A Limited Caribbeanness? The Continental Caribbean as Visions of Hell in Alejo Carpentier's El siglo de las luces and Maryse Condé's La vie scélérate1

[...]whereas the arrival of the French Revolution to the Americas was set in Guadeloupe, its poignant failure is staged in Guyana, symbolically foreshadowed by the withered up Tree of Liberty Esteban notices on his arrival. [...]shortly after arriving in Panama, 'Albert ne tarda pas à s'apercevoir qu'il n'avait fait que changer la couleur de ses habits de misère' (20: The same logic is found in other Creolisation theorists. [...]in his study of creole society in 1770 to 1820 Jamaica, Edward Kamau Brathwaite reaches the conclusion that the failure in the late slavery period for two segments of the population, the whites and the enslaved blacks, to develop meaningful interaction with each other ultimately prevented the emergence of a strong, autonomous culture and society that would have been better positioned to gain its political autonomy from Britain The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1 770-1820, 307-3 11). Brazil, and in particular the coastal North Eastern state of Bahia, has a long history of cultural and trade links with the Caribbean. [...]I discovered in the Museum of art and culture of Salvador that what I regarded as typically French Antillean jewellery, the collier chou, was in fact a style developed in Bahia.