Misplaced Pages

#945054

124-407: The literature of Caribbean is exceptional, both in language and subject. Through themes of innocence, exile and return to motherland, resistance and endurance, engagement and alienation, self determination, Caribbean literature provides a powerful platform for Post-Colonial studies and to Caribbean literatures in importance the context of all literature. As scholarship expands, there is debate about

248-453: A decolonized people, which derives from: Postcolonialism is aimed at disempowering such theories (intellectual and linguistic, social and economic) by means of which colonialists "perceive," "understand," and "know" the world. Postcolonial theory thus establishes intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own voices, and thus produce cultural discourses of philosophy, language, society, and economy, balancing

372-632: A 'style of thought' based on the antinomy of East and West in their world-views, and also as a 'corporate institution' for dealing with the Orient." In concordance with philosopher Michel Foucault , Said established that power and knowledge are the inseparable components of the intellectual binary relationship with which Occidentals claim "knowledge of the Orient." That the applied power of such cultural knowledge allowed Europeans to rename, re-define, and thereby control Oriental peoples, places, and things, into imperial colonies. The power-knowledge binary relation

496-437: A British writer instead of a Trinidadian writer, or Jamaica Kincaid and Paule Marshall American writers, but most West Indian readers and critics still consider these writers "West Indian". West Indian literature ranges over subjects and themes as wide as those of any other "national" literature, but in general many West Indian writers share a special concern with questions of identity, ethnicity, and language that rise out of

620-681: A blend that is unique to their country. Many Caribbean authors in their writing switch liberally between the local variation—now commonly termed nation language —and the standard form of the language. Two West Indian writers have won the Nobel Prize for literature : Derek Walcott ( 1992 ), born in St. Lucia, resident mostly in Trinidad during the 1960s and '70s, and partly in the United States since then; and V. S. Naipaul ( 2001 ), born in Trinidad and resident in

744-408: A clear or complete description of the area it supposedly refers to, it instead erases distinctions and identities of the groups it claims to represent. A postcolonial critique of this term would analyze the self-justifying usage of such a term, the discourse it occurs within, as well as the philosophical and political functions the language may have. Postcolonial critiques of homogeneous concepts such as

868-541: A cultural Other is salving your conscience...allowing you not to do any homework." Moreover, postcolonial studies also reject the colonial cultural depiction of subaltern peoples as hollow mimics of the European colonists and their Western ways; and rejects the depiction of subaltern peoples as the passive recipient-vessels of the imperial and colonial power of the Mother Country. Consequent to Foucault's philosophic model of

992-486: A deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and political power relationships that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism , including the social, political and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized. This approach may overlap with studies of contemporary history , and may also draw examples from anthropology, historiography , political science , philosophy , sociology , and human geography . Sub-disciplines of postcolonial studies examine

1116-776: A few. In more recent times, a number of literary voices have emerged from the Caribbean as well as the Caribbean diaspora, including Kittitian Caryl Phillips (who has lived in the UK since one month of age); Edwidge Danticat , a Haitian immigrant to the United States; Anthony Kellman from Barbados, who divides his time between Barbados and the United States; Andrea Levy of the United Kingdom; Jamaicans Alecia McKenzie , who has lived in Belgium, Singapore and France, and Colin Channer and Marlon James ,

1240-474: A full scholarship. She dropped out after a year and returned to New York, where she started writing for the teenage girls' magazine Ingénue , The Village Voice , and Ms. magazine. She changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid in 1973, when her writing was first published. She described this name change as "a way for [her] to do things without being the same person who couldn't do them — the same person who had all these weights". Kincaid explained that "Jamaica"

1364-503: A geopolitical tragic-comedy about the fall of the American empire , the liberation of Puerto Rico, and the realignment of powers among Caribbean nations . Mixing elements of poetry, lyric essay , Caribbean songs , and socratic dialogues , this epic tackles the subjects of global debt , financial terrorism , and decolonization . Trinidadian playwright and novelist Earl Lovelace 's work has been described as performative epics that mix

SECTION 10

#1732904857946

1488-484: A higher purpose in life, whereby the more powerful, more developed, and more civilized races have the right to colonize other peoples, in service to the noble idea of "civilization" and its economic benefits. Postcolonial theory holds that decolonized people develop a postcolonial identity that is based on cultural interactions between different identities (cultural, national, and ethnic as well as gender and class based) which are assigned varying degrees of social power by

1612-552: A literate, cultured woman and homemaker, and her stepfather, a carpenter. She was very close to her mother until her three brothers were born in quick succession, starting when Kincaid was nine years old. After her brothers' births, she resented her mother, who thereafter focused primarily on the brothers' needs. Kincaid later recalled, Our family money remained the same, but there were more people to feed and to clothe, and so everything got sort of shortened, not only material things but emotional things. The good emotional things, I got

1736-526: A mentally cathartic practise, which purges colonial servility from the native psyche , and restores self-respect to the subjugated. Thus, Fanon actively supported and participated in the Algerian Revolution (1954–62) for independence from France as a member and representative of the Front de Libération Nationale . As postcolonial praxis , Fanon's mental health analyses of colonialism and imperialism, and

1860-448: A paradigm of how to avoid lots of novelistic pitfalls." In February 2022, Kincaid was one of 38 Harvard faculty members to sign a letter to The Harvard Crimson defending Professor John Comaroff , who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies. The letter defended Comaroff as "an excellent colleague, advisor and committed university citizen" and expressed dismay over his being sanctioned by

