Resisting acculturation

Abstract

My thesis studies strategies of resistance to acculturation in Francophone and Hispanophone Caribbean oral literature. By using Edouard Glissant’s notion of contre-poétique, I will compare Le Roman de Bouqui by Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, a collection of Haitian tales, with a collection of Senegalese tales: La Belle Histoire de Leuk-le-Lièvre by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Abdoulaye Sadji.I will also analyze the dynamics between ethnography and literature in the process of resistance to acculturation by using Jossiana Arroyo’s theory of Travestismos Culturales in studying Kele Kele: an adaptation of Afro-Cuban myths by Excilia Saldaña. My goal is to show how African oral tradition provides strategies for resistance to acculturation in the Caribbean through the development of oral literature and how these authors have reworked oral material to address distinct social and political issues relevant to their countries and historical context.