Haiti and Mozambique: Postcolonial Literature in the Context of Combined and Uneven Development

In this essay, I compare two narratives from different nations, Haiti and Mozambique, in order to analyze intersections between the postcolonial contexts in which each fiction is embedded. Two theoretical perspectives inform my reading of Nadine Pinede’s “Departure Lounge” (2011) and João Paulo Borges Coelho’s Campo de trânsito (2007). I draw first on Vivek Chibber’s argument that postcolonial studies fail to provide an adequate basis for a theory of human rights and a practice of global solidarity. I then introduce the Warwick Research Collective’s elaboration of a new theory of world literature constructed around the concept of “combined and uneven development”. My discussion of “Departure Lounge” and Campo de trânsito subsequently focuses on the fictional portrayal of emergent practices within traditional societies experiencing a process of modernization and the effects of the world capitalist system. I conclude by proposing a way out of the limitations of postcolonial studies.

In this essay, I compare two narratives from different nations, Haiti and Mozambique, in order to analyze intersections between the postcolonial contexts in which each fiction is embedded. Two theoretical perspectives inform my reading of Nadine Pinede's "Departure Lounge" (2011) and João Paulo Borges Coelho's Campo de trânsito (2007).
I draw first on Vivek Chibber's argument (2013a;2013b) that postcolonial studies fail to provide an adequate basis for a theory of human rights and a practice of global solidarity. I then introduce the Warwick Research Collective's elaboration of a new theory of world literature constructed around the concept of "combined and uneven development". My textual analyses of "Departure lounge" and Campo de trânsito subsequently focus on the fictional portrayal of emergent practices within traditional societies experiencing a process of modernization and the effects of the world capitalist system. I conclude by proposing a way out of the limitations of postcolonial studies based on the concept of "intersectionality".
Of course, comparing experiences between Haiti and Mozambique may strike one as arbitrary or at least as unusual. Nonetheless, it is my intention to do precisely that.
My purpose is to show that, beyond their different historical trajectoriesnot to mention the obvious dissimilarity in terms of their colonial agents and these colonizers' First, however, I should like to acknowledge significant strengths among a variety of postcolonial theorists. Postcolonial studies as a positive theory and also as a radical critique have been around for quite a while. Its most important non-European figures -Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Ranajit Guha, Aníbal Quijano, Partha Chatterjee, and Dipesh Chakrabartyshare a salient feature: they all broke ties with Marxism in the 1970s. In Portugal, much the same can be saidalthough in some cases to a lesser extentof the virtuoso community of scholars centered around and led by Boaventura Sousa Santos in Coimbra.
There is much to admire in postcolonial studies. Edward Said's Orientalism (1979) forcefully exposed the ideologies of exoticism and inferior difference imposed on the East by most Western writersfrom anthropologists to travel diarists, literary and cultural critics. His work, mainly Foucauldian in methodology and effect, should be considered as foundational for postcolonial theory. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, whose theoretical work has been inspired mainly by deconstructionists (Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, in particular), has claimed throughout most of her career equal and parallel allegiances to feminism and to communism. Her seminalor perhaps better "disseminal" -essay on "Can the subaltern speak?" (1988) was itself foundational for institutionalizing the term "subaltern". Ultimately, of course the notion of "subalternity" derives from Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, but with Spivak it acquires centrality within a major branch of postcolonial studies (especially the Subaltern Studies Group).
Following the Derridean impulse, Homi Bhabha emphasized what he, rightly or wrongly, considered to be the aporia (undecidability; intractable contradictions) of the subaltern's position and stressed the (at least symbolic) potential for subverting colonial power through subaltern discourses, insofar as these may appropriate and resignify colonial logics. Ranajit Guha, whose work informed and inspired the Subaltern Studies Group, stressed the importance of anti-essentialism in the construction of subalternity, as well as the need to write "history from below". And the art historian Siva Kumar Torres. These scholars represent especially important influences in the development of the theories and practices of "Southern Epistemologies". And their main postulatenamely, that colonialism is not the opposite of modernity but rather part of its central dynamic (its "dark side") -can be made to dialog with the Marxist idea of "combined and uneven development".
