M.A Lit Review Model

Introduction
Introduction
This chapter will first look at how postcolonial writing has been defined. It will also
focus on postcolonial writing by the Francophone Afro-Caribbean author Aimé Césaire and the
Mauritian author Dev Virahswamy. In order to do so, it will consider the relationship between
postcolonial world and Marxism as well as the link between postcolonialism and postmodernism.
It will outline how both texts re-appropriate and subvert The Tempest to create a postcolonial
national literature.
1.1 Postcolonial Writing
According to Homi Bhabha the term ‘postcolonial’ can be situated in “two time-frames.”
He refers here to both the decolonization period when most Third World countries got their
independence and the following neo-colonial period through “West-oriented international
capitalism.”1 Kyung-Won Lee says that it was after the “appearance of Edward Said’s
Orientalism in 1978” that postcolonialism emerged “as discursive practice in Euramerican
literary and cultural studies.”2 Furthermore in ‘The politics of literary postcoloniality’ Aijaz
Ahmed claims that it was in the 1980s that terms like ‘postcolonial’ and ‘postcolonialism’
“resurfaced [...] in literary and cultural theories and in deconstructive forms of history-writing”. 3
Ahmed says that postcolonial writing consists of:
1
Goldberg and Quayson. 2002. Introducing: Scale and Sensibility. Relocating Postcolonialism. Blackwell
Publishers Ltd.
2
Lee Kyung-Won. 1997. Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? Rethinking the Problems of Postcolonial
Revisionism. Cultural Critique, No. 36. Published by University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354501> on 04/12/08
3
Ahmed Aijaz. 1995. The politics of literary postcoloniality. Race Class. Published by SAGE. Retrieved from
<http://rac.sagepub.com> on 19/11/08
4
Introduction
“literary compositions- plays, poems, fiction of non-white minorities located in Britain

and North America [and] contemporary literatures of Asia and Africa.”4
Catherine Nash adds that postcolonial writing can be found in:
“work on imaginative geographies, the cultural fashioning of gendered, sexualized and

