Shards of love discourse in Maryse Condé's decolonial historical fiction

Abstract

The text analyzes the novel I, Tituba, witch black of Salem, by Maryse Condé, according to semantic elements present in the narration, which, on the one hand, bring it closer to a classic narrative pattern and, on the other, bring unique components related to a certain point of view from which the report is based. It highlights, in the text, episodes in which the protagonist experiences love, here understood as an affective drive that gives rise to certain attitudes in different social interactions. As a literary-discursive formulation, this notion appears shattered in situations that constitute his journey. This fragmentation seems to indicate the intense emotional contradictions experienced by Tituba, her internal conflicts, the result of her condition as a woman, of African descent, surviving in a colonial, slave-owning and patriarchal society. What makes bell hooks' study, Everything about love: new perspectives, essential to understand such processes of overcoming and resilience in the decision to love and be loved, as expressed by Tituba, in the midst of a troubled existential journey. Roland Barthes' contribution, in Fragments of a Loving Discourse, corresponds to the selection of semantic indicators of the development of the theme-subject, suggesting, moreover, interpretative paths for such indexes, present in the novel under study as well as in universal canonical literature, as abundant documentation by the French semiologist. As a methodological guide, the approaches suggested by Abrams (2010) are used, namely expressive, mimetic, objective and pragmatic, which relate the topics highlighted in Condé's work, respectively, to the author's biographical data; contextual in relation to the story narrated; structural; as well as the uses that the narrative has given rise to in the discussion about the African diaspora, black feminism and decoloniality. And, finally, relevant aspects stand out for the perception of the work of the writer from Guadalupe as essential to the study of the formation of societies, based on a counter-hegemonic logic and in the midst of anti-racist processes of historical review.