“Être une femme sur terre”: Resistance in Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle

Abstract

Abstract:This essay analyzes Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle through the lens of critical race theory to argue that the novel demonstrates protagonist- and textual-based resistance to white supremacy through depicting an alternative Weltanschauung, or apprehension of the world. Examining the novel with the framework of resistance described in Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism, Frances Lee Ansley’s definition of white supremacy, and Charles Mills’s description of white supremacy in The Racial Contract, this analysis identifies characteristics of women’s resistance to a society that denigrates them, which are part of this oppositional Weltanschauung. The novel highlights the ways in which white supremacist societies subordinate those marked non-white; but also illuminates modes of resistance to subjugation, especially in its emphasis on its definition of humanity. This essay identifies how the text affirms black characters’ humanity and dignity by associating humanity with nature, establishing women’s spiritual leadership as essential to the protagonist’s agency, and employing créolité, signifying an oppositional mode of speech and thought, as described in Chamoiseau’s Eloge de la créolité.