Walter D. Mignolo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156095
- eISBN:
- 9781400845064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156095.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores theoretical responses to and departures from the modern world system. The first part looks into Anibal Quijano's concept of “coloniality of power” and Enrique Dussel's ...
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This chapter explores theoretical responses to and departures from the modern world system. The first part looks into Anibal Quijano's concept of “coloniality of power” and Enrique Dussel's “transmodernity” as responses to global designs from colonial histories and legacies in Latin America. The second part is devoted to Abdelkhebir Khatibi's “double critique” and “une pensée autre” (an other thinking) as a response from colonial histories and legacies in Maghreb. The chapter also studies Edouard Glissant's notion of “Créolization,” proposed to account for the colonial experience of the Caribbean in the horizon of modernity and as a new epistemological principle. These perspectives, from Spanish America, Maghreb, and the Caribbean, contribute today to rethinking, critically, the limits of the modern world system—the need to conceive it as a modern/colonial world system and to tell stories not only from inside the “modern” world but from its borders.Less
This chapter explores theoretical responses to and departures from the modern world system. The first part looks into Anibal Quijano's concept of “coloniality of power” and Enrique Dussel's “transmodernity” as responses to global designs from colonial histories and legacies in Latin America. The second part is devoted to Abdelkhebir Khatibi's “double critique” and “une pensée autre” (an other thinking) as a response from colonial histories and legacies in Maghreb. The chapter also studies Edouard Glissant's notion of “Créolization,” proposed to account for the colonial experience of the Caribbean in the horizon of modernity and as a new epistemological principle. These perspectives, from Spanish America, Maghreb, and the Caribbean, contribute today to rethinking, critically, the limits of the modern world system—the need to conceive it as a modern/colonial world system and to tell stories not only from inside the “modern” world but from its borders.
Jan Brokken
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628461855
- eISBN:
- 9781626740914
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461855.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt Before Chopin's Heart is not your usual music handbook. The book’s curious title refers to the presence of eleven Antilleans at the service held in the Warsaw church to ...
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Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt Before Chopin's Heart is not your usual music handbook. The book’s curious title refers to the presence of eleven Antilleans at the service held in the Warsaw church to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Fryderyk Chopin’s death in October 1999 where the composer’s heart is kept in an urn, whilst the rest of his mortal remains lie in Paris. The item which Brokken had read in a German newspaper triggered him to start writing the book based on notes he had been taking while living on Curacao from 1993 to 2002. Anyone interested in discovering an overlooked chapter of Caribbean music and music history will be amply rewarded with a Dutch Caribbean perspective on the pan- Caribbean process of Creolization and the history and legacy of slavery in shaping culture and music in the New World. Brokken’s portraits of prominent Dutch Antillean composers, are interspersed with anecdotes, and forays into cultural and music history. Brokken puts the Dutch Caribbean’s contributions into a broader context by also examining the 19th century phenomenon, pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans and Manuel Samuel from Martinique. Brokken explores the African component of Dutch Antillean music – examining the history of the rhythm and music known as tambú as well as American jazz pianist Chick Corea's fascination with the tumba rhythm from Curacao. The book ends with a discussion of how recent Dutch Caribbean adaptations of European dance forms has shifted from a classical musical approach to contemporary forms of Latin jazz.Less
Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt Before Chopin's Heart is not your usual music handbook. The book’s curious title refers to the presence of eleven Antilleans at the service held in the Warsaw church to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Fryderyk Chopin’s death in October 1999 where the composer’s heart is kept in an urn, whilst the rest of his mortal remains lie in Paris. The item which Brokken had read in a German newspaper triggered him to start writing the book based on notes he had been taking while living on Curacao from 1993 to 2002. Anyone interested in discovering an overlooked chapter of Caribbean music and music history will be amply rewarded with a Dutch Caribbean perspective on the pan- Caribbean process of Creolization and the history and legacy of slavery in shaping culture and music in the New World. Brokken’s portraits of prominent Dutch Antillean composers, are interspersed with anecdotes, and forays into cultural and music history. Brokken puts the Dutch Caribbean’s contributions into a broader context by also examining the 19th century phenomenon, pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans and Manuel Samuel from Martinique. Brokken explores the African component of Dutch Antillean music – examining the history of the rhythm and music known as tambú as well as American jazz pianist Chick Corea's fascination with the tumba rhythm from Curacao. The book ends with a discussion of how recent Dutch Caribbean adaptations of European dance forms has shifted from a classical musical approach to contemporary forms of Latin jazz.
Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501705267
- eISBN:
- 9781501719592
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705267.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The Second Dutch Atlantic was a distinct era in Dutch colonial history, different both from the imperially-minded period from 1620 through 1680 and the years after 1815, in which the Dutch Atlantic ...
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The Second Dutch Atlantic was a distinct era in Dutch colonial history, different both from the imperially-minded period from 1620 through 1680 and the years after 1815, in which the Dutch Atlantic faded into insignificance. While marked by a lack of geographic expansion, the Second Dutch Atlantic saw remarkable Dutch colonial and inter-imperial activity. On the one hand, the Dutch engaged in the Atlantic slave trade, built their own plantation colonies on the “Wild Coast” of South America, and developed their Caribbean islands into commercial assets. On the other hand, they were deeply involved in inter-imperial trade and finance. Maintained by slave majorities and, increasingly, free people of color as well as whites from various European backgrounds, the Dutch Atlantic realm was heterogeneous in its governance, religious profile, and ethnic composition.Less
The Second Dutch Atlantic was a distinct era in Dutch colonial history, different both from the imperially-minded period from 1620 through 1680 and the years after 1815, in which the Dutch Atlantic faded into insignificance. While marked by a lack of geographic expansion, the Second Dutch Atlantic saw remarkable Dutch colonial and inter-imperial activity. On the one hand, the Dutch engaged in the Atlantic slave trade, built their own plantation colonies on the “Wild Coast” of South America, and developed their Caribbean islands into commercial assets. On the other hand, they were deeply involved in inter-imperial trade and finance. Maintained by slave majorities and, increasingly, free people of color as well as whites from various European backgrounds, the Dutch Atlantic realm was heterogeneous in its governance, religious profile, and ethnic composition.
Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez and Shirley Anne Tate
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Anthropologists and cultural historians have related ‘creolization’ to processes of transformation produced by colonial rule, enslavement and plantation economies, while other scholars have seen ...
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Anthropologists and cultural historians have related ‘creolization’ to processes of transformation produced by colonial rule, enslavement and plantation economies, while other scholars have seen creolization in terms of global cultural mixing or as theory which reaches beyond its Caribbean birthplace. The decolonial epistemological contributions of Caribbean intellectuals in conceptualizing creolization in political, economic, cultural and theoretical terms is foregrounded in this volume as relevant for a Europe in which the call for’ integration’ is allied with ‘the failure of multiculturalism’ discourse to continuously re-create Europe’s post/colonial other.Less
Anthropologists and cultural historians have related ‘creolization’ to processes of transformation produced by colonial rule, enslavement and plantation economies, while other scholars have seen creolization in terms of global cultural mixing or as theory which reaches beyond its Caribbean birthplace. The decolonial epistemological contributions of Caribbean intellectuals in conceptualizing creolization in political, economic, cultural and theoretical terms is foregrounded in this volume as relevant for a Europe in which the call for’ integration’ is allied with ‘the failure of multiculturalism’ discourse to continuously re-create Europe’s post/colonial other.
Stuart Hall
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Stuart Hall engages with ‘Créolité and Creolization’ sets out the theoretical orientation that guides this volume in his challenge to us to seek out creolization’s applicability outside of the ...
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Stuart Hall engages with ‘Créolité and Creolization’ sets out the theoretical orientation that guides this volume in his challenge to us to seek out creolization’s applicability outside of the Caribbean as he takes up Glissant’s claim that ‘the whole world is becoming creolized’ and looks at its meanings and implications. Hall interrogates whether or not créolité can be applied to all processes of cultural mixing or if it is tied to the French Antilles and asks if it can be a genuine alternative to hegemonic post-colonial and post-imperial understandings. He also asks whether créolité and creolization refer to the same phenomenon and whether or not creolization should replace other terms such as hybridity, métissage and syncretism as he seeks out creolization’s general conceptual applicability.Less
Stuart Hall engages with ‘Créolité and Creolization’ sets out the theoretical orientation that guides this volume in his challenge to us to seek out creolization’s applicability outside of the Caribbean as he takes up Glissant’s claim that ‘the whole world is becoming creolized’ and looks at its meanings and implications. Hall interrogates whether or not créolité can be applied to all processes of cultural mixing or if it is tied to the French Antilles and asks if it can be a genuine alternative to hegemonic post-colonial and post-imperial understandings. He also asks whether créolité and creolization refer to the same phenomenon and whether or not creolization should replace other terms such as hybridity, métissage and syncretism as he seeks out creolization’s general conceptual applicability.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Gaytri Chakravorty Spivak addresses the limitations in grasping the theoretical and policy implications of the proposal of creolization. Discussing reolity rather than kinship as a model for ...
