Rehvana's 'negritudism' or Mat(h)ildana's metissage-marronnage in Suzanne Dracius' L'autre qui danse and "L'ame soeur"

Abstract

Martinican female writer Suzanne Dracius published her first novel L'autre// qui dansein 1989. Rehvana, the protagonist suffers from a
"mal-être du métissage", which means that she is unable to come to terms
with her mixed biological and cultural inheritance. Therefore, the main
theme is identity, which is articulated within a dual paradigm that
consists in juxtaposing the psychological natures of two female
characters, Rehvana and Matildana, to represent two dissimilar identity
concepts. On the one hand, Rehvana promotes a corrupted notion of
"Négritude" while Matildana extols "métissage-marronnage". This term is
chosen by Suzanne Dracius to render her own concept of identity that she
asserts even more in "L'ame soeur", a short story published in 2003
and, which is in fact the continuation of L'autre qui danse.

In this paper I argue that although Dracius' "métissage-marronnage"
innovatively includes the Martinican diaspora into the identity quest,
her concept is very similar to existing ones such as "Antillanité" and
"Créolité".