| Name: Rose Mary Allen
Email: allenrm@curinfo.an
Title: Constructing cultural identity in modern Caribbean : The case of Curacaoan society.
This paper wishes to address the different ways in which globalization and localization dialectically interact in Curacao at the moment. Most of the time, societies tend to be in a dual position when dealing with the issue of globalization. The Curacaoan society, on one hand sees globalization as a salvation to the many economic and developmental problems it faces. Present discourses related to development focus on issues such as the opening of the frontiers. e_commerce and e_government. It is believed that an increasing flow of people. capital, goods and meaning will lead eventually to development of the society.Essentially, this paper aims at looking at how local identity is constructed amidst the currently global flow of population and ideas. It questions how globalization affects the organization of cultural meanings in the everyday lives of locally situated people and how they try to deal with this.
Name: Kathryn L. Beard
Email: ab4256@wayne.edu
Title: D.A.Straker: A political paradox in elite leadership in late nineteenth century Detroit
The theoretical framework of the paper, "D. A. Straker: A Political Paradox in Elite Leadership in Late Nineteenth-Century Detroit," offers a revision of the view of Detroit's black community as monolithic. The presence of West Indian immigrants like Straker attests to not only class divisions, but ethnic diversity as well. West Indian immigrants comprised part of an elite class of professionals in Detroit by the 1890s, with Straker himself becoming one of the first black judges in the city. He also encouraged the immigration of friends he had in Barbados, thus becoming a vital link in the migration chain.
The paper challenges the conventional historical periodization of West Indian immigration. Although the change in the US immigration policy in the 1960s led to a dramatic growth in Detroit's West Indian population, I argue that a small yet significant cohort of immigrants from the Caribbean arrived much earlier. This early-arriving group has suffered from the "double invisibility" syndrome due to the wider society's predisposition to view West Indian immigrants as indistinct from the broader African-American community. An examination of Straker's experience as an immigrant illustrates the awareness of a self-conscious West Indian ethnic identity that until recently has been ignored in Detroit's history.
Name: Chris Campbell
Email: cordd@csv.warwick.ac.uk
Title: Possessing the Language of the Land: Literature and Ecology in the Caribbean.
This paper will provide examples of possible intersections between the new field of literary ecocriticism and Caribbean Studies/ postcolonial readings of Caribbean literature in English. It will attempt to give an overview of the corpus of work by Wilson Harris and Derek Walcott and, through readings of specific narratives/poems, to demonstrate the centrality of these artists to 'new approaches' in Caribbean humanities scholarship.
Name: Donald Davis
Email: iblack@yahoo.com
Title: The Emergence of the JAMAICA REGGAE BOYZ within the context of Caribbean Football: A Building Block in the Caribbean Integration process
This paper examines the notions of Resistance, Liberation, and Development in the Diaspora; viewed through the bi_focal cultural lens of play and sport; looking at the psychological, socio_economic and political impact of football on individuals, schools, communities, and by extension_ the Nation. The paper looks specifically at the implications of the Jamaican experience on the 1998 Road to France.
Name: Melisse Ellis
Email: melisseellis@yahoo.co.ukTitle: Race Consciousness Ideologies and Movements in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1838-1950: A Research Design.
This study examines the pillars of race consciousness ethoi among Afro_West Indians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It seeks to recover Afro_West Indian perspectives on `the nature and peculiarities of the Negro,' his/her sense of identity, the state of the race and strategies for progress through an examination of sources produced by Afro_West Indians themselves. It attempts to tease out a history of ideas: To conduct "historical investigation of the textual and cultural remains of human thought."
This is intended as a "new intellectual history"_a history of both intellectuals and `ordinary' individuals alike; as such, (self)written sources are not always available to be studied. Therefore, a combination of traditional and non_traditional methods will be used in an effort to excavate thoughts. Authors outside of the group will be examined using the methodology of literary discourse theory of `reading against the grain'_reading subtextually to find meaning by attending to the metaphors in the discourse and what they unconsciously say about the author as well as subjects. Through Anthroponymic methods formal names given at birth, adopted formal names, pseudonyms and nicknames will be examined to determine what they may teach us about ethnic and cultural pride. Psychological and Sociological theories on the significance of dress and ornamentation in society are being utilised to study the clothing behaviour and ornamentation practices of nineteenth and early twentieth century blacks, as revealed in surviving visual sources. Folk music, novels, poetry and cartoons are being used glean insights into attitudes of blacks towards their blackness.