1984-457: A poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for The New Yorker , I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people." Talk Stories was later published in 2001 as a collection of "77 short pieces Kincaid wrote for The New Yorker' s 'Talk of the Town' column between 1974 and 1983". In December 2021, Kincaid was announced as the recipient of

2108-525: A popular art form, a poetry heard by audiences all over the world. Caribbean oral poetry shares the vigour of the written tradition. Among the most prominent Caribbean poets whose works are widely studied (and translated into other languages) are: Derek Walcott (who won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature ), Kamau Brathwaite , Edouard Glissant , Giannina Braschi , Lorna Goodinson , Aimé Fernand Césaire , Linton Kwesi Johnson , Kwame Dawes , and Claudia Rankine . Common themes include: exile and return to

2232-510: A race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity, and almost no sense of honour; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers,

2356-968: A reason why the "literary qualities" of her work tend to be less of a focus for critics. Writing for Salon.com , Peter Kurth called Kincaid's work My Brother the most overrated book of 1997. Reviewing her latest novel, See Now Then (2013), in The New York Times , Dwight Garner called it "bipolar", "half séance, half ambush", and "the kind of lumpy exorcism that many writers would have composed and then allowed to remain unpublished. It picks up no moral weight as it rolls along. It asks little of us, and gives little in return." Another New York Times review describes it as "not an easy book to stomach" but goes on to explain, "Kincaid's force and originality lie in her refusal to curb her tongue, in an insistence on home truths that spare herself least of all." Kate Tuttle addresses this in an article for The Boston Globe : "Kincaid allowed that critics are correct to point out

2480-492: A short end of that. But then I got more of things I didn't have, like a certain kind of cruelty and neglect. In an interview for The New York Times , Kincaid also said: "The way I became a writer was that my mother wrote my life for me and told it to me." Kincaid received, and frequently excelled in, a British education growing up, as Antigua did not gain independence from the United Kingdom until 1981. Although she

2604-534: A specific area, demonstrate the interdependence of movements and the shared pursuit of justice and emancipation. Colonialism was presented as "the extension of civilization," which ideologically justified the self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western world over the non-Western world. This concept was espoused by Ernest Renan in La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), whereby imperial stewardship

SECTION 20

#1732904857946

2728-422: A strong maternal figure and colonial and neocolonial influences. Excerpts from her non-fiction book A Small Place were used as part of the narrative for Stephanie Black 's 2001 documentary, Life and Debt . One of Kincaid's contributions according to Henry Louis Gates, Jr , African-American literary critic , scholar, writer, and public intellectual , is that: She never feels the necessity of claiming

2852-487: A subaltern woman, she applied to her voice the Spanish cultural filters of sexism , Christian monotheism, and servile language, in addressing her colonial master: I, Francisca de Figueroa, mulatta in colour, declare that I have, in the city of Cartagena, a daughter named Juana de Figueroa; and she has written, to call for me, in order to help me. I will take with me, in my company, a daughter of mine, her sister, named María, of

2976-412: A system that comes after colonialism , as the prefix post- may suggest. As such, postcolonialism may be thought of as a reaction to or departure from colonialism in the same way postmodernism is a reaction to modernism ; the term postcolonialism itself is modeled on postmodernism, with which it shares certain concepts and methods. A clear reflection of the continuous fights for independence around

3100-481: A triumphant British colonial power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they incorporated similar essentialisms." In Provincializing Europe (2000), Dipesh Chakrabarty charts the subaltern history of the Indian struggle for independence, and counters Eurocentric , Western scholarship about non-Western peoples and cultures, by proposing that Western Europe simply be considered as culturally equal to

3224-399: Is 'magic' and 'real,' but not necessarily [works] of 'magical realism'." Other critics claim that her style is "modernist" because much of her fiction is "culturally specific and experimental". It has also been praised for its keen observation of character, curtness, wit, and lyrical quality. Her short story " Girl " is essentially a list of instructions on how a girl should live and act, but

3348-425: Is Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks . In this book, Fanon discusses the logic of colonial rule from the perspective of the existential experience of racialized subjectivity. Fanon treats colonialism as a total project which rules every aspect of colonized peoples and their reality. Fanon reflects on colonialism, language, and racism and asserts that to speak a language is to adopt a civilization and to participate in

3472-468: Is a postmodern epic composed of six books of poetry that blend elements of eclogues , epigrams , lyrics, prose poem , diary, jingles, Puerto Rican folklore , and political manifesto . The work traces the history of the Spanish language from medieval times to contemporary Puerto Rico , Cuban , Chicano , and Nuyorican culture. Braschi's later epic, written in English, is United States of Banana (2011),

3596-439: Is a more suited term because "the colonial in colonial modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to internalize inferiority. Santiniketan's artist teachers' refusal of subordination incorporated a counter vision of modernity, which sought to correct the racial and cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western modernity and modernism. Those European modernities, projected through

3720-612: Is an Antiguan–American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer . Born in St. John's , the capital of Antigua and Barbuda , she now lives in North Bennington, Vermont , and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence, Emerita at Harvard University . Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in the city of St. John's on the island of Antigua , on 25 May 1949. She grew up in relative poverty with her mother,

