French Guest Lecturer Karen Lindo

Guadeloupean author, Maryse Condé's novel Célanire cou-coupé deploys shame, power and humor to collapse the categories of race, gender and sexuality that purport to apprehend a clearly defined identity in post-colonial narratives and theoretical models. Condé's work forces us into an unsettling position of uncertainty and invites us to laugh at our endless machinations to erect logical grids to delineate claims to an identity that inevitably crumbles in our dynamic relations with the other.