Postcolonizing Europe? An International Workshop // May 10-12, 2010

Natalia Bremner (Leeds) - Constructions of Cultural Identity in the Indian Ocean: Réunion as ‘the ultimate island periphery’
Réunion appears to be an island of inherent contradictions. A former French plantation colony in the Indian Ocean, the island was officially incorporated into the European metropole in 1946 and today, as a région ultra-péripherique, it forms part of the European Union. The island’s population is intensely mixed on both an individual and communal level, the result of successive waves of immigration which continue to the present day. The island’s political status is thus clearly incongruous with what we might call a Creole consciousness: a sense of a specifically Réunionese experience which has developed (and is developing) in spite, or perhaps precisely because of the different ethnic, cultural and religious elements present in the population; and against the paradigm of Frenchness imposed by the state’s policy of cultural assimilation which aimed to preclude any expression of réunionnité (Réunion-ness).
The very real social consequences of the paradoxical cultural experience of the French départements was dramatically and violently revealed in the general strikes which took place at the beginning of this year, which called for government intervention to help those receiving the lowest salaries with the inflated cost of living in the overseas départements. The strike action began in Guadeloupe, and spread to Martinique, French Guiana and, significantly, Réunion; thus suggesting a solidarity which reaches beyond the imagined Caribbean community. This pan-Creole solidarity is also reflected in recent Caribbean intellectual engagement with constructions of identity, for example in Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant’s theoretical construct créolité, described as a ‘mental envelope’ which could hold wider international relevance (Eloge de la créolité 1991). However, as the French and international media’s focus on strike action in the Caribbean region appears to suggest, even within these expressions of solidarity, Réunion’s doubly peripheral position is maintained. The island is not only an overseas département, represented alternately as exotic island paradise and/or tropical banlieue; but it has also been so affected by the French colonial policy of assimilation that the Réunionese people are lacking in any geocultural markers within the surrounding region; a situation which thus appears in stark contrast to expressions of Caribbean solidarity explored by academics such as Edouard Glissant and Antonio Bénitez-Rojo. Constructions of identity in this context thus require an extremely creative and skilful approach, one that perhaps may well establish a new, specifically Réunionese position for the displaced island in an increasingly globalised international context through tentative explorations of solidarities both within the Indian Ocean region and in relation to other postcolonial spheres elsewhere.

READ MORE ABOUT THE EVENT