3844-540: Is an English corruption of what Columbus called Xaymaca, the part of the world that she comes from, and "Kincaid" appeared to go well with "Jamaica". Her short fiction appeared in The Paris Review , and in The New Yorker , where her 1990 novel Lucy was originally serialized. Kincaid's work has been both praised and criticized for its subject matter because it largely draws upon her own life and because her tone

Caribbean literature - Misplaced Pages Continue

3968-407: Is believed to be a problematic application of the term, as the immediate, historical, political time is not included in the categories of critical identity-discourse, which deals with over-inclusive terms of cultural representation, which are abrogated and replaced by postcolonial criticism. As such, the terms postcolonial and postcolonialism denote aspects of the subject matter that indicate that

4092-422: Is conceptually essential to identify and understand colonialism in general, and European colonialism in particular. Hence, To the extent that Western scholars were aware of contemporary Orientals or Oriental movements of thought and culture, these were perceived either as silent shadows to be animated by the orientalist, brought into reality by them or as a kind of cultural and international proletariat useful for

4216-427: Is considered by E. San Juan, Jr. as "the originator and inspiring patron-saint of postcolonial theory and discourse" due to his interpretation of the theory of orientalism explained in his 1978 book, Orientalism . To describe the us-and-them "binary social relation" with which Western Europe intellectually divided the world—into the " Occident " and the " Orient "—Said developed the denotations and connotations of

4340-470: Is necessary to thoroughly reconsider historical narratives, acknowledge a variety of viewpoints, and work to create inclusive and equitable societies that enable people to affirm and reclaim their distinct cultural identities in the post-colonial era. As a term in contemporary history , postcolonialism occasionally is applied, temporally, to denote the immediate time after the period during which imperial powers retreated from their colonial territories. Such

4464-418: Is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for The Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie... In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern—a space of difference. Now, who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern .... Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and

4588-414: Is often perceived as angry. Kincaid counters that many writers draw upon personal experience, so to describe her writing as autobiographical and angry is not valid criticism. Kincaid was the 50th commencement speaker at Bard College at Simon's Rock in 2019. As a result of her budding writing career and friendship with George W. S. Trow , who wrote many pieces for The New Yorker column "The Talk of

4712-528: Is the founder of Levelsoundz; and a daughter, Annie, who graduated from Harvard and now works in marketing. Kincaid is president of the official Levelsoundz Fan Club. Kincaid is a keen gardener who has written extensively on the subject. She converted to Judaism in 2005. While working as an au pair , Kincaid enrolled in evening classes at a community college. After three years, she resigned from her job to attend Franconia College in New Hampshire on

4836-541: Is to be "disrespectful of a fiction writer's ability to create fictional characters". Kincaid worked for Arlen, who would become a colleague at The New Yorker , as an au pair and is the figure whom the father in Lucy is based on. Despite her caution to readers, Kincaid has also said: "I would never say I wouldn't write about an experience I've had." The reception of Kincaid's work has been mixed. Her writing stresses deep social and even political commentary, as Harold Bloom cites as

4960-399: Is to be understood, as Mahmood Mamdani puts it, as a reversal of colonialism but not as superseding it. As an epistemology (i.e., a study of knowledge , its nature, and verifiability), ethics ( moral philosophy ), and as a political science (i.e., in its concern with affairs of the citizenry), the field of postcolonialism addresses the matters that constitute the postcolonial identity of

5084-453: The Caribbean region and the diaspora. Caribbean poetry generally refers to a myriad of poetic forms, spanning epic , lyrical verse, prose poems , dramatic poetry and oral poetry , composed in Caribbean territories regardless of language. It is most often, however, written in English, Spanish , Spanglish , French , Hindustani , Dutch , or any number of creoles . Poetry in English from

Caribbean literature - Misplaced Pages Continue

5208-1160: The Havana International Book Fair , in Trinidad and Tobago the NGC Bocas Lit Fest , in Jamaica the Calabash International Literary Festival , in Saint Martin / Sint Maarten the St. Martin Book Fair, in Barbados Bim Literary Festival, in the Dominican Republic the Santo Domingo International Book Fair, in Dominica the Nature Island Literary Festival and Book Fair, Alliouagana Festival of

5332-470: The Panama Canal is often used as a narrative foundation. Maryse Condé ’s novel Tree of Life (1992) discusses the involvement of family ties and how people seek to improve their lot in life by working to build the Panama Canal . Another contemporary classic about migrant cultures is Ramabai Espinet ’s novel The Swinging Bridge (2003), which explores trauma of displacement, Indian indentureship , and

5456-918: The Third World concept, it ignores the why those regions or countries are considered Third World and who is responsible. One of the ongoing struggles is balancing the cultural heritage of the indigenous people with the norms and values imposed by colonizers. This can cause identity fracture and a sense of displacement in people as well as communities.  In addition, the hierarchical social structures that were created during colonial control have continued to support inequalities in power and injustice, which contributed to identity conflicts based on gender, class, and ethnicity. These problems are not just historical artifacts; rather, they are fundamental components of society and are expressed in current discussions about government, language, education, and cultural representation. In order to address these persistent identity problems, it

5580-747: The United Kingdom since 1950. ( Saint-John Perse , who won the Nobel Prize in 1960 , was born in the French territory of Guadeloupe .) Other notable names in (anglophone) Caribbean literature have included Una Marson , Earl Lovelace , Austin Clarke , Claude McKay , Louise Bennett , Orlando Patterson , Andrew Salkey , Edward Kamau Brathwaite (who was born in Barbados and has lived in Ghana and Jamaica), Linton Kwesi Johnson , Velma Pollard and Michelle Cliff , to name only

