Karukerament Lexicon - Colonial filter
Yé Moun La! In 2025, Karukerament offers you a lexicon to describe the representation issues of Caribbean cultures. This series of short articles is inspired by Toni Morrison's quote (May 30, 1975): “It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” The purpose of racism is to distract us from what's important. What's important is to define our joy, to build harmonious inclusive communities. Trying to prove your humanity to the system is a waste of time and energy. Over the last 8 years, I've seen 20th-century identity issues come back with no evolution of point of view compared to the time. I'd even say there's been a setback, because the négritude, antillanité, créolité and Maryse Condé’s literature wasn’t created for my generation to still see itself as deportees with no future, uprooted people looking for external validation. This defeatist, miserabilistic vision has even led to the radicalization of certain positions, reflecting a form of Black supremacism as dangerous as any other supremacism, which is why it's so important to keep a trace in 2025.
#1 - the colonial filter
“Telling the story of those who dared to break their chains, who dared to revolt against the colonial order” were the punchlines used to market Simon Moutaïrou's film ‘Ni Chaîne, Ni Maître’ [“No Chain, No Master], released in France in September 2024. With over 400,000 admissions, this first feature film can be considered a success according to French cinema standards. The majority of French films don't attract as many people to movie theaters. While this production, which for the first time shows on screen the place of Mauritius in France's colonial slavery past, is to be hailed with enthusiasm, there was no discussion about the film's conventional aspect, in line with the representation expected by French cinema.
During the promo, the contributions of filmmakers from Guadeloupe and Martinique were mentioned anecdotally, even though they are the only ones to innovate in the representation of slavery from a French (cf. Karukerament special edition #1) and international point of view. Even Alain Bidard's animated feature “Battledream Chronicle” (2015), which won over 20 awards, is systematically overlooked in terms of its innovative representation of slavery. Since the launch of Karukerament, I've noticed how difficult it is for the public and the media at local and national level to analyze and evaluate the quality of our productions. If we're capable of vociferous criticism of negative representations of slavery, it's because we're not. While we may be capable of vociferous criticism of negative representations, I never see any opposition to the real issues at stake when these negative representations are given the appearance of positive ones. On the contrary, the need for external validation is so strong that we give thanks without offering a critical view.
That's because of the colonial filter.
This colonial filter clouds our vision with all the negative stereotypes and inferiority complexes inculcated by slavery/colonization. We only judge ourselves on criteria we can't meet, resulting in a systematically devaluing gaze. The colonial filter decides that our productions have no value because they're “low-budget”, because they're “made by untrained filmmakers and/or actors”, because they're set on “a small island”, because they “don't follow the Hollywood storytelling rules”, because “our stories aren't universal enough”, because “it's not realistic enough”, because “it's too folkloric”. The colonial filter pushes us to judge only by the positive extreme, the negative extreme or by indifference. It refuses nuance, it forbids indulgence... unless a voice of authority decides to highlight the quality.
The challenge for my generation is to create without using the usual negative stereotypes, without imposing limits set by others. Obviously, when I say a worthy self-image, I mean presenting ourselves in our complexity as human beings, not creating an unattainable ideal. Is it possible to completely remove the colonial filter? At this stage of my thinking, I don't think so, because society is constantly evolving, racism is taking on new forms, parts of history are disappearing, so deconstruction is a never-ending process. On the other hand, I think that once we accept the existence of this colonial filter, it's easier to adjust it to suit the circumstances. As a Caribbean woman, it means confronting the points of view of other countries in the region and on the African continent that have helped me build my reading grid. Whatever the nature of the cultural work (film, music, novel, painting etc), the challenge is to question our own definition of beauty. And it's not a one-way street. It's not just a question of learning to detect beauty in the cultural works of Guadeloupe and Martinique. It's also about questioning our own biases when we judge other people’s productions in a positive light.
From my Karukerament point of view, when we're able to write, to sing our humanity through our vulnerability as much as we're able to describe our humanity through decay and debauchery then we'll have mastered the colonial filter.
Challenge 2025: list three works (in any medium) from your Caribbean country that showcase our joy. See you in December to see if the challenge is successful.