Cover not available

In:A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Madeleine Dobie and Mads Anders Baggesgaard
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVII] 2025
► pp. 330–348

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 18
Self-expression by black Antillean women

Disempowering self-censorship and remembering history

Published online: 29 April 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.37.18arm
Abstract
This chapter presents a reflexive analysis of two oeuvres: Mes Quatre Femmes by Gisèle Pineau and Mes Météores, Combats Politiques au Long Cours by Christiane Taubira. The analysis comes from the findings of my previous research in social sciences. The data revealed the extreme sensitivity of black Antillean women in expressing their thoughts and ideas freely. Their positions in an entre-deux (sitting on the fence) signal a form of hesitance and self-censorship. This chapter examines how Pineau and Taubira substantiate the silenced voices of the data that emerges from my quantitative research. The narratives and life experiences of these authors reveal how written words and self-expression are an act of resistance to the phenomenon of self-censorship.
Article outline
  • Introduction: Literary hermeneutic of research in social sciences
  • Self-expression and self-censorship
  • Self-expression: A testimony of self-dissidence
  • Historical legacy and decolonial her-stories
  • Using her-stories to frame collective memory
  • Using self-expression to amend duty of memory
  • Conclusion: Opening the self to a form of liberatory ‘femihumanism’
  • Notes
  • References
References (35)
References
Armange, Roseline and Etienne Mullet. 2016. “Slave Descendants’ Views regarding National Policies on Reparations: A Martinican Perspective.” Social Science Information 55 (4, December): 511–530. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boyce Davies, Carole. 1994. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1952. Peau Noire, Masques Blancs. Paris: Du Seuil.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Francis, Gladys. M. 2017. Odious Caribbean Women and the Palpable Aesthetics of Transgression. Lanham: Lexington Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glover, L. Kaiama. 2018. “Beyond the Post|Colonial Canon: A Pedagogical Approach to Embodiment in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother .” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 33 (2, June): 465–471. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glover, L. Kaiama. 2015. “A Woman’s Place Is in… The Unhomely as Social Critique in Marie Chauvet’s “Fille d’Haïti”.” Yale French Studies (128, XX): 115–130. [URL]
. 2011. “Tituba’s Fall: Maryse Condé’s Counter-narrative of the Female Slave Self.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 15 (1, January): 99–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guyon, Stéphanie. 2018. “Christiane Taubira, a Black woman in Politics in French Guiana and in France.” In Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848–2016, edited by Germain, Félix, Silyane Larcher, and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, 36–19. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. [URL].
Herbeck, Jason and Kanor, Fabienne. 2013. “Entretien avec Fabienne Kanor.” The French Review 86 (5, April): 964–976. [URL].
Hourcade, Renaud. 2013. “L’esclavage dans la mémoire nationale française: cadres et enjeux d’une politique mémorielle en mutation.” Droits et cultures 2 (66, December):71–86. [URL].
Hua, Anh. 2013. “Black diaspora feminism and writing: memories, storytelling, and the narrative world as sites of resistance.” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 6 (1, January): 30–42. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jurney, Florence Ramond. 2012. “Entretien avec Gisèle Pineau: Réflexions sur une œuvre ancrée dans une société mondialisée.” Nouvelles Etudes Francophones 27 (2, Fall): 107–120. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kanor, Fabienne. 2016. “La d’où Je Viens.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 20 (3, June): 404–410. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lionnet, Françoise. 1995. Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maisier, Véronique. 2012. “L’Écriture au Service de la Parole dans les Romans de Gisèle Pineau.” Nouvelles Études Francophones 27 (2, Autumn): 30–44. [URL]
McCusker, Maeve. 2013. “Authorising a Tradition: Theory, Criticism and (Self-)Canonisation in French Caribbean Writing.” French Cultural Studies 24 (1, January): 77–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mohammed, Patricia. 2002. Gendered Realities: Essays in Caribbean Feminist Thought. Kingston: The University of the West Indies Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nardal, Paulette and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting. 2009. Beyond Negritude: Essays From Woman in the City. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nazaruk, Maja. 2011. “Reflexivity in Anthropological Discourse Analysis.” Anthropological Notebooks 17 (1, May): 73–83.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Callaghan, Evelyn. 1994. “(Ex)Tending the Boundaries: Early Travel Writing by Women and the Construction of the “West Indies”.” Extended Boundaries: 13th Conference on West Indian Literature 27 (¾, Jul.-Dec.): 255–277. [URL]
Orlando, Valerie. 2001. “Writing New H(er)stories for Francophone Women of Africa and the Caribbean.” World Literature Today 75 (1, Winter): 40–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pfaff, Françoise. 2016. Nouveaux Entretiens Avec Maryse Condé : Écrivain et Témoin de Son Temps. Paris: Éditions Karthala.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pineau, Gisèle. 2009. “Gisèle Pineau, 5 Questions pour Île en île.” Interview by Thomas C. Spear. Ile-en-Ile.org, June, 11, 2009. Video, 33/00. [URL]
. 2007. Mes Quatre Femmes. Paris: Rey.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. 2002. Negritude Women. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simmons, K. Merinda. 2014. Changing the Subject: Writing Women across the African Diaspora. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. [URL]
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tagore, Proma. 2009. Shapes of Silence: Writing by Women of Colour and the Politics of Testimony. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taubira, Christiane. 2017. “Entretien avec Christiane Taubira.” By Pierre-Olivier Jay. Boukan Le Courrier Ultramarin, 17: 28–30. [URL]
. 2012. “Foreword. Black…A Color? A Kaleidoscope! ” In Black France/France Noire. The History of Politics of Blackness, edited by Tricia Danielle Kaeton, and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Tyler Stovall, ix–xiv. Durham: Duke University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Mes Météores. Combats Politiques au Long Cours. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Egalité pour les Exclus. Le Politique Face à l’Histoire et à la Mémoire Coloniales. Paris: Temps Présent.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taubira-Delannon, Christiane. 1998. Les Mardis du Savoir: Cycle de Conférences. Strasbourg: Union européenne, Parlement européen, October 15, 1998.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomas, Bonnie. 2012. “Memory and Relation in Gisèle Pineau’s “Mes Quatre Femmes”.” The French Review 86 (1, October): 136–146. [URL].
. 2010. “Transgenerational Trauma in Gisèle Pineau’s Chair Piment and Mes Quatre Femmes .” International Journal of Francophone Studies 13 (1, April): 23–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue