Université d'État d'Haïti (UEH)
École normale supérieure d'Haïti (ENS)
Centennial of Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922-2022)
International Colloquium:
“Revisiting the works and ideas of Jacques Stephen Alexis”
Call for papers
April 22, 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jacques Stephen Alexis, world-renowned writer and theorist of novels and culture, neurologist, and Marxist politician. Commemorating this centennial with a new examination of Alexis’ works and ideas is a highly significant and worthwhile gesture, simply because a centennial is always a very rare occasion, and it will take ten decades and several generations before we see another one. Because, in spite of the great recognition Alexis already enjoys, his literary and theoretical legacy remains highly topical and therefore deserves to be glossed, especially with the younger generations, all the more so as Alexis’ works and ideas carry within them a political ferment likely to help examine the present.
By emerging on the literary scene in the 1950s, and despite his flash career (1955-1960), Alexis established himself as a crossroads writer and a figurehead of the mid-twentieth century Haitian intelligentsia. A witness to a decade considered decisive in Haiti’s future, Alexis is the author of powerful works and reflections of primary importance, fueled by the major ideologies of the time (indigenism and Marxism). Indeed, in his works and especially in his various reflective interventions (“Où va le roman?”, 1957 and “Florilège du romanesque haïtien”, 1959), he fully assumes his debts, his filiation so to speak. His literary approach integrates both what he identified as a component of a certain national storytelling tradition (areitos, folk tales, lodyans, Haitian “realists”) and the various contributions of universal literature. In other words, while proposing a clearly situated work, Alexis did not bother with any narrow nationalism. The analysis of several of his works has not failed to shed light on this filiation, his “aesthetic kinship[s]” [1]. In the Haitian realm, for example, his work is often likened to that of Jacques Roumain, particularly his novel Compère Général Soleil (translated into English as General Sun, My Brother). This novel is integrated along with Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée (Masters of the Dew) in many corpora of analysis (Claude Souffrant: Une négritude socialiste, 1978 ; Yves Chemla: La question de l’autre dans le roman haïtien, 2002). The prominent place that Alexis himself gave to Roumain’s novel in the Haitian literature of his time seems to substantiate this trend. In this perspective, and somewhat beyond, Rafael Lucas endeavors to examine what he calls the “Haitianization” of Alexis’ writing[2].
During this same period, Alexis strove to contribute to a literary field that was then in full flux. He is credited with a significant contribution to the advent of Haitian literary modernity. L'espace d'un cillement (In the Flicker of an Eyelid, 1959), the last novel published before his disappearance, is often cited in this perspective. The choice of Haiti as the location of a Caribbean confluence, through the evocation of a brothel, and the narrative’s arrangement into a “mansion” (in the medieval theatrical staging sense) via reference to the system of human senses, contribute, inter alia, to conferring the status of an innovative work upon this novel. Years later, others credit him with making a noteworthy contribution to the consecration of lodyans as a constitutive genre of Haitian fiction since Justin Lhérisson’s inaugural act[3]. His collection of stories Romancero aux étoiles (1960) is hence associated with his discovery of lodyans and his interest in this form, which he sought to preserve for posterity as Haitian heritage, according to Georges Anglade. In this vein, a recent study proposes an analysis of songs and folk humor in Alexis’ work[4].
Alexis is interested in Haiti’s history, which he reinvests as much in his novelistic endeavors as in his aesthetic and political writings. As such, his reference to the themes – national bourgeoisie, people, popular arts, etc. – gives theoretical backing to his vision of Haitian modernity. The manifesto of the Parti Entente Populaire re-engages these questions through referents of Marxism, as it was understood at a certain time and in certain circles. It is from the investment of the Marxist scheme of historical analysis that the national history, haloed by its African, Amerindian, and European heritage, is mobilized for the benefit of novelistic creation and the invention of political action. There is no doubt that this literary and political experience is punctuated by twists of interpretation, theoretical uses and “counter-uses”, such that writers, like politicians, never cease to forge new paths, without ever neglecting the salient features of the place from which they theorize and fight.
These are the questions that the Colloquium aspires to explore, to brew together in order to draw from them ways of reconsidering a literary and political tradition in articulation with the great challenges of our current experiences. It is all about revisiting the works and ideas of Alexis. In this perspective, four themes are proposed and presented for your appreciation.
Theme 1. Literary and political sources and legacy/heritage of Jacques Stephen Alexis’s works and ideas:
1. Literary sources and heritage This theme proposes dusting off Alexis’ library – Jean Price-Mars, Maurice Casséus, Jacques Roumain, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sedar Senghor, and Alejo Carpentier – in relation to his reference to the marvelous, etc. What can an analysis of certain traces of Alexis’ readings in his writing reveal about his creativity and his thinking? Who are his potential literary “heirs”? Through what kinds of dialogues do they take on and perpetuate the legacy?
2. Political sources and legacy. Jacques Stephen Alexis remains a politician and prominent figure of Haitian Marxism. Has a true assessment of his political thought been made? What theoretical legacy of this experience remains nearly sixty years later? Does the mechanical resumption of the project by “circles” with limited scope take into account the questions that have arisen in Marxism and historical Communism? As a member of the Party, what kind of relationship did Alexis have with Soviet power of the time? Did Alexis evade a certain vulgate in the way he “practiced” national history and literature? Can we envisage a renewal of Alexis’ thinking and ideas based on the experiences of China, Latin America, Africa, and Europe in the 1960s and at the end of the 20th century?
Theme 2. Popular culture in Alexis’ writings (music, oral tradition, the peasantry, voodoo).
Alexis’ writings, from his novels to his aesthetic texts, are essentially concerned with the staging of scenes from popular, national tradition. What are the main elements of popular culture with which Alexis populates his literary imaginary? How does he inscribe them in his works and ideas? In his work, what functions does Alexis confer to the elements of popular culture that he mobilizes?
Theme 3. Human Love: The Physician and the Question of Care.
When reading Alexis, one cannot fail to notice instances related to his profession as a doctor. To what extent is Alexis’ work enriched by his training and experience as a doctor? How can we understand this intersection between science and politics in Alexis.
Theme 4. Alexis’ modernity.
Three central questions among the most prominent in contemporary times are found at the heart of Alexis’ writings and ideas. They are those of gender, the environment, and the renewal of novel writing, which make him a key figure in the reflection on Haitian modernity, without however lapsing into what is called, in the usual sense, anachronism.
1. The gender issue. How are women represented in Alexis’ work? What roles does he give them in his novels and stories? How can the handling of such characters contribute to the development of the Alexisian aesthetic?
2. The place of environmental issues. How can we understand the importance of nature in Alexis’ writings? What contribution can the analysis of his vision of nature make to current concerns about “ecopoetics”?
3. The renewal of the Haitian novel. To what extent can L'espace d'un cillement (In the Flicker of an Eyelid) be received as an innovative novel? Is this tenable? How has the theory of “marvelous realism” and the publication of Alexis’ L'espace d'un cillement contributed to the renewal of Haitian and/or Caribbean novel writing ?
Format for submission of proposals :
Each proposal should be in the form of a 350- to 400-word abstract that relates to one of the Colloquium’s themes. It should include a title and the author’s contact information (first and last name, e-mail). The proposal can be written in French, Creole, English, or Spanish.
Deadlines:
16 November, 2021: last day to send proposals in response to the call for papers;
December 30, 2021: disclosure of selected proposals;
March 15, 2022: last day to send texts for publication;
April 21-22, 2022: Colloquium will be held in a hybrid format (virtually and in-person).
E-mail: colloque.centenairejsa@gmail.com
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Executive Secretariat : Mr. Qualito Estimé
Mr. Fritz Berg Jeannot
Mr. Jethro Antoine
[1] BOULAY, Ch., “Une parenté esthétique: Jacques Stephen Alexis et Victor Hugo”, Relire l’histoire littéraire et le littéraire haïtiens, Port-au-Prince, Presses Nationales d’Haïti, coll. “Pensée critique”, 2007, pp. 409-439.
[2]LUCAS, Rafael, “L’haïtianisation de l’écriture chez Jacques Stephen Alexis”, Cultures Sud, [Online] at www.culturessud.com/contenu.php?id=614, accessed on 8 January 2012.
[3]ANGLADE, Georges, Le dernier codicille de Jacques Stephen Alexis, Montréal, Plume et Encre, p. 96.
[4]DIEUMETTRE, Jean, “Le rire haïtien : rires et chansons dans Compère Général Soleil, de Jacques-Stéphen Alexis”, Cerrados, n° 51, Brasília, December 2019, pp 125-148, PDF version [Online], accessed on 24 January 2021.