René Maran and the creole conteur

Abstract

Despite the recognition of important literary movements in French Antilles from the 1930s onwards – Negritude, Antillanité, Creoleness –, in general René Maran has been categorized by critics as an African writer. Evidently, the notoriety and recognition that the literary productions of African countries have received is of paramount importance for the dissemination of the diversity of histories and cultures of the world-system. That’s why highlighting the Antillean identity proves itself important in order to not reproduce the racist colonial premise of civilisation against barbarism. This premise presupposes only a relation between Africa and Europe, as Condé (2009) claims, when it comes to the identity of the Antilo-Guyanian subject in contemporaneity. Analyzing Maran’s work and, more precisely, the novel that awarded him the Prix Goncourt, Batouala (1921), one can see, however, similarities to the first manifestation of a literary nature of this new subject born from the horror of enslavement in the Americas: the Oraliture. Therefore, this paper seeks to demonstrate these similarities between the Maranian novel and the figure of the Antillean conteur to finally emphasize his creole identity, bringing it to the literary and cultural studies that have been developed in the French language in the Americas.