Il Tolomeo

Rivista di studi postcoloniali | A Postcolonial Studies Journal | Journal d’études postcoloniales | Revista de estudos pós-coloniais

Mémoires en conflit et le rôle du silence dans Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes de Simone et André Schwarz-Bart et La mémoire aux abois d’Évelyne Trouillot

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Abstract

This article explores how memory is recovered and represented in the novels Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes (1967) by the Franco-Guadeloupean couple Simone and André Schwarz-Bart and La mémoire aux abois (2010) by the Haitian Évelyne Trouillot. Drawing on Régine Robin’s typologies of memory described in Le roman mémoriel (1989), it examines the interplay between individual, collective, national and cultural memory, analyzing how fragmented recollections, silences, and sensory stimuli articulate diasporic and intergenerational remembrance. Through polyphonic female voices, the novels challenge dominant historical narratives and foreground subaltern, decolonial modes of memory rooted in Caribbean postcolonial experience.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: June 14, 2025 | Accepted: Sept. 22, 2025 | Language: fr

Keywords Régine RobinAndré Schwarz-BartÉvelyne TrouillotHaitian LiteratureFrancophone Caribbean LiteratureSimone Schwarz-Bart