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Gaytri Chakravorty Spivak addresses the limitations in grasping the theoretical and policy implications of the proposal of creolization. Discussing reolity rather than kinship as a model for comparativist practice, Spivak suggests that we start with Dante’s understanding of popular Italian as varieties of Creole and his choice of an aristocratic (‘curial’) political Creole as ‘Italian’, because this will enable us to perceive the beginnings of European nationalisms as grounded on a creolized understanding of themselves while asserting kinship. In a second step, asserting literature’s capacity to inaugurate an ‘experience of the impossible’, Spivak discusses Glissant’s creolization as a project that gives us a way of thinking outside of the exigencies of activism and beyond the identitarian politics implicated in the European project.Less
Gaytri Chakravorty Spivak addresses the limitations in grasping the theoretical and policy implications of the proposal of creolization. Discussing reolity rather than kinship as a model for comparativist practice, Spivak suggests that we start with Dante’s understanding of popular Italian as varieties of Creole and his choice of an aristocratic (‘curial’) political Creole as ‘Italian’, because this will enable us to perceive the beginnings of European nationalisms as grounded on a creolized understanding of themselves while asserting kinship. In a second step, asserting literature’s capacity to inaugurate an ‘experience of the impossible’, Spivak discusses Glissant’s creolization as a project that gives us a way of thinking outside of the exigencies of activism and beyond the identitarian politics implicated in the European project.
Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez focuses on conviviality and examines the ethical underpinning of the project of creolization for ‘living together’. Discussing creolization as an ethics of ...
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Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez focuses on conviviality and examines the ethical underpinning of the project of creolization for ‘living together’. Discussing creolization as an ethics of conviviality, she explores first, the epistemic implications of creolization within the Caribbean epistemological framework of ‘Antilleanity’, and second, contrasts this proposal with current debates in Europe focusing on cultural mixing. In particular, the focus lies on current political debates on integration in Germany and the United Kingdom. Third, she explores the potential of creolization in people’s everyday lives by engaging with ethnographic research conducted between 2010 and 2012 in Manchester on ‘Latinizing Manchester’, with Latin American and Spanish diasporic networks.Less
Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez focuses on conviviality and examines the ethical underpinning of the project of creolization for ‘living together’. Discussing creolization as an ethics of conviviality, she explores first, the epistemic implications of creolization within the Caribbean epistemological framework of ‘Antilleanity’, and second, contrasts this proposal with current debates in Europe focusing on cultural mixing. In particular, the focus lies on current political debates on integration in Germany and the United Kingdom. Third, she explores the potential of creolization in people’s everyday lives by engaging with ethnographic research conducted between 2010 and 2012 in Manchester on ‘Latinizing Manchester’, with Latin American and Spanish diasporic networks.
Shirley Anne Tate
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Shirley Anne Tate analyses the aesthetics of creolization. Introducing the cultural politics of beauty into Glissantian creolization she shows that aesthetics has the potential to take us beyond a ...
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Shirley Anne Tate analyses the aesthetics of creolization. Introducing the cultural politics of beauty into Glissantian creolization she shows that aesthetics has the potential to take us beyond a simple mètissage to enable us to see how a nation understands itself. Discussing the example of the crowning of 20 year-old black ‘mixed race’ Rachel Christie on 20th July 2009 as the first black Miss England, she explores, first what creole could mean in aesthetic terms; second, Rachel Christie as the embodiment of the English nation as creolized, and third, the poetics of relation in which the continuation of white racial hegemony emerges through the beauty pageant as a micro-strategy of aesthetic domination.Less
Shirley Anne Tate analyses the aesthetics of creolization. Introducing the cultural politics of beauty into Glissantian creolization she shows that aesthetics has the potential to take us beyond a simple mètissage to enable us to see how a nation understands itself. Discussing the example of the crowning of 20 year-old black ‘mixed race’ Rachel Christie on 20th July 2009 as the first black Miss England, she explores, first what creole could mean in aesthetic terms; second, Rachel Christie as the embodiment of the English nation as creolized, and third, the poetics of relation in which the continuation of white racial hegemony emerges through the beauty pageant as a micro-strategy of aesthetic domination.