The research context of Portuguese postcolonial theory is dominated by researchers who are also broadly engaged with the project of identifying and elaborating "Southern Epistemologies". These include such brilliant scholars as Boaventura Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses. contrasting critique of its resulting inequities. Asserting itself not only as a theory, but also as a radical political practice, the fascination with postcolonialism spread all over, and it continues to thrive. Chibber comments, however, that "the challenge faced by postcolonial studies is strikingly similar to the one accepted by Marxism a century agoto generate a theory adequate to the needs of a radical political agenda" (2013a: 2). He calls, nonetheless, attention to the differences:

POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES: LIMITATIONS
[…] the most obvious one being that Marxism's initial development and spread was almost entirely based in working-class organizations and political parties, while its foothold in universities was infinitesimally small. Postcolonial studies is its mirror image, having developed entirely within the university and, though drawing some inspiration from movements, rarely in more than symbolic contact with them. (2013a: 2-3) Chibber highlights one of the major problems with this field of studies, i.e., the lack of a research agenda and its presentation more as a political orientation than as a theory per se. Postcolonial studies don't offer a coherent methodology, but merely a political agenda and perception. And Chibber adds: It is not that postcolonial studies is an assemblage of theories while Marxism was notin fact, Marxism always comprised an eclectic range of theories, much as does the former. The difference is that Marxism always sought internal coherence and while postcolonial studies resists any compulsion to bring together and assess its various strands. Thus, as its influence has spread, the variations in what falls under its rubric have tended to increase. From literature and cultural studies, to historiography, the philosophy of history, and anthropology, it is now possible to find postcolonial theory in all these areas and elsewhere besides, but with the common "theory" increasingly hard to discern. (2013a: 3) It is then easy to understand why Chibber criticizes postcolonial theory. From his point of view, it tries to do the same as Marxismi.e., to explain the world and how to proceed in order to change itand it fails in both realms. Postcolonial theory not only fails but also has serious conservative implications. For example, it revives such Orientalist ideas as that the West profoundly differs from the East: "it relentlessly promotes Eurocentrism [by portraying] the West as the site of reason, rationality, secularism, democratic culture, and the like, and the East as an unchanging miasma of tradition, unreason, religiosity, and so on". According to Pranav Jani, we can compare Chibber's formulation with that of Sarkar, a founding member of Subaltern Studies "who famously left the editorial collective after it turned decisively toward postmodernism" (2014: 108). Jani adds: In "The Decline of Subaltern in Subaltern Studies" Sarkar argued that the "detachment from socio-economic contexts and determinants" in Subaltern Studies had led to a simplistic vision of the "subaltern" (the marginalized, the By setting itself as an opponent of the universalization propagated by Marxism, postcolonialism claims that people are not influenced by their culture, but fully constituted by it. In Chibber's words, "That means their socializations is so strong, their culture and cultural indoctrination so overriding, that it can erase their understanding of their basic needs and interests, like the importance of physical well-being or individual harm" (2013b: 41). For Chibber, a lot is at stake if we accept this statement, since any conception of human rights stops making sense. Chibber asserts that culture is always an important element of subjectivity, but it can't be taken as the essence of subjectivity if it makes people ignore their overall well-being.
