Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing(New Americanists)

"Clear Word and Third Sight" examines the strands of a collective African diasporic consciousness represented in the work of a number of black Caribbean writers. Catherine A. John shows how a shared consciousness, or "third sight", is rooted in both pre- and postcolonial cultural practices and disseminated through a rich oral tradition. This consciousness has served diasporic communities, creating an alternate philosophical "worldsense" linking those of African descent across space and time. Contesting popular discourses about what constitutes "culture" and maintaining that neglected strains in Negritude discourse provide a crucial philosophical perspective on the connections between folk practices, cultural memory, and collective consciousness, John examines the diasporic principles in the work of the Negritude writers Leon Damas, Aime Cesaire, and Leopold Senghor. She traces the manifestations and reworkings of their ideas in Afro-Caribbean writing from the eastern and French Caribbean, as well as the Caribbean diaspora in the United States. The authors discussed include Jamaica Kincaid, Earl Lovelace, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, and Edouard Glissant, among others. John argues that, by incorporating what she calls "folk groundings" - such as poems, folktales, proverbs, and songs - into their work, Afro-Caribbean writers invoke a psychospiritual consciousness which combines old and new strategies for addressing the ongoing postcolonial struggle.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Alternate Consciousness in the Diaspora 1 1 Paris in 1956: Negritude and Cultural Discourse 21 2 Colonial Legacies, Gender Identity, and Black Female Writing in the Diaspora 43 3 Negritude and Negativity: Alienation and "Voice" in Eastern Caribbean Literature 74 4 Diaspora Philosophy, French Caribbean Literature, and Simone Schwarz-Bart's Pluie et vent sur Telumee Miracle 114 5 The Spoken Word and Spirit Consciousness: Audre Lorde and Paule Marshall's Diasporic Voice 158 Afterword 203 Notes 211 Bibliography 227 Index 237

About the Author :
Catherine A. John is Assistant Professor of African Diasporic Literature at the University of Oklahoma.

Review :
"[W]ide-ranging and lucid..."--Forum for Modern Language Studies "[A]n inspiring addition to a growing literary field..."--Kate Wright, English "[T]his [book] is written by a scholar of great promise in her lucid and often elegant writing, her tireless scholarship and the intellectual courage of taking this on."--Nancy R. Crillo, Symploke "The long-awaited re-examination of some of the writings that collectively fall under the heading of negritude has brought us this study. It is well worth the wait... [T]his study is thorough and informative. It is also provocative, and that's to its credit."--Keith Q. Warner, Research in African Literatures