Some of the works presented on this site are either born out of, or associated with one of the following literary movements. These movements and their proponents and detractors continue to define the West Indies today.

Negritude began in the in the 1930’s with Léon Damas’ Pigments (1937) and Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939). Born out of a criticism with France’s policy of assimilating the West Indies, Léopald Senghor found himself at this time in Paris defending the values of African culture. Together, with Césaire in Martinique and Senghor in Paris, they argued through their literature that although France’s actions towards the Caribbean were perhaps well intended, these dealings actually placed European culture and civilization on an inferior plane.

The idea of Negritude has the non-native West Indian looking to the whole of African culture, economic, and social values for their identity. It involves a rediscovery of one’s African roots in defining themselves. Among those traditions recaptured is the idea of Orality. The African ancestors and their contemporaries have a long, rich history of passing down morals, values, and worldly knowledge in the form of folkways. This becomes even more important as we reach the third and present movement.

By the 1960’s much less Negritude works were being produced than any of the decades since the 1930’s. Mostly this is due to the fact that most African nations had put its theories into practice and therefore placed Negritude as a permanent fixture in world literature. Yet, at least in part, this is also because of the emergence of a new movement referred to Antillanité, or Caribbeanness.

Edouard Glissant created caribbeanness out of a break with Negritude, which seemed to him to be the wrong philosophy for Caribbean identity. For Glissant, the inhabitants of the West Indies are too far removed from their African roots to solely define themselves based on them. Antillanité embraces the multi-racial culture of the Caribbean and declares its culture individually separate from that of both France and Africa.

The idea of the Caribbean as being its own and separate culture is further declared with the current movement, Créolité. (Back to top)

Créolité, or “Creoleness”, is heavily influenced by Glissant’s Antillanité and is the most recent of the literary movements involving the Caribbean. Led by the Martinican writers Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphael Confiant, it begins its unique roots in the 1980’s and especially with the publication of In Praise of Creoleness (1989) by the same plus Jean Barnabé. Créolité is more focused on the diversity of race in the region and its role in defining a West Indian identity. It is also primarily concerned with progressing the Creole language into a valid form of literature. Creole is a dialect of French spoken by the common people. Many frown upon its use both there and in France especially. It is akin to Ebonics in the United States. It is the proponents’ desire that the language become accepted and allowed to come into its own. Currently there is no definitive grammatical structure and each island/region has its own form. The advocates of Créolité hope that the combination of Creole with the region’s Orality will produce a valid and accepted unique language and literature now and in the future.

In “In Praise...” Negritude is referred to as an illusion, putting forth that Negritude still has West Indians looking outside themselves for identity. This strong proposal garners criticism from other writers on the topic and its important to note that each of these movements has its supporters and its detractors. (Back to top)