Periphery as Paradigm

Rather than undertake a polysystem approach to creole literature, to read, that is, from theory to text, I would like, as is the wont of some contemporary practitioners, deconstructionists in particular, to do the inverse: to read from text to theory, in this case from the global text of creole literatures (CLs) toward several facets of polysystem (PS) theory. I would like to argue by induction, in other words, that creole literatures offer an exemplary field in which to verify and elaborate PS theory. This special relevance devolves from three characteristics of CLs: first, they constitute a quintessentially non-canonized corpus of texts; second, they are reduced systems; third, they are particularly intense loci of interference. To some extent, all three of these features are properties not only of CLs, but of creole languages. Linguists do not of course define a creole in terms of its respectability or lack thereof, but historically or operationally. Nonetheless, the status of most creole speakers, as well as the prestige of the consecrated international vehiculars, serves to relegate creole and other marginal vernaculars to strata of the world linguistic which are, to apply the literary to the linguistic, noncanonized, marginal, peripheral. Given the privileged role non-canonized strata play in polysystem theory, not perhaps intrinsically but in reaction against unsystematic and romantically-nationally biased concepts (Even-Zohar 1986:4), CLs clearly offer interesting cases in point. There is a strong normative tendency in PS theory: 'As a rule, the center of the whole polysystem is identical with the most prestigious canonized system (Even-Zohar 1979:296). The proliferation of CLs (to say nothing of major world lit

Creole language · Linguistics · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistics and Language Studies · Literature, Language, and Rhetoric Studies · Philosophy · Psychology

• Describing Literature in Belgium

  Paul Dirkx•Dutch Crossing•1995

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