Description
In his seminal work, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, Kamau Brathwaite attempted to expose the essential “Jamaican” nature of the identity that developed at the interstices between the cultures of Europe and Africa. He took the concept of Creole society beyond mere description by articulating s clear and poetically engaging intellectual model of the process of cultural change that defines, and distinguishes, Creole societies – a process which he termed “creolisation”.
The publication of this path-breaking work has given rise to vigorous polemics among scholars who have expanded the debate beyond the Caribbean. Indeed, the creolisation discourse has been widely incorporated into scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic, and resonates in diverse fields of Atlantic World Studies, spreading beyond the confines of the discipline of history.
This interdisciplinary trend is demonstrated in this volume, primarily a tribute to Brathwaite, with contributions from Carolyn Allen, Hilary McD. Beckles, O. Nigel Bolland, Carolyn Cooper, Lorna Goodison, Veronica Gregg, Percy C. Hintzen, Verene A. Shepherd, Paul Lovejoy, Patricia Mohammed, Mary Morgan, Lucie Pradel, Rhoda Reddock, Glen Richards, Jean Small, David Trotman, Maureen Warner-Lewis and Swithin Wilmot.
About the Authors
Verene A. Shepherd is Professor of Social History, University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Jamaica.
The late Glen L. Richards was a Lecturer in the Department of History, University of the West Indies, Mona campus.
Contents
Foreword by Professor Rex Nettleford
Introduction
SECTION 1: BARBADIAN GENESIS
- Highway to Vision: This Sea Out Nexus – Mary Morgan
SECTION 2: CREOLISATION AND CREOLE: DEFINITIONS, MEANINGS AND MODELS CRITIQUED
- Creolisation and Creole Societies: A Cultural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social History – O. Nigel Bolland
- Creole: The Problem of Definition – Carolyn Allen
SECTION 3: CLASS, GENDER, ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY
- Enslaved Africans and their Expectations of Slave Life in the Americas: Towars a Reconsideration of Models of “Creolisation” – Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman
- Race and Creole Ethnicity in the Caribbean – Percy C. Hintzen
- Contestations Over Culture, Class, Gender and Identity in Trinidad and Tobago: “The Little Tradition” – Rhoda Reddock
- The “Creolisation” of Indian Women in Trinidad – Patricia Mohammed
- “Yuh Know Bout Coo-Coo? Where Yuh Know Bout Coo-Coo?”: Language and
Representation, Creolisation and Confusion in “Indian Cuisine” – Veronica Gregg
SECTION 4: CREOLISATION AND CARIBBEAN ECONOMY, SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM
- Questioning Creole: Domestic Producers and Jamaica’s Plantation Economy – Verene A. Shepherd
- Creolisation in Action: The Slave Labour Elite and Anti-Slavery in Barbados – Hilary McD. Beckles
- “Driber Tan Mi Saide”: Creolisation and the Labour Process in St. Kitts-Nevis, 1810– 1905 – Glen Richards
- The Politics of Samuel Clarke: Black Creole Politician in Free Jamaica, 1851–1865 – Swithin Wilmot
SECTION 5: CREOLISATION AND CARIBBEAN CULTURAL FORMS
- Creolisation Processes in Linguistic, Artistic and Material Cultures – Maureen Warner-Lewis
- African Sacredness and Caribbean Cultural Forms – Lucie Pradel
- Hip-Hopping Across Cultures: Crossing Over from Reggae to Rap and Back – Carolyn Cooper
SECTION 6: POETIC DISCOURSES
- Angel of Dreamers and My Uncle – Lorna Goodison
Po’m for Kamau – Jean Small
