Abstract
When Haitian author Frankétienne writes in French and Kreyòl, as he does in Rapjazz and in other texts, part of the work he achieves is the dismantling of a linear understanding of translation as movement between two languages, or as might be figured by the meeting of two bodies (whatever their attributed sexes). What appear to be blocks of texts in differentiable languages reveal themselves to not simply mirror one another but also refract and resorb one another; the languages devour each other, and their compost—Frankétienne's text—carries embedded trace elements that make their precise differentiation impracticable. Every translative act risks, of necessity, a form of double exposure, of both translator and text. Here, it is not so much the Marassa figure (from the Vodun tradition) in Frankétienne's text that demands attention but the text itself as a figure of the Marassa.