Another argument put forward by Chibber in Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital is that, while Marxism positions itself as part of an international and universal struggle against capitalismdefending the idea that, beyond religion, color, gender, etc., the oppressed populations of the planet have interests in common in the struggle against capitalismpostcolonialism asserts that workers from non-western societies are not motivated by the same concerns as westerners, that they don't even think in terms of their interests, i.e., that they have a consciousness essentially different from westerners. For Chibber, this conception is reminiscent of the one used by the imperialist and colonizer countries when then deny rights to Asians and Africans. In this sense, Chibber's argument rests on the clearest of principles: If you think people in postcolonial cultures deserve the same rights as people in rich countries do, you can only make that argument if you also believe they have the same needs and interests as the latter. To deny this is to insist that Easterners and Westerners live in different worlds. Such a theory can't possibly sustain and support international movements as internationalism within the working class. (2013b: 42) Chibber also addresses and challenges the claim made by postcolonial theoryone which is arguably one of its major fallaciesthat Marxism is not different from colonial ideology because it is as Eurocentric as the latter was. Nothing could be more false, however, if one looks at Marxism's history during the twentieth century. Chibber argues that, in fact, Marxism is the only theory that inexorably and incessantly engaged the eastern world. In his words, "The idea that it is a theory that ignores the nonwest or that it imposes western categories artificially, or that it is blind to the realities of the nonwestern world, is pretty far-fetched" (ibidem: 42). As Jani states, "PTSC offers a defense, from a left-wing perspective, of universalism, totality, reason, truth, reality, progress, knowledge, and other terms and concepts that have been denigrated and This is the eagerness among academics to appear au courant, at the cutting edge, to display familiarity with the very latest conceptual advances. The most common means of so doing is to roll for the latest neologisms in order to pepper one's work with them, even if only for symbolic purposes. The result is a kind of conceptual inflation, in which the substantive influence of a framework appears to extend far beyond its actual reach. (2013a: 3) Moreover, the accusations levelled by postcolonial theorists against Marxism are only a way to build their own credentials: [I]f you want to establish yourself as a radical in academia, and you don't want any of the hits to your career that come with being a 'Marxist,' the first thing you have to do is say something negative about Marxism. It establishes that even though you're on the left you're not 'one of them'. (2013b: 43) By way of summarizing Chibber's proposals, and beyond the positive aspects that he finds in postcolonial studiessuch as the maintenance of the idea that colonialism was extremely destructive and that it engendered a pernicious ideologywhat happens in general with postcolonial theory is that we are served a quantity of scholarship and argumentation that is interested in criticizing the dominant order, but which is not anti-capitalist. In the end, Chibber underscores, this is all that postcolonial studies have to offer. Chibber goes even further by claiming that what we have is a theory that imports from leftist academic culture the empty and presumptuous verbosity that one can find in graduate seminar rooms. According to Chibber, it is necessary "to push back against some of the silliness and obscurantism that has been propagated by postcolonial theory" (2013b: 44). And, as Jani once again points out, "Chibber also reinvigorates debates about universalism, asserting that, in order to understand a world brought together by capitalism, we need to see the world as onenot by ignoring diversity across regions but by explaining how capitalism thrives on the creation of difference and heterogeneity" (2014: n.p.).