José Carlos Pina Almeida and David Corkill
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
José Carlos Almeida and David Corkill interrogate the implications of the European colonial project in tracing new cartographies and phenomena. Departing from reolization as a concept which refers to ...
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José Carlos Almeida and David Corkill interrogate the implications of the European colonial project in tracing new cartographies and phenomena. Departing from reolization as a concept which refers to the interaction between African slaves, European settlers, Asian indentured workers and indigenous peoples and cultural creolization, understood as the intermingling and mixing of two or several formerly discrete traditions or cultures, they discuss the limits of this concept in the understanding of the impact of Portuguese colonialism. Critically discussing Gilberto Freyre’s work on Lusotropicalism, they contrast creolization with the politics of miscegenation within imperial and fascist expansionist projects.Less
José Carlos Almeida and David Corkill interrogate the implications of the European colonial project in tracing new cartographies and phenomena. Departing from reolization as a concept which refers to the interaction between African slaves, European settlers, Asian indentured workers and indigenous peoples and cultural creolization, understood as the intermingling and mixing of two or several formerly discrete traditions or cultures, they discuss the limits of this concept in the understanding of the impact of Portuguese colonialism. Critically discussing Gilberto Freyre’s work on Lusotropicalism, they contrast creolization with the politics of miscegenation within imperial and fascist expansionist projects.
Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa and Emiko Saldívar Tanaka
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Emiko Saldivar explore the discourses of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) in Mexico in an attempt to understand the politics of public recognition of racism. They ...
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Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Emiko Saldivar explore the discourses of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) in Mexico in an attempt to understand the politics of public recognition of racism. They argue that the Mexican case can offer some interesting lessons on processes of mixture and diversity, encounter and dealing with difference in Europe and beyond, by reflecting on the notion of mestizaje, which like creolization, has emanated from the Americas. This is particularly relevant as there are some analysts in Europe claiming that the flux and mélange of cultures, accompanied by a politics of recognition, is a recipe against racism. The relationships between discourses and experiences of official mestizaje, nationalism and notions of ‘race’ in Mexico prompt us to examine the problem of recognition and disavowal of racism. By looking at the approaches to racist discourse and practices in Mexico they explore the limitations and opportunities of public racial recognition and associated debates about ‘political correctness’ and identity politics framed by mestizaje dynamics. Drawing on a controversy around the Mexican children’s character Memín Pinguín, and on a similar controversy in the UK concerning the golliwog doll, this chapter engages with the disjunctions between ‘race’, nation and political projects, be they mestizaje or creolization.Less
Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Emiko Saldivar explore the discourses of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) in Mexico in an attempt to understand the politics of public recognition of racism. They argue that the Mexican case can offer some interesting lessons on processes of mixture and diversity, encounter and dealing with difference in Europe and beyond, by reflecting on the notion of mestizaje, which like creolization, has emanated from the Americas. This is particularly relevant as there are some analysts in Europe claiming that the flux and mélange of cultures, accompanied by a politics of recognition, is a recipe against racism. The relationships between discourses and experiences of official mestizaje, nationalism and notions of ‘race’ in Mexico prompt us to examine the problem of recognition and disavowal of racism. By looking at the approaches to racist discourse and practices in Mexico they explore the limitations and opportunities of public racial recognition and associated debates about ‘political correctness’ and identity politics framed by mestizaje dynamics. Drawing on a controversy around the Mexican children’s character Memín Pinguín, and on a similar controversy in the UK concerning the golliwog doll, this chapter engages with the disjunctions between ‘race’, nation and political projects, be they mestizaje or creolization.
Valérie Loichot
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679836
- eISBN:
- 9781452948171
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679836.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Loichot traces the evolution of the Caribbean response to the colonial gaze, or rather, colonial mouth, from the late 19th century to the inception of the 21st. The ubiquitous presence of food and ...