5704-694: The United Kingdom . A sense of a single literature developing across the islands was also encouraged in the 1940s by the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices , which featured stories and poems written by West Indian authors, recorded in London under the direction of founding producer Una Marson and later Henry Swanzy , and broadcast back to the islands. Magazines such as Kyk-Over-Al in Guyana, Bim in Barbados, and Focus in Jamaica, which published work by writers from across

5828-504: The decolonized world is an intellectual space "of contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions, of hybridity , and of liminalities." As in most critical theory-based research, the lack of clarity in the definition of the subject matter coupled with an open claim to normativity makes criticism of postcolonial discourse problematic, reasserting its dogmatic or ideological status. In Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (1996), Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins clarify

5952-421: The " Arabs ," the " First World ," " Christendom ," and the " Ummah ", often aim to show how such language actually does not represent the groups supposedly identified. Such terminology often fails to adequately describe the heterogeneous peoples, cultures, and geography that make them up. Accurate descriptions of the world's peoples, places, and things require nuanced and accurate terms. By including everyone under

6076-481: The "West Indies", which includes "the islands of the Caribbean" and was "used first [for] indigenous population, and subsequently both [for] settlers of European origin and of people of African origin brought to the area as slaves." West Indian can also refer to things that can be "traced back" to the West Indies but the creators "live elsewhere". West Indian "was a term coined by colonising European powers." Caribbean, on

6200-588: The 'us-and-them' binary social relation to view the non-Western world as inhabited by ' the other '. As an example, consider how neocolonial discourse of geopolitical homogeneity often includes the relegating of decolonized peoples, their cultures, and their countries, to an imaginary place, such as "the Third World ." Oftentimes the term "the third World" is over-inclusive: it refers vaguely to large geographic areas comprising several continents and seas, i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. Rather than providing

6324-478: The 2022 Paris Review Hadada Prize , the magazine's annual lifetime achievement award. Her novels are loosely autobiographical, though Kincaid has warned against interpreting their autobiographical elements too literally: "Everything I say is true, and everything I say is not true. You couldn't admit any of it to a court of law. It would not be good evidence." Her work often prioritizes "impressions and feelings over plot development" and features conflict with both

SECTION 50

#1732904857946

6448-465: The Caribbean historical experience. One unique and pervasive characteristic of Caribbean literature is the use of " dialect " forms of the national language, often termed creole . The various local variations in the language adopted from the colonial powers such as Britain , Spain , Portugal , France and the Netherlands , have been modified over the years within each country and each has developed

6572-643: The Caribbean. Dating to the 16th century, Juan de Castellanos 's Elegy to the Illustrious Gentlemen of the Indies ( 1589 ) is an epic in verse that traces Columbus's arrival to the conquest of Cuba , Jamaica , Trinidad , and Margarita . The work relates Juan Ponce de León 's colonization of Puerto Rico in search for the mythic fountain of youth . Later epics of the Spanish West Indies include Manuel de Jesus Galvan's national epic "The Sword and

6696-490: The Cross" (1954) that relates the myths and histories of the colony of Hispaniola . In the 20th century, epics approach subjects such racist legacies , economic terrorism , and the decolonization of Caribbean culture and politics. Nobel prize winner Derek Walcott pens one of greatest modern epic written in the English language, Omeros (1990). This epic poem is divided into seven books containing sixty-four chapters. Most of

6820-634: The Dominican Republic, and Panama as well as the islands of Venezuela and the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The literature of Anguilla , Antigua and Barbuda , Aruba , Curaçao , the Bahamas , Barbados , Belize , the British Virgin Islands , the Cayman Islands , Dominica , Grenada , Guyana , Haiti , Jamaica , Montserrat , Saint Martin , St Kitts and Nevis , St Lucia , St Vincent and

6944-483: The European race.... Let each do what he is made for, and all will be well. From the mid- to the late-nineteenth century, such racialist group-identity language was the cultural common-currency justifying geopolitical competition amongst the European and American empires and meant to protect their over-extended economies. Especially in the colonization of the Far East and in the late-nineteenth century Scramble for Africa ,

7068-522: The Grenadines , Suriname , Trinidad and Tobago , Turks and Caicos and the U.S. Virgin Islands would normally be considered to belong to the wider category of West Indian literature. The term "West Indies" first began to achieve wide currency in the 1950s, when writers such as Samuel Selvon , John Hearne , Edgar Mittelholzer , V. S. Naipaul , Andrew Salkey , and George Lamming began to be published in

7192-935: The Legacy of Classical Writers, Acheraiou discusses the history of colonialist discourse and traces its spirit to ancient Greece, including Europe's claim to racial supremacy and right to rule over non-Europeans harboured by Renan and other 19th-century colonial ideologues. He argues that modern colonial representations of the colonized as "inferior," "stagnant," and "degenerate" were borrowed from Greek and Latin authors like Lysias (440–380 BC), Isocrates (436–338 BC), Plato (427–327 BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC), Cicero (106–43 BC), and Sallust (86–34 BC), who all considered their racial others—the Persians, Scythians, Egyptians as "backward," "inferior," and "effeminate." Jamaica Kincaid Jamaica Kincaid ( / k ɪ n ˈ k eɪ d / ; born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949)

