Tragedy of the Possible: Aimé Césaire in Cuba, 1968

In 1968, Aimé Césaire travelled to Cuba to participate in the Havana Cultural Congress, a mass international meeting where delegates discussed the place of culture in the struggle against imperialism, neo-colonialism, and underdevelopment. Among the likes of C.L.R. James, Nicolás Guillén, René Depestre, Michel Leiris, and Daniel Guérin, it was in Havana that the Martinican politician undertook the until-now untranslated interview with Sonia Aratán for the Casa de las Américas revue and delivered his Cultural Congress conference paper – previously believed by Césaire scholars to be lost. Both texts shed light on Césaire’s little-known views on Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution and Marxism in the context of late-1960s tricontinentalism. By reconstructing Césaire’s exchanges with Cuban writers before and during the Congress, we propose a consideration of the role of Cuba in Césaire’s political thought as a tragic possibility, combining the catastrophe of Caribbean history with the uncertain potential of new social forms.

D’une Obscure Polémique

In 1958, in the pages of the daily newspaper Port-au-Prince Le Nouvelliste one can read violent exchanges between two major writers, recognized internationally. Back from exile in the capital a few months apart, Jacques Stéphen Alexis and René Dépestre, the major actors of the Revolution of 1946, clash about the creation of the Port-au-Prince office of the African Society of Culture, whose principle had been recorded at the 1st Congress of the black writers and artists in 1956 at La Sorbonne. Famous, published, identified actors of the international communist movement, the two writers are opposed under the gaze of the Haitian society, and François Duvalier, elected president in 1957. The controversy rises in intensity for several weeks, and soon becomes an exchange accusations and taunts. The initial pretext gives way to radical cross-criticisms, which skew the aesthetic, political and anthropological conceptions of the two writers. But the violence of the tone ends up destroying the very meaning of the debate. During this period, however, is set up the violent and dictatorial police state, without it becoming possible to slow down this growth.

El constructo del negro en René Depestre y Achille Mbembe

<p>A partir de los trabajos de René Depestre y Achille Mbembe, el artículo busca reconocer los procesos en los cuales las africanas, los africanos y sus descendientes en las Américas pasaron de una identidad impuesta en la época colonial –el negro– a la resignificación de la misma. Desde distintas disciplinas y contextos, Depestre y Mbembe identificaron los procesos de construcción del negro1 adentrándose en concepciones antropológicas, donde la idea de humanidad colapsa y se inauguran niveles de lo no humano. Esa deshumanización forzada, que implicó la esclavización de millones de personas provenientes de cientos de etnias del continente africano, es lo que está implícito en la identidad, primero impuesta y luego dignificada.</p>

La fête et le spectacle carnavalesques dans Le Mât de cocagne (1979) et Hadriana dans tous mes rêves (1988) de René Depestre

The aim of this article is to bring together two of René Despestre’s novels, Le Mât de cocagne (1979) and Hadriana dans tous mes rêves (1988), and place them within the tradition of the carnivalesque as it was discussed by Mikhail Bakhtin in L’œuvre de François Rabelais et la culture populaire au Moyen Âge et sous la Renaissance. By taking into account this wider perspective, I intend to show that the presence of a diegetic spectacle reinforces the subversive value of the two works by including a moment of utopian relief that invites both the characters and the readers to engage in a fight for freedom.