Michelle Cliff’s political writing

Abstract

This article analyses Michelle Cliff´s narrative work in light of the changes between the cycle of novels centered on the character of Clare Savage (Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven) and the writing of Free Enterprise. At the time this last novel was published, Cliff identified herself as a political writer, a label that can be understood as part of the author’s attempt to build a place of enunciation less exposed to the criticism of her self-identification as a Jamaican or black writer. The article shows how Free Enterprise, in addition to being a novel that recovers subaltern subjects and stories related to the fight against slavery and colonialism, also constitutes a symbolic space for the elaboration of Cliff’s authorial anxieties.