LITERARY STUDIES: COMBINED AND UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
In their collaborative work, which recently appeared under the title Combined and WReC then moves to resituate the problem of "world literature" by "pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined and uneven development" (2015: 6; see also Davidson, 2014;Trotsky, 1906). This paradigm shift involves re--conceptualizing the notion of modernity, which means "de-linking it from the idea of the 'west' and yoking it to that of the capitalist world-system" (WReC, 2015: 15). The theory of combined and uneven development originated in the work of Engels, Lenin and Trotsky 1 ; more recently, Fredric Jameson has described the world literary system as "one and unequal" (1981; 2013). As WReC authors remark: "The theory of 'combined and uneven development' was therefore devised to describe a situation in which capitalist forms and relations exist alongside 'archaic forms of economic life' and pre-existing social and class relations" (2015: 11). So, in the first instance, WReC defines 'world literature' "as the literature of the world-systemof the modern capitalist world-system, that is" (ibidem: 8). This implies that we need to understand modernity as governed always by unevenness. In other words, the historically determinate 'coexistence', in any given place and time, of realities from radically different moments of history […]. The multiple modes in and through which this 'coexistence' manifests itselfthe multiple forms of appearance of unevennessare to be understood as being connected, as being governed by a socio-historical logic of combination, rather than as being contingent and asystematic. (ibidem: 12) In the same manner, WReC argues that we need to recognize that capitalist development does not "smooth away but rather produces unevenness, systematically and as a matter of course" (ibidem). Another key element is that "modernity is neither a 1 The authors explain that Trotsky amplified Marx and Lenin's work by formulating an "elaborated theory of 'uneven and combined development', by way of analyzing the effects of the imposition of capitalism on cultures and societies hitherto un-or only sectorally capitalized. In these contextsproperly understood as imperialist, as Trotsky notedthe imposed capitalist forces of production and class relations tend not to supplant (or are not allowed to supplant) but to be conjoined forcibly with pre-existing forces and relations. The outcome, he wrote, is a contradictory 'amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms'an urban proletariat working in technologically advanced industries existing side by side with rural populations engaged in subsistence farming; industrial plants built alongside 'villages of wood and straw'; and peasants 'thrown into the factory cauldron snatched directly from the plow' (1967: 432)" (2015: 10-11). chronological nor a geographical category. It is not something that happensor even happens first -in 'the west' and to which others can subsequently gain access" (2015: 13). Capitalist modernization entails development, "but this 'development' takes the forms also of the development of underdevelopment, of maldevelopment and dependent development" (ibidem). WReC thus emphasizes that the "idea of some sort of 'achieved' modernity, in which unevenness would have been superseded, harmonized, vanquished or ironed out is radically unhistorical" (ibidem). "Alternative" modernities, as they have been attempted in recent state projects (for example, in Mozambique or Cubanized Angola), thus do not really represent a solution, since they derive from an "assumption as to the 'western' provenance of modernityrather than WReC's argument can be condensed into the following summary assertions: "a single but radically uneven world-system; a singular modernity, combined and uneven; and a literature that variously registers this combined unevenness in both its form and its content to reveal itself as […] world-literature" (2015: 49). World-literature is thus an 2 WReC here is following Harrootunian insights that "If modernity is understood as the way in which capitalism is 'lived'wherever in the world-system it is lived -then 'however a society develops', its modernity is coeval with other modernities, 'is simply taking place at the same time as other modernities'" (2015: 14-15). 3 On these questions, also see Jameson, 2013 andJameson, 1981. analytical category and not one centered in, or by, aesthetic judgement. 4 In WReC's And what is true for the forms of struggle that powered the 1960s Black liberation movement, creating new Afro-American identities from older Afro-American subjectivities, is also true for other self-determining assertions of identity (Black Lives Matter today; the National Organization for Women; the LGBTQ movement; Aztlán and the Chican@ movement; the American Indian Movement). Indeed, the successful emergence of such identities requires materialization in social practices and, in that sense, the mobilization of social movements can precisely be said to transform "subjects" (individuals and groups as passively defined by a social system) into "agents" (individuals and groups as actively transforming a social system).
There subsists, of course, a certain reification of "identity" in what we have just affirmed. Even in the case of identities based on self-determinationones that are articulated for the purpose of self-emancipationthese in fact lack seamless homogeneity.
They may be said to embody their own (stronger or weaker) contradictions, in particular historical conjunctures, such as tensions between women of color and white women,

Cuban-American Hispanics and Mexican-American Latinos, gays and lesbians, Native
Americans who continue to live on reservation territories and those who have relocated, full-time workers and the precariat, Oprah and Sojourner Truth.
Moreover, and now in a positive sense, identities lack seamless homogeneity because aspects of any individual subject's identity simultaneously converge with other social identities, even when the individual's subjectivity is constructed by an identitarian discourse as, in its essence, divergent. That is why it is necessary to introduce the concept of "intersectionality" into any discussion of "identity". And, indeed, for our purposes "intersectionality" has much to contribute to a discussion of the relations between the identities of the global North and West, on the one hand, over and against. the global South and East, on the other, as they are constructed as antinomies in the context of postcolonial theory.