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Loichot traces the evolution of the Caribbean response to the colonial gaze, or rather, colonial mouth, from the late 19th century to the inception of the 21st. The ubiquitous presence of food and hunger in Caribbean folktales, political and historical treatises, fiction, and poetry signals the various traumas that have marked the Caribbean from the Middle Passage, to Slavery, Colonialism, WW2, and Departmentalization. The Francophone and Anglophone authors featured in The Tropics Bite Back bite back at the controlling images of the cannibal, the starved, the cunning cook, or the sexualized sugary octoroon, with the ultimate goal of constructing humanity through structural, literal, or allegorical acts of ingesting, cooking, and eating. Deviating from monographs that identify food solely as a cultural trope, the book privileges literary cannibalism, which Loichot reads in parallel with theories of Relation and Creolization, and which she distinguishes from cultural assimilation. Unlike other “Food Studies” monographs, the book does not focus primarily on cookbooks or “food novels,” but rather constructively explores “culinary coups” in unexpected places, such as Glissant’s essays. The book culminates with an investigation of the complexity of Suzanne Césaire’s practice of literary cannibalism, focusing on the Martinican writer’s critique of surrealist André Breton. The Tropics Bite Back features a transnational network of Caribbean authors writing from or about Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, or the Caribbean Diasporas of the United States, Canada, and France, whose culinary acts resonate with American, Brazilian, Cuban, and Barbadian voices.Less
Loichot traces the evolution of the Caribbean response to the colonial gaze, or rather, colonial mouth, from the late 19th century to the inception of the 21st. The ubiquitous presence of food and hunger in Caribbean folktales, political and historical treatises, fiction, and poetry signals the various traumas that have marked the Caribbean from the Middle Passage, to Slavery, Colonialism, WW2, and Departmentalization. The Francophone and Anglophone authors featured in The Tropics Bite Back bite back at the controlling images of the cannibal, the starved, the cunning cook, or the sexualized sugary octoroon, with the ultimate goal of constructing humanity through structural, literal, or allegorical acts of ingesting, cooking, and eating. Deviating from monographs that identify food solely as a cultural trope, the book privileges literary cannibalism, which Loichot reads in parallel with theories of Relation and Creolization, and which she distinguishes from cultural assimilation. Unlike other “Food Studies” monographs, the book does not focus primarily on cookbooks or “food novels,” but rather constructively explores “culinary coups” in unexpected places, such as Glissant’s essays. The book culminates with an investigation of the complexity of Suzanne Césaire’s practice of literary cannibalism, focusing on the Martinican writer’s critique of surrealist André Breton. The Tropics Bite Back features a transnational network of Caribbean authors writing from or about Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, or the Caribbean Diasporas of the United States, Canada, and France, whose culinary acts resonate with American, Brazilian, Cuban, and Barbadian voices.
John Wharton Lowe
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469628882
- eISBN:
- 9781469628059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469628882.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the ...
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This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the conflict in Southern letters is surveyed, leading to a comparison of the guarded nature of such presentations with subsequent settings of the conflict by Caribbean writers. Nineteenth-century works by Victor Séjour, Charles Gayarré, Sherwood Bonner, George Washington Cable, and Grace King are noted, followed by extended readings of texts by twentieth-century writers such as Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and William Faulkner, who are placed in company with Caribbean writers - Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, C.L.R. James, Derek Walcott, Édouard Glissant - who dramatized the conflict. The chapter concludes with a reading of Madison Smartt Bell’s All Soul’s Rising. All these sections are supported by a discussion of relevant histories and critical analysis by figures such as J. Michael Dash, Sybille Fischer, Franz Fanon, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot; special attention goes to vodoun, the interplay of colonial powers in the basin, varying portrayals of leaders such as Macandal, Toussaint, and LeClerc, and the contrasting roles of enslaved characters, who mount the “revolution from below.”Less
This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the conflict in Southern letters is surveyed, leading to a comparison of the guarded nature of such presentations with subsequent settings of the conflict by Caribbean writers. Nineteenth-century works by Victor Séjour, Charles Gayarré, Sherwood Bonner, George Washington Cable, and Grace King are noted, followed by extended readings of texts by twentieth-century writers such as Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and William Faulkner, who are placed in company with Caribbean writers - Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, C.L.R. James, Derek Walcott, Édouard Glissant - who dramatized the conflict. The chapter concludes with a reading of Madison Smartt Bell’s All Soul’s Rising. All these sections are supported by a discussion of relevant histories and critical analysis by figures such as J. Michael Dash, Sybille Fischer, Franz Fanon, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot; special attention goes to vodoun, the interplay of colonial powers in the basin, varying portrayals of leaders such as Macandal, Toussaint, and LeClerc, and the contrasting roles of enslaved characters, who mount the “revolution from below.”
