Khal Torabully. "Coolies" and corals, or living in transarchipelagic worlds. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ette, Ottmar
• Is Part Of: Journal of the African Literature Association. Volume 11:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 112
• Page End: 119
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: African literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; African literature; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 809.896
• DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2017.1335948
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2167-4736

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Khal Torabully creates poetry and a poetics for those forgotten by history, a theorem and theory which construct a tangible and sensual landscape, allowing for an empathetically shared experience and expressing the dramatic climax of the third phase of accelerated globalization: a project that would be unthinkable without the cultural theory we now have at our disposal in the present surge of globalization. In his poetic and theoretical texts, he has paid a literary tribute to the Coolies, usually from India, but also China and many other countries. Given Torabully's Mauritian roots, but also the worldwide migration of the Coolies themselves, the world of Coolitude is culturally and linguistically extremely diverse, making the act of translation very relevant and giving it multiple meanings. Literature brings these forgotten lives back to life and allows us to share this experience thanks to its aesthetic force. It traces the movements, which sketch trajectories functioning to this day as palimpsest-like vectors of our own paths and trajectories. The author of Chair Corail, Fragments Coolies breaks the chain of mutual exclusions, replacing it with a type of writing belonging to a wider array of expressive modes which in diasporic situations unleash polylogical and archipelagic imaginaries.