@article{THESIS,
      recid = {648},
      author = {Sainte Claire, Linsey},
      title = {Quelques figures de la folie dans la littérature  caraïbo-guyanaise},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2016-12},
      number = {THESIS},
      pages = {344},
      abstract = {This dissertation examines, through a literary and  historical approach, the representation of figures of  madness in several colonial texts, and contemporary  Antillean fictions and plays from Guadeloupe, French  Guiana, Haiti and Martinique. While subscribing to  Foucault’s theory articulated in his History of Madness  (1961), that madness is primarily a socially-constructed  concept, this work considers the specificity and  singularity of this process in Antillean literature. I  define madness as unreason, that being the unwillingness or  inability to act or to think according to cultural norms,  and argue that, in the Antillean context, madness cannot  only be understood as an individual mental illness but  also, and above all, as the effect of a previous historical  and social disorder originating from colonialism and  slavery. Although my work can be inscribed in a  well-established literary tradition, it addresses an  understudied area in the French Caribbean literary and  critical production. I also provide a new way to look at  the phenomenon of madness insofar as I do not take the  occidental psychoanalytical discourses on madness as my  primary approach and instead opt to explore this notion  through a historical and literary lens that attests to the  importance of the socio-cultural and political history that  has shaped the life of Antillean people. 
    If, as  Foucault states in his History of Madness, madness is  contained in the West with the phenomenon of the "great  confinement" (even madmen who were offered to the public  gaze in the eighteenth century are now in cages), we are  far from noticing a similar phenomenon in the French  Caribbean colonies - at least during that time. Madness is,  conversely, free and out in the open, and showcases furious  and horrific scenes in the heart of a public "theater"  whose strings are held by the colonizers and by the  colonized.
	My historico-literary analysis of  manifestations of madness focuses on three specific fields  of investigation: “La folie merveilleuse” (Marvelous  Madness), “La folie du pouvoir” (Madness and Power) and “La  folie rhétorique” (Rhetorical Madness). I alternate between  colonial and postcolonial texts in order to inform the  birth, the evolution and the transformation of various  forms of madness which are subsequently found in  contemporary literary fictions.
	The inherent malleability  of these concepts makes the analysis of representations and  interpretations of madness even more fundamental. The  marvelous, power and rhetoric were in the colonial and post  colonial era, three areas where the white hegemonic  discourse prevailed; but also, and above all, areas  reclaimed by Black people in their desire to acquire a  physical and intellectual freedom. The acquisition of these  spaces of expression by Blacks will nevertheless not be  battle-free, hence the large production of discourses on  madness.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/648},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/M1PZ56WQ},
}