Name: Dr Kaima Glover
Email: klg29@hotmail.com
Most of us have a general understanding of and immediate reaction to the figure of the zombie; an understanding and reaction based primarily on the presentation of this figure in horror films produced by the Hollywood machine. In the particular context of Haitian literature, however, the zombie has a significance that far surpasses its "Hollywoodian" configuration. In effect, this figure from the voodoo universe offers the Haitian writer a valuable literary metaphor, providing an indigenously generated springboard from which to consider the larger question of social alienation in an economically, politically, and psychically fractured society. A look at three texts, Jacques_Stephen Alexis' "Chronique d'un faux amour," Franketienne's Les affres d'un defi, and Rene Depestre's Hadriana dans tous mes roves, will reveal the usefulness of the zombie figure in the construction of an authentic Haitian literary tradition.Indeed, the exploitation of the undead by the Haitian writer takes place on both a metatextual and a textual level, effectively highlighting the twofold definition of the verb "to exploit." For on the one hand, to exploit is "to employ to the greatest possible advantage." and thus bears a neutral, if not positive, connotation. On the other hand, to exploit is "to make use of selfishly or unethically," and carries a decidedly pejorative implication. It is helpful to acknowledge this connotative duality inasmuch as each component of the verb's definition very satisfyingly corresponds with one or the other of the uses to which the zombie figure is put by the authors in question. Thus the literary value of the zombie, an inherently exploited _ or selfishly and unethically used _ being, is exploited _ that is, employed to the greatest possible advantage _ as an effective aesthetic tool for the Haitian writer.
Name: Carmel L. Haynes
Email: bajegirl@hotmail.com
Title: Post-Structuralism and the Post-Colonial Caribbean Identity
This paper will discuss how West Indian literature has constructed a particular 'identity' for its postcolonial subjects. I am drawing upon a post-structuralist conceptualisation of identity as 'intersubjective' or 'intertextual'. Through an understanding of 'identity' as not 'fixed' but, a series of subject positions shaped by internal and external forces, I investigate the ways in which identities are articulated on behalf of the postcolonial subject. I am interested in the role played by language and literature in these postcolonial identity formations as conceptualised within the Althusserian framework that vests language or discourse with the ability to interpellate its subjects and confer subjectivity upon an individual since. Furthermore, I am interested in the role that literature has in defining the limits of the identity. As Stuart Hall notes, identities are constructed within 'specific discursive formations and practices' and produced by 'specific enunciative strategies' hence, I am looking at the literature as a specific discursive formation. To do this, I also draw upon Foucault in discussing how writers sought to limit what constituted the literature; how this literature was to be articulated; and who had the privilege or exclusive right to speak of, on, about, or for 'the nation' or 'the literature'.
Name: Melvina Hazard
Email: mehazard@yahoo.co.uk
Title: Caribbean E_Scapes: The Digital Diaspora
This paper will explore the intervention of cyber space in the transmutation of national states of being_ into transnational scapes of becoming among the Caribbean Digital Diaspora. It will contend that `Citizens of the Caribbean Diaspora' have convened in cyberspace to construct an imaginary Caribbean' E_scape. The notion of Caribbean E_scape makes use but transcends Anderson's Imaginary Homelands. The Internet creates extra_national communities' formed within cyber space. Citizens of the Caribbean Digital Diaspora experience and/or simulate Stuart Hall's sense of `imaginary plenitude'. In this virtual community, past or existing notions of nation hood and national identity are dramatically reduced and transformed into a simplified homogenous ideal of 'the Caribbean', In the `real' heterogeneous Caribbean, language, social status, ethnicity, race and geography create moments of tension and division among various groups. In this Caribbean Escape. citizens succumb to a hyper_real united creolised/carnivalised Caribbean ordained by unofficial consensus of the Internet rich majority of the cyber elite continuum.
Will this transnational propensity lead to Appudurai's prophecy that in the globalisation process the `transnations' of diasporic communities would signal the `end of the nation state'? (Modernity at Large. 18). The paper will also examine how citizens of the Caribbean digital Diaspora self_construct new personas/identities; Often, living a double masquerade of co presence. One, in the hyper real Caribbean where they wear an online mask that locates them as part of a transnational/transcultural community. The other in the so_called 'real world', where their ethnic and national identities are being constantly constructed and renegotiated.
