La géographie des identités

Abstract

There is a number of identities which present themselves to the individuals along their lives. The notion of identity takes diverse forms, becomes dynamic, changeable, and evolves through conflicts and breaks, both in time and in space. Dany Laferrière, a writer from Quebec, is one of the most important representatives of these takings of psychological, professional and national identities. Born in Port au Prince, 17 April 1953, he grew up in the village of Petit-Goâve. As a journalist, his life is menaced by the dictatorship. He thus flees to Canada in 1976. He finds asylum in Montreal and he becomes popular quickly as a Quebecois writer, as a result he turns to literature completely. The natural identity of Dany Laferrière is completed with his professional identity in Quebec, in a country whose cultural survival is confronted with multiculturalism. The present paper wishes to analyses the different identities in his novel, Pays sans chapeau (Editions Lanctôt, 1996), in which the author tries to regain and recapture his native country and his identity stolen by the dictatorship. In this novel where pages of “a real country” ; alternate with those of “a dream country”, the author-narrator travels between his real identity and his dream identity regaining eventually his land.

Keywords

• creole
• Haiti
• identities
• naive art