6-2 | Table of Con­tents | http://​dx​.doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​7​7​4​2​/​I​M​A​G​E​.​C​C​N​.​6​-​2​.10 | De Groof | Gys­sels PDF


Abstract | This essay links Léon-Gontran Damas’ poet­ry to Matthias De Groof’s exper­i­men­tal film, Ren­dez-les moi, which is based on Damas’ poem “Lim­bé.” By offer­ing an inter­pre­ta­tion of “Lim­bé” in rela­tion to the museifi­ca­tion of African arti­facts, the film frames the re-eval­u­a­tion of Damas as artis­tic inter­ven­tion. Kath­leen Gys­sels engages the way the visu­al exper­i­men­ta­tion tries to gal­va­nize Damas’ artis­tic vision and focus­es on the fig­ure of Damas’ black dolls as a metaphor for gen­dered dis­crim­i­na­tion, there­by mov­ing beyond clas­sic antag­o­nisms of Négri­tude.

Résumé | Dans cette con­tri­bu­tion, nous lions la poésie de Damas à un film expéri­men­tal, « Ren­dez-les moi,» réal­isé par Matthias De Groof et basé sur le poème « Lim­bé ». En offrant une inter­pré­ta­tion de « Lim­bé » con­cer­nant la muséi­fi­ca­tion d’artéfacts africains, notre réé­val­u­a­tion de Damas est cadré par le film comme inter­ven­tion artis­tique. Le tra­vail de Kath­leen Gys­sels ira au-delà de la manière dont l’expérimentation visuelle tente de gal­vanis­er la vision artis­tique de Damas, et abor­de la fig­ure des Poupées Noires comme métaphore de dis­crim­i­na­tion gen­rée qui par-là tran­scende les antag­o­nismes clas­siques pro­pres à la Négritude.

MATTHIAS DE GROOFUNIVERSITY OF ANTWERP
KATHLEEN GYSSELS | UNIVERSITY OF ANTWERP

GIVE ME BACK MY BLACK DOLLS:
DAMAS' AFRICA AND ITS MUSEIFICATION, FROM POETRY TO MOVING PICTURES

The work of the rel­a­tive­ly under­val­ued Négri­tude poet Léon-Gontran Damas allows for an inter-artis­tic dia­logue. This con­tri­bu­tion links Damas’ poet­ry to an exper­i­men­tal film, Ren­dez-les-moi (2013), direct­ed by Matthias De Groof, one of the authors of the present arti­cle, and based on Damas’ poem “Lim­bé” (in Pig­ments; 1937). Pre­ced­ing the artist state­ment on the film, Kath­leen Gys­sels pro­vides a use­ful con­text for the film. Rather than expe­di­ent­ly recy­cling Damas’ anti-colo­nial poet­ry, De Groof’s film tries to deploy aes­thet­ics to ren­der Damas’ poet­ry a per­for­ma­tive speech act, albeit fic­tion­al­ly. The trans-medi­al aspects of the film—poetry, music, sculpture—aspire towards a free­ing of col­o­nized arte­facts from the dis­cur­sive stric­tures of colo­nial frame­works and insti­tu­tions. By offer­ing an inter­pre­ta­tion of “Lim­bé” as an inter­ven­tion into the museifi­ca­tion of African arte­facts, the film par­tic­i­pates in a re-eval­u­a­tion of Damas and Négri­tude. This study does not aim at recast­ing our under­stand­ing of Négri­tude, nor do we attempt at re-canon­is­ing Damas’ work, as Négri­tude is itself at odds with canon­i­sa­tion. Instead, we focus on the medi­al­i­ty of the film to illu­mi­nate its rela­tion to the poet­ry. Although “Lim­bé” is Damas’ only poem using the fig­ure of the dolls as a per­va­sive metaphor, we will also analyse a selec­tion of Damas’ oth­er poems in rela­tion to museification.

In the first part of the essay, Gys­sels recov­ers dimen­sions of Damas’ sup­pressed his­to­ry and artis­tic vision. Gys­sels begins by scru­ti­niz­ing the poet’s biog­ra­phy in rela­tion to his “black dolls” and the way the issue of stolen her­itage re-emerges through­out his oeu­vre (Pig­ments & Black Label). Then, she arrives at a focus on the fig­ure of Damas and his mar­gin­al­i­ty. The metaphor of the “black dolls” final­ly appears in the sec­ond con­tri­bu­tion as a reflec­tion on, rather than an analy­sis of, De Groof’s film. Ren­dez-les-moi it hopes to open up unique per­spec­tives on the oeu­vre of Damas. This crit­i­cal piece and artist state­ment facil­i­tates a recon­sid­er­a­tion of Damas’ oth­er works.