racialized colonial identities, the cultural strategies that accompanied and enabled the
extension of European power, colonial cultural as well as political and material
subordination, and new geographies of identity that challenge the fixities of nationalism
as well as colonialism.”5
Since Césaire makes use of Marxist standpoint to deconstruct colonial Manichean binaries,
this dissertation will study the relationship between Postcolonial world and Marxism. Douglas
Kellner defines the economic base of society for Marx and Engels as “the forces and relations of
production in which culture and ideology are constructed to help secure the dominance of ruling
social groups.” He adds that “this influential ‘base/superstructure’ model considers the economy
the base, or foundation, of society, and cultural, legal, political and additional forms of life are
conceived as ‘superstructures’ which grow out of and serve to reproduce the economic base.”6
Jameson argues that after the Second World War, the dominant French thought was existential
Marxism.7 Sanjay Seth claims that the non-Western world adopted Marxism since Lenin’s
“analysis of imperialism made it possible to argue that nationalist movements were progressive
because they were anti-imperialist, and that therefore communists in colonial countries had a
political role to play.”8
4
5
Nash Catherine. 2002. Cultural geography: postcolonial cultural geographies. Retrieved from
http://phg.sagepub.com on 30/10/07
6
Kellner Douglas. 2005. Western Marxism in Modern Social Theory: An Introduction. (ed) Austin Harrington.
Oxford University Press. UK.
7
Zhang Xudong and Federic Jameson. 1998. Marxism and the Historicity of Theory: An Interview with Federic
Jameson. New Literary History. Vol. 29. No. 3. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved from
5
Introduction
Mishra and Hodge affirm that “processes of decolonization cannot be read apart from
Marxist reading [and that Marx] believed in the need for colonized peoples to be awakened by
the force of bourgeois history.”9 Robin D.G. Kelley supports the point of view that Marxist
thought has been used in the decolonising process. He refers to Ralph Bunche who stated in 1936
that:
“The doctrine of Fascism with its extreme jingoism, its exaggerated exaltation of the state
and its comic-opera glorification of race, has given a new and greater impetus to the
policy of world imperialism which had conquered and subjected to systematic and
ruthless exploitation virtually all of the darker populations of the earth.”10
The use of Marxism by the postcolonial world can be traced back to the 1960s. Michael
Burawoy claims that:
“In the 1960s, the New Left in Europe and America, national liberation movements in
Africa and Asia, and socialist experiments in Latin America all drew on Marxism both
for their critique of what was and their conjecture of what could be.”11
Ngugi writes that the sixties was the period when “the centre of the universe was moving from
Europe.”12 Jameson also describes the 1960s as a period when all the “natives became human
beings” and as a “decisive [...] history of human freedom; as a more classically Hegelian process
8
Seth Sanjay. 2002. Review: Back to the Future? Third World Quarterly. Vol. 23. No. 3. Published by Taylor &
Francis Ltd. Retrieved from <http://wwww.jstor.org/stable/3993542> on 25/07/09
9
Mishra Vijay and Bob Hodge. 2005. What was Postcolonialism? New Literary History. Vol. 36. No. 3. Published
by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
10
Kelley Robin D.G. 2000. A Poetics of Anticolonialism. Monthly Review Press. Retrieved from <
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1199kell.htm> on 26/07/09
11
Burawoy Michael. 2000. Marxism after Communism. Theory and Society. Vol. 29. No.2. Published by Springer.
Retrieved from <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3108567> on 24/07/09
12
Ngugi wa Thiong'o. 1991. Moving the Centre: Towards a Pluralism of Cultures. The Journal of Commonwealth
Literature. Retrieved from <http://jcl.sagepub.com> on 22/08/09
6
Introduction
of the coming of self-consciousness of subject peoples; [...] a new left conception of the
emergence of new ‘subjects of history’ of a nonclass type (blacks, students, third world
peoples).” Seth suggests that Lenin’s assumption that “nationalist movements would be
bourgeois-democratic ones, committed to the establishment of a national market [and] the
abolition of feudal fetters” proved wrong since in the non-Western world, there was “a necessary
gap between structure and consciousness.”13 He writes that “peasants would fight for land and
bread [...] but because their feudal oppressors were tied up with comprador and foreign
capitalists, and all of these were part of the imperialist system, they would in effect be fighting
against imperialism.”14 But Jameson warns that the 1960s must not be considered as “a moment
in which all over the world chains and shackles of a classical imperialist kind were thrown off in
a stirring wave of wars of national liberation.” According to him, this definition would be “an
altogether mythical simplification.” 15
Michael Burawoy writes that by the 1980s, “Critique took a cultural turn, forsaking
Marxism for the more discursive critical race and gender theory and for poststructuralism more
generally.”16 Indeed Munck writes that after 1989 and the “virtual collapse of communism”,
Marxism started losing ground.17 As Condé points out, the faith people had that the Marxist
“ideology would bring about the end of colonialism and usher in a new era of happiness and
freedom for the Third World” was shattered when leaders of the Third World started
manipulating their own people by hiding behind a Marxist discourse.18 Fanon has criticised
bourgeois nationalist anticolonialism. Neil Lazarus refers to Fanon who says that the aim of
13
Seth Sanjay. 2002. Review: Back to the Future? Third World Quarterly. Vol. 23. No. 3. Published by Taylor &
Francis Ltd. Retrieved from <http://wwww.jstor.org/stable/3993542> on 25/07/09
14
Ibid.
15
Jameson Frederic. 1984. Periodizing the 60s. Social Text. The 60's without Apology. No. 9/10. Published by Duke
University. Press. Retrieved from <http://www.jstor.org/stable/466541> on 23/08/09
16
Burawoy Michael. 2000. Marxism after Communism. Theory and Society. Vol. 29. No.2. Published by Springer.
17
Munck Ronaldo. 1998. Latin American/Late Marxist Perspective. Latin American Perspectives. Vol. 25. No. 6.
Published by Sage Publications, Inc. Retrieved by <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2634212> on 25/07/09
18
Condé Maryse. 1993. The Role of the Writer. World Literature Today. Vol. 67. No. 4. Published by University of
Oklahoma. Retrieved from <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40149563> on 23/08/09
7
Introduction
nationalist anticonialism was “quite simply to transfer into native hands- the hands of bourgeois
nationalists- those unfair advantages which are a legacy of the colonial period.”19 When
postcolonial nationalist projects turned out to be a failure, then the need to rely on Marxism to
create postcolonial nations was no longer felt.
For Pius Adesanmi, one of the reasons why the postcolonial project of nationalism has
failed is because the prefix ‘post’ itself is problematic.20 Catherine Nash says that the prefix
‘post’ “inappropriately denotes and prematurely celebrates a time after colonialism and so elides
continued neocolonial processes [and] the endurance of colonial discourses”.21 Jasper Goss says
that the process of nation-making is itself a colonial project. He refers to Harvey who stated that
“the world’s spaces were deterritorialised, stripped of their preceding significations, and then
reterritorialised according to the convenience of colonial and imperial administration.”22 Partha
Chaterjee writes that:
“In the 1950s and 1960s, nationalism was still regarded as a feature of the victorious
anticolonial struggles in Asia and Africa. But [...] as the new institutional practices of
economy and policy in the postcolonial states were disciplined and normalized under the
conceptual rubrics of ‘development’ and ‘modernization’, nationalism was already being
relegated to the domain of the particular histories of this or that colonial empire.”23
19
Lazarus Neil. 1993. Disavowing Decolonization: Fanon, Nationalism, and the Problematic of Representation in
Current Theories of Colonial Discourse. Research in African Literatures. Vol. 24. No. 4. Published by Indiana
University Press. Retrieved from <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820255> on 16/12/08
20
Adesanmi Pius. 2004. Of Postcolonial Entanglement and Duree: Reflections on the Francophone African Novel.
Comparative Literature. Vol. 56. No. 3. Published by Duke University. Retrieved from
21
Nash Catherine. 2002. Cultural geography: postcolonial cultural geographies. Progress in Human Geography.
Published by Sage Publications. Retrieved from <http://phg.sagepub.com> on 30/11/07
22
Goss Jasper. 1996. Postcolonialism: Subverting Whose Empire? Third World Quarterly. Vol. 17. No. 2. Published
by Taylor and Francis Ltd. Retrieved from <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993091> on 23/08/09
23
Chaterjee Partha. 1993. Whose Imagined Community? The nation and its fragments. New Jersey. Princeton
University Press.
8
Introduction
Kwadwo Osei-Nyame refers to Fanon who argued in his essay ‘Pitfalls of National
Consciousness’ that:
“National consciousness, instead of being the all-embracing crystallization of the

