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Article: Antinomies of Double Consciousness in Aime Cesaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Mosaic (Winnipeg)
- Article date:
- September 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 University of Manitoba, Mosaic. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Against the monological tenor of much postcolonial criticism, this essay argues for, and finds ethical value in, the inherent double character of Aime Cesairees Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. The poem describes an Afro-Caribbean "double consciousness," allowing Cesaire to dramatize the antinomical character of freedom postulated amidst social inequity.
"Ethics" means[s] the negativizing of narcissism within a practice. [...] Given this insight, one cannot ask that "art"--the text--emit a message which would be considered "positive": the univocal enunciation of such a message would itself represent a suppression of the ethical function. (Julia Kristeva 233)
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