I. The Damas of Give Me Back My Black Dolls

The Africa they ran­sacked, the Africa they robbed me of”

De Groof’s film offers an intrigu­ing per­spec­tive on “Lim­bé” by con­sid­er­ing the black dolls as objects stolen from muse­ums. The Musée de l’Homme, in Damas’ mind, becomes a kind of “mau­soleum” of the dead and the dis­eased. Hav­ing stud­ied in Paris with Mar­cel Mauss and Paul Riv­et, Damas left the insti­tu­tion because he felt uncom­fort­able with the fact that Euro­pean ethnographers—and, more pre­cise­ly, French ethnographers—stole entire col­lec­tions of art and trib­al masks. The incor­po­ra­tion of these arte­facts into the muse­um space void­ed them of their rit­u­al func­tion and high­light­ed African “dark­ness” in met­ro­pol­i­tan muse­ums. Those pub­lic places exhib­it West­ern suprema­cy and hunger for wealth more than gen­uine sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, an obser­va­tion that lurks in Damas’ poems. The work of Paul Morand, the con­tro­ver­sial inter­war writer and trav­eller who has his pro­tag­o­nist vis­it­ing the Ter­vuren Muse­um in the short sto­ry “Syra­cuse ou l’homme-panthère” (from Magie noire, 1927), evokes Damas:

These African beliefs that make of the rit­u­al cloths of the deceased so many exten­sions of the liv­ing per­son awoke in the heart of the cit­i­zen from Syra­cuse; all the divin­ers, the necro­mants who had slipped on these accursed, cast-off gar­ments, all the souls that had been trapped in these cal­abash­es, all the life­less locks of hair that had been slipped into mag­ic pouces came back to live, sig­nalled their pres­ence. “Flee,” they said; “leave the land that you inhab­it; it is fer­tile only in appear­ance, but ruin is upon it. Its progress is noth­ing but pres­tige; it has made of you a vam­pire. Return to the land where the trees and the stones speak in the name of the Spir­it.” (Morand 1992: 566, qtd in Ezra 143)

In “The Dogon as lieu de mem­oire” (2012), Statchan explains how Mar­cel De Griaule’s Dji­bouti expe­di­tion irri­tat­ed Michel Leiris, one of Damas’ friends and fel­low ethno­g­ra­phers; we must under­stand Damas’ metaphor of the black doll in this context.

French author­i­ties seized Damas’ first and most sub­ver­sive col­lec­tion, the polem­i­cal Pig­ments (1937), for its out­right anti-fas­cist and anti-colo­nial dis­course. In one of his most famous poems, “Ils sont venus ce soir” (“They came that night,” 2), Damas por­trays the colo­nial inva­sion of the Euro­pean col­o­niz­er as a moment that for­ev­er stops the drum­beat of the many African wor­ship­pers and dancers. The arrival of white bar­bar­ians destroyed the African rit­u­al gath­er­ings of dances, songs, and drums:

They came that night when the
tom
tom
rolled from
rhythm
to
rhythm
the frenzy

of eyes
the fren­zy of hands
the frenzy
of stat­ues’ feet
SINCE
how many of ME ME ME
have died
since they came that night when the
tom
tom
rolled from
rhythm
to
rhythm
the frenzy
(“They Came that Night”)

How­ev­er, by com­pli­ment­ing Damas on the African beat, Léopold Sen­g­hor, one of the ini­tia­tors of Négri­tude, glossed over the actu­al event por­trayed in “They came that night / Ils sont venus ce soir.” The poem shows men (white or black) slaugh­ter­ing and ran­sack­ing and dis­cuss­es geno­ci­dal vio­lence and how the poet is inca­pable of actu­al­ly count­ing the relent­less accu­mu­la­tion of colonialism’s vic­tims. Damas hints at the long-last­ing after­shocks of colo­nial rule, the col­li­sion between two cul­tures in which the oppressed turn to “stat­ues” (i.e. inan­i­mate dolls), to ash­es, deprived of now-musei­fied trib­al masks and weapons.

This open­ing poem also hints at the racial­ized élite, the évolués betray­ing their own “race,” enslav­ing their own “blood” (“Et Caetera” and “S O S” echo this lament). Not explic­it­ly nam­ing the cul­prits, Damas denounces both the French invad­er (the White per­pe­tra­tor) and theAfricans who sold their own broth­ers and sis­ters into slav­ery, com­plic­it in their razz­ias; this vil­i­fi­ca­tion is most explic­it in an inflam­ma­to­ry litany in the first move­ment of Black-Label. Addi­tion­al­ly, he uses the passé com­posé tense to push the read­er to recon­sid­er a sin­gu­lar event (a spe­cif­ic evening of bru­tal colo­nial inva­sion as a sex­u­al­ly sug­ges­tive Euro­pean “pen­e­tra­tion,”) as the incep­tion of what became a his­to­ry of bru­tal con­quests and vio­lent incur­sions by white col­o­niz­ers that con­tin­ues into the present.