innermost hopes of the whole people...will be in any case only an empty shell, a crude
and fragile travesty of what it might have been.”24
Chaterjee adds that “by the 1970s, nationalism had become a matter of ethnic politics, the reason
why people in the Third World killed each other.”25 Aijaz Ahmed suggests that it is:
“Third World Literature [which] gets rechristened as ‘postcolonial literature’ when the
governing theoretical framework shifts from Third World nationalism to postmodernism.”26
In fact, Mishra and Hodge affirm that the terms ‘postcolonial’, ‘third word’ or ‘postmodern’
“overlap and support each other.” As they point out in ‘What was Postcolonialism?’ :
“Postcolonialism has not disappeared, but lags well behind its dominant partner,
postmodernism.”27
Jameson writes that postmodernism “lies in its symbiotic or parasitical relationship” to high
modernism.28 He adds that postmodernism is characterised by “the waning of the opposition”
24
Osei-Nyame Kwadwo. 1998. Love and Nation: Fanon's African Revolution and Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautiful
Ones Are Not Yet Born. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Retrieved from <http://jcl.sagepub.com> on
24/08/09
25
Partha Chaterjee. 1993. Whose Imagined Community? The nation and its fragments. New Jersey. Princeton
University Press.
26
27
28
9
Introduction
between high modernism and mass culture and “some new conflation of the forms of high and
mass culture.”29 Zygmunt Bauman says that postmodernism does not “substitute one truth for
another [...] instead, it splits the truth, the standards and the ideal into already
deconstructed/discredit rules. It braces itself for a life without truths, standards and ideals.”30
This means that unlike Marxism, Postmodernism can rise above the Manichean binaries. This
explains why Postmodernism has been harnessed by the postcolonial world. Jameson declares
that as a framework, Postmodernism covers “death of the subject, [...] the nature and function of
a culture of the simulacrum, [its] relation to media culture or the ‘society of the spectacle’
(Debord), [...] the literal signifier [....] schizophrenic time; the eclipse, finally, of all depth,
especially historicity itself, with the subsequent appearance of pastiche and nostalgia art”.31
According to Jasper Goss, Ahmad has defined Said as the one who first developed “a whole
critical apparatus for defining a postmodern kind of anti-colonialism which, also for the first
time, had little (if no) relation to Marxism.”32 He adds that Homi Bhabha further changed the
way postcolonialism is perceived since he was influenced by “Lacanian psychoanalysis and
Derrida’s methods of deconstruction.” This is why Bhabha focuses on subjectivity “in terms of
location and psyche, rather than class.”33 Moustafa Bayoumi says that for Bhabha,
Postcolonialism can be located as a “reconfiguration of postmodern contingency” while for
Appiah Postcolonialism exists in “an ambivalent relationship with postmodern
commodification.”34 According to him, both Bhabha and Appiah have emphasized on the need to
“disestablish the primacy of the Self-Other division in this equation and championed the
29
Ibid.
30
Bauman Zygmunt. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. Routledge. London and New York.
31
32
33
34
Bayoumi Moustafa. 2001. Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature by Chris Bongie.
African American Review. Vol. 35. No. 1. Published by Indiana State University. Retrieved from
10
Introduction
circulations and hybridities of contemporary cultures.”35 However this “alliance” between