Name: Tara A. Inniss
Email: innisst@hotmail.com
This paper proposes new directions for Caribbean history which have not been adequately addressed by past or current scholarship. Loosely based on Barry Higman's call for Caribbean historians to pay attention to some neglected areas of Caribbean social history, this paper will help flesh out some of the work that has been done, as well as the work that needs to be done, and is being pursued by some graduate research students.
However, there are still many aspects of Caribbean society that have not been adequately addressed. Histories of other social groups/ categories such as children, the sick, the mentally and physically disabled as well as the elderly have not been completed. Related topics such as the social history of health and medicine underlie many historical events and have real and assessable impacts on population throughout Caribbean history. Gender, class, and ethnicity also pervade discussions of these specific social groups and their interactions with one another and the state. Comparisons and continuities between the pre_and post_emancipation periods also need to be made in order to raise questions and critiques of "development" in the Caribbean. This paper will serve as an entry point for further discussion of the abovementioned topics as well as invite discussion on other under_investigated areas of Caribbean social history.
Name: Terencia Joseph
Email: wildmajesty@hotmail.com
Title: An Invisible Existence: The Indian Experience in St. Lucia, 1859_1903.
Most of the history of the Indians in the Caribbean has been the history of Indians in Trinidad. Guyana and Surinam. These histories recount the existence of large communities of Indians and their impact on the host society. This paper tries to contribute a shift in the discourse by assessing an Indian community which has never exceeded 4% of the total population while still being the largest minority. Indians in Trinidad and Guyana were able to consolidate and reconstitute their culture after the indentureship period. However, in colonies such as St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Jamaica this was not the case. Instead, what occurred was the adoption of the_Black culture by the Indians to such an extent that one cannot speak of an "Indian culture" in these territories. The historian therefore, needs to answer why the post_indenture history of these two groups of islands are so different, when they all share a somewhat similar history in other areas.The paper identifies a number of factors which resulted in the absorption of this migrant group into the general population. They include the small numbers of Indians introduced during the indentureship period, the intermittent importation of these labourers, the high level of repatriation, the geography of the island and colonial government policy towards them. The references include primary sources such as newspapers ("The West Indian", the "St. Lucia Gazette"). official government documents such as Protector of Immigrants Reports, and Decennial Censuses.
Name: Radica Mahase
Email: radmal@yahoo.com
This paper analyses the history of female Indian emigrants to Trinidad. From 1845 to 1917. approximately 147,000 Indians settled in British_governed Trinidad as indentured labourers on mainly (though not solely) the sugar cane plantations. Of this number about 25% were female migrants. This research will examine the position of Indian women in their mother country; attempt to evaluate the extent to which they were `pushed' from their traditional villages and other reasons why they emigrated; and discuss their adaptation to their new environment.It will also look at the problems faced by Indian women as well as their status and role in a patriarchal society. It intends to show that Indian women were subjugated economically and socially in India and that their movement was highly regulated and restricted so that they were simply not at liberty to emigrate. They were the ones most victimized during the indentureship system but were able to establish `new lives' in Trinidad. In an attempt to analyze this topic in its totality I have examined a host of primary source materials both in India and Trinidad.
Name: Debbie Anne Navarrete
Email: d.navarrete@umiami.edu
Title: Nature. Eroticism, and Community: Toward an Ecowomanist Sensibility in Pauline Melville's The Ventriloquist's Tale
With the use of ecological womanism as a base and Pauline Melville's The Ventriloquist's Tale as illustration. I plan to investigate a contemporary representation of the intersections between landscape, imperialism (both historical and contemporary) and sexuality. Part of the justification for the resurrection of Heliodorus's Aethiopicu was its potential use as moral guide. Part of my argument here will be that the moral vision being advanced in the Aethiopica was one of devastating sexual and cultural appropriation that heralded the continuous usurption and despoilation of land that has led to the present_day global environmental crisis. I posit that The Ventriloquist's Tale attempts to revise the kind of moral vision represented by Aethiopica'.s publication with its attention to communal life that is not only dependant on an egalitarian relationship to the natural environment but also. in the spirit of Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," female sexuality.This paper takes a two_pronged approach towards examining mythology in West Indian literature, looking at mythology in terms of traditional mythology: Afro_Caribbean and Judeo_Christian/Western, and contemporary mythology: the archetypal situations and characters which reflect the more current sociocultural concerns of the writers.
