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Part of
A Comparative History of the Literary Draft in Europe
Edited by Olga Beloborodova and Dirk Van Hulle
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXV] 2024
► pp. 214–227

1.2.9
Postcolonial traditions

Toward comparative genetic criticism through a Caribbean lens

This chapter discusses literary drafts in the context of postcolonial endangered archival situations. My aim is to examine how certain archival situations, particularly across the Caribbean region, have impacted writers’ creative processes, leading to a significant tradition of published books, which have a distinctive manuscriptesque aura. What will become clear is that these postcolonial writers and their works purposefully straddle and disrupt the old spatial boundaries separating Caribbean islands from one another, and from Europe, and North America. This chapter looks at comparative genetic criticism through a decolonial Caribbean lens. Such a comparative approach to postcolonial literary drafts from the region is apt because the Caribbean space remains balkanised along old colonial linguistic lines to this day.
Keywords: postcolonial genetic criticism, rasanblaj (gathering/reassembling), rewriting, Caribbean, Haiti, endangered literary archives, Haitian boatpeople, Kamau Brathwaite, Dany Laferrière, Frankétienne
Article outline
  • Introduction: Studying and preserving Caribbean literary drafts
  • Sycorax video style: Kamau Brathwaite’s “hypertextual” typography
  • Graphic novels and rasanblaj: Dany Laferrière and Frankétienne
  • Notes
  • References
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