Postcolonialism and Postmodernism has been criticized since Mishra argues that:
“in a current theory a trinity of ‘posts’ has been effectively colonized and enclosed the
open space of ‘afterness’, each morphing into the others in an endless play of almost
sameness, closing around a single theme and a single version of history in the name of
plurality.”36
As such the field of Postcolonialism is a very diverse one and includes other paradigms like
Marxism and Postmodernism. Both Touffan and Une Tempête are part of this postcolonial
literature but set within the island space. Islands have since the fifteen century been defined as
“stopovers and sites of migrations”37 for traders. Still according to Verges, islands like
Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles have been ignored by European and Eurocentric scholars.
She adds that these islands are found “at the interstices of [...] the African, [...] Asian, European
world.”38 These same islands have been defined by Françoise Lionnet as:
“places of escape and rest, hideaways onto which an infinite number of desires can be
projected. They do not appear to have any cultural integrity of their own, unlike older
civilizations. They are seen as their residues of Europe’s dream of empire, tabulae rasae,
which need not be taken very seriously.”39
35
Ibid.
36
37
Vergès Françoise. 2001. Positions: Looking East, Heading South. African Studies Review. Vol. 44. No. 2. Ways
of Seeing: Beyond the New Nativism. Published by African Studies Association. Retrieved from
38
Vergès Françoise. 2001. Positions: Looking East, Heading South. African Studies Review. Vol. 44. No. 2. Ways
of Seeing: Beyond the New Nativism. Published by African Studies Association. Retrieved from
39
Lionnet Françoise. 1998. Reframing Baudelaire: Literary History, Biography, Postcolonial Theory, and
Vernacular Languages. Diacritics. Vol. 28. No. 3. Doing French Studies. Published by The Johns Hopkins
11
Introduction
It is in this colonial construction of the island space that Shakespeare’s The Tempest is set and
both Aimé Césaire and Dev Virahswamy subvert the colonial text within The Tempest by
rewriting their own translations.
1.2 Postcolonial Francophone Afro-Caribbean Literature by Aimé Césaire
David Murphy writes that French-language literatures from Canada, Africa and the
Caribbean come under the collective term ‘Francophone Literature(s)’. He adds that while the
promotion of Francophone literature is perceived as “an inclusive gesture”, such “writing is
usually excluded from the category of French literature” since it is not produced within
metropolitan France.40 This is why he states that “La Francophonie is the ‘periphery’ while
France is the ‘centre’.”41 Furthermore Pius Adesanmi says that:
“Francophone Africa is [...] far from a homogeneous literary, cultural, or political space [and]
because these new realities have been largely subsumed within the strictures of nation and
nationalism, there has been an increasing tendency in Francophone African texts to articulate
identities as national literatures.”42
Still while many attempts have been made to define African literature, Afro-Caribbean and
Mauritian literature stay on the fringe. In 1990, the authors of the article In Praise of Creoleness
affirmed that “Caribbean literature does not yet exist.”43 It is a literature still in the making for
according to Danielle Dunontet, Caribbean literature is still considered as minority literature.44
40
Murphy David. 2002. De-centring French studies: towards a postcolonial theory of Francophone cultures. French
Cultural Studies. Retrieved from <http://frc.sagepub.com> on 05/09/09
41
Ibid.
42
Adesanmi Pius. 2004. Of Postcolonial Entanglement and Duree: Reflections on the Francophone African Novel.
Comparative Literature. Vol. 56. No. 3. Published by Duke University. Retrieved from
43
Bernabe Jean et al. 1990. In Praise of Creoleness. Callaloo. Vol. 13 No. 4. Published by The Johns Hopkins
44
Dumontet Danielle. 1996. Le Meutre du Père dans la Littérature Antillaise ou l’emancipation d’une littérature.
Edited by Immaculda Linares. Littératures Francophones. Universitat de Valéncia.
12
Introduction
Aimé Césaire was born in Martinique (Caribbean) in 1913 and died in 2008 and according to
The Times, he was one of the “principal founder[s] of the concept of négritude which aimed to
give again to black people a pride in their African roots.” 45 As Germaine Brée and Edouard
Morot-Sir claim, it was in the 1930s that the movement for négritude began with Léopold
Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas.46 Césaire’s Cahier d'un retour au pays natal
contributed a lot in this movement. For Cilas Kemedjio, “Négritude [...] is an affirmation of
identity that finds its full significance in the context of the black world.” 47 Indeed Léopold
Senghor says that Césaire developed negritude as “a weapon, as an instrument of liberation and
as a contribution to the humanism of the twentieth century.”48 Frantz Fanon further adds that:
“Before Césaire, West Indian literature was a literature of Europeans”49
Césaire realised the importance literature could play in the process of decolonisation. In 1959
during the ‘Congrès des Écrivains Noirs’, Césaire said that it is up to the man of culture to teach
his people about liberty.50
45
Times Online. 2008. Aimé Cesairé. Retrieved from
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3766951.ece> on 05/12/08
46
Brée Germaine et Morot-Sir Edouard. 1990. Littérature Française. Du Surréalisme à l’Empire de la critique. Les
Editions Arthaud. Paris.
47
Kemedjio Cilas. 2002. Founding-Ancestors and Intexuality in Francophone Caribbean Literature and Criticism.
Research in African Literatures. Vol. 33. No. 2. Published by Indiana University Press. Retrieved from
48
Senghor Leopold. Négritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century. Colonial Discourse and Post- Colonial
Theory, A Reader, (ed) and introduced by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Published by Prentice Hall/
Harvester Wheatsheaf. A division of Simon and Schuster International Group.
49
Times Online. 2008. Aimé Cesairé. Retrieved from
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3766951.ece> on 05/12/08
50
Kestelroot Lilyan. 1963. Les écrivains noirs de langue française : naissance d’une littérature. Quatrième édition.
Études fricaines. Editions de L’institut de Sociologie. Université Libres de Bruxelles.
13
Introduction
Many African and Caribbean texts have been accused of focusing only on their past and
immediate political environment. However in The national longing for form Timothy Brennan