Name: Icil Phillips
Email: singleeye@sunbeach.net
Title: Out or not out: Cricket as a liberating force in Earl Warner's Mantalk (1995)
ManTalk, written and directed by Earl Warner in 1995, can be regarded as classic performance piece that uses a Caribbean style to explore the psychic disintegration and spiritual regeneration that marks ex_colonial relations with the outside world. Through the trope of cricket, which acts as a signifier of colonial containment, Warner answers back the race/class discourse which has persisted in modern times. This paper, using content analysis, examines ManTalk as an example of a Caribbean theatre aesthetic and as commentary on the social conditions affecting men in the region. It also seeks to address the ways in which cricket becomes a liberating force for men and women in a contemporary Caribbean.
Name: Antoinette Pressley-Sanon
Email: tonisanon@aol.com
Title: Bearing Witness: Haiti's Use of Oral Tradition under Silencing Conditions: The Case of Raoul Peck's "The Man by the Shore"
When filmmaker Raoul Peck was in pre_production for his film "The Man by the Shore" (L'homme sur les Quais) with co_funding from the new government of Jean_Bertrand Aristide, he conceived the film to be an assessment of the emotional damage of Papa Doc's reign of terror in the 1960's. It was supposed to commemorate the violence and oppression of a past time and be a testament to the strength of the human will of those who lived through Duvalier's tenure. Instead of being able to film in Haiti as he'd hoped, the coup d'etat of 1991 in which General Raoul Cedras seized control of the small country from its newly elected president, Aristide, he was forced to do his filming in the neighboring country of the Dominican Republic, having to build the set completely from scratch. Given Haiti's political history, the period of brutality that characterized Papa Doc's reign, Peck's subject matter and the timeliness of his film, coupled with Haiti's social history, the strong African influence in the country and the people's use of story, proverbs and performance in their resistance to their oppression and exploitation, the film begs further investigation. This paper seeks to investigate how Raoul Peck uses Haiti's oral tradition to tell stories that those in power did not mean to have told. They are stories of unthinkable tortures, murders that were explained as slips-and-falls, and disappearances.
Name: Kelvin Quintyne
Email: kwynt@lycos.com
Title: The darker side of black mas (k)ulinities: The representation of the black male in film
This paper examines the constructions of black masculinity in film from a Derridean deconstuctive perspective. Philosopher Jacques Derrida's theorising of the working of the "dangerous supplements" in language/discourse and Patrick Fuery's insights into how this could be incorporated into analysis of film are the frameworks that underpin the analysis of films in this study. A short survey of films _ from Jamaica, Martinique and the United Kingdom _ forms the main focus. The study is as much a philosophical analysis of the nature of representation in the light of Derridean deconstruction as it is an investigation of race, gender and cultural identity from a postcolonial perspective. Not only does this study point out how constructions of black masculinity deconstruct themselves, but how this deconstruction occurs in the relationship between filmic representation and "reality."
Name: Burton Sankeralli
Email: bsankeralli@yahoo.com
Title: Liquid fire - Creative violence, masculinity and the rum shop space or everybody modder cont
I can say what my paper is not.It is not a systematic exposition of rumshop space a la social science.It does not pretend to speak for the subaltern. the Caribbean masses who are its true owners.It is an exploration. Playful, creative (I hope) but serious. An exploration of the space itself and of aspects of our Caribbean existence in its light.The rurnshop is a key Caribbean cultural institution but it has not been properly engaged by the academy. The space is important not only in itself but also for the insight it provides into the nature of the society. It is significant for the way our world appears in its light.My paper in a preliminary way attempts to engage this space and the world as it shows itself here. It is hence a jumping off point for understanding our selves.The paper seeks to here examine such realities as community, gender, sexuality, music. It hopes to do so by location in the space itself.
Name: Cleve Scott
Email: clevemcd@caribsurf.com
Title:Cricket and Politics don't mix: The 1912 Windward Islands cricket Cork Cup disturbance in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the discourse on West Indian political union.
It has been often said that `cricket and politics just don't mix. Most recently this argument was made during the 2003 cricket world cup, hosted in Africa. During this event, there were several exchanges based on political problems and international diplomacy surrounding the Zimbabwe government's domestic policies. The result of this fiasco was the refusal of England and New Zealand to play in Zimbabwe. This paper argues that the 12 May 1912 cricket protest was a political protest against the vagaries of Crown Colony government, especially the perceived subordination of' St. Vincent to the other Windward Islands under any form of amalgamation. St. Vincent was continuously dissatisfied with the arrangement where Grenada appeared to be its senior because the seat of the governor_in_chief of the Windward Islands was located there. The incident was a demonstration of anti_Grenada Sentiments.
