Negrofilia y negritud en perspectiva cubana. Una lectura de “Lettre des Antilles”, de Alejo Carpentier

Authors

  • Andrea Pagni

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/1925-5624.35234

Keywords:

primitivism, ethnography, Carpentier, Bifur

Abstract

In “Lettre des Antilles”, Carpentier interrogates the negrophile primitivism of the French avantgarde, comparing the essentialist conception of a homogenous Black identity with the multiple and constantly changing identities in the context of the diaspora. Taking into account the cultural location in which “Lettre des Antilles” is written, this paper analyzes how Carpentier subverts the model of ethnographic communication and translation: while the ethnographic text invites its reader to share a conspiratorial position of observation and superiority, Carpentier's narrator does not delineate a place of shared superiority for his French readers. The situation of intercultural communication created in “Lettre des Antilles” relies on a reader willing to be fascinated by alterity, and a narrator who calculates this effect exactly, revealing, from a position between cultures, the double gaze that would come to characterize the poetics of "lo real maravilloso". The original article is in Spanish.

References

Alexis, Jacques S. “Du réalisme merveilleux des Haïtiens.” Présence Africaine. 8-10 (1956): 245-271. Impreso. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/presa.9564.0245

Asad, Talal. “A Comment on Translation, Critique, and Subversion.” Dingwaney y Maier 325-332. Impreso.

Bifur. 3 (1929): 91-105. Gallica Bibliotheque Numérique. Web. 5 feb. 2012.

Carpentier, Alejo. “Lettre des Antilles.” Bifur.

Carpentier, Alejo. La música en Cuba. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1946. Impreso.

Carpentier, Alejo. El reino de este mundo. México: Edición y Distribución Ibero Americana de Publicaciones, 1949. Impreso.

Chiampi, Irlemar. “Alejo Carpentier y el surrealismo.” Revista de la Universidad de México. 5 (1981): 2-10. Impreso.

Chiampi, Irlemar. El realismo maravilloso. Caracas: Monte Ávila, 1983. Impreso.

Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Impreso. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjf9x0h

Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Impreso.

Dash, Michael J. “Marvelous Realism – The Way Out of Négritude.” Caribbean Studies. 13.4 (1974): 57-70. Impreso.

Dingwaney, Anuradha. “Introduction: Translating ‘Third World’ Cultures.” Dingwaney y Maier 3-15.

Dingwaney, Anuradha y Carol Maier, eds. Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. Impreso.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. Impreso.

Glissant, Édouard. “Alejo Carpentier et ‘L’Autre Amérique.’” Critique. 12.105 (1956): 113-119. Impreso.

Glissant, Édouard. Le Discours Antillais. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1956. Impreso.

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Eds. Patrick Williams y Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory – A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 392-403. Impreso.

Janney, Frank. Alejo Carpentier and his Early Works. London: Tamesis, 1981. Impreso.

Jitrik, Noé. “Blanco, negro, ¿mulato? – Una lectura de El reino de este mundo.” La memoria compartida. 1982. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1987. 146-176. Impreso.

Klengel, Susanne. Amerika-Diskurse der Surrealisten – “Amerika” als Vision und als Feld heterogener Erfahrungen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994. Impreso. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-03557-8

Lawton-Lévy, Catherine. Du colportage à l’édition: Bifur et les éditions du Carrefour: Pierre Lévy, un éditeur au temps des avant-gardes. Genève: Les éditions Métropolis, 2004. Impreso.

Leiner, Jacqueline. “Négritude caraïbe – Négritude africaine”. Aimé Césaire: Le terreau primordial. Tübingen: Narr, 1993. 153-172. Impreso.

Matibag, Eugenio. Afro-Cuban Religious Experience: Cultural Reflections in Narrative. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. Impreso.

Miller, Christopher L. Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Impreso.

Niranjana, Tejaswini. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Impreso.

Pratt. Mary L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 1992. Impreso.

Schwab, Gabriele. “Literary Transference and the Vicissitudes of Culture.” REAL – Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. 12 (1996): 115–141. Impreso.

Wise, Christopher. “The Dialectics of Négritude: Or, the (Post) Colonial Subject in Contemporary African-American Literature.” Eds. Gita Rajan y Radhika Momarnam. Postcolonial Discourse and Changing Cultural Contexts: Theory and Criticism. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. 33-46. Impreso.

Published

2012-05-22

How to Cite

Pagni, A. (2012). Negrofilia y negritud en perspectiva cubana. Una lectura de “Lettre des Antilles”, de Alejo Carpentier. Tusaaji: A Translation Review, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.25071/1925-5624.35234