refers to Paul Ricoeur who says that:
“the developing world has to root itself in the soil of its past, forge a national spirit, and
unfurl this spiritual and cultural revendication before the colonialists’ personality.”51
Furthermore Adlai Murdah says that the “tendency towards nationalism and national expression
[...] symbolizes a desire for resistance to colonial hegemony on a regional scale.”52 As Georges-
Henri Leotin and Suzanne Houyoux have found:
“From 1960 to 1980, in Martinique and in Guadeloupe, major works of Creole literature
are connected to the rise of nationalism and the quest for identity.”53
Bruce King and Kolawole Ogungbesan claim that black writing is linked to the “renewal of
African culture and political consciousness after the demoralizing effects of the slave trade and
colonialism.”54 For them, there was the need for black writers to “reconstruct an African
personality out of the cultural survivals still retained.”55 Consequently it can be said that Une
51
Bhabha Homi K. 1990. Nation and Narration. Routledge. London.
52
Murdoch Adlai. (Re)Figuring Colonialism: Narratological and Ideological Resistance. Callaloo. Vol. 15. No. 1.
The Literature of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Published by The John Hopkins University Press. Retrieved from
53
Léotin Georges-Henri and Houyoux Suzanne. 1992. A Summary Overview of Antillean Literature in Creole:
Martinique and Guadeloupe.Callaloo. Vol. 15. No. 1. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved
from <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2931412> on 10/01/09
54
King Bruce and Ogungbesan Kolawole. 1975. Celebration of Black and African Writing. Ahmadu Bello
University Press and Oxford University Press.
55
Ibid.
14
Introduction
Tempête and Touffan are attempts at re-narrating the nation or history from a different point of
view.
Une Tempête is part of the attempt to form the nation. As Mireille Rosello says, Césaire
“hardly owns his words.” His work is considered as “public property” and therefore Une
Tempête plays a role in the forging of an Afro-Caribbean identity. According to Mireille Rosello,
56
Césaire becomes a “sower of ideas” so as to contribute to the growth of “a people”. This is
done through speech as in Une Tempête, Caliban is offered the possibility to talk back to
Prospero in a ‘negrified’ French while in Touffan, all the characters talk in Creole. As Griffiths
says while referring to Bhabha, subaltern speech comes into being when:
“its mediation through mimicry and parody of the dominant discourse subverts and menaces
the authority within which it necessarily comes into being.”57
Even if Aimé Césaire has been criticised for not using Creole in his writings, the authors of In
Praise of Creoleness, claim that it was because Césaire was trapped between “Europeanness and
Africanness, two forms of exteriority which proceed from two opposed logics- one monopolizing
our minds submitted to its torture, the other living in our flesh ridden by its scars, each inscribing
in us after its own way its keys, its codes, its numbers.”58 This is why according to them, Césaire
was more ante-Creole than anti-Creole.59 They claim that it is Césaire’s Négritude that “gave
Creole society its African dimension, and put an end to the amputation which generated some of
the superficiality of the so called doudouist writing.”60 His play Une Tempête (1969) could be
56
Rosello Mireille. 2001. The “Cesaire Effect,” or How to Cultivate One’s Nation. Research in African Literatures,
Vol.32, No. 4. Retrieved from <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820808> on 25/06/08
57
Griffiths Gareth. The Myth of Authenticity. Representation, discourse and social practice.
58
Bernabé Jean et al. 1990. In Praise of Creoleness. Callaloo. Vol. 13 No. 4. Published by The Johns Hopkins
59
15
Introduction
said to be part of the postcolonial enterprise to write back to canonical texts like The Tempest by
William Shakespeare. As the writer Timothy Scheie says:
“Productions of Shakespeare's The Tempest, have often dwelt on its colonial overtones, but
in A Tempest, Césaire, a Martiniquais who himself lived under (neo) colonial rule, explicitly
sets the action in terms of the struggle between a colonising European master and the
colonised indigenous slaves.”61
Indeed according to Senghor, Postcolonial African literature should “revalue” African values for:
“it is not only the territory of Africa that has to be decolonized but the mental attitude of
people- both lack and white- towards the black race.”62
It could be said that the Mauritian author Dev Virahswamy aims at a similar kind of
decolonisation in his translation of The Tempest in Creole. However he goes beyond Une
Tempête since he does not get trapped in Manichean binaries and offers a more postmodern
version of The Tempest in Touffan.
1.3 Postcolonial Mauritian Literature by Dev Virahswamy
Literary activity began in Mauritius in 1810 after the colonisation by the British as a
means for French immigrants to preserve their cultural identity. Therefore most of the literature
was written by French authors such as Léoville L’Homme, Robert Edward Hart, Malcolm de
Chazal, Édouard J. Maunick, and more recently by Nathacha Appanah and Jean-Marie Le
60
61
Jamaica Gleaner. 2008. University Players' production of 'A Tempest' celebrates Aimé Césaire. Retrieved from
<http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080505/ent/ent4.html> on 05/12/08
62
Peters Jonathan. 1978. A Dance of Masks. Senghor, Achebe, Soyinka. Three Continents Press. Washington D.C.
16
Introduction
Clézio. These Francophone writers have won many international awards for francophone
literature. In fact, Francophone Mauritian literature has been more prominent than Anglophone
literature in spite of the fact that Mauritius was a British colony. Shakuntala Hawaldar, Hassan
Heerah and Régis Fanchette are among the Anglophone Mauritian writers. Since English and
French were colonial languages, they have been given more importance than Kreol in Mauritius.
Literature was mostly written in these two languages. As Miles writes, “superimposed colonial
tongues are valued because no indigenous ethnic groups are specifically identified with them.”63
Furthermore Tirvassen writes that when the British left Mauritius, the Indo-Mauritians from the
bourgeois class adopted English as a marker of social identity and when the link between the
Franco-Mauritians and French weakened with time, French also gained social value.64
Even if Mauritius became an independent nation in 1968, Postcolonial literature written in

