Derek Walcott wrote that “History is sea”: sailing, as a movement, goes beyond the borders and in the postcolonial narratives the transatlantic is a powerful symbol of the transnational space.
The essay wants to analyse the images of the marine world, of the ocean and especially of the ship, the transatlantic as the fundamental and chronotopic figure of the postcolonial theories, particularly in relation to the delineation of a contemporary cultural and global reality as a transnational space in which take shape political and aesthetical expressions that challenge the modern conceptions on nationality, ethnicity and on cultural authenticity. The theories on postcolonialism by Paul Gilroy and Édouard Glissant are here examined.
Gilroy considers the ship that moves through the archipelagos as the representation of the instability and the mutability of identities that are in perpetual development, since the ship’s movement is transversal, not linear, and it crosses the “Black Atlantic”, transmitting multicultural, hybrid ideas during its journey. Édouard Glissant is the theorist of the ‘Antillanité’ as the place of choice for the crossing of different cultures in the French-speaking Caribbean, and moves from his vision of the American and Caribbean landscape towards a broader, global identity.
