Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing FROM THE PUBLISHER
About the Author
Catherine A. John is Assistant Professor of African Diasporic Literature at the University of Oklahoma.
SYNOPSIS
Clear Word and Third Sight examines the strands of a
collective African diasporic consciousness represented in the work of a number
of black Caribbean writers. Catherine A. John shows how a shared consciousness,
or "third sight," is rooted in both pre- and postcolonial cultural practices and
disseminated through a rich oral tradition. This consciousness has served
diasporic communities, creating an alternate philosophical "worldsense" linking
those of African descent across space and time.Contesting popular
discourses about what constitutes "culture" and maintaining that neglected
strains in N�gritude discourse provide a crucial philosophical perspective on
the connections between folk practices, cultural memory, and collective
consciousness, John examines the diasporic principles in the work of the
N�gritude writers L�on Damas, Aim� C�saire, and L�opold Senghor. She traces the
manifestations and reworkings of their ideas in Afro-Caribbean writing from the
eastern and French Caribbean, as well as the Caribbean diaspora in the United
States. The authors discussed include Jamaica Kincaid, Earl Lovelace, Simone
Schwarz-Bart, Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, and Edouard Glissant, among others.
John argues that, by incorporating what she calls "folk groundings"-such as
poems, folktales, proverbs, and songs-into their work, Afro-Caribbean writers
invoke a psychospiritual consciousness which combines old and new strategies for
addressing the ongoing postcolonial struggle.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
"Clear Word and Third Sight itself offers clarity and vision in a new and insightful reading of African diaspora literatures. Catherine A. John offers a necessary revisiting of negritude; a confidence in its examination of coloniality and gendered identity; the embrace of magic and spirit and poetry." — Carole Boyce Davies
Percy C. Hintzen
"Clear Word and Third Sight casts new light upon the argument of alternative consciousness by using relatively unknown writers and poets, particularly from the English and French West Indies, along with better known Diasporic and American writers. It will be of significant interest to scholars concerned with discourses of difference rooted in notions of being and understanding that are not Western or Euro-centered." — author of West Indians in the West: Self Representations in a Migrant Community
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