Créolité Nineteenth Century Style: Lafcadio Hearn’s Vision

Abstract

This essay proposes to examine the influence of nineteenth century journalist, writer, and traveler Lafcadio Hearn on Jean Bernabé’s, Raphaël Confiant’s, and Patrick Chamoiseau’s manifesto Éloge de la Créolité. This comparison reveals that the characteristics of Créolité - a praise for the culturally and racially mixed, a defiance of the pure, and a suspicious racialism under the cover of an embracing of diversity - are already contained in Hearn’s Martinican writings. In short, the novelty of Créolité is unmasked as the repetition of a nineteenth century exotic fantasy. Additionally, and in relation to its first goal, the essay will situate the racial perception and construction at work in Hearn’s Martinican writings within its immediate contemporary context. Counter-current to dominant late nineteenth century constructions of race privileging “pure” categories, Hearn’s vision clearly opts for the racially mixed. I intend the word vision both as anticipation and as hallucination.