"Intersectionality" is a concept put forward by Black feminist scholar Kimberlé

Crenshaw and developed in various ways by Patricia Hill Collins, the Combahee River
Collective, Barbara Smith and Angela Davis, among others. It is meant to capture two realities: (1) an oppressed individual, such as a Black woman, experiences multiple forms of oppression simultaneously (gender, race, and, in the majority of instances, social class); and (2) systems of oppression transcend singular identities. Thus Black men are ensnared in the same practices of racism that afflict Black women. Forms of oppression and exploitation based on sexual preference, social class, religion, and ethnicity similarly cut across gender boundaries, nationalities, races, and creeds. In all of these cases, the isolation and vindication of a singular identity masks (1) the fact that multiple oppressions are integrated into an overall social system; and (2) the fact that those who suffer a particular form of oppression, which others do not suffer, still have an interest in allying with those others, since at some point(s) the oppression(s) each one experiences intersects with the oppression(s) experienced by others.
Views of knowledge and of politics based on "intersectionality" thus avoid the worst consequences of the kinds of "identity politics" that have become so fashionably dominant in the academic world. "Intersectionality" means precisely that one has an interest in fighting against all forms of oppression and exploitation. Moreover, it means that one does not need to personally experience a specific form of oppression (racial, gender, national, class) in order to become an effective fighter against that oppression. In this sense, "intersectionality" reveals the limits of social movements based on "identity", including nationalist or regionalist movements whose politics reify the identities on which they are based. "Intersectionality" is thus key to understanding the limits of postcolonial theory concerning the cognitive and political insularity and incommensurability of North and South and East and West.

DEPARTURE AND TRANSIT
The relevance of WReC in this essay will quickly become apparent in my analysis of Pinede's "Departure Lounge". The relevance of Chibber must await my analysis of Borges Coelho's Campo de trânsito, as well as my conclusion in which the relevance of "intersectionality" will also figure. Succinctly put, these theories facilitate the analysis of formal structures as well as the ideologies conveyed by these literary forms. Since I do not want to be accused of "oversimplifying", and therefore of being a "reductionist, mechanical Marxist", I wish to stress from the outset that our fictional texts are not mere "reflections of reality" nor are they mere "pretexts" for the interpretive perspectives I employ. On the contrary, I consider that each fictional narrative intervenes in specific politico-ideological circumstances and, in doing so, produces insights embodying genuine cognitive import.  Nonetheless, it is the worker's struggletheir protests and potential use of violence as a means of social/political powerthat surfaces as one of the most striking features of the narrative: "The farmers begin to tell stories of being threatened and forced to sell their land so as a free-trade zone can be built. 'We will fight for this land until we die!' they yell, waving their machetes. But some say they're afraid of what may happen if they don't sell. Alexis listens to all of it along with us, then he asks if there's a way they can put their heads together" (ibidem: 257).
By paralleling individual and collective suffering, the narrative can thus be taken out of its historical and geographical context, in order to become a text that speaks to and about humanity: "You are crying", says one of the farmers. I look up and recognize his face.
Earlier, when we were walking through his land, he had spotted me and called out in Creole, "You are Haitian, aren't you? I can tell by your beautiful skin". But now his voice is sharp: "You are crying, but we are the ones with a reason to cry".

I have a reason too. I can understand my parents' language but I can't use it
here, now, for a simple greeting. (ibidem: 256-257) Not to dismiss Fabienne's own struggle with her split identity, it is nevertheless the farmers' quest against the government for better working and living conditions which makes this story valuable as an example of world-literature. Turning our attention now to Borges Coelho's fictional work, Campo de trânsito, will permit us to establish some parallels between the two narratives and to draw a few conclusions.
