M. NourbeSe Philip’s Poetics of Justice: Reacquiring the Tongue, (W)ri(gh)ting African-Caribbean History

Résumé 0

Trinidadian Canadian poet M. NourbeSe Philip practised Law for seven years in Toronto before devoting her life to her writing in 1983. Philip’s work is a hybrid mixture of genres as over the last decades the author produced a number of prolific essays, fiction and poetry work. To her, law and poetry share an obsession with language and in fact, her work is influenced by the material and concrete aspect of the legal text as well as by the fluid and abstract nature of the poetic text. Philip’s work is reminiscent of a poetic court where the writer appears to take proceedings against dominant discourses or to turn the previously accepted evidence upside down while the reader becomes a juror who is to return a new verdict. As ’she tries her tongue’ (1989), Philip aims at retelling African Caribbean history from the perspective of the oppressed thus demonstrating how fundamental it is for the Caribbean writer to engage with history. As a matter of fact, this paper seeks to demonstrate to what extent Philip’s former profession has contributed to shape her writing through which she attempts to reacquire her tongue and to express her thirst for historical truth and social justice. Hence, to what degree are legal and Euro-centric accounts of African history being challenged by Philip’s texts? Ultimately, does the fragmentation of the text genuinely allow the poet to write/right her history, to mourn her African ancestors and to ’make the black hole (w) hole’ (1997)?