7316-448: The Orient for its own subjective purposes, one that lacks a native and intimate understanding. Such industries become institutionalized and eventually become a resource for manifest Orientalism, or for compiling misinformation about the Orient. The ideology of Empire was hardly ever a brute jingoism; rather, it made subtle use of reason and recruited science and history to serve its ends. These subjective fields of academia now synthesize

7440-602: The Town", Kincaid became acquainted with New Yorker editor William Shawn, who was impressed with her writing. He employed her as a staff writer in 1976 and eventually as a featured columnist for Talk of the Town for nine years. Shawn's tutelage legitimized Kincaid as a writer and proved pivotal to her development of voice. In all, she was a staff writer for The New Yorker for 20 years. She resigned from The New Yorker in 1996 when then editor Tina Brown chose actress Roseanne Barr to guest-edit an issue as an original feminist voice. Though circulation rose under Brown, Kincaid

7564-589: The West could progress—beyond the colonial perspective—by means of introspective self-criticism of the basic ideas and investigative methods that establish a culturally superior West studying the culturally inferior non–Western peoples. Hence, the integration of the subaltern voice to the intellectual spaces of social studies is problematic, because of the unrealistic opposition to the idea of studying "Others"; Spivak rejected such an anti-intellectual stance by social scientists, and about them said that "to refuse to represent

SECTION 60

#1732904857946

7688-400: The West's alter ego. It should be understood that this process draws creativity, amounting to an entire domain and discourse. In Orientalism (p. 6), Said mentions the production of "philology [the study of the history of languages], lexicography [dictionary making], history, biology, political and economic theory, novel-writing and lyric poetry." There is an entire industry that exploits

7812-677: The Word in Montserrat , the Virgin Islands Literary Festival and Book Fair, the International Poetry Festival - Puerto Rico, and Antigua and Barbuda Literary Festival. (Grouped by territory of birth or upbringing) Post-Colonial Studies Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory ) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism , focusing on

7936-606: The author of the 2015 Man Booker Prize -winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (as well as John Crow's Devil , The Book of Night Women , the unpublished screenplay "Dead Men", and the short story "Under Cover of Darkness"), Antiguan Marie-Elena John , and Lasana M. Sekou from Saint Martin . Caribbean lands and seas have been depicted as a paradise on earth by foreign artists and writers. Scholars and writers in Postcolonial Studies have researched and published on this cultural phenomenon of an empty island, and

8060-424: The beat of a drum and the rhythm of jazz…" She is described as writing with a "double vision" meaning that one line of plot mirrors another, providing the reader with rich symbolism that enhances the possibilities of interpretation. Kincaid's writing is largely influenced by her life circumstances even though she discourages readers from taking her fiction literally. To do so, according to the writer Michael Arlen,

8184-475: The binary relationship of power and knowledge, scholars from the Subaltern Studies Collective , proposed that anti-colonial resistance always counters every exercise of colonial power. In The Location of Culture (1994), theoretician Homi K. Bhabha argues that viewing the human world as composed of separate and unequal cultures, rather than as an integral human world, perpetuates the belief in

8308-1081: The body, history and identity, migration, Afro Caribbean history, decolonization, revolution, queer theory, among countless other topics. Major novelists include Maryse Conde ( Guadeloupe ), Merle Hodge ( Trinidad ), Paule Marshall (Barbadian-American), Cynthia McLeod ( Suriname ), Elizabeth Nunez (Trinidad-American ), Tiphanie Yanique (Virgin Islands), Rosario Ferre , (Puerto Rico), and Michelle Cliff (Jamaica). Poets include Mahadai Das ( Guyana ), Lenelle Moïse (Haiti), Nancy Morejón , Pamela Mordecai (Jamaica), Lorna Goodison (Jamaica), Julia de Burgos , Mara Pastor , Giannina Braschi (Puerto Rico), Merle Collins (Grenada), Shara McCallum (Jamaica), Chiqui Vicioso (Dominican Republic), Jennifer Rahim (Trinidad and Tobago), and Olive Senior (Jamaica). Playwrights include Una Marson who wrote in English, and Ina Césaire (Martinique) and Simone Schwarz-Bart (France/Guadeloupe) who write in French. There are many epic stories, plays, and poems written in and about

8432-464: The book's complexity. "The one thing the book is," she said, "is difficult, and I meant it to be." Some critics have been harsh, such as one review for Mr Potter (2002) that reads: "It wouldn't be so hard if the repetition weren't coupled, here and everywhere it occurs, with a stern rebuff to any idea that it might be meaningful." On the other hand, there has been much praise for her writing, for instance: "The superb precision of Kincaid's style makes it

8556-697: The colonial behavior happening due to the War on Terror. Acheraiou argues that colonialism was a capitalist venture moved by appropriation and plundering of foreign lands and was supported by military force and a discourse that legitimized violence in the name of progress and a universal civilizing mission. This discourse is complex and multi-faceted. It was elaborated in the 19th century by colonial ideologues such as Ernest Renan and Arthur de Gobineau , but its roots reach far back in history. In Rethinking Postcolonialism: Colonialist Discourse in Modern Literature and

8680-439: The colonial society. In postcolonial literature , the anti-conquest narrative analyzes the identity politics that are the social and cultural perspectives of the subaltern colonial subjects—their creative resistance to the culture of the colonizer ; how such cultural resistance complicated the establishment of a colonial society; how the colonizers developed their postcolonial identity; and how neocolonialism actively employs

