INTRODUCTION
(Continued)
In "Claiming Masculinity as Her Own: Maroon Revolution in Michelle Cliff s No Telephone to Heaven", Patricia Krus focuses on how Cliff both relates to and subverts the writing of Caribbean male authors. In this perspective, she first analyzes how Cliff's intertextual use of Aime Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land reveals the shortcomings of the ethos of Negritude in the contemporary Caribbean cultural landscape; she then delves into Cliff's treatment of the figure of the Maroon and shows how, through the evocation of Nanny, she transforms this masculinist symbol of resistance into a powerful female agent of change in Caribbean history.
Kathleen Gyssels also discusses the female critique of male concepts, here that of créolité, in " ' Fils et Filles d'Anancy' : Diaspora and (un)woven identity in Schwarz-Bart's and Marshall's fiction". In exploring the use of arachnean imagery by female authors, Gyssels shows how women acquire a sense of solidarity by forging ties with their community and reaching back into history to commune with African ancestors and share into their spirituality. Through the weaving of a canvas of voices, these womanist writers then undo the webs they feel caught in by colonialism and patriarchy and offer a female version of creolite which suggests the constant negotiation and renegotiation of identity.
A similar process of creolization is the subject of the next paper, "Maryse Condé's La Migration des Coeurs, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and (the possibility of) creolization". In her study of these Caribbean rewritings of novels by the Bronté' s sisters, Maria Cristina Fumagalli addresses how Condé and Rhys creolize their British models in different ways and for different reasons. Condé pays homage to Emily Bronté and writes Caribbean variations on the theme of Wuthering Heights while Jean Rhys "corrects" Charlotte Bronté's depiction of Antoinette/Bertha and of the Caribbean. Fumagalli interprets both cases as the expression of Caribbean identity always in the making, a process that questions established European categories.
The last three papers complete this series by considering how intertextuality links areas of the Caribbean marked by their specificity to the rest of the region. In the first, "Walcott versus Naipaul: Intertextuality in Frank Martinus Arion's De Laatste Vrijheid (The Ultimate Freedom)" , Doris Hambuch analyzes the explicit Caribbean intertext used by Arion and his representation of the tension between the views of Naipaul and Walcott as they are expressed in Guerillas and Omeros. She shows that, like Walcott, Arion challenges Naipaul's negative views on the Caribbean and foregrounds the idealism of a region in the making. She concludes that, although both views are necessary to a adequate portrayal of the Caribbean, Arion's use of a strictly Caribbean intertext is important to highlight in order to stress the postcolonial accomplishments of the region.
In "Intertextuality as strategic affiliation in the work of Patrick Chamoiseau," Liesbeth Korthals Altes assesses the function of intertextuality in the strategic positioning that Chamoiseau adopts in relation to the influence of European writers on Caribbean emerging literature. Her examination of the poetics of reading in Ecrire en pays dominé and in Texaco helps to explain how intertextuality lends itself to the formation of a complex and subversive Creole identity. Altes does questions however Chamoiseau's non-critical attitude toward the ideology conveyed by some of the writers he refers to, for example Saint John Perse, and concludes that, in the words of Derek Walcott, "Caribbean genius is condemned to contradict itself."
We end the issue and this two volume series on Haiti because, historically the first Caribbean nation state, Haiti is ironically the island that has been the most ambivalent about the idea of Federation. Emblematic of this ambivalence is the fact that the author of the next article was a participant in the MLA session on The Caribbean That Isn' t? but since chose to submit his piece for The Caribbean that is?, thus underlining the Haitian desire to identify with the Caribbean region. In "Haitian Exceptionalism and Caribbean Consciousness," Asselin Charles shows how Haitian writers express the tensions between regional and national consciousness and to what extent a pan-Caribbean identity may help Haiti in retaining its specificity while creating ties with the outside, in particular through its diaspora. The exceptionalist ethos that Charles traces through Haitian writing speaks to the ideologically determined reading of national history which has been transmitted from generation to generation and sustained by the myth of a collective mission. In transcending this ideology however, contemporary writers suggest the possibility of a broader sense of identity and the recognition of similar struggles in the Caribbean, such as the Cuban revolution.
At the conclusion of this two volume series on the Caribbean and the problematic of a collective identity, we come to reflect on the tensions and the contradictions that have been laid bare. While the first issued posed a question and proposed new avenues for Caribbean scholarship and new readings of literary texts, the second issue relied on more traditional textual analyses to assert the commonalities of the region. While the main concern of the second volume was to answer the first and to point out the danger of reverting back to colonial divisions by stressing the rifts and disjunctions in the Caribbean, the selected articles in both issues often ended up blurring these lines of opposition and underlining instead the complexity of this question and the many paradoxes it contains.
Haiti is a case in point. Perhaps because of what Asselin Charles calls its culture of exceptionalism, Haiti reflects the tension between unity and specificity that has been addressed here but, at the same time, it appears paradoxical that it is the subject of only one article (Charles) in this issue and of three (Chancy, Duffey, N'Zengou-Tayo) in the last one. Perhaps this imbalance also has to do with gender and age since the writers studied by Charles are all male "classics" whereas the other three contributors deal mostly with a new generation of female authors. Are we in fact responding in these publications to a conflict between the old and the new? Although the divergent selection of authors being analyzed seems to point in that direction, another important aspect is revealed in the juxtaposition of the two volumes: all the articles stem from the same concern which has to do with "reading" the Caribbean. In both volumes authors have been concerned to show how Caribbean writers themselves read the region and together they show that contradictions are at the root of its identity. In this way, rifts and disjunctions show through the texture of The Caribbean That Is? and the desire for unity animates The Caribbean That Isn't?.
Our thanks go to the scholars who have agreed to contribute to The Caribbean that is?. As we pointed out in the introduction to the first volume, we have tried to include texts from all regions of the Caribbean and would have liked to have more scholars from the Caribbean participate in this dual endeavor. As we put an end to this project, we deplore its imperfection and we can only hope that the debate we meant to initiate has helped in raising the profile of Caribbean scholarship in the region and elsewhere and will be taken up by others.
