© 2003 by Society for French Studies
Wild Thing: Noble Savages, Exoticisms and Postcolonial Space in Jacques-Stephen Alexis's Les Arbres Musiciens
1 University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
This paper analyses occurrences of exoticism, firstly in European culture, and notably in Surrealist discourse, scientific racism, and in the work of Gobineau. This theoretical framework is then used to discuss an example of a wild man/noble savage figure in Jacques-Stephen Alexis's Les Arbres musiciens. The apparent incongruity of a postcolonial author reproducing a figure so charged with Eurocentric, exoticist impulses is examined in detail. Through a comparison with instances of European exoticism, I show how the wild man figure is invariably evoked in periods of social and political change. The novel describes historical events of American neo-colonialism in Haiti, in particular the clearing of the land for new sugar plantations, and the Church- and government-led campagne anti-superstitieuse. The paper argues that it is this moment of modernity that creates the sense of crisis which in turn leads to the invocation of the exotic. Importantly, I do not see this as a case of a postcolonial author self-exoticizing, but show that the society described is one built on internal divisions (of race and class), and that from Alexis's position as an urban bourgeois, the Haitian peasantry, and especially the wild man figure must be seen as internal ‘others’. The paper ultimately calls for a reinterpretation of dualistic visions of postcolonial space; the classic inside/outside dichotomy is shown to be untenable as processes of exclusion and inclusion, and gradations of ‘authenticity’ and belonging are exposed within Haitian society.