Kreol is still considered as inferior and only a few writers like Dev Virahswamy, Asgarally and
Collen have published their works in Kreol. As Ngugi has pointed out:
“any achievement in spoken or written English was highly rewarded; prizes, prestige,
applause; the ticket to higher realms. English became the measure of intelligence and ability
in the arts, the sciences, and all the other branches of learning.”65
In fact, it was only in mid 1970s onward, that the Ledikasyon Pu Travayer (LPT) movement
emerged to promote Kreol as a literary medium.66 In 1971, René Noyau published a literary work
63
Miles William. 2000. The Politics of Language Equilibrium in a Multilingual Society: Mauritius. Comparative
Politics. Vol. 32. No. 2. Published by Ph. D. Program in Political Science of the City University of New York.
64
Tirvassen Rada. 1999. La problématique du choix des langues d'enseignement dans des pays indépendants:
l'anglais dans la politique de l'école mauricienne. DiversCité Langues. En ligne. Vol. IV. Retrieved from
<http://www.uquebec.ca/diverscite> on 17/08/09
65
Ngugi Wa Thiongo. Decolonising the mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Studies in African
Literature Series).
66
Government of Mauritius. Independence: from Creole patois to Morisyen. The standardization process (1970s –
1980s). Retrieved from <www.gov.mu/portal/goc/educationsite/file/propo.doc> on 15/08/09
17
Introduction
in Kreol, Tention Caïman. His work has been qualified as “the first post-independence creative
publication [which has attempted] to revive the traditional Creole narrative and recast it into a
literary mode of expression of popular wisdom and clairvoyance.”67
Dev Virahswamy, a Mauritian author was born in 1942 at Quartier Militaire chose to
write mostly in Mauritian Creole and has translated many plays of Shakespeare. He believes that
Kreol could play an important role in the creation of the postcolonial multicultural nation. This is
why in spite of the fact that he does not come from a Creole ethnic background, he defends Kreol
as a Mauritian language. In 1967 he stated that:
“We Mauritians have something in common. It is a very useful tool for the creation of a
nation. It can release the feelings of loyalty, self-respect and complete participation. It is
the creole which we speak.”68
Furthermore since the majority of Mauritians speak Kreol, Virahswamy believes that Mauritius
can become a united nation through this language. Moreover to avoid any conflict between
ethnicity and the adoption of Kreol as national language, he refers to the Mauritian Creole as
‘Morisyen’. Ania Loomba says with reference to Anderson that:
“nation formation involves breaks with such an order and the creation of a different sort
of ‘imagined community’ in which people across different classes are united within a
more bounded geographical space, and identify with the same language.”69
This view is supported by Roshni Mooneeram who has affirmed that:

