History as neurosis: Psychoanalysis and Marxism in Édouard Glissant’s Le Discours antillais

Abstract

In Le Discours antillais (1981) Glissant analyses the alienation of the Martiniquan people within both a psychoanalytical and a Marxist perspective. He argues that they have repressed their consciousness of their history, so that their relation to it is neurotic. He considers psychosis to be in some sense less negative, because it is an escape from repression. But he also uses Marxism because he believes that the current state of the society derives from economic factors, specifically the collapse of the sugar cane industry: and since Martinique has no ‘real’ economy, it can have no ‘real’ social classes either. His use of both theoretical approaches is compared with the positions of Lacan and Althusser.