Transoceanic echoes : coolitude and the work of Mauritian poet Khal Torabully

Khal Torabully's poetry (mainly Cale d'etoiles coolitude and Chair corail, fragments coolies) surfaces as a marine odyssey of the coolie diaspora. Coolitude epitomizes in many respects a double articulation in Torabully's work: his commitment to denouncing trauma and violence at the eve of the twenty-first century as well as the concern of the contemporary artist to find adequate words, styles and modes to engage with this suffering. Torabully, similarly to Paul Gilroy, maps a more complex picture of the notion of 'Indian identity', shifting the emphasis from a fossilizing nostalgia for a fixed India to the ocean space that mediates the numerous cultural (ex)changes coolie culture has undergone. His rehabilitation of the coolie memory embodied in coolitude has provided him with a framework to understand, not only his own but on a more universal level, the cross-cultural chaotic relationships that can lead to bursts of creativity but also devastating violence. Coolitude thus emerges as a poetics that attempts to recover and reassess the transoceanic crossing of coolies, establishing it as a central metaphor that is constitutive of a new perspective on Indian identities characterized by multiple crossings: crossings between cultures, heritages, places, generations, gender, historical assertions, and mythical references. Le poete mauricien Khal Torabully chante le voyage oceanique des coolies et evoque la traversee oubliee que chaque migrant, que chacun cherche a exprimer a un moment de son existence. En poetisant son concept de coolitude (principalement au travers de ses ouvrages Cale d'etoiles coolitude et Chair corail, fragments coolies), il etablit des ponts entre engages et esclaves, entre memoires et peuples et fait echo au travail d'effacement de frontieres de Paul Gilroy. La memoire du deracinement, le travail d'enracinement et de deuil vis-a-vis d'une Inde mythifiee est au centre de la coolitude qui se veut 'acclimatation de l'Inde en terre plurielle', poetique de la relation qui, en recuperant l'element coolie des profondeurs abyssales de l'oubli et du non-dit, engage au dialogue et met en exergue le metissage. L'espace oceanique est ici metaphorise par une nouvelle generation d'ecrivains qui, apres Paul Gilroy, le celebrent comme lieu de l'hybridite.