Performance in Caribbean and African Literatures as Subversion of the Colonial Order

In the past oral Caribbean and African cultures,performances by the“griots”reminded the community of its heroic past.In colonial studies,performance is a way for the colonized people to reconnect with its original soul and language and to become magnificent of creativity like the storyteller Solibo in Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnifique(Caribbean).In Chamoiseau’s novel,the Black policemen who came to investigate on Solibo’s sudden death during the performance look grotesque.They mimic the French colonizers with their“baton”and their racism at thinking evil of the Black community and they provoke laughter.Mimicry and the irony it conveys,subverts the formerly ironclad authority of the colonial order(Homi K.Bhabha in Location of Culture).The Cameroonian writer Werewere Liking-Gnépo also warns the Africans of the danger of wearing the White Mask of the colonizers(like Fanon in Black Skin,White Masks).She demonstrates in her Song/Novel She will be of Jasper and Coral,that while the African Mask empowers the performer of metaphysical powers,the White Mask of colonialism on the contrary weakens the performer who internalizes his inferiority and becomes complicit of his subjugation.Fortunately,Werewere Liking-Gnépo shows ithat the White Mask of colonialism can be used to mimic the harshness and corruption of the Colonial order and in doing so to bring back regeneration of Africa.