Du negrier au bateau ivre : figures et rythmes du temps dans l'oeuvre de john edgar wideman
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Abstract EN:
John edgar wideman's fiction was first published when the black arts movement was fast developing in his country, the united states of america. Yet it owes little to "black" nationalism. From the start any racial definition of man is forcefully rejected by this heir to richard wright, ralph ellison and robert hayden. In his first three novels, published between 1967 and 1973, he laments at length the prevailing "black" / "white" dichotomy, but fails to find consistent ways out of what he calls "little time", i. E. Racial history. Perceived as yet another rehash of the paradigm of race, black heroics are unambiguously disqualified in hurry home and the lynchers. Only in 1981-1983 with the homewood trilogy does wideman strike a new and more jubilant note, as he lovingly gathers up the numerous stories of ordinary life which were told around him when a child. Authorship is no longer a matter of absolute control over the text; rather it means opening up to the many voices competing for air time and truth within society. The storyteller acts as medium to them all. Only then can he hope to gain access to (african) "great time" or (australian) "dreamtime", "a nonlinear, atemporal medium in which all things that ever have been, are, or will be mingle freely". As all stories go backward and forward, linear time collapses and the always present tense of narrative takes over. To counter the notorious slavers' shuttle and erase racial history, wideman has now come to rely on the semi-autonomous shuttle of narrative. Since 1989 his assiduous and ever more sophisticated weaving of textual "great time" is coupled with an uninhibited revisiting of the so-called enlightenment, when africans were transported to the new world, the modern notions of "race" and "ethnicity" invented and ancient greece remodeled and cleansed of all egyptian influence. Because there is always one more voice to hear, there can be no end to the storytelling. Narrative "great time" is what comes next and next and next. In wideman's fiction "blackness" is the opposite of a boxed-in identity: it means revealing and exploring man's infinite possibilities.
Abstract FR:
Les premieres publications de john edgar wideman coincident avec l'emergence du black arts movement dans son pays, les etats-unis d'amerique. Toutefois son oeuvre ne doit rien au nationalisme "noir". Comme richard wright, ralph ellison et robert hayden le firent avant lui, wideman rejette toute definition raciale de l'homme. Ses trois premiers romans, publies entre 1967 et 1973, composent une longue lamentation de la pensee dichotomique en "noir" et "blanc". L'auteur se contente d'y suggerer que la voie du salut passe plutot par l'imagination que par un heroisme "noir", dont il recuse divers modes dans hurry home et the lynchers. Il faut attendre la parution de la trilogie d'homewood en 1981-1983 pour que la deploration du "petit temps" de l'histoire raciale cede la place a la celebration d'un autre temps, non lineaire, inspire du "grand temps" africain et du "temps du reve" des aborigenes australiens. C'est en revenant aux innombrables recits qu'il a toujours entendu raconter dans sa famille a homewood (un quartier de pittsburgh), que wideman decouvre a la fois le pouvoir du recit, superieur au pouvoir individuel du seul auteur, et le va-et-vient constitutif du recit entre passe et avenir. Employe des lors a produire sans fin du "present perpetuel de narration", ou co-existent ce qui fut, ce qui est et ce qui sera, il constate que la navette du texte peut defaire celle des navires negriers. A partir de 1989, passe maitre dans l'art du recit, c'est desormais sans complexe qu'il remonte au moment ou furent inventees les notions modernes de "race" et d'"ethnicite", en plein siecle des lumieres, au plus fort de la traite transatlantique. L'oeuvre de wideman joue du temps pour communiquer la non essence de ce dernier a la "negrite" : redefinie, celle-ci ne designe plus une identite fixe imposee a certains par le discours dominant, mais un chemin de liberte, l'exploration du possible infini qui seul definit, selon cet auteur, notre condition.