In “Et Caetera,” Damas indi­rect­ly con­demns the enrol­ment of racial­ized troops, specif­i­cal­ly Sene­galese sol­diers, in the French army. Thou­sands of sol­diers for the French war machine came from Saint-Louis du Séné­gal, the colo­nial cap­i­tal on the West­ern coast of Séné­gal. Embrac­ing the loy­al­ty France expect­ed from its colonies was indeed one of the atti­tudes char­ac­ter­is­tic of the first gen­er­a­tion of black and oth­er racial­ized lead­ers in the inter­war and imme­di­ate inde­pen­dences. Damas con­demns the end­less trib­ute paid by Africa’s sons and daugh­ters as an image of a gigan­tic machine mak­ing more sol­diers for France's war. He blames the French occu­pi­er in Sene­gal for hav­ing “ran­sacked” the black con­ti­nent and its pop­u­la­tions. The innu­mer­able sac­ri­ficed sol­diers (from the Caribbean, Amer­i­ca, and Africa) haunt Damas: they become his “spec­tral ghosts”[1] who fol­low him every­where on his sails and cross­ings, as his ances­tors did dur­ing the Mid­dle Pas­sage. His poem, “The Wind,” describes anoth­er sleep­less night as he cross­es the Black Atlantic, hear­ing a poly­phon­ic choir of ghosts. (Damas, Pig­ments 17) Out of the dark­ness, in spite of the silence, the poet cap­tures mes­sages from the ele­ments and the unseen, the haunt­ing silence of the many unheard voic­es echoes in his ears. The poem “Buried trea­sures” already demon­strates the poet’s con­vic­tion that not only human but also non-human loss is buried on the bot­tom of the ocean. The silenced voic­es in this poem impress them­selves on the world under the cov­er of night, caus­ing an extreme ten­sion on the part of the enclosed, entrapped, and enlist­ed sub­jects. The ethno­g­ra­ph­er will have the same uncan­ny expe­ri­ence, in ref­er­ence to what Freud calls “Unheim­lich,” when she or he strolls through the many muse­ums of Paris, Lon­don, or Brus­sels. In “if tomor­row the ghosts,” Damas writes, “I’m haunt­ed by their mem­o­ry” (Black-Label, M II). Ghosts are everywhere.

[K]Not's and Lines

The third cofounder of the lit­er­ary-polit­i­cal move­ment Négri­tude, Léon-Gontran Damas embod­ies the Caribbean con­cept of cre­oliza­tion. His name apt­ly express­es this cre­olized her­itage. Explor­ing the sig­ni­fi­ca­tions of his last name, Damas, inher­it­ed by some French “bag­nard,” the mil­i­tant author inter­twines the noun damas, which refers to an iron to forge weapons, with the image of sea knots and tex­tile knots (“damassé, fibre”). Among all these pol­y­semic uses, Damas favours indeed one specif­i­cal­ly haunt­ing image. Kei­th Walk­er artic­u­lates the sym­bol­ism of Damas’ name and its use in his poet­ry in Coun­ter­mod­ernism (1999):

The slip­knot is also a recur­ring image in the writ­ing of the Césaire-Damas gen­er­a­tion. Like the life­lines metaphor, the slip­knot has much to do with the sea and sur­vival. It is poly­va­lent in its sig­ni­fy­ing pow­er and mul­ti­lay­ered in its rich­ness and apt­ness to the his­to­ry and expe­ri­ence of New World Blacks, evok­ing a string of ver­bal asso­ci­a­tions that plot the lega­cy of the Mid­dle Pas­sage, colo­nial dom­i­na­tion, plan­ta­tion expe­ri­ence and post-colo­nial­ism: cap­ture, bound hands, nau­ti­cal voy­age, bondage, sui­cide, lynch­ing, stran­gu­la­tion, tri­an­gu­la­tion, strug­gle, tics, knots pres­tidig­i­ta­tion, escape, free­dom and sur­vival. (14)

