MARYSE COND£ BETWEEN THE IMPULSE TO LEAVE AND THE IMPULSE TO RETURN: A REAPPROPRIATION OE ANTILLEAN SPACE NORA C . COTTILLE-FOLEY (TRANSLATED BY PHILLIP D . BAILEY)' GEORGIA iNsmrrrE OF TECHNOLOGY As Pascale Becel states, in Caribbean literature where "the question of iden- tity crisis remains a central preoccupation" travel has "archetypal value [of] initia- tion to the identity formation ofthe Antillean subject" (Becel, 135). According to Glissant, the "impulse to leave" that motivates people ofthe West Indies threatens Antillean culture with extinction by assimilation (Glissant, 76). Consequently, Glissant recommends "a retum to place. Detour is only a useful ruse if the Retum enriches it" (ibid). Maryse Conde offers us the example of a long refiection on the matter, both in her personal life and in her intellectual search. After having left Guadeloupe and lived in metropolitan France, Conde sought, without success, an answer to her quest for identity in Africa. Recently she has retumed to Guadeloupe where she has tried to reestablish ties with the local population (Clark, 104). This experimen- tation with exile and retum appears in her work where the treatment of space occupies an important place. Two literary works, published more than ten years apart, illustrate the tenden- cies of Conde's geo-political refiections. On the one hand, Heremakhonon, the author's first novel, presents the paralyzing effects ofthe impulse to leave aroused by the attractive force of the African identity pole. On the other, /, Tituba, Witch of Salem, written when Conde was beginning to rediscover Guadeloupe, develops the richness of the retum to the native Caribbean center. The choice of a center of attraction defines, in both of her novels, the failure or the success ofthe protagonist's search for identity. For Veronica, Africa appears progressively in the form of an assimilating center of quicksand. In contrast, for Tituba the retum to the Caribbean center is a source of desire whose fulfillment is always delayed. This desire pro- vokes a series of displacements from one triangular relationship to another, dis- placements that become concrete in space through a series of voyages. The insta- bility of human relationships stirs up a chain of fertile geographic and interpersonal displacements, which allows the denunciation ofthe conceptual artificiality of fixed binary identity comparisons in favor of an Antillean identity mosaic. Veronica, the Antillean heroine oi Heremakhonon, leaves for Africa in search of her origins, following an identity quest inspired by the Negritude movement. Throughout the novel, the African continent is compared to a matemal womb from which the heroine would like to be symbolically rebom in order to no longer be a "bastard" in the cultural sense (the Antilles being perceived as "children bom out of wedlock," bom ofthe slave trade). By living in Africa, she hopes also to heal the personally felt ethnic humiliation of her childhood. Indeed, the black-middle class