Édouard Glissant's 1958 novel La Lézarde provides a fitting beginning to the in-depth literary analyses of identity and authenticity that comprise this book. As the first novel published among those examined at length here, La Lézarde also focuses on a period—the years leading up to the départementalisation of France's overseas colonies in 1946—that precedes the central time frames at stake in the other works studied. In terms of cultural, political, and national autonomy, the events recounted in the novel reveal a particularly significant moment in Martinique's history in which not only the future identity of the country is questioned, but its equally uncertain past as well. Additionally, Glissant's profound attachment to the Caribbean landscape serves as an excellent pretext by which to consider both the abundant critical attention paid to the natural environment in French-Caribbean literature and the relative neglect of the majority of human landscapes in this same body of works.

Rather than immediately address the significance of architectural structures in La Lézarde, however, I will turn first to the “spatial logic” (see Hitchcock) of Martinican space found therein, and according to which the mountains, plains, and sea/delta prove to be highly symbolic spaces, each in their own right. Importantly, the characters in Glissant's novel have different connections to the land—or, rather, they prove to have connections to different parts of this signifying landscape. Consequently, the character studies to which I devote a lengthy portion of this chapter demonstrate how these individualized relationships inform each person's views and actions, and, together, are representative of the competing interests and perspectives involved when attempting to negotiate expressions of identity. Indeed, the conflicting positions articulated by different members of the novel's young revolutionary group with respect to determining Martinique's future and chronicling the country's elusive past will prove critical to the subsequent readings of structure. As I will demonstrate, both the conspicuous placement and (in)occupancy of the Maison de la source—the architectural structure on which I will focus in La Lézarde—and the novel's own (meta)construction serve to illustrate how identity building in the French Caribbean is fraught with conflict.