The noun “damas” by exten­sion also refers to a “cord,” a “line,” which res­onates with sin­is­ter images often recy­cled by the poet: indeed, Damas repeat­ed­ly inserts the intru­sion of a hang­ing Negro, lynched at dawn for “hav­ing want­ed to cross the line.” This fic­tion­al dou­ble of him­self shows the poet entan­gled in all kinds of exis­ten­tial knots. In Amerindi­an cul­tures, the knot often serves to mea­sure time, as in the Aztec and Mayan cal­en­dars. The knot comes close to the oth­er famous “metaphor” for mixed cul­tures in the New World, the “branche­ment” (see Amselle 2001) and Glissant's “rhi­zome,” which Amselle (1990) crit­i­cizes for risk­ing a slide into a new “essen­tial­ism.” Con­sid­er­ing these diverse con­no­ta­tions, the cord with its poten­tial to form a knot, may thus serve as metaphor that chron­i­cles and sum­ma­rizes the effects of col­o­niza­tion. Damas has always defined him­self as “fils de trios fleuves” (“son of three rivers”), there­by object­ing too strong polar­i­ties between Africa (the Niger) and Europe (the Seine). Thus, as part of his per­son­al famil­ial her­itage, Damas has the blood of three rivers run­ning through his veins: African blood, blood of the indige­nous peo­ples of the Amer­i­c­as, and Euro­pean blood.

Damas – the city dweller and bohemi­an, the jazz lover and anthro­pol­o­gist, the cen­sured poet and “député dépité” (deceived politi­cian)[2]—was ahead of his time, mov­ing beyond the antag­o­nisms of Négri­tude. Not only did he claim African her­itage along­side Amerindi­an and Euro­pean (Gys­sels 2009), but he also moved away from strong bina­ries regard­ing class and gen­der. Impor­tant­ly, he strug­gled to move beyond mas­culin­i­ty as a cul­tur­al con­struc­tion opposed to fem­i­nin­i­ty (cf. infra). Regard­ing his own mixed iden­ti­ty, the poet acknowl­edged the impor­tant yet invis­i­ble fig­ure of the “red-skinned Gal­i­bi,”[3] “la Tigresse des Hauts Plateaux,” liv­ing on the bor­ders of the Orénoque-riv­er in the Ama­zon­ian for­est. In Black-Label (1956: 63), Damas poem “Roucouyennes” (BL 21) reclaims the “bone flute” (“flûte en tib­ia” BL 31) as both fetish and rit­u­al instru­ment. Else­where in Black-Label, trib­al music is evoked through the rhythms played on a “flûte de bam­bou” (“bam­boo flute” BL 45). In these poems it seems as though the lyri­cal voice is try­ing to remem­ber a female ances­tor on the Amerindi­an side, “une Gal­i­bi mat­inée de sang Con­go.” This empha­sis on the Amerindi­an pop­u­la­tion already shows Damas work­ing between the Lines, in what Homi K. Bhab­ha calls the “third zone” (Bhab­ha 1993), between the inter­stices of dis­ci­plines and among vary­ing cul­tur­al heritage(s).

Fight­ing alien­ation and racism, the Guyanese Damas would take issue with some of the most divi­sive issues to come out of the next gen­er­a­tions from the French Caribbean. First of all the “antillanité”-movement by Glis­sant, as well as the sec­ond “créolité”-movement found­ed by Con­fi­ant and Chamoi­seau in the foot­steps of Mar­tini­can Aimé Césaire face the mate­r­i­al as well as cul­tur­al depen­dence from the colo­nial Metrop­o­lis. Sen­g­hor, Césaire, Glis­sant all claim to write in her­met­ic style. When Sen­g­hor states in the “Intro­duc­tion” to Antholo­gie de la nou­velle poésie nègre et mal­gache that “Damas’ poet­ry is not sophis­ti­cat­ed” (PUF, 1948: 5), he indi­rect­ly rein­forces schol­ar­ly neglect of Damas’ poet­ry and prose. Senghor’s com­ment is indica­tive of the some­what tur­bu­lent part­ner­ship among the founders of Négri­tude. Although mar­gin­al­ized with­in his own move­ment, Damas’ writ­ing has been tak­en up by some lat­er crit­ics (see Kesteloot 1963), and authors from the African Dias­po­ra, includ­ing Glis­sant who in his Dis­cours antil­lais (1981, tr. Caribbean Dis­course) places Damas along­side Hait­ian Jacques Roumain from the Indigénist-move­ment, and Cuban Nico­las Guil­lén (Glis­sant 1989: 154). Yet oth­er rea­sons have to be tak­en into account for the wan­ing of Damas’ canon­i­cal stature and the obfus­ca­tion of his mil­i­tant work. On the mar­gins of the French-Caribbean canon, omit­ted from man­i­festos by Glis­sant and Chamoi­seau, Damas deserves to be reread as his work also approach­es a trans­gres­sion of the lines between liv­ing and dead, object and sub­ject, male and female, homo- and het­ero­sex­u­al. Also, con­trary to more acces­si­ble poet­ry, his poet­ry has from its incep­tion appealed strong­ly to visu­al arts. His sec­ond col­lec­tion, apt­ly enti­tled Graf­fi­ti (1952) already tes­ti­fies to the writ­ings on the wall, so-to-speak, of mar­gin­al­ized cul­tures and the long-last­ing pic­tures engraved on the minds of sub­al­tern sub­jects. An ear­ly voice to pub­licly address issues of the col­o­niza­tion and oppres­sion, Damas’ inter­war peri­od work proves a fer­tile ground for refram­ing Black poet­ry from the (post-)Négritude peri­od. The fol­low­ing exper­i­men­tal short film, along with its director’s artis­tic state­ment, high­light these ele­ments in Damas’ poet­ry, in par­tic­u­lar in “Lim­bé.”