Sharad Chari
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280063
- eISBN:
- 9780823281510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280063.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
This chapter begins with C.L.R. James’ quip on considering the passage of his ideas to South Africa, that “revolution moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.” From a reading of James’ Black ...
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This chapter begins with C.L.R. James’ quip on considering the passage of his ideas to South Africa, that “revolution moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.” From a reading of James’ Black Jacobins the paper shifts to a diagnosis of four dialectical moments in anti-apartheid Durban, South Africa. The ‘moment of the disqualified’ exemplifies best what James (citing Hegel) calls “the seriousness, the suffering, the patience and the labour of the negative.” Emerging from this detour through the rough and tumble of revolutionary Durban, through the making and unmaking of coalitional Black politics, the paper connects the critique of the essential Black political subject with the work of reimagining revolution against racial capitalism. The key argument is that a postcolonial politics to come must circuit through the insights of the Black radical tradition, while stretching the spectre of Black Power into new, and newly creolized futures.Less
This chapter begins with C.L.R. James’ quip on considering the passage of his ideas to South Africa, that “revolution moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.” From a reading of James’ Black Jacobins the paper shifts to a diagnosis of four dialectical moments in anti-apartheid Durban, South Africa. The ‘moment of the disqualified’ exemplifies best what James (citing Hegel) calls “the seriousness, the suffering, the patience and the labour of the negative.” Emerging from this detour through the rough and tumble of revolutionary Durban, through the making and unmaking of coalitional Black politics, the paper connects the critique of the essential Black political subject with the work of reimagining revolution against racial capitalism. The key argument is that a postcolonial politics to come must circuit through the insights of the Black radical tradition, while stretching the spectre of Black Power into new, and newly creolized futures.
Jarrett H. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319389
- eISBN:
- 9781781380901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319389.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This essay examines the persuasive fit between the biographical evidence of Claude McKay’s life, his characterization of Bita Plant as a maroon figure returning to “the point of entanglement” ...
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This essay examines the persuasive fit between the biographical evidence of Claude McKay’s life, his characterization of Bita Plant as a maroon figure returning to “the point of entanglement” (Glissant, Caribbean Discourse 26), and the continuum of masculine subjectivity in McKay’s work, from Jake/ Ray to Banjo/Ray to Bita. The author posits the idea of Bita as McKay’s maroon self returned in drag on two bases: one, that the life of a vagabond troubadour, and the habit of literary self-portrait had so become second nature to McKay, that he was unable to inhabit a less ambiguous, less tricksterish persona; two, that McKay’s unresolved issues with his mother and father play out as impersonation or ventriloquism, reconciliation, exorcism, and homage in the figure of Bita. The essay argues also that McKay’s lifelong and haunting need to return to the country of his birth played out in this literary disguise in which, if we also see Bita as Jamaica developing a decolonized subjectivity, her move is from (feminized) colonial territory to an authoritative republic of the self. Less
This essay examines the persuasive fit between the biographical evidence of Claude McKay’s life, his characterization of Bita Plant as a maroon figure returning to “the point of entanglement” (Glissant, Caribbean Discourse 26), and the continuum of masculine subjectivity in McKay’s work, from Jake/ Ray to Banjo/Ray to Bita. The author posits the idea of Bita as McKay’s maroon self returned in drag on two bases: one, that the life of a vagabond troubadour, and the habit of literary self-portrait had so become second nature to McKay, that he was unable to inhabit a less ambiguous, less tricksterish persona; two, that McKay’s unresolved issues with his mother and father play out as impersonation or ventriloquism, reconciliation, exorcism, and homage in the figure of Bita. The essay argues also that McKay’s lifelong and haunting need to return to the country of his birth played out in this literary disguise in which, if we also see Bita as Jamaica developing a decolonized subjectivity, her move is from (feminized) colonial territory to an authoritative republic of the self.
Atreyee Phukan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781628464757
- eISBN:
- 9781628464801
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628464757.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter delineates the multilayered Indo-Caribbean experience of the region’s nationalism as it sought to balance pride in the realization of independence from Britain on the subcontinent in ...
