Sex, Sea, and Self: Nationalism and Sexuality in French Caribbean Discourse, 1924-1948 Couti Jacqueline

Sex, Sea, and Self reassesses the place of the French Antilles and French Caribbean literature within current postcolonial thought and visions of the Black Atlantic. This interdisciplinary study of female and male authors reconsiders their political strategies and the critical role of French creoles in the creation of their own history. Using a feminist lens, this study examines neglected twentieth-century French texts by Black writers from Martinique and Guadeloupe, making the analysis of some of these texts available to readers of English for the first time.

In the systems of cultural production under consideration, sexuality constitutes an instrument of political and cultural consciousness in the chaotic period between 1924 and 1948. This approach recalibrates overly simplistic understandings of the victimization and alienation of French Caribbean people. Studying sexual imagery