Mobilizing the Masks of Carnaval for a Re-Reading of Zobel's Rue Cases-Nègres

The identity of Caribbean literature, subject to the forces of domination and exclusion, has long been contested from both within and outside of its field. Alternately described as imitating, reappropriating, indigenizing and reductionist, Caribbean writers have sought to carve out a space for works that are received as authentic without recourse to fetishes. Drawing upon the works of Maryse Condé, the Creolists and anthropologic studies of Carnaval, the present work attempts to analyze what might be termed alternative narratives, characters and symbols in Joseph Zobel’s novel La Rue Cases-Nègres and its filmic adaptation by Euzhan Palcy through the lens of masks, a carnavalesque art that permits individuals to both obscure and reveal their identities, and communities to transcend the oppressive categories of a colonial racial hierarchy. While providing a new reading of the classic work Rue Cases-Nègres, the author will articulate how using Creole arts – here, Carnaval masks – as frameworks for literary analysis circumvents the debate between authenticity and imitation and provides new and key insights into the literary production of Caribbean artists, the processes of creolization and the contemporary debates over Caribbean national identities.