(Working Draft)
In their introduction to Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism, Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace make a case for a revolution in the field of ecocriticism. When this anthology was published, 20 years ago, the field of ecocriticism was ill-defined and essentially lawless. Armbruster and Wallace voice their opinion that contemporary ecocriticism “can usefully be applied to texts outside of nature writing” (3). Put simply, their argument suggests that “an expanded sense of environment” can lead to “understanding nature and culture as interwoven rather than as separate sides of a dualistic conflict” (4). Instead of categorizing constructions of location as either ecological or not, contemporary ecocriticism should seek to blur the boundaries between places – finding ecology in unfamiliar contexts. In doing so, scholars can “attend to the landscapes in which most people live – cities, suburbs, and rural areas” (6). The relationship between people and their environment, however wild or tame, should be the chief concern of ecocriticism.
How does this relationship manifest, then, in a global postcolonial environment, characterized by abundant displacement and a ravaged landscape? Michael Bennet, in the same anthology, argues that the narrative of Frederick Douglass establishes an anti-pastoralism through its rejection of wilderness spaces, embracing an urban ethos. I want to speak on this, briefly, to establish an ecocritical lens that examines the relationship between oppressed people and their sense of place. Building off traditional ecocritical spaces – the pastoral and the wilderness – Bennet suggests that Douglass constructs a third, distinct space: the anti-pastoral. Bennet highlights “a black literary tradition that, from its inception, has constructed the rural-natural as a realm to be feared for specific reasons and the urban-social as a domain of hope” (199). In this reading, the urban environment holds just as much significance as the “natural” environment. Bennett then looks at this trend in a broader context, connecting Douglass’s antipastoralism to a broader urbanization within African-American communities, with reference the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance (206).
What Bennett characterizes as “anti-pastoralism” can also be read as the process of an oppressed people dealing with the fallout of a postcolonial landscape. This involves a negotiation between spaces that they originally hold no authority over, but that they come to claim some ownership or agency in. Douglass’ anti-pastoralism is an exercise in carving out some space for enslaved people in a landscape that continually seeks to deny their existence. Over the course of this essay, I hope to examine other examples of relocation in a postcolonial and neocolonial context.
Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker explores the legacy of trauma and displacement, but also the various ways that displaced people reinvent and recreate a sense of place, of home. In “Seven,” the protagonist’s basement apartment, shared in proximity with two other men, serves as a partial recreation of Haiti. “He simply wanted to ger [his wife] home, if home it was,” writes Danticat, illustrating this attempt to establish a sense of place (41). The smallest details of the apartment serve as stand-ins, however far-fetched, for Haiti – juice “from the Panamanian grocer down the street” (41), “all the Haitian stations on the AM/FM dial of his night-table radio” (44), a home-cooked meal instead of the usual takeout fare (46). Though they are small comforts, the occupants find a sense of community, of family, “something they had not experienced for years” (46). The world of the apartment stands in stark contrast to the outside world and its “foreign streets” (52). Though the couple draws parallels between Jacmel and New York, the latter will never be a stand-in for the former. “Seven” ends in uncertainty, the couple riding the bus back to their apartment, caught in the space between a world left behind and a new home.
The same recreation of place occurs in “The Funeral Singer,” also from The Dew Breaker. In this story, three Haitian women convene, after their class, in one’s Haitian restaurant. It’s “the sole Haitian restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan” (165), illustrating the scarcity of these kinds of spaces. The space is filled with photos from Haiti (169-170), and Mariselle, one of the women, brings Haitian newspapers (173). It’s not perfect, a fact highlighted by the women’s tendency to break glasses (176, 180), and their fear of failing the exam, but it’s a more comfortable space than the classroom, a space in which they feel at liberty to reminisce and share stories from home. These conversations, then, are the space in which they find comfort. The recreation of a home hinges less on the space’s physical attributes and more on the women’s desire to connect with one another. The privacy of the restaurant, like the apartment basement from “Seven,” gives the women strength to “raise our glasses, broken and unbroken alike, to the terrible days behind us and the uncertain ones ahead” (181).
Danticat uses the short story as a medium to explore the legacy and survival of the Haitian diaspora, but Dew Breaker is not a story about the peaceful construction of a new home, a new identity, or a new place. Instead, we see a displaced people carving out space for themselves in this new landscape. Their small environments – the restaurant, the apartment – are representative of this relocation, this new settling in. Martinez Falquina highlights how “the text also shows some closure in the way Ka is already rewriting the diasporic experience, trying to make sense of the past for the future” (183). The short story cycle represents the diaspora, all these individual lives held tenuously together by shared experiences and relationships. Still, “The focus on the interstitial, on the gaps, on the wound inherent in each particular scar helps avoid a totalizing, redemptive kind of narrative, which might become a form of traumatic denial” (186). As a result, Dew Breaker comes across as a story of perseverance and relocation. The characters are not ignorant of their past lives; they are dealing with the lasting legacy of violence they remember.
