The Radicalization of an Individual – As Told by Maryse Condé
MICHAEL NUNEZ
Maryse Condé, winner of the 2018 New Academy Alternative Prize for Literature, is a prolific Guadeloupean writer whose oeuvre is intimately concerned with the subjects of the African diaspora and their calamities, attributable to slavery, colonialism, and its contemporary avatar, globalization. She casts her fictional characters in a range of identities as Caribbean, African, and African Americans with mirrored experiences as they live in the wake of their subjugated realities, forever waged in the existential battle for personhood. Ever the iconoclast, Condé rejects convention, and she is persistent in questioning our commitment to ideals and purism. Satirical irony is a hallmark of her literary genius as she approaches the intersection of the impact of forms of oppression from unexpected – and rarely explored – positioning. Her plot lines are layered and textured, and like her characters, perform diasporic migrations, constantly shifting time and space. The language of her novels is often wry, witty, and provocative, tools she uses to avoid stereotypical renditions of the African diasporic subject. Her latest publication - The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana, translated by Richard Philcox – is imbued with the trademark qualities of her fictional work, but here, Condé transfixes her gaze on a contemporary political trauma – radicalization. She is precise and anatomical in her examination, offering us a commentary on racism, economic inequality in Guadeloupe, power dynamics, violence, immigration, and Jihadi terrorism. The novel would find Condé performing an alchemical transformation of the phenomena of radicalization and its byproduct, militant extremism, positioning it alongside the protagonists of a dual bildungsroman.
Book Cover: The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana by Maryse Condé
Published by World Editions
The novel provides us with Ivan and Ivana as protagonists, born in Guadeloupe to a poor black woman, and an estranged musician who helms as a descendent of the Royal family who once ruled the kingdom of Segu in Mali, a charming ode to Condé's novel, Segu. Despite the two leads, the Narrator is admittedly more interested in Ivan, and his process of radicalization, with Ivana existing in the foreground – her impact is integral, nonetheless. We follow the twins' fated journey, beginning in Guadeloupe, as they contend with the reality of the post-modern state. The twins initially appear inseparable, and yet their relationship encounters a fissure following a confrontation in a Basse-Terre marketplace where they would collide with racism - a woman refers to them as "miserably black." The interaction pierces their psyche, Condé writes, "From that day on Ivan and Ivana realized they belonged to the most underprivileged category of their population, the ones anyone could insult as they liked… In an instant they realized their skin was black, their hair kinky, and that their mother worked herself to the bone in the sugarcane fields for a pittance." Ivana is heartbroken and endeavors to avenge her mother by providing her with an alternative and better life; Ivan, however, is enraged. The Narrator acknowledges that the seeds of revolution are planted here for Ivan. The twins diverge upon different paths: Ivana, altruism that begets success, and a career in law enforcement. "We know, too that in order to be happy on this earth we need to shut our eyes to a good many things – something Ivana was good at doing." Ivan, a rage that germinates into alienation, violence, and finally radicalization, culminating in involvement with French Jihadists. Is this how the world works? Friends who abandon you without warning? Girls who slander you? Journalists who write lies about you? People prepared to eat you up alive? If so, give me a load of explosives for me to destroy it." High unemployment rates, political instability, violence, terse identity and language politics, and a dearth of opportunity creates a blight over them, and their hopeful chimera finds them seeking betterment in metropolitan France. They would end up in Africa first, where they brush with the violence begotten from corruption and religiosity as a form of resistance to western influence. Ultimately, their journey would end in Paris.
The peripatetic twins would struggle along their calamitous route, Ivan more so than Ivana, as they contend with their realities as post-colonial subjects, shattering conceptions of religion, race, geography, and history as they cross continents. But they each would offer a challenge to the other, a challenge that would conflate the difficulty of their experience. The twins have a strange, borderline incestuous relationship that forces them to fight against the desire to consummate their yearning. Ivan says to his sister, "I think of you all day long. I wonder what you are doing, what you are thinking. When I imagine your thoughts they end up becoming mine. All things considered, I am you." One might recall Cathy's speech to the housemaid Nellie in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights – a favored work of Condé. Their fight against the impulse has opposing manifestations: Ivana finds solace in her studies and books. Ivan rarely finds solace, which alienates him and leaves him vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation. Despite their bond, Condé offers them to us as choices provided to the post-colonial subject: acceptance of the established norms or refusal. In shaping the reality of the twins in this way, jarringly diametric, Condé is shedding light on the limited options offered to the youth population in Guadeloupe, an unsovereign island grappling with its colonized past.
