The Negotiated Self: The Dynamics of Identity in Francophone Caribbean Narrative

Using a multifaceted approach, this study explores questions of identity in novels by Dany Bébel-Gisler, Maryse Condé, and Emile Ollivier. As signs, narrators and characters are connected to each other dialogically and produce multilayered narratives that problematize the concept of a cohesive and static collective identity. In revealing identity to be a constantly fluctuating semiotic process, the study shows that Caribbean Francophone narrative is creating a new literary space where the dialogic underpinnings of the self are called upon to express the difficulties, the heterogeneity, and the opacity of meaning associated with any definition of a cultural or national identity.

The Author: Anne Malena is Assistant Professor of French and Translation at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and a translator. She received her Ph.D. in French Literature from Cornell University where she was the recipient of a fellowship from the Olin Family Foundation. In addition to publishing in various professional journals on Caribbean writers and translation, she has translated into French a first novel by Kristjana Gunnars, ＂The Prowler,＂ and is currently at work on a second one.