The plot of Campo de trânsito is set around the life of the protagonist, J. Mungau, located in a transit camp. Mungau is taken there in the middle of the night and never knows the reasons for his arrest. Even though it is easy to associate the narrative with a critique of the reeducation camps established in Mozambique after its independence, Borges Coelho asserts that is necessary to avoid such a reading: O Campo de Trânsito flirta com a realidade dos campos de reeducação do nosso passado socialista, mas, desde o princípio, que visava a algo mais geral. Num certo sentido, é mais abstracto que os livros anteriores e procura colocar algumas questões relativas ao absurdo na nossa civilização global. (Borges, 2007) In this sense, the book's referentiality is simultaneously connected and not connected to the reality of Mozambique and can be situated in the context of global civilization. As WReC puts it, this Mozambican text should be considered together with the Haitian text discussed above because they both "bear testimonyin their own distinct ways, and in both their form and their content -to the 'shock of the new', the massive rupture effected at the levels of space-time continuum, lifeworld, experience and human sensorium by capitalist modernisation" (2015: 50). Even though the space is thoroughly described, there are no references to an identifiable geography. It is this particularity that opens up the narratives to and for a "juxtaposition of asynchronous orders and levels of historical experience, its barometric indications of invisible forces acting from a distance on the local and familiar" (ibidem: 17). Another similarity suggested by both narratives can be located in the vicious attacks perpetrated by the State on its individuals: Manuel, as we have seen, gets abducted by a group of armed men and hasn't been seen since, as many have also disappeared at the reeducation camps in Mozambique. This also leads us to the idea of massacres on a greater or lesser scale, ones carried out either by the country's governmentas in the case of Mozambique as portrayed by Borges Coelho's narrative (where a supposedly socialist State tries to impose on its inhabitants a new mentality based on Marxist-Leninist principals 5 )or by neighborhood governmentsas in the 5 While it is customary simply to take at face value Frelimo's claim that it implemented "socialism" in the 1975--1992 period, in fact it did no such thing. Its model of "socialism" derived directly from Stalinism: a one-party state, a state-controlled (top-down) command economy, a state-controlled process of land reform, extensive nationalization, and a heavily subsidized social sector (the first three of which have no place in Marx and Engels's conception of socialism, which always stressed workers' and peasants' self-emancipation and explicitly rejected any kind of "socialism" bestowed upon the populace from above). All of this assured that political power in Mozambique brought with it the party and state's bureaucratic control of the means of production. An ideology and practice of "nationalist modernization", derived from Western models, characterizes both the "post--independence" and the so-called "post-socialist" periods. The difference between the two, of course, is that the form of capitalism pursued between 1975-1992 consisted of state-led development (exactly like that which was seen not only in places such as the USSR and Cuba, but also in US areas of influence such as the Pacific Tigers), while the form of capitalism pursued after 1992 in Mozambique is neoliberalism. The latter period has witnessed the introduction of multiple political parties, but capitalism has been proven globally to be compatible not only with multi-party political systems, but also with single-party states. The Village Chief also "desconfia da modernidade que se respira no Campo de Trânsito, teme as perversidades que esta deixa fermentar" (ibidem: 184). The Director, on the other hand, "'perde-se nas trufas, pensa que elas são a solução para todos os problemas, a forma de amansar os prisioneiros. Desdenha deste trabalho, diz que perco o meu tempo à procura de calhaus'" (ibidem: 103-104). In this context, the truffles would be the symbol of the throes of capitalist modernization.
The representation of space in both narratives also exceeds the description of its physical characteristics, "as the political and cultural implications are joined to intimations of the 'irreal'" 6 (WReC, 2015: 88). Mozambique and Haiti mark a verifiable position in the map, but they also allude to a place of fantasy in the imperial imaginationthe Soviet Union and China in the former's case; the United States, the IMF and the World Bank in 6 João Paulo Borges Coelho's novel also falls into this category. WReC describes the novel as "inhabiting what Michael Löwy has called 'a border territory, between reality and 'irreality ' (2007: 196).
