Notes on the Caribbean essay from an archipelagic perspective (Kamau Brathwaite, Édouard Glissant and Antonio Benítez Rojo)

BONFIGLIO, FLORENCIA

Caribbean Studies

Instituto de Estudios del Caribe, Universidad de Puerto Rico

Lugar: San Juan; Año: 2015 vol. 43 p. 147 - 173

0008-6533

The article analyzes the construction of a Caribbeanist discourse in the region?s cultural essay by looking at the work of three recognized authors from three different linguistic blocs: Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), Antonio Benítez Rojo (1931-2005) and Kamau Brathwaite (1930-). According to the drive for symbolic integration that their essays on Caribbean culture show, the region´s literature constitutes itself as a complex weave of shared symbols, figures and notions and a dense network of intellectual relations which crosses linguistic and national barriers. It is the production of an essay ´in a certain kind of way´ that the writers share: an ´archipelagic´ kind of way in which the recurrence of aquatic metaphors -a legacy from founders of Caribbeanness like Aimé Césaire- allow writers to inscribe a regional (decolonizing) imprint in postmodern thought, affiliating themselves -even when the revolutionary spirit is long gone- with the decolonizing thrust of ´the long sixties´.