Of Riots and Representations: The Case of Auguste Macouba’s 1968 Play Eïa! Man-maille là!

1968 is marked not only by the student uprising in France and elsewhere, it is also a key moment in the Caribbean and African critique of Négritude. Alongside René Depestre's 1968 exposé of Négritude's abusive deployment by Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti stands the Martinican Auguste Macouba's two-act play of the same year, Eïa! Man-maille là! (translated as Right On, Young Brothers). The graphic portrayal of the riot and near-uprising in Martinique of 1959, Macouba's play is a classic example of radical anti-colonial theater. Despite its French créole title, the play is in lyrical French but involves militant actions. At the same time, it contains, according to Patrick Taylor, a clear (if guarded) critique of Aimé Césaire, poet and theorist of Négritude and the mayor of Fort-de-France at the time of the riot. The play is prefaced and then reviewed favorably by Depestre at the time, in the pages of the radical Moroccan journal Souffles; and not surprisingly, the play then raises a polemic in the pages of Présence Africaine in 1969 and 1970. Published by “third-world” publisher Pierre Jean Oswald, Eïa! Man-maille là! is rarely performed: the play stands now instead as a lyrical and poetic incantation and meditation on an uprising; it suggests that revolutionary theater replays but also repurposes acute moments of History, always with a view to intervening politically in the future.