Vanishing Creole in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic: The United States, Panama, and the Caribbean
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53154/Oltreoceano66Keywords:
creoleness, nineteenth-century, anglophone atlantic, ambiguityAbstract
Il Vanishing Creole nel contesto Atlantico del diciannovesimo secolo: Stati Uniti, Panama e Caraibi
Nel loro costante itinerario attraverso regioni, lingue, secoli ed imperi, alcuni concetti chiave del mondo Atlantico (post)coloniale cambiano forma e significato. Dal momento in cui lasciano le loro lingue europee di origine e si addentrano nella sfera anglofona, termini quali “pirata”, “rinnegato/a”, “neofita”, “convertito/a”, “prigioniero/a”, “creolo/a” attraversano diversi gradienti di ambiguità, de-monizzazione e attribuzione razziale. Il termine “creolo/creola” (Creole) è forse l’esempio più noto. Se lo spagnolo criollo e il portoghese crioulo indicavano che qualcuno, o qualcosa, fosse nato nelle colonie, l’America anglofona declina il termine in una moltitudine di definizioni divergenti, tutte lega-te strettamente, per quanto in modo ambiguo, al concetto di razza. Nella letteratura statunitense, sia del Nord quanto del Sud, “creolo” diventa sinonimo di genealogie miste e illeggibili, spesso capaci di scatenare ondate di irrefrenabile desiderio. L’articolo si sviluppa attorno alla parola “creo-lo/creola” e le sue ambiguità in due opere ambientate nel Sud degli Stati Uniti negli anni precedenti alla Guerra Civile: The Creole Orphans di James S. Peacocke (1856) e il romanzo in versi Alcar, the Captive Creole: A Story of the South di M. Roland Markham (1857). Nei loro viaggi attraverso Nord e Sud degli Stati Uniti, Caraibi ed Europa, i protagonisti “creoli” incontrano un ampio spettro di definizioni di “Creoleness” e di loro stessi, parallele, ma dissonanti, ed indissolubilmente legate alla razza. Propongo di seguire le iterazioni del termine “creolo/creola” in questi e, limitatamente, altri testi che manifestano l’instabilità del concetto di Creoleness nell’Atlantico anglofono; inoltre, è mia intenzione dimostrare che l’ambiguità e l’indeterminatezza della parola “creolo/creola” e delle identità che vi aderiscono spesso trovano espressione in un vocabolario denso di erotismo e desiderio interrazziale.
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