Transatlantic Circulation and Transformation of Ideas:The Impact of the Enlightenment in Contemporary Franco-Caribbean Literatures

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Operating under a transatlantic perspective regarding the impact of the Enlightenment on the francophone Caribbean, we focus on the globalized circulation of knowledge as central to an international dialogue. Given their growing cultural and linguistic diversity, these considerations stand to gain a new social significance in the European context. Such a study of the Enlightenment in a transcontinental framework has the potential to deepen understanding and point towards possible solutions. It is our hypothesis that the revolutionary potential of the European Enlightenment was not exhausted in the struggles for decolonization in the 19th century. We maintain, rather, that the ideals forged in the age of Enlightenment have an effect beyond Europe as they continue to influence the political and cultural development of postcolonial societies. Because ideas are subject to circulation, rather than simple adoption, we seek to investigate the particular ways in which ideas have been adapted and modified in Franco-Caribbean literatures. Focus will be directed on the last three decades, during which an observable re-import of Caribbean cultural theories, epistemes, and literatures into Europe has occurred. In working towards a re-evaluation of the Enlightenment, we will be guided by three questions:1. What type of neo-enlightenment episteme does contemporary Franco-Caribbean literature delineate in comparison to the Franco-Caribbean reception of the 19th century and the Spanish American Enlightenment?2. In what ways does the circulation of ideas in the overeas départements (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyana), or the European Caribbean, differ from that of Haiti since its independence in 1804?3. In what sense can an anthropological, literary transformation of the Enlightenment be said to function in the opposite direction; from the Caribbean back to Europe?The four areas of new humanism, epistemic transformations, knowledge organization, and belief systems will direct our project. The plotting of a universal concept of humanity and cosmopolitanism, as found in Franco-Caribbean literature, is central to the transatlantic relationship between Europe and the Caribbean. Moreover, the dynamics of epistemology as a semantic of evidence and clarity with specific transformations, epistemic formations, modes of archiving as well as the syncretistic and magical forms of religious belief in the narratives and their relationship to the Enlightenment will be of key concern in the research project. Since the circulation of Enlightenment thought cannot be understood as a mere transference of ideas, we aim to shed light upon the conceptual and unconscious impact of the Enlightenment into the very practice of language, and into the structures of writing, such as direct quotations from the Lumières and Creole deferrals and subversion. This approach makes a cooperation of literature, linguistic, and cultural studies absolutely vital.