Man and Landscape: Literary Biodiversity and Aesthetic Revolution in Aimé Césaire and Alfred Alexandre

Abstract

This article examines biodiversity in Caribbean literary texts in terms of the subject’s interaction with its environment. Using evocations of island and urban landscapes from Cahier d ’ un retour au pays natal , Moi laminaire , Le bar des Amériques and Les villes assassines , we show how the authors employ an environmental lexicon to express themselves while painting the world. The writing communicates a world devastated by a painful memory of slavery and a modern society stricken by extreme violence. The crisis of the living world, linked to the commodification of human beings from the slave trade to the neo-trafficking of drugs and prostitution, creates tensions and imbalances that the narrators try to rebalance through their reflections on the world. Literature enables us to reexamine these focal points of historical and contemporary domination in order to decry their mechanisms, in an innovative socio-poetic and aesthetic language, with a view to building a more viable and healthier society.