It’s also worth addressing the various ways that characters in The Dew Breaker use art as a tool to make sense of their world. Ka’s sculpture from “The Book of the Dead,” Beatrice’s and Aline’s respective crafts from “The Bridal Seamstress,” even Rézia’s cooking from “The Funeral Singer,” are all ways in which these people preserve and create a sense of place, of location. Haiti is a far-off land of memory, often soaked in trauma, that they have left behind. To cope with this displacement, the small landscapes and locations become stand-ins for Haiti, and their art is in constant negotiation with these landscapes.
This is the same negotiation as the construction of an “anti-pastoral” space that Bennett traces in Frederick Douglass. In Bennet’s argument, the anti-pastoral is created through a rejection of wilderness and pastoral spaces, forcing Douglass to find community and freedom in the urban setting of Baltimore. In The Dew Breaker, Danticat presents a complicated legacy. The memory of Haiti haunts them, a fear voiced by Beatrice in “The Bridal Seamstress,” who believes that the “choukèt lawoze,” the dew breaker, her former abuser, is always “living on [her] street” (131-132). The street, here is representative of their new home, the space they have been forced to make for themselves. Still, Beatrice’s paranoia is evidence that any recreation of Haiti cannot be divorce from legacy of trauma. Bennet see the same process in Douglass’s rejection of the pastoral space, point out that “even the most inviting physical environment cannot be considered separately from the sociopolitical structures that shape its uses and abuses” (201).
Although Bennett points out the relative safety of the urban environment for Frederick Douglass, he acknowledges that “this is not, of course, to say that the lives of slaves in the city were free of abuse” (201). Nonetheless, “freedom is figuratively and literally closer to the slave’s grasp in an urban environment” (203). The same is true for the Haitians in The Dew Breaker. The terrifying reality of their escape from Haiti is never far, and often emerges unexpectedly in their daily lives. In “The Book of Miracles,” Anne’s family is afraid that Emmanuel Constant has reappeared in their church, causing their fear of persecution to resurface, either for their crimes of another’s. Though the man does not turn out to be Constant, the episode demonstrates how their trauma remains close to the surface. Even in this landscape of rebirth and forgiveness, represented by the church and Christmas Mass, Anne’s family is negotiating for space in which they can feel free. Again, as Falquina notes, their negotiation for space is not a “traumatic denial.” Instead, it is the complex and grief-ridden process of leaving one place behind for a newer, safer place.
This negotiation for space does not require displacement, as it can also be seen in the context of colonial occupation. In his preface to Death and the King’s Horseman, Wole Soyinka asks readers and directors to understand that “The Colonial Factor is an incident, a catalytic incident merely.” He stresses the importance of “the numinous passage which links all: transition” (Author’s Note). The play, then, is not a colonial tragedy, mourning the loss of tradition, but rather a story of survival, of change, of learning to live even as the world reorients itself around a culture. This comfort with transition, Rosa Figueiredo argues, “is central to Yoruba life” (82). Read from this perspective, the British occupation is nothing but an external force, as arbitrary as a drought or a civil war. Still, the play is a moving picture of adaptation and cultural preservation in the face of trauma or hardship.
Figueiredo argues that Olunde is central to this adaptation, as his “access to Western culture has, in fact, erased the difference between it and his own” (82). This is immediately clear when Olunde returns to find Pilkings and Jane, both wearing traditional dress. It is a clear indication that all is not well, and it illustrates the tension between colonial occupation and traditional modes of life. Compared to Amusa’s reaction, one of shock and bewilderment, Olunde is calm and level-headed, understanding that this emerges from Olunde is calm however, and understands that this appropriation emerges from a lack of respect(50). Graced with a new perspective, Olunde deftly navigates the complexities of colonial occupation. He clearly does not abandon his cultural values, but rather finishes the ritual suicide in place of his father as a means to preserve their cultural integrity. Yoruban culture involves ritual suicide as a means to “restrict power and keep anything from lasting too long” (Figueiredo 82). At once, Olunde proves his cultural allegiance, defies the colonial occupation, and ensures the continued survival of his culture.
The role of poetry, writing, and art in a postcolonial landscape is twofold: of preservation and resistance. Sule Emmanuel Egya’s study of Tanure Ojaide’s poetry deals with a form of neocolonialism where the “colonial incident” is not a British occupation of Nigeria but the destruction of the Nigerian landscape at the hands of the global oil industry. Egys places the Tanure Ojaide at the center of the conflict, explaining that “the poet, on the one hand, is recalling the lost nature, his home, and on the other hand, is confronting the technological processes responsible for its loss” (Egya 187). Ojaide is Olunde, carefully navigating the postcolonial landscape. In Egya’s analysis, though, poetry is Ojaide’s form of resistance. Poetry is the medium through which he attempts to make sense of the changing world.
