Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The idea of marronage : reflections on literature and politics in Réunion

2004; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Francês

10.1080/014403904200293018

1743-9523

Edward A. Alpers,

African history and culture studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Edward A. Alpers, ‘Flight to Freedom: Escape from Slavery among Bonded Africans in the Indian Ocean World, c. 1750–1962,’ Slavery and Abolition, 24, 2 (2003) and in Gwyn Campbell (ed.), The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London: Frank Cass, 2004), both pp.51–68. Jean-François Sam-Long, Le Roman du Marronage à l'Île Bourbon (Saint-Denis: Éditions UDIR, 1990), p.9. All translations are the author's with some advice from the editor unless otherwise indicated. Jacqueline Picard with Armelle Détang and Claude Lucas (eds.), Ô Fugitif – Anthologie autour de la figure du marron (Le Gosier, Guadeloupe: CARET, 1992); Serge Meitinger and J.-C. Carpanin Marimoutou (eds.), Océan Indien: Madagascar, La Réunion, Maurice (Paris: Omnibus, 1998). For a critical study of the maroon in Jamaican literature, see Barbara Lalla, Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996); for a wider perspective on the British Caribbean, see Cynthia James, ‘The Maroon Narrative: A Study of Caribbean Literature in English and its Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Literary Origins,’ PhD dissertation, Howard University, 1998; for an important example of the maroon in the modern literature of Martinique, see Edouard Glissant, The Fourth Century/Le quatrième siècle, trans. Betsy Wing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). Rose-May Nicole, Noirs, Cafres et Créoles: Étude de la représentation du non blanc réunionnais – Documents et littératures réunionnais [1710–1980] (Paris and Montréal: L'Harmattan, 1996). Françoise Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Métissage (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999). Louis Tomagène Houat, Les Marrons (Piton-Saint-Rose, La Réunion: Éditions AIPDES, 1998). Nicole, Noirs, Cafres et Créoles, p.55. Raoul Lucas, ‘Préface – Histoire en miettes,’ in Houat, Les Marrons, n.p. It is worth noting, as well, that the reissue of Houat's novel occurred a decade later for the 150th anniversary of abolition. Sam-Long, Le Roman du Marronage, p.16. Houat, Les Marrons, pp.171–2. See Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries, ch.2, esp. pp.37–52. See Alpers, ‘Flight to Freedom’, p.67, n.58. Leconte Leconte de Lisle, ‘Sacatove’, in Meitinger and Marimoutou (eds.), Océan Indien, pp.431–8. Ibid., p.436. Ibid., p.438. Eugène Dayot, Bourbon Pittoresque, Poèmes, Variétés (St-Denis: Nouvelle Imprimerie Dionysienne, 1977). Ibid, pp.86, 94. Ibid, p.105. Ibid, p.126. Serge Meitinger and J.-C. Carpanin Marimoutou, ‘Escales dans les îles du Grand Océan’ in Meitinger and Marimoutou (eds.), Océan Indien, p.xiv. Nicole, Noirs, Cafres et Créoles, p.46; see also Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries, pp.64–8, on post-slavery deviance and maroons on the ground. Nicole, Noirs, Cafres et Créoles, pp.129, 145–51, 181–2; also Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries, pp.109–12. Quoted in ibid., p.239. Ibid, p.254; also pp.259–60. Ibid, pp.260–3 (quoted at p.261). Marcel Leguen, Histoire de l'Ile de La Réunion (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1979), pp.62–3 (quoted at p.63). Ibid. Daniel Honoré, Kroyans (Superstitions à La Réunion) (Saint-Denis: Éditions UDIR, 1994), p.15. See Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). For a valuable short account, see André Scherer, La Réunion, 5th edn. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), pp.93–119; for an important collection of papers, see Edmond Maestri (ed.), 1946: La Réunion, Département: Regards sur La Réunion contemporaine (Paris and Montréal: L'Harmattan, 1999). The quote is cited by Scherer, La Réunion, p.114. The phrase is from Meitinger and Marimoutou, ‘Escales dans les îles du Grand Océan’, p.xv. Boris Gamaleya, Vali pour une Reine morte (Saint-Denis: Édition Impression, 1973). Leguen, Histoire, p.237. Gamaleya, Vali pour une Reine morte, pp.26–7; this exchange is quoted in translation by Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries, p.247. Jean-François Sam-Long, Zoura, femme bon Dieu: Légende créole (Paris: Éditions Caribéennes, 1988), pp.12–13. Gilbert Aubry, Sois people, mystique marronage (Saint-Denis: Collection Anchaing, 1982); Idriss Isop-Banian (ed.), Chants de l'esclavage (Lézignan Corbières: Éditions Avant-Quart, 2000), pp.32–6. Aubrey is the first Réunionnais Roman Catholic bishop and a strong advocate of métissage and pride in local culture: Françoise Vergès to author, email, 24 September 2001. ‘Sur le Récit des fréres marrons,’ in Isop-Banian (ed.), Chants de l'esclavage, pp.32–3. ‘Colbert et Co.’, in ibid., pp.33–4. ‘Au fils d'Anchain’, in ibid., pp.35–6. ‘Noir maron’, in ibid., p.34. ‘Mafat’, in ibid., p.35. Yves Manglou, Noir main Marron (Île de la Réunion: Les éditions du Paille-en-queue noir, 2001); Marielle Chevallier, Sarita l'Africaine (Saint André: ARSTC and Océan Indien, 2001). For popular responses to official expressions of the meaning of abolition, see Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries, pp.263–4, n.4. Gamaleya, Le Volcan l'Envers ou Madame Desbassyns le Diable et le Bondieu suivi de l'Oratorio 1998 (Saint-Denis: Conseil Général de La Réunion and Saint-André: Océan Éditions, 1998). Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries, pp.309–10, n.3 notes that Firmin Viry's band gave the first public performance of maloya at the inaugural congress of the Communist Party of Réunion. Michel Verguin and Mario Serviable (eds.), Le Grand Moucatage – Premier livre: Le cri du Fouquet (Saint-Denis: Editions CLIP/AESTC, 1997) and Le Grand Moucatage – Deuxième livre: Le Leveur de Coq (Saint-Denis: Editions CLIP/AESTC, 1998). For an example, however, of the persistence of negative images of people of African and Malagasy descent in Réunion into the twentieth century, see Les Aventures du Caf’ Francisco (anonymous stories organized by Dominique Huet and Mario Serviable) (n.p.: ARS – Terres Créoles, 1994). Françoise Vergès to author, email, 24 September 2001; cf. Picard (ed.), Ô Fugitif, pp.3–4, for examples of similar usage in Martiniquan Creole; Joyce Fortuné, personal communication, on parallel usage in Mauritius. For historical treatments, see L. Sylvio Michel, Esclaves Résistants ([Mauritius], 1998); Richard B. Allen, Slaves, Freedmen, and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.35–54; Amédée Nagapan, Le Marronage à l'Isle de France – Ile Maurice: Rêve ou Riposte de l'Esclave (Port-Louis: Centre Culturel Africaine, 1999). Claire Mara, Anne Christiaens, and Kamini Ramphul, Marronage et Liberté (Saint-Denis: Conseil Général de La Réunion and Saint-André: Océan Éditions, 1999). Roger Moss, Le Morne/Lemorn (Port Louis, Mauritius: Ledikasyon pu Travayer, 2000). I owe this reference to Danielle Tranquille to the author, email, 25 September 2001, who very kindly sent me a copy of this small publication. Serge Ng Tat Chung, Terre d'Orages (Port-Louis: Centre Nelson Mandela pour la Culture Africaine, 2003).