Web_3 screenshot 'rendez-les-moi'

Fig­ure 1: Still from Ren­dez-les-moi (Give me back my black dolls), 2013

II. Rendez-les-moi : “Give me back my black dolls” through moving pictures

The short exper­i­men­tal film Ren­dez-les-moi (Give me back my black dolls) was part of De Groof’s work in 2013 dur­ing an IFAA-res­i­den­cy at Nijmegen.[4] The Film inter­prets Damas’ poem “Lim­bé” as an expres­sion of long­ing for a sup­pressed African cul­tur­al her­itage now pre­dom­i­nant­ly found in muse­ums. The film might be called a “visu­al poem,” using the tech­nique of “caméra-sty­lo” or “cam­era pen” that Alexan­dre Astruc describes as a form through which an artist is able to express his thoughts, tear­ing loose from the image for the image of the imme­di­ate anec­dote (Astruc 324-5). The cam­era in Ren­dez-les-moi ren­ders a visu­al poem guid­ed by a lin­guis­tic one, Léon-Gontran Damas’ “Lim­bé” as if Damas too is hold­ing the pen. After the intro­duc­to­ry expo­si­tion of a mask spin­ning as a Miles Davis’ record plays, cam­era move­ments work to imply the sub­jec­tive view­point of an imag­i­nary per­son stand­ing in front of a show­case in an Africa-muse­um. In a voyeuris­tic spy-shot, the cam­era takes on the imag­ined per­spec­tive of a per­son. This per­son sur­rep­ti­tious­ly gazes at a sin­gle black doll dis­played behind glass. In a sub­se­quent shot, view­ers see a series of African cul­tur­al arte­facts. Just at that moment, the film’s audi­ence hears the poet’s voice. The voice, read­ing Damas’ poem, infers that the sub­jec­tive gaze of the cam­era is also the gaze of Damas, who recites:

Give me back my black dolls
so they dispel
the image of pale whores
mer­chants of love who stroll back and forth
on the boule­vard of my ennui

Give me back my black dolls
so they dispel
the eter­nal image
the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry image
of stacked large-assed puppets
whose mis­er­able mercy
the wind car­ries to the nose
(“Lim­bé”)

In this recital, Damas gives an imper­a­tive order, addressed to the muse­um, to “give him back his black dolls.” The film uses cam­era move­ments to trans­late an under­stand­ing of Damas’ shame and the taboo of the sub­ject: the muse­um dom­i­nates and exploits “his black dolls.” Indeed, in the con­text of the poem, the arte­facts func­tion as “whores” in the pub­lic space of the muse­um: undressed from their rit­u­al cos­tumes and behind vit­rines, they are dom­i­nat­ed as his­tor­i­cal­ly and racial­ly infe­ri­or. Exhib­it­ed as idols, they sug­gest an African cul­tur­al her­itage at the dis­pos­al of colo­nial projects. Through their sta­t­ic pre­sen­ta­tion, they become neg­a­tive sym­bols of West­ern his­tor­i­cal pro­gres­sion. Imply­ing a remote past, they rein­force the West’s image as devel­oped and mod­ern. Loot­ed, trad­ed, and domes­ti­cat­ed, the dolls become the relics of West­ern colo­nial­ism. Referred to as a vari­a­tion of a West­ern past exist­ing in the present, these objects make Africa into Europe’s eter­nal muse­um. Eth­nol­o­gized, the black dolls are “oth­ered” as remote and musei­fied, his­tori­cized as past. Put at both tem­po­ral and spa­tial dis­tances, they are defined by a muse­um, which uses the “self as mea­sure” and makes from Pro­tago­ras’ Homo Men­su­ra doc­trine: Europa men­su­ra.

