The Wound of History: Walcott'sOmerosand the Postcolonial Poetics of Affliction

Abstract

The figure of the wound is central to Derek Walcott's Omeros, one of the most ambitious works of postcolonial poetry. Walcott grants a European name to the primary bearer of the wound, the black fisherman Philoctete, who allegorizes African Caribbean suffering under European colonialism and slavery. This surprisingly hybrid character exemplifies the cross-cultural fabric of postcolonial poetry but contravenes the assumption that postcolonial literature develops by sloughing off Eurocentrism for indigeneity. Rejecting a separatist aesthetic of affliction, Walcott frees the metaphoric possibilities of the wound as a site of interethnic connection. By metaphorizing pain, he vivifies the black Caribbean inheritance of colonial injury and at the same time deconstructs the experiential uniqueness of suffering. Knitting together different histories of affliction, Walcott's polyvalent metaphor of the wound reveals the undervalued promise of postcolonial poetry.

Derek Walcott’s Odysseys

“…Philoctetes and Thersites both represent outsiders within the Greek tradition to whom Walcott grants a prominence denied them by the tradition itself. On Philoctete, see Dougherty (1997, 339-347), Ramazani (1997), and Terada (1992, 196-201). 33.…”

What is behind Myth and History in Derek Walcott’s Omeros?

“…Jahan Ramazani (1997) in "The Wound of History: Walcott's Omeros and the Postcolonial Poetics of Affliction" focuses on Philoctete's wound in Omeros that symbolizes Caribbeans' suffering; in past through slavery and colonialism, and at present through imposed history, culture and language by the oppressors that do not acknowledge native Caribbean culture. He states, "Early on in Omeros, Walcott uses one of Philoctete's seizures to suggest that the inexpressible physical suffering of enslaved Africans is retained in the bodies of their descendants and that the pain still presses urgently for an impossible verbal release" (406).…”

'From Silent Wounds to Narrated Words': Calypso Storytelling in Lawrence Scott's Night Calypso

“…Yet, in his masterpoem, Omeros (1990), wounds abound, from the wounded leg of the fisherman Philoctete, brandishing his injury for the titillation of tourists, to the mythological wounded heel of Philoctete's romantic rival Achille. According to Jahan Ramazani (1997), far from double-speak on Walcott's part, the St. Lucian poet animates Philoctete's wound as "a resonant site of ... the black Caribbean inheritance of colonial injury and at the same time deconstructing the uniqueness of suffering," and transforms the Greek figure of suffering into "an allegorical figure for the postcolonial condition" (405; 409). Similarly, Patricia Krus (2009), in her examination of the economies of trauma in postcolonial narratives like Astrid Roemer's Trilogy of Suriname, sees Walcott's and Roemer's contemporary deployment of the wound as reflecting "the need to excavate the wounds left by a colonial and postcolonial history in order to effect a healing process" (183).…”