The repeating text : Signifyin(g), creolization and marronage in African diaspora womanist narratives

• Main Author: Codner, Paul Martin
• Format: Others
• Published: FIU Digital Commons 2006
• Subjects: Caribbean Languages and Societies; English Language and Literature
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2394

This thesis studied African-American and Caribbean fiction using models of African diasporization, creolization and womanism to discover how those theoretics affected understandings of black subjectivities. The diverse theoretics above-mentioned were examined to discover how their intersections enabled productive cross-fertilizations, notwithstanding differences. Black women's literary texts crossing diverse locations and experiences were examined. It was shown that their metadiscursivity enabled creative theorizations of creolization and African diasporization around the repeating text formulation. Their Eyes Were Watching God was analyzed as a prototypical womanist diasporic text, whose attributes were repeated and re-elaborated across various boundaries in Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home and No Telephone to Heaven. This study found that African diaspora womanist texts and theoretics, unbounded by location, engaged each other in conversations and contestations, affirmed kinship beyond differences and challenged various hegemonies. It concluded that the repeating text expanded parameters of black literary criticism and theory.