Archives and ethics in postcolonial literature: Le Miraculé de Saint-Pierre by Gaston-Paul Effa

What is it about?

In the context of recent African historical novels that aim to rehabilitate their protagonists through reference to the archives as they appear implicitly, both in the paratext and in the story itself, this article offers a reading of the novel Le Miraculé de Saint-Pierre by Gaston-Paul Effa (2017). This polyphonic novel traces the life of Louis-Auguste Cyparis, allegedly the only survivor of the eruption of the Montagne Pelée in 1902. In this novel, the third-person narrative of Cyparis, which unfolds in three stages (Martinique, the Barnum & Bailey circus and Panama), is interspersed by a conversation between Effa himself as a character and a reader, who could be Cyparis’s great-granddaughter. The validity of written sources is therefore questioned in favour of private remembrance, transmitted from generation to generation. By analysing the thematic of meeting or appointment, this reflection will illustrate the ethical significance of the novel, by combining the approaches of Emmanuel Levinas on the encounter with the Other and of Jacques Derrida on the archive, coalescing them in a postcolonial worldview.

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