TY - SER KW - politique / politics KW - Haiti KW - Caribbean AU - Martin Munro CY - Charlottesville, Virginia LA - anglais / English N1 -

The author takes an interdisciplinary approach to the notion of apocalypse in Caribbean societies, past and present, with an emphasis on Haiti. He draws on the theories of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižik as put forth in his book Living in the End Times. Žižik sees four ‘riders’ of apocalypse in the global context. Munro applies these terms to the Caribbean. They are ecological disaster, in the broadest sense of the term, slavery, the social divisions resulting from slavery, and the pervasive criminality in the region. Caribbean literature serves as pathways into these ‘riders’. But the author frames literature in the broader context of regional history and the narrower frame of 20th century Haitian politics, with chapters titled “The Duvaliers and Apocalyptic Memory,” “Utopian Ends: Aristide and the Apocalypse,” “The Chimères and the Haitian Antihero,” and “Religion Nature, and the Apocalypse.” The back jacket blurb announces that the author traces the evolution of apocalyptic thought in the region from negritude to the present, through works by authors such as Césaire, Fanon, Benitez-Rojo, Glissant, Dash, and Laferrière. The pages on Césaire’s influence on Laferrière are of particular interest. But researchers who study Césaire and négritude will find the book somewhat light, in terms of documentation and space, on these topics. TH

PB - University of Virginia Press PP - Charlottesville, Virginia PY - 2015 SN - 978-0-8139-3820-2 (15x23 cm hardback) EP - 228 TI - Tropical Apocalypse: Haiti and the Caribbean Experience ER -