Spirituality and slavery in Maryse Condé's Moi, Tituba sorcière… : from ritual adaptation to universal magic.

by Sebastien Sacre

It is a fact that, during the Atlantic slave trade, the exiled African populations had to undergo dramatic cultural and personal ruptures: during the crossing of the ocean, they lost everything they possessed… except their memories, their African myths and oral tales. According to scholar Mircea Eliade, these “surviving” elements of cultural memory are essential for the survival of any civilization. Indeed, despite sufferings, alienation and attempted acculturation a form of African cultural memory and “civilization” was able to survive in the Caribbean , thanks to these folktales that allowed a form of communication between slaves of different origins. However, if we go through contemporary francophone Caribbean literature and culture, it appears that Africa is not always seen as the land of the origins. As centuries passed, a gradual cultural syncretism appeared as the different cultures (Native, African, European and later Hindu) present in the Caribbean islands came in contact. The first generations of slaves, born in Africa, gradually disappeared and were replaced by the younger generations for whom Africa could only be a myth instead of a memory/reality. As a result, change was necessary, spirituality had to adapt.

N o author has proposed a connection between those elements as important as Maryse Condé's did in her novel Moi, Tituba sorcière noire de Salem . A novel in which her character, Tituba, who was initiated to magic by an old African lady, goes to Salem, Massachusetts, and discovers various aspects of another kind of ritual magic. Connections appear between Caribbean magic and European-pagan rituals and it appears that magic changes through time: some rituals are lost, others are created and magic remains, as if universal… But to what extend? The study of magic in Condé's novel raises several crucial questions for our presentation: what is the significance (real and metaphorical) of such universality? What is the importance of speech and materiality in those rituals and, most or all, what is the relation between this image of universal/individual magic conveyed by Maryse Condé and cultural memory in the Caribbean ?