The Hydropolitics of Rivers in the Caribbean: J.-B. Labat, Édouard Glissant, James Noël

Abstract: This article explores fresh waters in the French Caribbean literary imagination from the early modern to the present by cross-reading Édouard Glissant's La Lézarde (1958) and James Noël's Belle merveille (2016) with Jean-Baptiste Labat's Nouveaux voyages (1722). It examines articulations of hydrocontrol as linked to the formation of plantation society and shows that fresh waters can be read in terms of a tension between global modernity and the construction of local life. Drawing from theories within Ocean Studies, the analysis shows that rivers and springs prompt a reading that critically follows the interconnectedness and transformability of waters while disclosing how waterways are represented as relational sites where hydropolitical power is both produced and questioned.