ABSTRACT
The polemical vigor of the crolit movement that emerged from Martinique, the more French of the two French Caribbean islands, is proportionate to the movement's controversiality. French lexicologists broadly agree that the term crole derives via the Spanish criollo from the Portuguese crioulo, meaning a slave born in his master's house. The crolit movement is not alone among French Caribbean movements in its marked association with France. Over the final two decades of the twentieth century, the body of French Caribbean writing associated with the crolit movement sedulously promoted a certain narrative of Caribbean identity. A central paradox of the crolit movement concerns the tension between its visionary claims and its revisionist perspective, between its particularistic retrospection and its globalist pretentions. Precipitating some of the paradoxes brings us back to the notion of teleology; a deep philosphical fault line underlies the whole notion of 'creoleness'. Inevitably, of course, the very words antillanit and crolit suggest certain essentialist nostalgia.
