Statues in the French Caribbean and the Iconoclastic Assault

Abstract

This article contributes to debates concerning slavery and slave museums, taking as inspiration historical novels and archives from the Schwarz-Bart Library in Goyave (Guadeloupe). I question, in particular, the passing over of black or mulatto female heroines, in sharp contrast with béké figures who, even if they have been temporarily(!) beheaded, remain the more famous icons in the collective mind of the French Caribbean and Caribbean population at large. I could indeed measure that Martinicans, in particular, are proud to have ‘given Napoléon’s wife’ and to have erected her beautiful body into white marble ‘posture’ at the Fort-de-France Savanah. My survey touches on the counter-example of ‘La mulâtresse Solitude’, a statue erected in Guadeloupe, but without any indication of its source: the best-selling novel La mulâtresse Solitude by André Schwarz-Bart. Why does Édouard Glissant’s project for a ‘Centre national pour la mémoire des esclavages et de leurs abolitions’ on no occasion mention Solitude as the only female heroine such a Centre national could and should have staged? What does this tell us about the gender bias that continues to wreak havoc to the West Indies in all fields? Solitude remains a central, pivotal poteau mitan in Caribbean iconography. In spite of recent successful innovations, there is still much to sort out before leaving the dominant tendency to ‘statufier sur son sort’ and to promote male heroes instead of female ones.