Cudjoe's intention, as stated in the introduction, is to
meticulously analyze the artistic forms utilized to convey the ideological
content of Caribbean literature. In Part I, titled 'Caribbean resistance: an
historical background', a materialist interpretation of history is applied to
the historical struggle of a people who endured slavery or indentured servitude
in the 'plantation colonies' of the Hispanic, French, and British Caribbean.
The pivotal concept of 'resistance', central to the book's overarching argument,
is defined as encompassing any act or series of acts aimed at liberating a
people from their oppressors, whether they be slave masters or multinational
corporations. Therefore, within Cudjoe's thesis, Caribbean literature is to be
endowed with a comprehensive structural foundation encompassing socio-economic
and political-aesthetic elements.
This structural foundation within the historical continuum,
with revolution as a dominant theme, adheres to a deterministic rationale in a
series of chapters thematically interconnected in Part II. 'The beginning'
traces resistance to foreign dominance back to the Incas' resistance against
the Spanish conquistadors, progressing inexorably through 'The liberation
movement'. This phase encompasses pivotal events such as the French and
American revolutions, which have reverberations in local conflicts, uprisings,
and rebellions within the Caribbean. The narrative culminates with the Cuban
revolution in 1959. In a natural dialectical progression, we then encounter a chapter
titled 'The transition', where representative Caribbean writers—such as Jean
Price Mars, Rene Maran, Claude McKay, and Aime Cesaire, to name a few—are
depicted as exploring themes with a shared aspiration for spiritual
emancipation. The author's primary objective is to harmonize the dialectical
elements in writers' works with the historical events of the Caribbean. In the
chapter 'Towards self-government', V.S. Reid's conservatism in 'New Day' (1949)
faces scrutiny. Conversely, in 'Towards independence', Lamming receives acclaim
for being "the first writer in the British Caribbean to seriously examine
the relationship between them [the colonizer and the colonized] on a
psychological level." Nevertheless, it is in novels like Bertène Juminer's
'Au seuil d'un nouveau cri' (1963), which explores the efficacy of
revolutionary violence in the vein of Fanon, in the chapter 'Smashing the
ties', where a genuine form of 'socio-political realism' is achieved.
Cudjoe contends that such concern within the writer's perspective
is imperative for the restoration of the debased victim of colonial history to
a state of manhood. To illustrate this necessity, the author turns to the
poetry of Nicolas Guillén and the novels of Alejo Carpentier and Wilson Harris,
emphasizing the crucial universality of vision that is needed. The inclusion of
Wilson Harris, who is considered the least politically inclined among
representative Caribbean writers, in this context may raise some curiosity. In
Harris' work, particularly in his treatise 'Tradition and the West Indian
Novel' (1965), from which Cudjoe draws quotes in an attempt to demonstrate
Harris' deep-seated connection to Caribbean history, we encounter a manifesto
stating: "It seems to me vital - in a time when it is so easy to succumb
to fashionable tyrannies or optimisms - to break away from the conception so
many people entertain that literature is an extension of the social order or a
political platform." As of 1965 and continuing into the present, Harris'
work remains a tapestry of impressionistic responses within a surrealist vein,
lacking the dynamism found in the works of his Caribbean counterparts. These
writers, while acknowledging the inherent alienation between the artist and
society as a central challenge of realism, do not attempt to negate this
realism, but rather strive to imbue it with coherence and structure within a
mythology of art intertwined with socio-economic processes.
Furthermore, a notable value judgement in Cudjoe's
assessment is his categorical statement, unsupported by documentary evidence or
footnotes, that Caribbean writers such as John Hearne, Orlando Patterson, and
Derek Walcott endorse an 'anti-democratic and nihilistic Naipaulian tendency'.
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