Ti Jean L’Horizon : An Ecocritical and Decolonial Approach of the Guadeloupean Anthropocene

Abstract

At its publication in 1979, Simone Schwarz-Bart's second novel, Ti Jean L'Horizon, was celebrated by critics and seen as an extension to the French West Indies of the Indigenist legacy of Haitian writers Jacques Roumain and Jacques Stephen Alexis. The author was also associated with Maryse Condé and both Guadeloupean authors were seen as challenging the myth of the return to Africa so dear to the Négritude movement. Finally, when the Creolité movement emerged in the late 1980s, Schwarz-Bart's novels were seen as its precursors.

Today, the question arises whether Ti Jean L'Horizon is still relevant to the West Indian reader. Could we not approach the novel from a new angle and draw new meanings from it? This article proposes to examine some of them, looking at Ti Jean's odyssey from the perspective of postcolonial ecocriticism and a decolonial reading of Guadeloupean history. Indeed, if it has managed to stand the test of time and still makes sense, it is because Ti Jean's quest also addresses environmental issues following the region's slave-owning past and ideological changes. In this respect, the novel is a precursor to recent calls to preserve the island's landscapes and biotopes and to fight against climate change in the West Indies.