Les Affres d'un défi and Ultravocal

Though as rich with descriptive elements as the at least nominally spatiotemporally framed narratives discussed in the previous chapter, Frankétienne's Les Affres d'un défi is, for the most part, almost entirely unreferential with respect to the configuration of time and space. The highly allegorical Bois-Neuf provides the backdrop for the stories of the named characters, and scattered references are made to Port-au-Prince as well. The great majority of the narrative spaces are, however, unidentified and unbound. They appear as a series of individual tableaux, without continuity but contextually aligned, and so mimetically display the profound dispossession and unrootedness that have historically plagued New World post-slavery communities. In its spatio-temporal incoherence, Les Affres d'un défi evokes a physical situation in space that both reflects and determines the psychological conditions of the region's inhabitants.