8804-407: The colonized. This language results from centuries of colonial domination which is aimed at eliminating other expressive forms in order to reflect the world of the colonizer. As a consequence, when colonial beings speak as the colonized, they participate in their own oppression and the very structures of alienation are reflected in all aspects of their adopted language. Cultural critic Edward Said

8928-464: The complications of colonialism using local fruit metaphors, such as star apples , in his poetry to connote the complexity of acidity and the sweetness. Giannina Braschi 's postcolonial work United States of Banana imagines a political and economic deal between China and Puerto Rico as the exchange of a bowl of rice for a bowl of beans, and a Lychee for a Quenepa . Caribbean poetry is vast and rapidly evolving field of poetry written by people from

9052-422: The correct term to use for literature that comes from the region. Both terms are often used interchangeably despite having different origins and referring to slightly different groups of people. Since so much of Caribbean identity is linked to "insidious racism" and "the justification of slave labor", it is usual to refer to the author of the piece for their identity preference. West Indian is defined as coming from

9176-438: The course of inter-group discourse. The important distinction, between the terms, is that strategic essentialism does not ignore the diversity of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social group, but that, in its practical function, strategic essentialism temporarily minimizes inter-group diversity to pragmatically support the essential group-identity. Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence to describe

9300-645: The cultural concept of "the East," which according to Said allowed the Europeans to suppress the peoples of the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and of Asia in general, from expressing and representing themselves as discrete peoples and cultures. Orientalism thus conflated and reduced the non-Western world into the homogeneous cultural entity known as "the East." Therefore, in service to the colonial type of imperialism,

9424-610: The denotational functions, among which: The term post-colonialism —according to a too-rigid etymology—is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state. Not a naïve teleological sequence, which supersedes colonialism, post-colonialism is, rather, an engagement with, and contestation of, colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies... A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to more than

9548-462: The destruction of non-Western ways of perceiving the world and the resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving the world. Conceptually, epistemic violence specifically relates to women, whereby the "Subaltern [woman] must always be caught in translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing herself," because the colonial power's destruction of her culture pushed to the social margins her non–Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and knowing

9672-494: The effects of colonial rule on the practice of feminism , anarchism , literature , and Christian thought . At times, the term postcolonial studies may be preferred to postcolonialism , as the ambiguous term colonialism could refer either to a system of government, or to an ideology or world view underlying that system. However, postcolonialism (i.e., postcolonial studies) generally represents an ideological response to colonialist thought, rather than simply describing

9796-423: The elimination of indigenous knowledge and customs. Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety of approaches, and theoreticians may not always agree on a common set of definitions. On a simple level, through anthropological study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life—based on the assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators —from the point of view of the colonized people. On

9920-779: The existence of a black world or a female sensibility. She assumes them both. I think it's a distinct departure that she's making, and I think that more and more black American writers will assume their world the way that she does. So that we can get beyond the large theme of racism and get to the deeper themes of how black people love and cry and live and die. Which, after all, is what art is all about. Kincaid's writing explores such themes as colonialism and colonial legacy, postcolonialism and neo-colonialism , gender and sexuality, renaming, mother-daughter relationships, British and American imperialism , colonial education, writing, racism , class, power, death, and adolescence. In her most recent novel, See Now Then , Kincaid also first explores

10044-434: The existence of imaginary peoples and places—" Christendom " and the " Islamic World ", " First World ," " Second World ," and the " Third World ." To counter such linguistic and sociological reductionism , postcolonial praxis establishes the philosophic value of hybrid intellectual spaces, wherein ambiguity abrogates truth and authenticity; thereby, hybridity is the philosophic condition that most substantively challenges

10168-496: The formation of the cohesive, collective European cultural identity denoted by the term "The West." With this described binary logic, the West generally constructs the Orient subconsciously as its alter ego. Therefore, descriptions of the Orient by the Occident lack material attributes, grounded within the land. This imaginative interpretation ascribes female characteristics to the Orient and plays into fantasies that are inherent within

10292-553: The former British West Indies has been referred to as Anglo-Caribbean poetry or West Indian poetry. Since the mid-1970s, Caribbean poetry has gained increasing visibility with the publication in Britain and North America of several anthologies. Over the decades the canon has shifted and expanded, drawing both on oral and literary traditions and including more women poets and politically charged works. Caribbean writers, performance poets, newspaper poets, singer-songwriters have created

10416-431: The foundational aspects of art necessitated by changes in one's unique historical position. In the post-colonial history of art, this marked the departure from Eurocentric unilateral idea of modernism to alternative context sensitive modernisms . The brief survey of the individual works of the core Santiniketan artists and the thought perspectives they open up makes clear that though there were various contact points in

10540-423: The generation, production, and distribution of knowledge) about the colonized peoples of the non-Western world. The cultural and religious assumptions of colonialist logic remain active practices in contemporary society and are the basis of the Mother Country's neocolonial attitude towards her former colonial subjects—an economical source of labour and raw materials. It acts as a non interchangeable term that links

10664-502: The ideological validity of colonialism. In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's Independence, " Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism " was an important exhibition curated by R. Siva Kumar at the National Gallery of Modern Art . In his catalogue essay, Kumar introduced the term Contextual Modernism, which later emerged as a postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of Indian art , specifically

10788-558: The imbalanced us-and-them binary power-relationship between the colonist and the colonial subjects. Understanding the complex chain of political and social, economic, and cultural impacts left in the aftermath of colonial control is essential to understanding post-colonialism. A wide range of experiences are included in post-colonial discourse, from ongoing battles against colonialism and globalization to struggles for independence. The long-lasting effects of colonialism will be faced by them, such as identity issues, structural injustices, and

