Frankétienne

Of the three Spiralists, Frankétienne has been perhaps the most overt in his attention to the specifically formal challenges to writing in and from a geographical space where the distance between the written and the real is so remarkable. Author of the world's first full-length novel in Haitian Creole, resolute refuser of exile, math teacher, and community leader, Frankétienne's actions reveal a commitment to the insular collective that inspires his literary production. At the same time, however, the sesquipedalian acrobatics of his prose fiction certainly appear, at first (and second and third) glance, to be at odds with any sort of populist intent. Frankétienne is aware of this apparent contradiction. In fact, he ultimately goes so far as to name it: “schizophonia,” officially introducing the term in the title of his 1993 spiral, L'Oiseau schizophone. Though this title appears some years after the publication of the three works discussed here, there is no question that the concepts it describes are present from Frankétienne's first writings. Yves Chemla defines schizophonia as