Description
Caribbean cultural identity is dynamic and complex but also continuously in flux. In the 21st century, the Caribbean is both a site of cultural convergence and divergence. Though influenced by common histories of slavery, indentureship and European colonization and postcolonialism, the multi-ethnic diaspora and new globalized dispensation has resulted in an ever-changing, yet unique Caribbean culture.
In Caribbean Dynamics: Re-configuring Caribbean Culture, the authors present the multi-vocality of Caribbean culture with an integrated overview of the social, political and cultural themes that dominate the Caribbean landscape. Francophone, Anglophone, Dutch and Spanish creolization in the Caribbean is examined to reveal reconfigured national and regional identities.
Divided into 3 main sections, the first, ‘The Dynamics of Carib-being’, looks at how literature has helped to shape Caribbean identities. The second section, ‘Performing Arts: Mapping out the Caribscape’ presents the diversity of Caribbean culture, while the third section, ‘Transcending Adversity to Foster a Caribbean Culturalist Ethos’ examines how Caribbean cultural identity is articulated and translated in social and government policies. This examination of the Caribbean ‘being’, ‘performing’ and ‘transcending’ steps outside of traditional interrogations of identity and provides a timely panoramic view of emergent issues in a globalized Caribbean region.
Caribbean Dynamics investigates both the collectiveness and singularity of the Caribbean and reveals the mosaic that is Caribbean cultural identity; hewn from the past, honed by trans-border diasporic influences and woven into the tapestry of a new globalized cultural landscape.
About the Author
Béatrice Boufoy-Bastick is Professor of Language and Culture at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine. An experienced academic writer and empirical researcher, she has lectured across four continents and written extensively on language and culture.
Savrina Chinien is a lecturer in French, Francophone Literature and film as well as coordinator of the French section at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine. Her research focuses on Martinician literature and Francophone Caribbean Cinema and she has been widely published. She is the author of Les Communautés orientales aux Antilles (2008).
Contents
Foreword by Lise Winer
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: The Dynamics of ‘Carib-being’
- European Creoleness: The Dynamics of Creolization in the European and Caribbean Literary Spaces – Kristian Van Haesendonck
- Francophone Caribbean Writers and the Legacy of Negritude: A Critical Evaluation – Kahiudi Claver Mabana
- Rethinking Caribbean Communities: The Dynamics of Natural Disasters in the Works of Gisèle Pineau – Laura Loth
- Envisioning Social Change in Indo-Caribbean Women’s Writing – Elizabeth Jackson
- Echoes of Ancestral Voices: Analysing Tropes of Identity in Selected Poetry by Jennifer Rahim, Mayra Santos Febres and Chiqui Vicioso – Nicole Roberts
- The Nation in the Literary Imagi-Nation: A Question of Human Dignity – Vijay Maharaj
Part 2: (Performing) Arts: mapping the Caribscape
- Trinidad’s French Creole Linguistic and Cultural Heritage: Documentation and Revitalization Issues – Jo-Anne S. Ferreira
- Contemporary Globalized Popular Cultures: Re-configuring Vodou Traditions in the serialized novels of Gary Victor Le revenant – Françoise Cévaër
- Bim and Joebell: Filmic Representations of Colonial and Postcolonial Caribbean Identity – Susan L. McFarlane-Alvarez
- ‘We are still in the Colonial Woods.’ Interview with Yao Ramesar – Savrina Chinien
- Visual Iconography as Trans-positional Mode: Monument, Performance and Spectacle as episteme – Marielle Barrow
- Chutney Music in Carnival: Re-defining National Identity in Trinidad and Tobago – Kumar Mahabir
Part 3: Transcending Adversity to Foster a Caribbean Culturalist Ethos
- Variations on Culturalist Nationalisms in Puerto Rico, or ‘That Orgy of Brutal Appetites, Under the Veil of a Loutish Superstition’ – Ricardo J. Arribas
- Refashioning the Dynamics of National Identity and Cultural Diversity in the Caribbean Society of Curaçao – Rose Mary Allen
- Consuming Safety Safely: Upper Middle and Upper Class Trinidadian Responses to Increasing rates of Crime – Sacha Geer
- The Future of Vulnerability and Sustainable Development in Haiti: Disaster, Community, Innovation and Information – Russell Stockard Jr
- The Case of Haiti: Dichotomies of Religious Engagement and Citizenship – LeGrace Benson »
Contributors
Index
