Sangue e melaço: violência, solidariedade e identidades subalternizadas e subalternizantes em Commandeur du sucre, de Raphaël Confiant

Abstract

This research has as its central theme the relationship between the phenomena of violence and solidarity and the processes of construction of subalternized and subalternizing identities present in the fictional environment presented in the novel Commandeur du sucre, by the Martinican writer Raphaël Confiant. Our objective is to identify in what way the phenomena of violence and solidarity dialogue, in Commandeur du sucre, with the processes of construction of subalternized and subalternizing identities represented in its plot. For the elaboration of this work, interlocutions were made with theoreticians who reflect about violence, solidarity, subalternity, coloniality, decoloniality, and Creoleness. It was possible to verify that, in the novel Commandeur du sucre, the issue of subalternity is directly linked to the white/non-white dichotomy of colonial origin. We identified, in this way, that although subalternized identities are associated with non-white rural workers and subalternizing identities with white Martinicans, the subalternized/subalternizing dichotomy clashes when analyzing the non-white mixed-race foreman Firmin Léandor, who figures in Commandeur du sucre as a point of intersection between the experience of dominating and that of being dominated.