Creolizing the Metropole is a comparative study of postwar West Indian migration to the former colonial capitals of Paris and London. It studies the effects of this population shift on national and cultural identity and traces the postcolonial Caribbean experience through analyses of the concepts of identity and diaspora. Through close readings of selected literary works and film, H. Adlai Murdoch explores the ways in which these immigrants and their descendants represented their metropolitan identities. Though British immigrants were colonial subjects and, later, residents of British Commonwealth nations, and the French arrivals from the overseas departments were citizens of France by law, both groups became subject to otherness and exclusion stemming from their ethnicities. Murdoch examines this phenomenon and the questions it raises about borders and boundaries, nationality and belonging.

"Murdoch exploits the postmodern theoretical vocabulary to provide perceptive readings of a selection of French Caribbean novels within the framework of "antillanite" and "creolite.""-- E. Anthony Hurley, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Adlai Murdoch offers a detailed rereading of five major contemporary French Caribbean writers--Glissant, Conde, Maximin, Dracius-Pinalie, and Chamoiseau. Emphasizing the role of narrative in fashioning the cultural and political doubleness of Caribbean Creole identity, Murdoch shows how these authors actively rewrite their own colonially driven history.

Murdoch maintains that the culture of the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique is less homogeneous and more creatively fragmented than is commonly supposed. Promoting a new vision of this multifaceted region, he challenges preconceived notions of what it means to be both French and West Indian. The author's own West Indian origin provides him with intimate, firsthand knowledge of the nuances of day-to-day Caribbean life.

While invaluable to students of Caribbean literature, this work will also appeal to those interested in the African diaspora, French and postcolonial studies, and literary theory.

H. Adlai Murdoch, associate professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the author of articles in "Callaloo, Research in African Literatures," and "Yale French Studies."

This collection brings together methods and insights taken from literary criticism, cultural studies, philosophy, theory, film studies, and linguistics to define new parameters of study for the emerging field of francophone postcolonial studies. While francophone writings share some characteristics indicative of postcolonial literatures in general, they also have their own unique set of characteristics, including issues of migration, stereotyping, continued relationships with France, and creolization. This book gathers together some of the best-known francophone literary scholars to examine various francophone texts through a postcolonial lens.