Tennessen


 DISCURSIVE SEDUCTION: CREOLE AND THE FRENCH OF FRANCE



 This paper deals with the nature of linguistic
 control in majority/minority situations and cites
 examples of resistance to such control in a specific
 discursive arena, that of the French-speaking West
 Indies. It suggests that Creole talk of these islands
 is a form of disruptive language not so much because it
 occupies a marginal position with regard to the more
 authoritative position of the official linguistic code
 but rather because it is a form which moves back and
 forth between the two positions, endlessly reversing
 itself. The premise is that language is often subject
 to sudden and unpredictable reversibility and for this
 reason, it can be turned around and used against authorized
 spokespersons. I will argue that Creole in the French
 Caribbean is a case in point.

 Creole languages, it has been said, developed as a
sort of bricolage, as a made-up or improvised solution
to a particular set of problems and contradictions and
therefore represent a deep-seated tension between those
in authority and those in subordinate positions.
Certainly this is a valid theory. But at the same time,
I should like to propose that Creole goes beyond mere
representation of the ambivalent social relations of a
people deprived of "authentic speech" and enters another
space altogether, one where words and forms no longer
strive to resemble things or circumstances but deliberately
undermine them. It is in this other space that the very
structure of the "official" language, French (and with
it the structure of the "official" order of things),
can be questioned, indeed challenged. For Creole
presides in the realm of the in-between, the ambiguous,
the composite, those things which, as Julia Kristeva
insightfully tells us in Powers of Horror, most disturb
identity, system, and order. From this perspective,
Creole talk is more than simply an alternative means of
communication in certain situations, it is also a highly
original form of linguistic resistance. And furthermore,
many scholars now think it was precisely that from the
very beginning. This is a provocative argument and one
which deserves closer examination.