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This chapter delineates the multilayered Indo-Caribbean experience of the region’s nationalism as it sought to balance pride in the realization of independence from Britain on the subcontinent in 1947 with a recognition of the need to forge permanent affective links within the Caribbean basin. Examining Khan’s The Jumbie Bird in the context of the influential creolization theories of Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Édouard Glissant, the author argues that Khan’s book advocates for a version of creolized Caribbean nationalism inflected by its characters’ South Asian lineage. By highlighting the novel’s explicit repudiation of the “back-to-India” movement and its valorization of a syncretic Indo-Caribbean aesthetic practice, the chapter reveals that Khan’s political aesthetic is quite in keeping, on a structural level, with the more celebrated, more Afro-centric theories of creolization in concert with which it arose.Less
This chapter delineates the multilayered Indo-Caribbean experience of the region’s nationalism as it sought to balance pride in the realization of independence from Britain on the subcontinent in 1947 with a recognition of the need to forge permanent affective links within the Caribbean basin. Examining Khan’s The Jumbie Bird in the context of the influential creolization theories of Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Édouard Glissant, the author argues that Khan’s book advocates for a version of creolized Caribbean nationalism inflected by its characters’ South Asian lineage. By highlighting the novel’s explicit repudiation of the “back-to-India” movement and its valorization of a syncretic Indo-Caribbean aesthetic practice, the chapter reveals that Khan’s political aesthetic is quite in keeping, on a structural level, with the more celebrated, more Afro-centric theories of creolization in concert with which it arose.
Sara Le Menestrel
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628461459
- eISBN:
- 9781626740785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461459.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter introduces French Louisiana cultural and musical landscape. It contextualizes Creole and Cajun identities throughout Louisiana history up to the present and gives a brief description of ...
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This chapter introduces French Louisiana cultural and musical landscape. It contextualizes Creole and Cajun identities throughout Louisiana history up to the present and gives a brief description of current musical categories. This chapter also explains the subject of the book, the approach that was adopted, and situates them within the existent literature on music. It also explores the concept of creolization and explains why it will not be used as an analytical tool but rather, as a vernacular category. Finally, the chapter presents the research methodology, including the ethnographic techniques involved and the importance of introspection.Less
This chapter introduces French Louisiana cultural and musical landscape. It contextualizes Creole and Cajun identities throughout Louisiana history up to the present and gives a brief description of current musical categories. This chapter also explains the subject of the book, the approach that was adopted, and situates them within the existent literature on music. It also explores the concept of creolization and explains why it will not be used as an analytical tool but rather, as a vernacular category. Finally, the chapter presents the research methodology, including the ethnographic techniques involved and the importance of introspection.
Jane Anna Gordon
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823254811
- eISBN:
- 9780823260881
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823254811.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Asking whether one can develop an approach to studying political life that reflects its heterogeneity, Jane Anna Gordon offers the creolization of political theory as a viable response. Creolization, ...
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Asking whether one can develop an approach to studying political life that reflects its heterogeneity, Jane Anna Gordon offers the creolization of political theory as a viable response. Creolization, she argues, describes mixtures that were not supposed to have emerged in the plantation societies of the Caribbean but did through their capacity to exemplify living culture, thought, and political practice. In so doing, they provide a useful way of understanding similar processes that continue today, namely of one potential outcome when people who were previously strangers find themselves as unequal co-occupants of new political locations they seek to call “home.” In demonstrating a path that is different from the one usually associated with multiculturalism, in which different cultures are thought to co-exist relatively separately and the aim is for each to tolerate the other by letting it remain in relative isolation, creolization describes how people reinterpret themselves through interaction with one another to create forms of belonging that are familiar but also distinctive and new. These are useful models for reconsidering how contemporary political solidarities could be constructed and how relationships may be forged among what have become radically separate fields for studying a shared world. Gordon demonstrates the generative capacity of creolizing methodologies through bringing together the ideas of the 18th century revolutionary Swiss thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the 20th century Martinican-born Algerian liberationist Frantz Fanon. Fanon, she argues, outlined a vision of how to bring into being the decolonial methodologies and democratically legitimate alternatives that Rousseau mainly imagined.Less
Asking whether one can develop an approach to studying political life that reflects its heterogeneity, Jane Anna Gordon offers the creolization of political theory as a viable response. Creolization, she argues, describes mixtures that were not supposed to have emerged in the plantation societies of the Caribbean but did through their capacity to exemplify living culture, thought, and political practice. In so doing, they provide a useful way of understanding similar processes that continue today, namely of one potential outcome when people who were previously strangers find themselves as unequal co-occupants of new political locations they seek to call “home.” In demonstrating a path that is different from the one usually associated with multiculturalism, in which different cultures are thought to co-exist relatively separately and the aim is for each to tolerate the other by letting it remain in relative isolation, creolization describes how people reinterpret themselves through interaction with one another to create forms of belonging that are familiar but also distinctive and new. These are useful models for reconsidering how contemporary political solidarities could be constructed and how relationships may be forged among what have become radically separate fields for studying a shared world. Gordon demonstrates the generative capacity of creolizing methodologies through bringing together the ideas of the 18th century revolutionary Swiss thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the 20th century Martinican-born Algerian liberationist Frantz Fanon. Fanon, she argues, outlined a vision of how to bring into being the decolonial methodologies and democratically legitimate alternatives that Rousseau mainly imagined.
