Tennessen


discourse and of signs. Modern man is obliged to
communicate, not only as an individual speaking subject
but collectively as well, for instance, in polls and
various other statistical surveys. Here the masses are
compelled to reveal their secret, Baudrillard explains
in les strategies fatales, even if they don't have one--
they must nevertheless cross over the threshold of
silence and say something. Yet, the very title of this
most recent book suggests that Baudrillard would agree
that saying too much is in itself a form of linguistic
resistance, another "subversion by reversion," namely,
a fatal strategy.

 The point becomes clearer if we ask what happens
when there is excess of any kind, when there is too
much left over or there is a dangerous remainder--what
happens when, for example, there is a sudden influx of
cash into a monetary system. Basic economics teaches
that any surplus is capable of ruining the system of
equivalences, if it is disproportionately poured back
into it. And the outcome is exactly the same, no matter
if the surplus is a remainder of goods or a linguistic
remainder. This is why the influx of French words
into Creole is deplored by people like Edouard Glissant
who believe that such a practice can onlv contribute
in the long run to a banalization of Creole and its
eventual disappearance as a language of vitality and
creative force.

 But what complicates the Creole situation is the
fact that the language is in a certain sense intemperate
by its very nature. A close look at the origins of the
Creole speech act will show that excess (i.e., of noise)
was a technique used by the African slave from the start.
Because slaves were not allowed to talk to one another,
they disguised their speech either as shouts in the cane
field or whispers in the night and for a long time there
was really nothing in between. Thus, we might hypothesize
that Creole first sprung from both an extreme of sound
and from a lack of it. In this regard, it is interesting
to note also that the principle of excess (i.e., of
riches) is one of the constant features of Creole
folktales, as Glissant points out in Le Discours antillais.
The riches can be either quantitative, as when a story
enumerates things to eat or when we are told a castle
has 210 toilets, but there is also qualitative excess,