67
Government of Mauritius. Independence: from Creole patois to Morisyen. The standardization process (1970s –
1980s). Retrieved from <www.gov.mu/portal/goc/educationsite/file/propo.doc> on 15/08/09
68
Quoted by Mooneeram Roshni. 2007. The contribution of creative writing to the standardization of Mauritian
Creole. Language and Literature. Retrieved from <http://lal.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/3/245> on
24/04/09
69
Loomba Ania. 2002. Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism. Oxford University Press.
18
Introduction
“Creole became the privileged space where an authenticity previously denied could be
reclaimed, and evolved into an increasingly potent symbol.”70
Therefore Virahsawmy promotes this language through his plays. In fact, Françoise Lionnet cites
Virahswamy as “the main proponent of its lingua franca as a national language.” 71 The Tempest
is one of the texts he has translated and adapted to the Mauritian context as Touffan (1991). This
play has also been translated back in English as Toufann: A Mauritian Fantasy.
Dorothy F. Lane says that in “literary texts that emanate from former British colonies, the
island recurs as a figure of postcolonial space”.72 Just like Françoise Lionnet, she claims that the
island is a space which has been appropriated in British colonial texts. This is why there has been
postcolonial resistance to The Tempest. It is as Dorothy F. Lane says a play which has been
given priority in colonial education as a text which fixes islanders into perpetual otherness. She
further claims that the:
“island itself is depicted as a feminine space penetrated by male reason and science [and that]
the coloniser’s language easily constructs the island, maps it, and finally claims ownership of
that territory.”73
Dev Virahswamy re-appropriates the text and de-constructs both constructions of the island
space. He proves Prospero’s power to be limited and shows that reason and science cannot
70
Mooneram Roshni. Prospero’s Island Revisited: Dev Virahswamy’s Toufann.
71
Lionnet Françoise. 2003. Creole Vernacular Theatre: Transcolonial Translations in Mauritius. The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
72
Lane Dorothy. 1995. The Island as Site of Resistance An Examination of Caribbean and New Zealand Texts.
Studies of World Literature in English. Peter Lang Publishing.
73
Ibid.
19
Introduction
control everything. He also changes the language from English to Creole, thus allocating more
power to Kalibann. Dorothy F. Lane also says that the island in British texts can be defined as:
“a space that is repeatedly the setting for a narrative of management, control, and a simplified
replication of the Old World which simultaneously resolves Old-World problems.”74
However Dev Virahswamy turns this very space into a postmodern hybrid one, beyond the
control of Prospero. This allows him to subvert the “single, representative master who is able
successfully to subdue, domesticate, and linguistically own any deviant elements.”75
Other Mauritian writers such as Edward Maunick and Carl de Souza have dealt with the
theme of hybridity and this is why Danielle Tranquille says that Mauritius inscribes itself as the
hybrid space, the “ideal site from which to interrogate the possibilities and parameters of
identity.”76 Touffan reflects such a hybrid society. This play in turn contributes to the
construction of the postcolonial Mauritian nation. As Timothy Brenan says:
“ ‘Print-capitalism’, according to Anderson, meant ideological insemination on large scale