[…] Löwy devised the term 'critical realism' to describe an aesthetic 'founded on a logic of the imagination, of the marvelous, of the mystery or the dream' (194), [….]." (2015: 83). According to WReC, "critical irrealism as theorized by Löwy does not, for all its investment in imagination and the imaginary, deny the existence of natural and social words independent of human perception or apprehension. This foundational homage to realism, or remembrance of it, gives critical irrealist texts the ability to articulate powerful critiques of actually existing reality, which, as Löwy writes, have variously taken the forms of 'protest, outrage, disgust, anger, anxiety, or angst' […]" (2015: 83). the latter. Also, the realities lived in the context of these physical spaces extend beyond their national borders and are felt throughout other world peripheries, as highly suggested by Borges Coelho's omission of proper names and country designation in his novel. Both narratives intersect at the human level where human beings are being oppressed and exploited by the capitalist system. Both also envision a way out by portraying the union of the individuals in a common cause. Borges Coelho's novel describes that space of encounterrevolution?in a moving manner: Murmura-se por todo o descampadosobre as bancas dos feirantes, na camarata dos guardas, nos labirínticos corredores entre as casinhas dos prisioneiros, no amontoado de crianças, velhos, mulheres e aves domésticas a que já chamam de Aldeia Nova -, murmura-se por toda a parte que a horda do Campo Novo se juntou à horda do Campo Antigo algures, a meio do caminho.
In "Departure Lounge" Fabienne's evolving consciousness of Haitian inequalities also implicates inequalities in the U.S. The representation of her split identity suggests the potential for cross-cultural understanding and resistance. The farmers' struggle against the destruction of their lands by the forces of economic imperialism (the transmutation of Haiti into a super-exploited free-trade zone) subsumes individuals within a purposeful collectivity while diminishing neither individual personality nor social movement, as happens with the subordination and sacrifice of individuality in oppressive collectivies (such as capitalist minimum wage workers or Stalinist slave labor camps.) The overlay of economic and cultural temporalities accentuates Fabienne's alienation from her native language, as well as from her past in Haiti, at the same time as it stimulates her memories of a frequently alienated youth as a Haitian immigrant to the U.S.
In Campo de trânsito, the bad collectivities imposed by capitalism and Stalinismboth of which seek to erase the independence of individual thought and actionare contrasted with the good collectivities envisioned by Mungau and practiced by the Professor's Wife and the political prisoners who revolt in Transit Camps One and Two.
Here, especially in the dialog/debate between Mungau and Prisoner 13.2, the narrative voice evinces a belief in the power of social struggle to transform both individual subjectivities and collective consciousness alike. The parallelism between the Prisoners' gardening (collective) and the Professor's Wife's gardening (individual) drives home the same point. Similarly, the garden as the scene of the rape of the Professor's Wife by the Director and the subsequent vengeance exacted against him by herespecially in the light of the Professor's ongoing physical abuse of his Wifeaccords to the individual (Wife) a revolutionary agency that, once again, parallels and helps to compose the collective revolt against capitalism and Stalinism. Moreover, the revenge of the Professor's Wife produces direct effects in the fields. These effects symbolically figure forth not only the possibility of solidarity and unity in struggle but also a form of collectivity that, again, does not erase the individual. They highlight the possibilities of resistance along both gender and class linespossibilities that become and which remain available precisely in the context of "combined and uneven development". Indeed, perhaps more so than in "Departure Lounge", Campo de trânsito helps us to understand a number of the political opportunities embedded in the dynamic of an uneven modernity.
Such realities and possibilities, as expressed in "Departure Lounge" and Campo de trânsito, make clear how and why the notion of "intersectionality" contributes a fundamental perspective to a theory of world-literature based on combined and uneven development. Specifically, it elucidates in and for the world-literature system that a better