This recalls the characters in The Dew Breaker, using their own art to make sense of their landscape and establish a new sense of location. This seems to be a common act among oppressed and displaces peoples – the use of art as a way to negotiate for space, to maintain identity, and to reject the forces of erasure. This process inherently demands adaptation: there is no return to a precolonial past, just as many of the characters in The Dew Breaker are unable to return to Haiti. For the ones that do, their relationship with home can never be the same.
In “Night Talkers,” Dany and Claude find themselves in their ancestral village. Though they are both welcomed back into the society, they are clearly still outsiders. Claude has nobody with whom he can speak English until Dany returns to the village (100). His English dialect is in abrasive opposition with the soft-spoken manner of the villagers. Still, the death of Tante Estina represents the slow decay of their former way of life, gradually replaced by the new generation of Dany and Claude. Just as the Haitians in new York are dealing with a traumatic legacy, so are the ones still at home. There’s an interesting parallel here between Claude and Olunde. Both left their homes and came back, equipped with different customs, beliefs, and mannerisms. Still, Olunde’s suicide recognizes the importance of tradition and represents the blending of beliefs, old and new. Claude, despite his past mistakes, is “already one of them, a member of their tribe” (120). Like Olunde’s suicide, the blending of Claude’s American dialect with his new identity as a “palannit,” a cultural role associated with speech, is evidence of a negotiation between past and present.
This negotiation is what Figueiredo refers to as the “hybrid cultural formation of the postcolonial” (83). In some way, all of these texts demonstrate the necessity for constant recreation and reconsideration of the postcolonial landscape. On one level, the stories demonstrate this through the actions of their characters – Douglass, Olunde, Dany and Clause, among others. On another level, the mere existence of theses tests is, in a way its own negotiation and reconsideration. Figueiredo puts this best, explaining:
If we are to encourage the slow, perplexed growth of a more adequate humanism, the ritual processes still at work in our own societies urgently need to be understood and revalued. Soyinka’s theatre makes a formidable contribution to this understanding, through its cultural history, showing an indigenous theatre that has expressed itself for centuries in the form of the festivals and ceremonies that still punctuate Yoruba life.
Figueiredo, 85
The heart of cultural formation in the postcolonial is the art of oppressed peoples, seeking to create a space between the past and the present, between trauma and healing, both through its own assertion of identity as well as its depiction of the process.
Now, more than ever, we must seek to uplift, encourage, and share these acts of creation. Global climate change, spurred on by reckless consumption and colonial exploitation of our resources, has turned our planet into a postcolonial landscape. There is no environment that can be divorced from the threat of climate change, just as there is no going back to pre-industrial levels of warming. Instead, we, as a human species, must reckon with the fallout of our actions. Look at how, through work like Soyinka’s and Ojaide’s, Yorubas culture has struggled against the oppression of colonial and neo-colonial forces. Look at how Edwidge Danticat has revised and resisted the legacy of Haitian trauma, carving out space for the diverse experiences of their diaspora. Look at Frederick Douglass’ movement towards liberty and navigation of the spaces around him.
We no longer have the luxury of confining postcolonial struggle to isolated pockets of continued oppression. Climate change is knocking at the door, demanding radical action. Just as Douglass waded into the anti-pastoral urban space, bringing an entire population with him, so we must push forward into the postcolonial, meeting adversity with adaptation. It’s true, as well, that the populations who historically suffer from the effects of colonialism will also disproportionately suffer the effects of climate change. If you’re looking for voices that need uplifting, look no further than the art of oppressed peoples, for it is there that we can find a path to survival.
Works Cited
Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. New York, Random House, 2004.
Soyinka, Wole. Death and the King’s Horseman. New York, Norton, 2002.
Martinez Falquina, Silvia. “Postcolonial trauma theory and the short story cycle: Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker,” ES: Revista de Filologia Inglesa, vol. 35, pp 171-192, 2014. https://revistas.uva.es/index.php/esreview/article/view/731
Figueiredo, Rosa. “Ritual Theatre: Bodies and Voices,” Bodies and Voices : The Force-Field of Representation and Discourse in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, edited by Merete Falck Borch, Eva Rask Knudsen, Martin Leer, and Bruce Clunies Ross, Amsterdam, Brill, 2008, pp. 81-92.
Egya, Sule Emmanuel. “The pristine past, the plundered present: Nature as lost home in Tanure Ojaide’s poetry,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 56, no. 2, 2021, pp. 186-200.
Bennett, Michael. “Anti-Pastoralism, Frederick Douglass, and the Nature of Slavery,” Beyond Nature Writing: expanding the boundaries of ecocriticism, edited by Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R Wallace, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 2001.
Armbruster, Karla and Kathleen R Wallace. Beyond Nature Writing: expanding the boundaries of ecocriticism. Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 2001.
Sprockets and Springes 