10912-410: The impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The field started to emerge in the 1960s, as scholars from previously colonized countries began publishing on the lingering effects of colonialism, developing a critical theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of (usually European) imperial power. Postcolonial, as in the postcolonial condition,

11036-467: The independent country to its colonizer, depriving countries of their Independence , decades after building their own identities. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon analyzes and medically describes the nature of colonialism as essentially destructive. Its societal effects—the imposition of a subjugating colonial identity —is harmful to the mental health of

11160-469: The merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism. The term post-colonialism is also applied to denote the Mother Country 's neocolonial control of the decolonized country, affected by the legalistic continuation of the economic, cultural, and linguistic power relationships that controlled the colonial politics of knowledge (i.e.,

11284-438: The messages are much larger than the literal list of suggestions. Derek Walcott , 1992 Nobel laureate , said of Kincaid's writing: "As she writes a sentence, psychologically, its temperature is that it heads toward its own contradiction. It's as if the sentence is discovering itself, discovering how it feels. And that is astonishing, because it's one thing to be able to write a good declarative sentence; it's another thing to catch

11408-408: The most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word 'subaltern'... They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern. Spivak also introduced

11532-438: The motherland; the relationship of language to nation; colonialism and postcolonialism ; self-determination and liberty; racial identity. There is great abundance of talent, styles, and subjects covered by Caribbean women writers spanning the genres of poetry, theater, short stories, essays, and novels. There is also a burgeoning field of scholarship on how women authors address women's lives under dictatorships, eroticism and

11656-472: The native peoples who were subjugated into colonies. Fanon writes that the ideological essence of colonialism is the systematic denial of "all attributes of humanity" of the colonized people. Such dehumanization is achieved with physical and mental violence, by which the colonist means to inculcate a servile mentality upon the natives. For Fanon, the natives must violently resist colonial subjugation. Hence, Fanon describes violent resistance to colonialism as

11780-494: The orientalist's grander interpretive activity. Nonetheless, critics of the homogeneous "Occident–Orient" binary social relation, say that Orientalism is of limited descriptive capability and practical application, and propose instead that there are variants of Orientalism that apply to Africa and to Latin America. Said responds that the European West applied Orientalism as a homogeneous form of The Other , in order to facilitate

11904-403: The other cultures of the world; that is, as "one region among many" in human geography. Derek Gregory argues the long trajectory through history of British and American colonization is an ongoing process still happening today. In The Colonial Present , Gregory traces connections between the geopolitics of events happening in modern-day Afghanistan, Palestine , and Iraq and links it back to

12028-416: The other hand, denotes a temporary, essential group-identity used in the praxis of discourse among peoples. Furthermore, essentialism can occasionally be applied—by the so-described people—to facilitate the subaltern's communication in being heeded, heard, and understood, because strategic essentialism (a fixed and established subaltern identity) is more readily grasped, and accepted, by the popular majority, in

12152-474: The other hand, is defined as "of the Caribbean...its people, and their cultures" only. Further issues include language classifications like Creole Caribbean literature and Anglophone Caribbean literature. Different languages also make different references to the texts. While there is no terminology that is obsolete, the issue requires acknowledgement, since it is the literature of historically oppressed people. The Spanish Caribbean islands include Cuba, Puerto Rico,

12276-508: The phenomena of invisibility relating to women. Caribbean stories and poems are ripe with references to storms, hurricanes, and natural disasters. Derek Walcott's wrote "The Sea is History," and dramatized the impact of tropical storms and hurricanes on the locals. Caribbean writing deploys agricultural symbolism to represent the complexities of colonial rule and the intrinsic values of the lands. Native fruits and vegetables appear in colonized and decolonizing discourse. Derek Walcott describes

12400-556: The poem is composed in a three-line form that is reminiscent of the terza rima form that Dante used for The Divine Comedy . The work uses local island folklore and ancient Greek myths such as Homer ' Iliad to address legacies of Greek, Roman, and American culture including racism and slavery. Parts of the story occur on Walcott's native island St. Lucia , but there are also time travels to ancient Greece and Rome, as well as travels to modern day Lisbon , London , Dublin , Toronto . Giannina Braschi 's Empire of Dreams (1988)

12524-536: The political resources and think-tanks that are so common in the West today. Orientalism is self-perpetuating to the extent that it becomes normalized within common discourse, making people say things that are latent, impulsive, or not fully conscious of it. In establishing the Postcolonial definition of the term subaltern , the philosopher and theoretician Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak cautioned against assigning an over-broad connotation. She argues: ... subaltern

12648-404: The racist implications of a fantasy void of local people and their cultures. Caribbean classic novels such as Jean Rhys 's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) have inspired films, stories, and poems by other artists who seek to decolonize the relationship of people and landscapes. Caribbean novelists imbue island landscape with bustling life of the locals and migrants. The migration of Caribbean workers to

12772-542: The region, also encouraged links and helped build an audience. Many—perhaps most—West Indian writers have found it necessary to leave their home territories and base themselves in the United Kingdom , the United States , or Canada in order to make a living from their work—in some cases spending the greater parts of their careers away from the territories of their birth. Critics in their adopted territories might argue that, for instance, V. S. Naipaul ought to be considered

