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Of Suffocated Hearts and Tortured Souls: Seeking Subjecthood through Madness in Francophone Women's Writing of Africa and the Caribbean (review)

On the whole, then, this book is a sterling piece of literary scholarship, providing new and much-needed perspectives on both historical and contemporary Caribbean writing. The author’s command of the material is unquestioned, and the extent of his archival research and command of theoretical complexities is clear. Yet at the same time, it seems that portions of this book end up giving short shrift to the independent spirit of Caribbean literature and culture, and to the conjunction of identity and revolt that has long characterized them. Indeed, it seems at times that the author implicitly claims that the Caribbean experience is the product of, or came into being as a response to, a European mindset instantiated by Hegel, Marx, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Sartre. Such an impression is buttressed by the relative volume of quotations taken from such critics as Arnold, Bongie, Kristeva, and Hallward, appearing by contrast to leave the views of, say, Davis, Dash, and Lionnet and their ilk somewhat underrepresented. Ultimately, it is the extent to which Caribbean authors and their critics draw on, and add to, the body of history and experience that imparts identity to the region that makes Caribbean writing Caribbean. And while this book does an exemplary job of framing the tensions and teleologies of Caribbean writing, the Caribbeanness of the project seems at times to need shoring up.