Luis Martínez-Fernández
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781683400325
- eISBN:
- 9781683400981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9781683400325.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter explores the complex manifold hybrid cultural manifestations stemming from the human interactions discussed in the previous chapter. The chapter recurs to Fernando Ortiz’s ajiaco (Cuban ...
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This chapter explores the complex manifold hybrid cultural manifestations stemming from the human interactions discussed in the previous chapter. The chapter recurs to Fernando Ortiz’s ajiaco (Cuban stew) metaphor as representative of the syncretic or hybrid culture forged by transculturation among Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans. The chapter brings to life the stories of different characters that are emblematic of creolization and transculturation in religion and burial practices, food and diet, and music.Less
This chapter explores the complex manifold hybrid cultural manifestations stemming from the human interactions discussed in the previous chapter. The chapter recurs to Fernando Ortiz’s ajiaco (Cuban stew) metaphor as representative of the syncretic or hybrid culture forged by transculturation among Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans. The chapter brings to life the stories of different characters that are emblematic of creolization and transculturation in religion and burial practices, food and diet, and music.
April J. Mayes
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049199
- eISBN:
- 9780813050041
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049199.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
The introduction provides an overview of the chapters and situates the present study in conversation within three separate historiographies: the “nueva ola” generation of Dominican historians who ...
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The introduction provides an overview of the chapters and situates the present study in conversation within three separate historiographies: the “nueva ola” generation of Dominican historians who published new social histories during the post-Trujillo period; U.S.-trained historians interested in questions of race and identity in the Dominican Republic; and, within the emerging scholarship on gender and political culture in the Dominican Republic.Less
The introduction provides an overview of the chapters and situates the present study in conversation within three separate historiographies: the “nueva ola” generation of Dominican historians who published new social histories during the post-Trujillo period; U.S.-trained historians interested in questions of race and identity in the Dominican Republic; and, within the emerging scholarship on gender and political culture in the Dominican Republic.
Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501705267
- eISBN:
- 9781501719592
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705267.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The Dutch started to develop parts of the Guianas mainly because they had not succeeded in conquering, defending and exploiting Caribbean islands suitable for profitable plantation agriculture. The ...
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The Dutch started to develop parts of the Guianas mainly because they had not succeeded in conquering, defending and exploiting Caribbean islands suitable for profitable plantation agriculture. The colonial economies remained fragile and growth would increasingly depend on credits extended from the Republic. The one unique and lasting Dutch contribution to the technology of sugar production was the adaptation of the Dutch polder system to plantation agriculture. The population of the colonies was overwhelmingly of African birth and descent, and almost entirely enslaved. While manumission was rare, in Suriname the major route out of slavery was marronage, and Berbice saw a major slave revolt, which almost ended Dutch rule.Less
The Dutch started to develop parts of the Guianas mainly because they had not succeeded in conquering, defending and exploiting Caribbean islands suitable for profitable plantation agriculture. The colonial economies remained fragile and growth would increasingly depend on credits extended from the Republic. The one unique and lasting Dutch contribution to the technology of sugar production was the adaptation of the Dutch polder system to plantation agriculture. The population of the colonies was overwhelmingly of African birth and descent, and almost entirely enslaved. While manumission was rare, in Suriname the major route out of slavery was marronage, and Berbice saw a major slave revolt, which almost ended Dutch rule.
