Itinéraires (Jul 2009)
En-quête d’histoire : le roman policier populaire de la Caraïbe
Abstract
The connections between literature and history are not immutable, particularly in the case of the French West Indies. The affirmation of identity and the search for one’s roots are some of the tropisms of literature from that area. They allow the novelist (Glissant, Schwarz-Bart, Confiant, Condé…) to claim (s)he is an historian. Thus they establish fiction and history as rivais, and manifest the authors’ will to fight against acculturation and the loss of cultural identity, and in favour of a representation of reality and a testimony that might at last be free of any trace of neo-colonialism. But what about those historical facts that have no place in history? Everyday news and incidents that make headlines and prompt public debate, legendary characters that stem from collective memory, bloody crimes that suddenly symbolize a particular stage in collective awareness, such are the topics addressed by Caribbean detective novels.
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