The fragile ‘absolute’: Heremakhonon and the crisis of representation and historical consciousness

Abstract

The Diasporian subject’s encounter with Africa, framed around the trope of return to Africa, constitutes a crucial part of the poetics and discourse of Negritude and Afrocentrism. However, until Heremakhonon’s intervention the condition of possibility of this trope was hardly contested and refuted. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze this article examines the criticality of encounter in Heremakhonon. Encounter in Heremakhonon emphasises experiential contact as a strategy for a radical tropological deconstruction of the return to Africa. We contend that Veronica Mercier’s existential struggle in Heremakhonon dramatizes a broader crisis of representation and historical consciousness