggle with/in a contextual space that is decidedly Haitian. At the same time, however, Fignolé and Philoctète explore the potential of the Haitian folkloric universe to provide insight into non-Haitian-specific problematics. Expanding on the model created by Frankétienne's first prose works, Fignolé and Philoctète offer characters whose personal sufferings echo those of the Haitian nation and, to some extent, of the (post)modern world as a whole. Their characters’ schizophrenic responses to the tragedies in their lives are portrayed as much more than mere pessimistic neuroses. Rather, their schizoid behaviors very often provide opportunities for self-interrogation and even self-preservation. The two authors thus seem to imply that madness can actually make sense in a “psychotic” socio-cultural context. The implicit slipperiness of their characters makes quicksand of the stories into which they are inserted, creating a narrative instability that effectively obliges the reader's engagement with the texts other than by way of a more traditional attachment to or identification with sympathetic protagonists.
Published eight years after Les Affres d'un défi, the very first pages of Fignolé's Les Possédés de la pleine lune are devoted to the depiction of a traditional veillée. This opening scene provides a description of the specific physical components of the occasion, detailing the roles assigned to the members of either sex. While the men drink rum, play cards, and tell stories—“stories of the living” (7)—the women, les pleureuses[the lamenters], dedicate themselves to the task of mourning alongside the widow.
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- Haiti UnboundA Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, pp. 72 - 100Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2010