Cat­e­go­rized, the black dolls are con­struct­ed as prim­i­tive; assim­i­lat­ed, they are con­ceived of as bar­barous and imag­ined as exot­ic. As V.Y. Mudimbe elu­ci­dates, African arte­facts “seem to be rem­nants […] of absolute begin­nings” (64). Moreover:

[t]he ethno­graph­ic muse­um enter­prise espoused a his­tor­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, deep­en­ing the need for the mem­o­ry of an archa­ic Euro­pean civ­i­liza­tion and, con­se­quent­ly, expound­ing rea­sons for decod­ing exot­ic and prim­i­tive objects as sym­bol­ic and con­tem­po­rary signs of a West­ern antiq­ui­ty. (61)

Ethno­graph­ic muse­ums appro­pri­at­ed African arte­facts in order to assim­i­late them in a play of oth­er­ness and same­ness so that they speak to us as our con­tem­po­rary his­to­ry. Art muse­ums assign these arte­facts aes­thet­ic qual­i­ties so that they speak as art. Négri­tude attrib­ut­es them with an alter­i­ty that refus­es to be reduced to a West­ern gaze. This view of art is dis­tinct from the under­stand­ing formed by insti­tu­tion­al­ized West­ern Art His­to­ry, in which art has its place out­side dai­ly life, a detach­ment reflect­ed by the spa­tial dis­tinc­tion of the muse­um (see König 2007).

L’art nègre, by con­trast, is not only fun­da­men­tal­ly entan­gled with life, but its ulti­mate func­tion is to man­i­fest l’âme noire. In oth­er words, Damas iden­ti­fies with the arte­facts he sees in the muse­um and sees the impris­on­ment of African cul­tur­al her­itage as an act of alien­ation in which muse­ums took part. He writes:

my courage recovered
my audacity
I become myself once again
myself once more
out of what I was Yesterday
yesterday
with­out complexity
yesterday
when the hour of uproot­ing came

Will they ever know this ran­cor in my heart
Opened to the eye of my mis­trust too late
they stole the space that was mine
(“Lim­bé”)[5]

Uproot­ing the masks from their cul­tur­al con­text and “steal­ing the space that was mine” func­tioned with­in the log­ics of cul­tur­al coloni­sa­tion and alien­ation: this theft was French pol­i­cy every­where in the French empire, from the Afrique-Équa­to­ri­ale française (AEF) and Afrique-Occi­den­tale française (AOF) and in the Caribbean espe­cial­ly. Colo­nial­ism required this pol­i­tics of assimilation.

Con­se­quent­ly, the poet of the post-colony first and fore­most tries to recov­er and recu­per­ate the loss. The idea of a “restora­tion”—(rede­venu moi-même […] de ce que […] j’étais hier[…]quand est venue l’heure du déracin­e­ment)—with­out hin­der­ing trans­for­ma­tion into some­thing “new” (nou­veau) is typ­i­cal to Négri­tude. Yet the work of many of its mem­bers have nev­er­the­less at times been con­sid­ered tra­di­tion­al­ist. How­ev­er, in a con­text of alien­ation, nos­tal­gia on the part of the vic­tim is nev­er far-off, as demon­strat­ed by the suc­ces­sion of words in the poem:

the cus­tom, the days, the life
the song, the rhythm, the effort
the path, the water, the huts
the smoke gray earth
the wis­dom, the words, the discussion
the elders
the cadence, the hands, the tem­po, the hands
the stamp­ings of feet
the ground
(“Lim­bé”)

The “col­o­nized her­itage” has been altered into “colo­nial her­itage”: the masks end up being decap­i­tat­ed from their cos­tumes and their rit­u­al mean­ing. Exhib­it­ed behind glass, they func­tion with­in the knowledge/power struc­ture of the mod­ernistic Weltan­schau­ung of the muse­um. The sig­nif­i­cance of museifi­ca­tion is most dras­ti­cal­ly expressed in ref­er­ence to Wal­ter Benjamin’s ter­mi­nol­o­gy from his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion” (1936): arte­facts change from the modal­i­ty of rit­u­al-val­ue to the modal­i­ty of expo­si­tion-val­ue in the con­text of repro­ducibil­i­ty (248). Nev­er­the­less, the decap­i­tat­ed masks are not dead. To para­phrase the canon­i­cal 1953 French film-essay on African art Stat­ues Also Die by Chris Mark­er, Alain Resnais, and Ghis­lain Clo­quet, the masks still main­tain the pow­er to enchant, which is why they fea­ture in De Groof’s film.

Web_1 screenshot 'rendez-les-moi'

Fig­ure 2: Still from Ren­dez-les-moi (Give me back my black dolls), 2013, 3’ depict­ing Pier­rot Barra’s instal­la­tion art­work “Agwé.”

