Nicole Simek  (Whitman College)
Insolent Imitation in Maryse Condé's La Migration des cœurs

Cannibalistic rewriting can be described as the paradigmatic genre of Caribbean and postcolonial literature. From Aimé Césaire's _Une Tempête_ to Jean Rhys' _Wide Sargasso Sea_, Caribbean authors have privileged rewriting as a technique for challenging established histories and bringing into being new, self-fashioned identities. Inspired by Emily Brontë's _Wuthering Heights_, Maryse Condé's _La Migration des cœurs_ (1995) repeats this quintessential gesture as it playfully reworks its English intertext. At the same time, this "migratory" novel crosses generic and cultural borders, drawing attention to the instability of the identitarian boundaries the cannibalistic act purportedly sets up. This paper will examine Condé's work as a comment on postcolonial Caribbean identities and literary norms, shedding light in particular on Condé's uneasy relationship with both canonical European literary models and contemporary postcolonial attempts to theorize, break away from, and revise overdetermining literary and cultural paradigms.

Central to Condé's challenge to postcolonial norms is her complex brand of imitation. At first glance, Condé's dedication--"À Emily Brontë qui, je l'espère, agréera cette lecture de son chef-d'œuvre. Honneur et respect!"--hardly seems to conform to the more agonistic tone of most postcolonial rewrites. What are we to make of her admiration of Brontë's canonical work? Should we interpret her dedication as an anti-postcolonial gesture, a conservative move upholding the literary value of her English predecessor? Such an interpretation of _La Migration des cœurs_ would, however, distort the subversive qualities of the novel and Condé's deeper engagement with postcolonial intertextuality.

Drawing on Jacques Derrida's recent reflections on the problematic of following (highlighting how fidelity and betrayal co-exist in the act of following---"to be true what you follow, you have to interrupt the following" [Interview with Derrida in _life.after.theory_]), I propose to analyze how Condé's faithful act of repetition involves both interruption and invention. As such, Condé's singular practice of imitation constitutes an attempt to reform postcolonial literature from within one of its most dominant traditions