and created conditions where people could begin to think of themselves as a nation.”77
Bhabha says that the “exemplary postcolonial [is the one] who stands ambivalently against
atavistic nationalism”.78 Since there is the need for Virahswamy to contribute to the creation of a
74
Ibid.
75
Ibid.
76
Tranquille Danielle. 2005. Inscriptions of dev/fiancé: métissage in Mauritian literature. International Journal of
Francophone Studies. Volume 8. Number 2. Intellect Ltd. University of Mauritius, Réduit.
77
Bhabha Homi K. 1990. Nation and Narration. London, Routledge.
78
Bayoumi Moustafa. 2001. Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature by Chris Bongie.
African American Review. Vol. 35. No. 1. Published by Indiana State University. Retrieved from
20
Introduction
Mauritian postcolonial nation and he uses a postmodern approach to achieve this. For Chris
Bongie, postmodernism is important for it goes against the essentialisation of identities and
allows for hybridity as well as Glissant’s idea of creolisation.79 However Bayoumi says that even
Chris Bongie does not escape from the search for roots since by “historicizing creole identities”,
he ends up doing exactly what he has argued against.80
Still Touffan offers various possibilities as a postcolonial and postmodern text. While Césaire
takes a Marxist position to fight against colonial oppression, Virahswamy takes a postmodern
approach. Furthermore unlike Aimé Césaire, Dev Virahswamy chooses to write in Kreol, thus re-
appropriating the original text in a different way. While Une Tempête uses hybridity to subvert
the colonial binaries set in The Tempest, Virahswamy resorts to hybridity as a marker of a new
evolving Mauritian identity. This allows him to represent his narration of the postcolonial
Mauritian nation.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
21

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Introduction

1.1 Postcolonial Writing

“literary compositions- plays, poems, fiction of non-white minorities located in Britain

Catherine Nash adds that postcolonial writing can be found in:

“work on imaginative geographies, the cultural fashioning of gendered, sexualized and

“National consciousness, instead of being the all-embracing crystallization of the

circulations and hybridities of contemporary cultures.”35 However this “alliance” between

1.2 Postcolonial Francophone Afro-Caribbean Literature by Aimé Césaire

“Before Césaire, West Indian literature was a literature of Europeans”49

1.3 Postcolonial Mauritian Literature by Dev Virahswamy

Even if Mauritius became an independent nation in 1968, Postcolonial literature written in

This view is supported by Roshni Mooneeram who has affirmed that:

“ ‘Print-capitalism’, according to Anderson, meant ideological insemination on large scale

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