Fragmentation and Restoration in Derek Walcott’s Omeros

Abstract

Creolization is usually taken to be an important and distinctive feature of the Caribbean. Edward Brathwaite defines the process in the case of Jamaica as involving the ‘formation of a society which developed, or was developing, its own distinctive character or culture which, in so far as it was neither purely British nor West African, is called “creole”’. In the course of this process, during which two cultures had to ‘adapt themselves to a new environment and to each other’ within a context dominated by slavery, a ‘friction’ was generated which was both ‘cruel’ and ‘creative’.¹ One aspect of this process is the development of creole languages and of what linguists call the creole continuum, which refers to the existence of a number of language varieties, ranging from the ‘acrolect’, a local version of the standard language (English or French, for example), to the ‘basilect’ or variety furthest removed from the standard. The existence of this continuum allows speakers to move between different language varieties — a characteristic known as code-switching. Although creolization is not synonymous with translation, it is nevertheless one manifestation of a translational structure within Caribbean cultures. By a ‘translational structure’ I mean here the structure of similarity-in-difference or difference-in-similarity that Clifford Geertz identifies as a feature of cultural translation.