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Article Excerpt
The genre of autobiography in the hands of an orphan might seem ironic: The writing of history by an individual without knowable pre-history. Yet, there is logic to the orphan's life writing if one views autobiography as the written record of a self-made life. This paper explores the postcolonial orphan autobiography through a reading of Jamaica Kincaid's Mr. Potter (2002) and Calixthe Beyala's La Petite fille du reverbe (1998), exposing the coincidence of states of orphanage and states colonization. I demonstrate the manner in which orphanage dominates the postcolonial space; how it manifests itself within individuals and within the state itself. I situate the works within the context of life-writing so as to consider the theme of literacy in postcolonial literature, the agency displayed by the colonized orphan who becomes a writer and the implications for postcolonial states fully prepared to write their own histories.
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My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! (Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)
In the final pages of Jamaica Kincaid's Mr. Potter the narrator's autobiographical project takes her to the unmarked grave of the father who abandoned her. The scene which unfolds is only one example of the state of lack which defines the novel: the missing headstone; the missing name; the orphaned narrator and the now voiceless father. Mr. Potter--now dead--has lost the capacity to speak, and so can not assist his daughter in the writing of her life story. However, Kincaid's narrator will not be deterred. She speaks her father's name and then writes it, and in doing so "imagines him whole and complete" (2002. 193). "Writing" the father in order to write the self is the narrator's answer to the challenge of the orphan's autobiography.
The genre of autobiography in the hands of an orphan might seem ironic: the writing of history by an individual supposedly without history, or more precisely, without a coherent known or knowable pre-history. Yet, there is logic to the orphans life writing it one views autobiography as the written record of a self-made life. The autobiography as creative writing, that is, as the creation of oneself through writing, is an exercise in personal agency. One could even say that an orphan is the quintessential autobiographer; a writer without the judging eyes of family, for whom the self, transcribed, is a construct more personal than social. Indeed, the independence inherent in the orphan's life writing can be compared to giving birth not only to a narrative, but also to oneself. For the orphan, autobiography is not, as Michel Foucault suggested, writing, "in order to become other than what one is." (1987, 182). Rather, it is writing in order to become.
Like many implicitly retrospective life-narratives, the orphan's autobiography may attempt to resurrect the imagined ancestors of the abandoned child. However, the fissure between the orphan and his or her origins renders the author's account of history incomplete or inaccurate. The success of the autobiographical orphan narrative is thus not only in its engagement in the archeology of one's origins, but also in its emphasis on the creation of a personal history. It is a bildungsroman in the truest sense; a genesis which requires the will of the author to become his or her own creator.
This paper explores the genre of the postcolonial orphan autobiography through a reading of Jamaica Kincaid's Mr. Potter and Calixthe Beyala's La petite fille du reverbere (1998) (The little girl under the street lamp) in order to expose the manner in which states of orphanage and states of colonization coincide. I seek here to demonstrate the manner in which the theme of orphanage dominates the postcolonial space; how
it manifests itself within individuals as well as within the state itself. Though the protagonists of these texts are black women--the former an Antiguan and the latter a Cameroonian--the choice to present these narratives together has less to do with gender and is more based on their racial and political commonalities; cultural and historical kinships which also inform the lives of the male characters of these novels. This comparative study is not a creation of the kind of "ethnic absolutism" of which Paul Gilroy warns us, in which race becomes the sole factor in determining similarity of experience (1993, 5). Rather race, history and the geographic link of what Gilroy calls the Black Atlantic create unquestionable links between these orphan narratives. I also situate the works within the context of life-writing so as to consider the theme of literacy in postcolonial literature, the agency displayed by the colonized orphan who becomes a writer and the implications for postcolonial states fully prepared to write their own histories.
In Mr. Potter Kincaid tells the story of her illiterate, orphan father, Roderick Potter, who abandons her and her mother, just as he abandons countless other women and children on the Caribbean island of Antigua. La petite fille du reverbere is the story of the young Beyala--nicknamed "Tapoussiere" or "your dust"--who is deserted by her mother, and raised by her grandmother in a slum of Cameroon. Beyala's heroine searches in vain for paternal love, but eventually, finds she can thrive within the state of orphanage.
A precise definition of the genre of postcolonial orphan autobiography distinguishes the orphan's life writing from the orphan narrative; the latter having no coincidence of writer, narrator and orphan subject. The former is bound by Philippe Lejeune's autobiographical pact in that it relates the life story of an actual person, and not, as the orphan narrative might, of an invented hero (1975, 14, 28). While both genres are concerned with identity construction, the orphan's autobiography implies the personal agency of the orphan, while within the orphan narrative the protagonist depends on the author to create her. The author, in writing the orphan's story, has relegated her to second or third person status, whether or not the narrative is autodiegetic. Marivaux's La vie de Marianne on les aventures de Madame la Comtesse de*** (1728-1745), though presented as an orphan memoir, is clearly an orphan narrative. Marianne is no more than a figment of the author's imagination, and cannot exist without him. Conversely, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1764-1767) is a true orphan autobiography in which the author, motherless, long estranged from his father and exiled from his native land, seeks to write himself into existence.
The desperate need to write the self, which culminates in Rousseau's Confessions is also of great significance for the postcolonial orphan--a child who, as a consequence of Western hegemony, has lost parent and motherland through death, abandonment, or permanent exile. Indeed the history of the postcolony should not be written without first considering the orphan's omnipresence, and without acknowledging that the postcolony itself is an orphan, first exploited, then abandoned by its "mother country," its history erased or perverted. The term "orphan," as it has been understood throughout the ages, is a concomitant of the state of the postcolony. The Latin orbus meaning "bereft," and the German Erbe or "non-inheritor" could easily refer to the condition of the colony and the colonized. The Italian term esposito, or [familial] exile, referring to a child who has been put out of its home (David-Peyre 1987, 3) and the English term "orphan" which has come to mean "one deprived of some protection or advantage," also defines the state of those affected by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the European carving-up of Africa into colonies. (1)
However, the orphan's autobiography as a means of understanding the predicament of the state remains an underdeveloped source within postcolonial studies, specifically in scholarship dealing with sub-Saharan Africa and its Diasporas. Although the orphan figure is present in pre-colonial African oral tradition and employed in orphan narratives by authors such as Mongo Beti in Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (1956), Ferdinand Oyono in Une vie de boy (1956), and more recently by Emmanuel Dongala in Johnny, Chien Mechant (2002), the significance of the orphan's self-writing within the context of postcolonial studies has yet to be fully exploited. Ludovic Obiang (2002) and Eloise A. Briere (1993) provide starting points exploring both pre and post-colonial orphan narratives, but they confine themselves to the African continent and explore orphan narratives rather than orphan autobiography. A comparative study of orphan autobiographies in Africa and its Diasporas which places the orphan as a central figure among the colonized is thus...
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