Righting/Writing the Faulted House in Édouard Glissant’s La Lézarde
Righting/Writing the Faulted House in Édouard Glissant’s La Lézarde
Set in Martinique, Glissant’s La Lézarde (1958) focuses on the years leading up to the departmentalization of France’s overseas colonies in 1946. In exploring the “spatial logic” (Hitchcock) of Martinican space found in the novel, and the links that characters have with specific parts of this signifying landscape, initial textual analyses demonstrate how these individualized relationships inform each person’s views and actions, and, together, are representative of the competing interests and perspectives involved when attempting to negotiate expressions of French-Caribbean identity. In the context of these conflicting positions articulated by different members of the novel’s young revolutionary group with respect to determining Martinique’s future and chronicling the country’s elusive past, both the conspicuous placement and (in)occupancy of the novel’s principle architectural structure—the Maison de la Source—and LaLézarde’s own (meta)construction serve to illustrate how identity-building in the French Caribbean is fraught with conflict and uncertainty.
Keywords: Édouard Glissant, La Lézarde, Departmentalization, Architecture, Identity, French Caribbean
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