Ren­dez-les-moi attempts to ful­fil a transat­lantic cin­e­mat­ic resti­tu­tion of the black dolls by incor­po­rat­ing Pier­rot Barra’s instal­la­tion art­work “Agwé.” This con­tem­po­rary piece by the Hait­ian artist Bar­ra (1942-1999) has the form of a boat that car­ries dolls. On the boat, the film’s view­ers see Iwa Agwe, a voodoo sea-spir­it, rep­re­sent­ed as cap­tain of the ship Imamou, which brings the deceased back to their ances­tral home of Africa. Barra’s works were pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed to serve as “lit­tle altars” for the ini­tiés, the mem­bers of the houn­for admir­ing and pray­ing the loas or voodoo pan­theon. Syn­cretis­ing West-African ani­mist and Spir­it reli­gions with Catholi­cism and freema­son­ry, voodoo was devel­oped by slaves in Saint-Domingue and was a sup­port­ive fac­tor behind the Hait­ian rev­o­lu­tion (1804) that secured the world’s first Black Repub­lic.[6]

Give me the illu­sion I will no longer have to satisfy
the sprawl­ing need
of mer­cies snoring
beneath the world’s uncon­scious disdain
(“Lim­bé”)

One of the dolls shown in the film turns a closed eye on the word dis­dain, accen­tu­at­ing its con­tempt. Damas, for his part, artic­u­lates the dis­dain that often accom­pa­nies mer­cy, as a sen­ti­ment pro­ject­ed by the col­o­niz­er onto the col­o­nized. In “Lim­bé” he describes/illustrates the dis­dain­ful mer­cy expressed for the dolls by a seem­ing­ly com­pas­sion­ate muse­um vis­i­tor. Damas demands to give him the illu­sion that he could get rid of emp­ty mer­cy and rean­i­mate the dolls (and we acknowl­edge the fact that the dolls stand in as a metaphor for objec­ti­fied women, who do not appear in the poem).

Give me back my black dolls
so that I can play with them
the naïve games of my instinct
which has remained in the shad­ow of its laws
(“Lim­bé”)

In the poem, the word illu­sion stress­es the fatal­ist impos­si­bil­i­ty of what he asks: to get rid of a mer­ci­ful and par­a­lyz­ing atti­tude and to lib­er­ate his her­itage from the muse­um in order to meta­mor­phose it with new mean­ing—his mean­ing. The sad irony of Damas’ work is that he can­not see past these dolls as objects: the chance of recu­per­a­tion is tied to his own dom­i­na­tion of them.

In the visu­al poem how­ev­er, spo­ken words con­nect with the medi­um of mov­ing images. De Groof takes up Damas’ wish to get the illu­sion, as explained above, across two phas­es in the film. First, a series of ver­ti­cal shots (tilts) in par­al­lel mon­tage con­nects iron objects used to chain slaves (shown with down­ward tilts) and the black dolls (shown with upward tilts).[7] Sec­ond, the illu­sion of lib­er­a­tion through cin­e­ma devel­ops in the final sequence where a suc­ces­sion of shots depicts arte­facts in move­ment. Ver­ti­cal and cir­cu­lar move­ments as well as abstract shots, detach the objects from their dis­play, attempt­ing to break these object free from their place in the muse­um and its con­nec­tion with colo­nial history.

Web_2 screenshot 'rendez-les-moi'

Fig­ure 3: Still from Ren­dez-les-moi (Give me back my black dolls), 2013, 3’, depict­ing Gérard Quenum’s black dolls, Cour­tesy of the Artist.

III Concluding Thoughts

By read­ing “Lim­bé” and oth­er poems by Damas, we have tried to shed light on a par­tic­u­lar metaphor used by the poet to denounce the process of dehu­man­iza­tion as defined in Aimé Césaire’s Dis­course on Colo­nial­ism (1950). The image of the black doll might also refer to the many artis­tic objects stolen by French ethno­g­ra­phers and explor­ers, vis­i­tors and art col­lec­tors, in the colonies. More­over, the metaphor­ic black doll cross­es dif­fer­ent lines the poet want­ed to abol­ish: between ages, sex­es, races, and class­es. The read­ing of this poem illus­trates how much Damas’ poet­ry can be ampli­fied through close read­ing and artis­tic prac­tice. De Groof’s film presents an audio-visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Damas’ work. It may serve as an exam­ple of the ways in which Caribbean lit­er­a­ture can inspire con­tem­po­rary film art as a recu­per­a­tive and rec­on­cil­ia­to­ry strat­e­gy. Result­ing films then offer new inter­pre­ta­tions and thus encour­age re-read­ing of Caribbean writ­ers such as Damas.

 

Acknowl­edg­ments: This work was sup­port­ed by the Foun­da­tion for Sci­en­tif­ic Research-Flan­ders (FWO)

 

Works Cit­ed

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Image Notes.

Fig­ure 1: Still from Ren­dez-les moi (Give me back my black dolls), 2013, 3’

Fig­ure 2: Still from Ren­dez-les moi (Give me back my black dolls), 2013, 3’ depict­ing Pier­rot Barra’s instal­la­tion art­work “Agwé”.

