In 1924, the French newspaper Les Continents led the publicity for a new book by an unknown author: ‘Véritable roman exotique et parisien’, read the advertisement, ‘admirablement écrit par un Noir Martiniquais’ (1). This advertisement for Benoît Alié’s Madiana, Roman poétique sought to capitalise on the success of René Maran’s Batouala, Véritable roman nègre (1921) and a growing taste among French readers for the exotic, emphasising at once the novelty of the author’s race and the familiarity of the book’s Parisian charm. 

 

In reality, Madiana was a much coarser read, and far less flattering to the French elite. In verses of crafted alexandrines, Alié delivered a biting satire taking aim at France’s literary and political establishments. The true, disruptive nature of Alié’s book was conveyed by two promotional interviews, also published in Les Continents, with Alié and his publisher, Emmanuel Édouard. ‘Des éclats ricochent parfois jusqu’aux murs de l’Institut ou du Palais-Bourbon’, wrote the anonymous interviewer in their assessment of Madiana, ‘éclats de rire, plus dangereux que les bombes terroristes’ (2).

 

This paper locates the power of Alié’s work in its double-speak, that is, its action to subvert the key terms of imperialist discourse and to insert new meanings into common tropes. As such, I frame Alié’s Madiana as a French iteration of the black vernacular tradition theorised by Henry Louis Gates Jr. as ‘Signifyin’’. A precursor to the verse of Étienne Léro, René Menil, and Jules-Marcel Monnerot (3), Alié’s Janus-faced writing prompts us to reconsider the importance of the 1920s to French Caribbean modernism, an era too often dismissed as the ‘uninteresting prelude’ (Miller 1998) to Negritude. 

 

(1). ‘Truly   exotic and   Parisian novel, admirably written by a   Black Martinican.’

(2). ‘Bursts richochet, sometimes as far as the walls of the Institut [de France] or the Palais Bourbon. Bursts of laughter, more dangerous than terrorist bombs.’

(3). Martinican poets and co-founders of   Légitime Défense (1932).