Coolitude

Journal of indentureship and its legacies, 2023

is an independent researcher and also works as a cultural heritage and history consultant. Khal Torabully was born in Mauritius in 1956. He left for France to undertake higher studies. He completed his PHD (Semiology of Poetics) in Lyon in 1994. Coolitude, a concept coined by poet and semiologist Khal Torabully, evolved from the poetics of indenture he framed in a series of seminal works, notably Cale d'Etoiles: Coolitude (1992) and Chair Corail: Fragments Coolies (1999). In its origin offering a rehumanization of the Indian indentured labourer and descendants, in the sense that negritude empowered ex slaves, Coolitude, nonessentialist in nature, has today evolved into a universalist philosophy which embraces the concept of 'coolie' as a means of reaching out to geographical and cultural migrants throughout the world. Devised to fill a gap in postmodern and postcolonial theories and to address cross-disciplinary analysts in an attempt to grasp the complexity of inter and transcultural exchanges in the modern world, Coolitude continues to gradually evolve and find new expressions. This special issue is a compilation of academic thinking, discussion and critiques of Coolitude, as well as a forum for those whose own academic and artistic

NEW LITERARIA- An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021

Following the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, the mass labour emigration between 1837 and 1917 became a potent mechanism in the formation of the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. Over time, this "new system of slavery" emanated a new canon of studies related to migration and (re)settlement, the formation of new identities, experiences, and affiliation through assemblages of material. My study will analyse a selected texts from the Indo-Caribbean oeuvre. In the exploration of the intersectionality between migration and materiality, I will posit the significance of human identity and the process of commodification stimulated under the draconian indenture trade. My paper will engage in the binary prejudice and consequent, the commodification of the Indian coolies during and after the indenture system.

2017

Khal Torabully creates poetry and a poetics for those forgotten by history, a theorem and theory which construct a tangible and sensual landscape, allowing for an empathetically shared experience and expressing the dramatic climax of the third phase of accelerated globalization: a project that would be unthinkable without the cultural theory we now have at our disposal in the present surge of globalization. In his poetic and theoretical texts, he has paid a literary tribute to the Coolies, usually from India, but also China and many other countries. Given Torabully's Mauritian roots, but also the worldwide migration of the Coolies themselves, the world of Coolitude is culturally and linguistically extremely diverse, making the act of translation very relevant and giving it multiple meanings. Literature brings these forgotten lives back to life and allows us to share this experience thanks to its aesthetic force. It traces the movements, which sketch trajectories functioning to this day as palimpsest-like vectors of our own paths and trajectories. The author of Chair Corail, Fragments Coolies breaks the chain of mutual exclusions, replacing it with a type of writing belonging to a wider array of expressive modes which in diasporic situations unleash polylogical and archipelagic imaginaries.

GRFDT Research Monograph 75, Vol 7, Number 3, 2021

Colonialism changed the way the world economy and trade were happening. The colonial powers were unable to maintain the institution of slavery. Consequently, with the abolition of slavery, a new form of labour system was set up to fill the demand and supply gap. This labour system was created to reap maximum profit while exploiting the labourers in every possible manner. This is how indentureship was born. This system was born in various European colonies during19th century, and the labourers were referred to as coolies- a derogatory and racial term. The colonial plantations of jute, tea, rubber, coffee, sugarcane, etc., had draconian labour conditions that caused the coolies’ lifetime suffering. In the context of British India, this coolie network from India to other countries (external migration) was similar to the coolie network within India (internal migration). Indians were sent to other countries as coolies and within various tea plantations, coal mines, or other places for working. The internal migration of the Coolies is very much related to the greater migration project of the British Raj that wanted to create settler colonies in various parts of the colonised world. This paper will analyse both the internal and external migration mentioned in these Bangla texts- Phoolmoti by Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay (novel) and Alokrekha by Samaresh Majumdar (novel). This paper will analyse both these migration forms and how they are represented in these texts that are contemporary to each other

International Journal of Francophone Studies, 2014

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The purpose of this paper is to examine narratives of indentured labour in the period of Indian immigration and their descendants before the independence of Mauritius. I analyse these narratives in the writings of postcolonial Mauritian writers. I have selected three texts, one published in the late 1960s and two in 1970s. My focus is on three texts. Two texts are from contemporary writer D. Napal with his novelette The Years of Tribulation (1975) and his play La ligue des ancêtres trespassés (1978). Napal’s short story is set against the background of the centennial celebration (1835-1925) of Indian immigration. Through the eyes of the main character Lall, we witness an early form of organized labour resistance on sugar estates. As regard the play, it is an allegory of post-slavery and post-indentured labour. Three main characters namely L’Esclave (Slave), L’Engagé (Indentured) and l’Administrateur (Sugar Estate Master) are in the stratosphere discussing about their past days on earth. Then, L’Esclave invites them for a stroll to watch the evolution that has taken place on earth since then. Third, I examine the novel Namasté (1965) written by Marcel Cabon. This is the story of Ram who settles in the village of Vallée des Prêtres after the death of his uncle. Ram’s presence gradually impacts the villagers. He acts as an agent of change when encouraging people to set up a baitka, inspiring them to read sacred scriptures and nurturing love for land cultivation. In terms of data interpretation, I use text analysis. I have reached three findings. First, the narratives of indentured labour reveal not only a class struggle dimension but class power relations and agency. Second, these narratives have a sub-text or meta-message about the slave and indentured labour continuum. Finally, the narratives lead to the emergence of a new social order revolving around land cultivation, education and development and nation building revolving around the concept of ‘mauritianism’ or ‘entente mauricienne’. I apply the postcolonial/ subaltern lens to the discussion of my preliminary findings.

Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies, 2024

Indentureship had profound and lasting effects on the bodies of those involved. Recruitment processes, along with the harrowing conditions of transport and labour, radically reshaped the material and physical realities of indentured labourers, influencing not only their immediate bodily experiences but also the socio-cultural practices and embodied memories they would pass down to future generations. As such, indentured corporeality dwells in but also extends beyond the tangible realm of labour, touching on deeper questions of how bodies can be understood, experienced and mediated under colonial exploitation and beyond. To trace the intricate interplay between the concrete and sensory actualities of indentured bodies and the cultural processes inherent to embodiments of indenture, this special issue brings together interdisciplinary perspectives that examine how bodies became both sites of colonial inscription and sites of resilience and resistance. Through historical analysis, literary exploration, artistic representation and anthropological insight, contributors attend to how the afterlives of indenture continue to shape our understanding of indentured identity, memory and belonging, revealing the body as both a marker of oppression and a medium for enduring cultural expression.

South Asian Studies, Imagining Indenture: Colonial Contexts and Postcolonial Perspectives., 2017

This paper discusses the processes through which historical research, visual archives, and artistic production have interacted to produce a series of original artworks capturing some of the complexities of Indian indentured migrants’ experiences and identities. The images from the ‘Coolitude’ series by Danny Flynn apply modern screen-printing techniques to archival photographs of Indian indentured labourers. The artworks themselves seek to interrogate and challenge the stereotypical image of the so-called ‘coolie’, presenting a more nuanced view of the Indian labour migrant. This paper discusses the creation of the visual archive from which the original images are drawn, as well as the conceptual and creative processes that underpin their reimagining as original works of art.

Atlantic Studies, 2016

In the opening poem "One Continent/To Another" from the collection I Is a Long Memoried Woman (1983), Grace Nichols depicts the experience of the Middle Passage and slavery as a form of epistemic violence and forced (re)birth. 1 Born in Guyana and now based in the UK, Nichols exemplifies the concerns of this issue poignantly through her biography and her work. In "One Continent/To Another," the experience of the Middle Passage and the arrival on Caribbean shores imposes a disconcertingly new epistemic system upon the lyrical "she," a "Child of the middle passage womb" who is giving birth herself. 2 This imagery is strikingly reminiscent of Édouard Glissant's primal scene of "The Open Boat" from his Poetics of Relation (1997; Poétique de la relation, 1990). In this programmatic text, Glissant compares the destiny of deported Africans to the experience of a triple abyss (the slave ship, the sea and the fading memories of Africa) which causes a radical change of perspective in the displaced populations. Like Nichols, he exploits the metaphor of birth, turning this painful and perilous, but also joyful process into a threatening image for the physical and psychical transformation of the deported. Glissant associates the notions of birth and pregnancy closely with the slave ship and its hold, which Glissant compares to a "devour[ing]" 3 belly: [T]he belly of this boat dissolves you, precipitates you into a nonworld from which you cry out. This boat is a womb, a womb abyss. It generates the clamour of your protests; it also produces all the coming unanimity. This boat is your womb, a matrix, and yet it expels you. This boat: pregnant with as many dead as with living under sentence of death. 4

Anti-Trafficking Review, 2017

Under systems of indenture in the Caribbean, Europeans such as Irish, Scots and Portuguese, as well as Asians, primarily Indians, Chinese and Indonesians, were recruited, often under false pretences, and transported to the 'New World', where they were bound to an employer and the plantation in a state of 'interlocking incarceration'. Indentureship not only preceded, co-existed with, and survived slavery in the Caribbean, but was distinct in law and in practice from slavery. This article argues that the conditions of Caribbean indenture can be seen to be much more analogous to those represented in contemporary discussions about human trafficking and 'modern slavery' than those of slavery. Caribbean histories of indenture, it is proposed, can provide more appropriate conceptual tools for thinking about unfree labour today-whether state or privately sponsored-than the concept of slavery, given the parallels between this past migrant labour system in the Caribbean and those we witness and identify today as 'modern slavery' or human trafficking. This article thus urges a move away from the conflation of slavery and human trafficking with all forced, bonded and migrant labour, as is commonly the case, and for greater attention for historical evidence.