Towards an aesthetics of movement: Body, language, and space in Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean literature

This project proposes that there exists a distinct Caribbean literary sphere, which exhibits similar aesthetic concerns within an otherwise linguistically, geographically, and politically divided space. The dissertation examines the idea of "movement" within literary practices of several authors of the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean. It reads literature in and about the Caribbean space as the writing of popular culture from which arises the aesthetics of movement. The Caribbean space refers to an idea that ceases to be a place or specific location, but rather accounts for the Caribbean basin, its diaspora, and the imaginary in literature. This study focuses on performance of the body and language in narrative, dramatic, and poetic texts by Caribbean authors, to show the interconnectedness of the Caribbean and its diaspora. The project argues for intertextual readings so as to visualize the Caribbean as a space where voices, histories, and sociopolitical concerns intersect in spite of its fragmentary history.;An introductory chapter sets a theoretical framework for reading aesthetic movement in Caribbean literature along comparative lines. Subsequently the dissertation is divided into four chapters. The first one examines Haitian author Franketienne's Spiralisme by focusing on his play Melovivi ou le piege (2009), which uses bodily movement, linguistic creation, and the deformation of genres in order to cope with catastrophes. Then follow two chapters that examine late twentieth century narrative, in which I study music and dance in Puerto Rican Luis Rafael Sanchez's La guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976) and Guadeloupean Daniel Maximin's L'Isole Soleil (1981). Both texts use music to decentralize the narrative and cross generic and literary boundaries. The last chapter interrogates the place of the diaspora in Caribbean literature. I read Dominicanish: A Performance Text (2000) by Josefina Baez (Dominican Republic/New York), a "spanglish" poetic text to reflect on the continual becoming of diasporic identities.