Portrait of Maryse Condé, 2016
Photo by Ulf Andersen for Aurimages
Upon accepting the New Academy Prize, Condé stated, "I am glad and deeply proud, to be one Guadeloupean who has made her voice heard, thanks to the New Academy Prize. This gives me hope that Guadeloupe's voice, despite the island's misfortunes, remains powerful, remains magical, and still has the power to say no." The love for her birthplace is apparent in her latest work as she uses her gift of imagery to illustrate the overtones of the island in vivid detail. The agricultural landscape is lush, like Port-Louis, "the color of the sea is never the same. Iridescent from the sun's blaze, it is sometimes violet, sometimes green like that ink they no longer make since nobody writes by hand, and sometimes pastel-colored. Likewise, the sand turns tawny like the mane of a wild animal or blond like the down of a new-born chick." She intersperses the island's cuisine, writing of "…stuffed crabs, curried goat Colombo, tuna casserole, octopus, and conch fricassee." But Condé is careful to avoid exoticization, rejecting – and simultaneously chastising – touristic language, like that of which is used to describe Basse-Terre, which she describes as "a small nondescript town." Ever wary of sentimentalism, her depiction also sheds light on the island's travails. She provides us with the effects of Hurricane Hugo – the 1989 storm that rendered 35,000 people homeless and totaled 800 million dollars in damages. We also see the island's language politics. There is anger over the decision to sing in French as opposed to Creole. "at the time it caused an uproar and infuriated those who defended the Creole language. How come this sudden liking for French songs?" As such, Condé shows us the island's storied history, which has bearings on its inhabitants.
Still, globalization underscores the entirety of the work and is a significant contributor to Ivan's radicalization. Condé's text offers us a kaleidoscopic and unflinching composite of globalization; in both its economic and cultural forms. In her 2014 book of essays, The Journey of a Caribbean Writer, Condé asks, "can the globalization we are witnessing today be considered a mere avatar of slavery, an extension to the entire planet of the fate once reserved for Africans alone and resulting in 'disposable people' worldwide? We need only look to the lives of Ivan and Ivana for the answer. A major tenant of economic globalization is the movement of people as government and companies seek capitalist expansion. In Guadeloupe, we see this reflected in the milieu of the island. But also on its economy, which is entirely dependent on tourism. Nevertheless, the island is plagued with astronomical unemployment rates. The challenge in finding a job afflicts Ivan, Condé writes, "On an island where 35% of the population is unemployed, this was no easy task. However hard she climbed up and downstairs… she was always met with the same answer: no job available." Geopolitical forces and the affordability of travel have conflated the migration of people; Conde's text illustrates this as we see disconcerting movement - the twins become immigrants, and they would encounter a plethora in their travels. One of the challenges presented to Mali, and perhaps Africa as a whole, is the inextricability of culture and politics; we're offered, "A bunch of individuals thought the west was having too much of an influence on us and claimed to remedy it. According to them, our education system must be totally over-hauled and religion made all-powerful." It is here that we find Condé interrogating cultural globalization by providing us with an alternative perspective of relations between the world's western powers and Africa and the Middle East. As the West imposes its value systems on the world, the East looks to religiosity for a path towards freedom. And yet, the countries grappling with the western powers cannot be absolved, as they enact forms of oppression on its citizens - rooted in abuses of power and corruption. "The little man symbolized all the duplicity of a power structure that knew his reprehensible violence only too well but exploited him for its own security." The Narrator's examination of the chasm between the West and the East provides us with a particularly striking reflection, "All the horror of the world was revealed to him. The world seemed to be divided into camps: the West and their lackeys and the rest. The former claim they are victims and are attacked for no reason as they have done no harm… In actual fact, this is not true. Both camps are playing games of massacre, and each is as savage and implacable as the other. Both have no other solution but to respond to violence with violence." It isn't long before Ivan is recruited, he is told by a friend who nudges him towards Islamic beliefs and Jihadism, "You must become a Muslim, you must convert to Islam." Another says, "We must get out of this country. It's one of Europe's vassals, where nothing original is created, and nothing good can emerge. We must go to Europe and strike the heart of capitalism." Paris would shatter Ivan's dream of opportunity as he would experience its unspoken underbelly that houses immigrants who are forced into drug trafficking and prostitution "For years Cambrésis, like Calais, had been an open sore on the face of France. Right- as well as left-wing governments had tried to eradicate it to no avail. Crammed in together, Eritreans, Somalis, Comorians, and West Africans were all galvanized by the dream of reaching England, where they believed they would find work and lodging."
Yet, the globalization of the Caribbean and Africa by the world's western powers can't be considered the sole contributor to Ivan's radicalization. He is a blighted subject, who has suffered many afflictions and lacks companionship – globalization compounds this reality. Condé provides Ivan to us as a foreboding, an allegory of the globalized world – or perhaps he already exists. Willie Virgile Brigitte or 'Abderrahman the West Indian' is arguably one of Australia's most notorious terrorists. Born in Guadeloupe before moving to Paris, Brigitte was arrested and jailed in Australia for conspiring to attack the Lucas Heights High Flux Australian Reactor – Australia's only nuclear reactor – as well as the Holsworthy Barracks military base. It is reported that Brigitte also participated in the planning of the Charlie Hedbo attacks in Paris. It is a possibility then that Willie Brigitte is to Ivan Diarra as Ivan Diarra is to Willie Brigitte. We need not look to the novel as an attempt to humanize in so much as it explains the seemingly unexplainable. Still, Condé's work warns us against the proclivity of binary thinking and Manichaean viewership, where answers fail to unveil truths.