Fig­ure 3: Still from Ren­dez-les moi (Give me back my black dolls), 2013, 3’, depict­ing Gérard Quenum’s black dolls, Cour­tesy of the Artist.

Notes

[1] A strong theme recur­rent­ly reap­pear­ing in Harlem Renais­sance poet­ry. See Gys­sels Kath­leen, “Damas et McK­ay : les démons blancs”, Riveneuve Con­ti­nents (automne-hiv­er 2008-2009), Hors-Série, Harlem Her­itage: 219-227. Gys­sels, Kath­leen, “Cor­re­spon­dances et con­so­nances: Bois-d’Ebène et Black-Label”, in Révolte, sub­ver­sion et développe­ment chez Jacques Roumain, Aca­cia, Michel, ed., Port-au-Prince, Edi­tions de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti, 2009 : 231-244.

[2] Trained as ethno­g­ra­ph­er and a pupil of Mar­cel Mauss and Paul Riv­et, Léon-Gontran Damas moves beyond a third Line, the endur­ing dif­férend around the issue of inde­pen­dence of the French Antilles and French Guiana. A strong oppo­nent to the vote of “départe­men­tal­i­sa­tion” launched by Césaire in 1946, Damas would for­ev­er remain the rebel, the “maroon” who does not fit in the tri­an­gle of the more Fran­cophile first Black mem­ber of the Académie française (Sen­g­hor) and life-long may­or of Fort-de-France, Césaire. In his acces­si­ble poet­ry, as well as in Retour de Guyane (1938), his sub­ver­sive por­tray­al of his moth­er coun­try in his cen­sored trav­el report on the results of French infil­tra­tion in French Guyana, Damas protest­ed fierce­ly against the départe­men­tal­i­sa­tion sup­port­ed by Aimé Césaire and fel­low Cayenese intel­lec­tu­als such as Gas­ton Mon­nerville and Félix Eboué. Reject­ing the sta­tus of “départe­ment d'outre-mer” for his own coun­try and the neigh­bour­ing French islands, Damas was con­vinced this sta­tus between auton­o­my and depen­dence would enhance a neo-colo­nial regime hold­ing the pop­u­la­tions in a dread­ful dou­ble bind. In line with Frantz Fanon, Damas believed that as cit­i­zens of France, they would always remain out­laws because of their ori­gin and skin colour. Final­ly, his with­draw­al from pol­i­tics and his dis­tanc­ing from the Négri­tude move­ment con­tributed to his isolation.

[3] The “Gal­i­bi” are one of the many Amerindi­an tribes liv­ing in French Guiana.

[4] ifaa​-plat​form​.org

https://​vimeo​.com/​7​0​7​4​1​130 (pas­word: bergendal)

https://​vimeo​.com/​7​0​7​3​1​876 (pas­word: bergendal)

[5] “Stole” is not strong enough a trans­la­tion for “cam­bri­ol­er.” In The Négri­tude Poets, An Anthol­o­gy of Trans­la­tions from the French (1989 [1975]), Con­roy-Kennedy, the verb “cam­bri­ol­er” gives the strin­gent equiv­a­lent “ran­sack­ing” (Con­roy-Kennedy 1989: 39-61). For Kesteloot, the first essay­ist to illus­trate the entire move­ment (Kesteloot 1963), the first poems by Damas indeed had a par­tic­u­lar­ly inso­lent and inci­sive char­ac­ter. Again the verb has not the strin­gent cor­po­re­al mean­ing of “fouiller” (nor of “cam­bri­ol­er” it is: “cam­ber” being close to “cham­ber,” the inti­mate space where atroc­i­ties are going on between white mas­ter and black slave). Lille­hei weak­ens Damas’ irri­ta­tion by trans­lat­ing “stole” instead of “ran­sacked.”

[6] octo​ber​gallery​.co​.uk/​e​x​h​i​b​i​t​i​o​n​s​/​2​0​0​7​v​o​y​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​h​tml

[7] The dolls are made by Gérard Quenum, an artist from the Repub­lic of Benin. Like the work of Bar­ra, Quenum makes pow­er­ful use of dis­card­ed children’s dolls and draws on voodoo tra­di­tions which have res­onat­ed across the Atlantic in var­ied guis­es (octo​ber​gallery​.co​.uk/​e​x​h​i​b​i​t​i​o​n​s​/​2​0​0​7​v​o​y​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​h​tml).


Copy­right Matthias de Groof and Kath­leen Gys­sels. This arti­cle is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons 3.0 License although cer­tain works ref­er­enced here­in may be sep­a­rate­ly licensed, or the author has exer­cised their right to fair deal­ing under the Cana­di­an Copy­right Act.