Against Silence
“ Rivers. Storms. Lightning. Mountains. Trees. Lights. Rains. Savage oceans. Take me to the frenzied core of your articulation. Take me!“
A spiral never starts, never ends. It swirls and rotates endlessly. So where does its story begin? Right in the middle.
In the 1970s, Haitian writer and painter Frankétienne released Ultravocal, a novel that wasn't really a novel. It broke apart language, form, and meaning turning the most conventional tool of expression into an abstract statement of revolution. Then came L’Oiseau Schizophone, where typography fractured, collages invaded the text, and narratives scattered.
But this didn’t happen in isolation, not were they isolated incidents.
Back in the 1960s, in Haiti, a land battered by dictatorship and oppression, three writers gave birth to something radically new:
The Spirale Movement.
Frankétienne. René Philoctète. Jean-Claude Fignolé.
Together, they rejected the straight line. They chose the spiral.
Why a spiral? Because reality isn’t linear. Not in Haiti. Not in the universe.
It twisted, looped, cracked, collapsed, and returned.
Spiralism mirrored this chaos, refused to tame it.
The storm was the style.
A total language, as Frankétienne called it.
It mixed poetry, theatre, science, painting, philosophy.
French and Haitian Creole collided, not to explain, but to agitate, twist, spin, whirl and vibrate.
To feel.
Spiralism was a rebellion against the linear, simplistic narratives behind colonized and fragemented minds.
Against silence.
Frankétienne, born Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d’Argent, passed away in February 2025.
You might not have heard of Spiralism before. But now you have. So what are you going to do with it?
written by Amer Chamaa
© Corentin Fohlen / Divergence for UNESCO