Name: Patricia Stafford
Email: patwinstaf@sunbeach.net
Title: The Barbados_Africa Connection: Embryonic Pan_African Movements, 1838_1918.
Rodney Worrell has recently produced a book about PanAfricanism in Barbados.i This outlines and gives an analysis of Pan_African Movements in the island from the 1920s to the end of the twentieth century. The interest in African and Pan_African philosophy in Barbados, however, did not suddenly grow with the arrival of the Garveyite Universal Negro Improvement Association following World War 1. Since Emancipation, people of Afro_Barbadian origin sought to move to Africa, to work, to settle and to evangelise. In the 1890s the emphasis changed slightly; at this point Afro_Barbadians started to look at the lessons of embryonic Pan_African movements from the United States and at African_American religious sects to find a way to their future and furnish people of African_Barbadian descent with power and status.The paper will start by reviewing the variety of ways Barbadians of the nineteenth century took an interest in Africa, through the work scheme for Sierra Leone, (which never seems to have materialised) through the Rio Pongas mission and through the emigration to Liberia. The main body of the paper will consider the influence of Booker T. Washington and the ideology of those followers who went to Booker T. Washington's world conference at Tuskagee in 1912. The paper will conclude by outlining the common ground and the differences of the philosophy of this group and of those who joined the U.N.I.A. in the 1920s.
Name: Charleston Thomas
Email: lestt77@yahoo.com
Title: Re-defining Cuban identity: A post-structuralist approach
Post_Structuralism has for long been a pivotal factor in initiating a reinterpretative trend that has affected and afflicted the Caribbean region. In literary and Cultural discourses on the region, its decentring modus has found confluences with indigenous creolization discourses that have contributed significantly to redefinitions of Caribbean identities, culture and its productions. However, the issue of homosexuality in Caribbean Studies, still largely remains in the dark and yearns for centring. It is my contention that an aggressive PostStructuralist treatment and investigation of the phenomenon can facilitate the unveiling of its presence and role in Caribbean dialectics in identity and nationalism beyond the limitations of its conventional treatment.
This paper seeks to advance a Post_Structuralist/Derridian reading of Antes que anochezca (Before night falls) by Reinaldo Arenas of Cuba. Its intention is to examine the themes of power and empowerment in relation to a redefinition of Self and national `Cuban' identity, using Derrida's theory of `Difference'.
Name: Roseann
Email: roseann95@yahoo.com
Title: Locating Cartey - Unsilencing a Caribbean-American Voice
Twenty years ago, the phrase "Neglected Writers" headlined the June 1983 publication of the Caribbean Quarterly (Volume 29, No.2). Today, twenty years later, the phrase retains currency and immediacy as the focus/locus of Caribbean literary criticism continues to be highly selective and exclusionary. The situation evokes compelling questions not just about Caribbean literary culture, but also about the work of those whom the Caribbean critical gaze overlooks, for example, that of Wilfred Cartey (1931-1992). What is Cartey's work about? Where does it fit? These issues provide the substantive range of this paper which will provide a summary exposition of Cartey's thought and aesthetic within the context of Caribbean-American discourse, the usability of Cartey's contributions and the influence of America on Caribbean consciousness and the definition of a Caribbean self to be distilled in the process.
Name: Wynell Yearwood_Scott
Email: wynell@sunbeach.net
Title: Stolen Childhoods: Juvenile offenders in Barbados 1837_1899
The function of the law in Barbados during slavery was to engineer the machinery necessary for the economic profitability of the island. After emancipation, according to Hilary Beckles, the social structure of the Barbadian society remained virtually the same and the Barbadian legislature refused to address vital social policies.
This paper will examine the treatment of children in the penal system in Barbados during the 19th century. The main purpose is to determine if there was a real concept of a Barbadian childhood or if children were treated in the same manner as adults especially in the penal system. Children's position in a slave society will be contrasted with free society to determine whether conditions in the penal institutions were improved or the issue even addressed. Therefore specific pieces of legislation which targeted juvenile offenders will be analysed. Similarly, the punishment allotted to children in the plantation complex will also be considered to determine if meaningful differences existed between these institutions and government establishments.
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