Putivtseva N. The Problematics of Martinican and Antillean identity in the works by Édouard Glissant

The research work focuses on the author’s revealing of the evolution of the relations between the Martinican people and the island landscape. The Antillean landscape was a point of the spiritual support for É. Glissant and the images of nature are the artistic constants in his oeuvre. The writer is sure that the Antillean people should work on their collective consciousness, re-appropriate the space conquered by the colonizers and revive the history concealed during the period of slavery. The author emphasizes the impossibility of return to Africa and underlines that it’s necessary to recreate the history through rooting into the landscape. The research pays special attention to the philosophical concepts introduced by É. Glissant, such as antillanité, créolisation, culture composite / culture atavique, pensée archipélique / pensée continentale. One of the focuses is on the concept of “identity-rhizome” or “identity-relation” developed by Glissant under the influence of the works by the French philosophers G. Deleuze and P.F. Guattari. The writer considers identity-rhizome as an important element of the search for identity of the Antillean people because taking into account historical peculiarities and multiple cultures and peoples living in the Caribbean region, it transmits, in a substantive way, the complexity of Antillean being. Tracing the peculiarity of plots and composition of the novels by Glissant, we come to the conclusion that the author renounces chronologic exposition of events and naturalistic aesthetics, giving advantage to the powerful poetics. His novels have numerous authorial retreats, comments, narrative ellipsis, mise en abyme etc. The analysis of mythological and poetic originality of the works by E. Glissant showed that the author combined the elements of myths of the African people with re-thinking of biblical text. Glissant is sure that legends and stories of African ancestors saved in memory of the Antillean people present the frame of reference to the man and the world, and their research allows to understand better the mental features of his people. On the other hand, his works are pierced by Christian perception of the world and by numerous interpretations of biblical plots and characters. It is shown in the research that Glissant established the link between the identity crisis in Martinique and the manifestation of the mental illness of some members of the Martinican society. The author connects the problem of madness with the gaps of collective memory and the absence of national consciousness of the Martinicans, caused by the colonialism. In his novels and philosophical essays, Glissant considers the phenomenon of madness as an individual model of human behavior and also within the framework of reflection on historical and social problems of the Antillean islands.