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Portulan: Negritude, Antillanite, Creolite. Roger Toumson, ed. Fort-de-France, Martinique. Vent des Iles. 1996. 256 pages. 110 F. ISBN 2-911412-0M.
Portulan is an ambitious new journal from Martinique that intends to wrest the cultural agenda of France's Caribbean Departements d'Outre-Mer from the Creoliste group (Jean Bernabe, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphael Confiant) who edit the popular magazine Antilla. Portulan looks more like an elegant quarterly devoted, as the cover states, to the examination of "Litteratures, Societes, Cultures . . . des Caraibes et des Ameriques noires." It is, strictly speaking, a university-based journal headquartered at the Schoelcher (Martinique) campus of the Universite des Antilles-Guyane. In order to understand fully the selection of articles and authors in this first issue, readers of Portulan must have a passing knowledge of Antilla's promotion of the literary work of Chamoiseau and Confiant.
Roger Toumson's editorial sets the agenda by situating Portulan in the wake of Tropiques-the wartime magazine edited by a group of lycee teachers that included Aime and Suzanne Cesaire as well as Rene Menil-and Aroma, Edouard Glissant's journal...