12896-463: The representation of a homogeneous European identity justified colonization. Hence, Belgium and Britain, and France and Germany proffered theories of national superiority that justified colonialism as delivering the light of civilization to unenlightened peoples. Notably, la mission civilisatrice , the self-ascribed 'civilizing mission' of the French Empire, proposed that some races and cultures have

13020-636: The rhythms of steelband and calypso with complex narratives about black power and the political, spiritual, and psychic struggles for decolonization . His best known works are The Dragon Can't Dance (1979) and Salt (1996) which won the Commonwealth Book Prize . Many parts of the Caribbean have begun in recent years to host literary festivals, including in Anguilla, the Anguilla Lit Fest, in Cuba

13144-494: The said colour, and of medium size. Once given, I attest to this. I beg your Lordship to approve and order it done. I ask for justice in this. [On the twenty-first day of the month of June 1600, Your Majesty's Lords Presidents and Official Judges of this House of Contract Employment order that the account she offers be received, and that testimony for the purpose she requests given.] Moreover, Spivak further cautioned against ignoring subaltern peoples as "cultural Others", and said that

13268-447: The said colour; and for this, I must write to Our Lord the King to petition that he favour me with a licence, so that I, and my said daughter, can go and reside in the said city of Cartagena. For this, I will give an account of what is put down in this report; and of how I, Francisca de Figueroa, am a woman of sound body, and mulatta in colour.... And my daughter María is twenty-years-old, and of

13392-576: The superior races is part of the providential order of things for humanity.... Regere imperio populos is our vocation. Pour forth this all-consuming activity onto countries, which, like China, are crying aloud for foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European society into a ver sacrum , a horde like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be in his right role. Nature has made

13516-526: The supporting economic theories, were partly derived from the essay " Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism " (1916), wherein Vladimir Lenin described colonial imperialism as an advanced form of capitalism , desperate for growth at all costs, and so requires more and more human exploitation to ensure continually consistent profit-for-investment. Another key book that predates postcolonial theories

13640-490: The temperature of the narrator, the narrator's feeling. And that's universal, and not provincial in any way". Susan Sontag has also commended Kincaid's writing for its "emotional truthfulness," poignancy, and complexity. Her writing has been described as "fearless" and her "force and originality lie in her refusal to curb her tongue". Giovanna Covi describes her unique writing: "The tremendous strength of Kincaid's stories lies in their capacity to resist all canons. They move at

13764-466: The term orientalism (an art-history term for Western depictions and the study of the Orient). Said's concept (which he also termed "orientalism") is that the cultural representations generated with the us-and-them binary relation are social constructs , which are mutually constitutive and cannot exist independent of each other, because each exists on account of and for the other. Notably, "the West" created

13888-438: The terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe the social functions of postcolonialism. Essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers inherent to reviving subaltern voices in ways that might (over) simplify the cultural identity of heterogeneous social groups and, thereby, create stereotyped representations of the different identities of the people who compose a given social group. Strategic essentialism , on

14012-587: The theme of time. Kincaid's style has created disagreement among critics and scholars, and as Harold Bloom explains: "Most of the published criticism of Jamaica Kincaid has stressed her political and social concerns, somewhat at the expense of her literary qualities." As works such as At the Bottom of the River and The Autobiography of My Mother use Antiguan cultural practices, some critics say these works employ magical realism . "The author claims, however, that [her work]

14136-495: The us-and-them binary relation between the Western and Eastern world. Building upon the ideas of the other and Said's work on orientalism, Gregory critiques the economic policy, military apparatus, and transnational corporations as vehicles driving present-day colonialism. Emphasizing discussion of ideas around colonialism in the present tense, Gregory utilizes modern events such as the September 11 attacks to tell spatial stories around

14260-548: The us-and-them orientalist paradigm allowed European scholars to represent the Oriental World as inferior and backward, irrational and wild, as opposed to a Western Europe that was superior and progressive, rational and civil—the opposite of the Oriental Other. Reviewing Said's Orientalism (1978), A. Madhavan (1993) says that "Said's passionate thesis in that book, now an 'almost canonical study', represented Orientalism as

14384-468: The work they were not bound by a continuity of style but by a community of ideas. Which they not only shared but also interpreted and carried forward. Thus they do not represent a school but a movement. Several terms including Paul Gilroy 's counterculture of modernity and Tani E. Barlow 's Colonial modernity have been used to describe the kind of alternative modernity that emerged in non-European contexts. Professor Gall argues that 'Contextual Modernism'

14508-425: The works of Nandalal Bose , Rabindranath Tagore , Ramkinkar Baij , and Benode Behari Mukherjee . Santiniketan artists did not believe that to be indigenous one has to be historicist either in theme or in style, and similarly to be modern one has to adopt a particular trans-national formal language or technique. Modernism was to them neither a style nor a form of internationalism. It was critical re-engagement with

14632-564: The world is provided by the ongoing struggles against colonialism and globalization. The harsh effects of colonial rule and the homogenizing effects of globalization have development to movements in recent years. The opposition to colonialism and globalization represents a complex battle for liberty and independence, ranging from community organizations calling for economic sovereignty and self-determination to indigenous people defending their land and culture against corporate exploitation. These initiatives, which cross continents rather than stay inside

14756-415: The world of that language. His ideas show the influence of French and German philosophy, since existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics claim that language, subjectivity, and reality are interrelated. However, the colonial situation presents a paradox: when colonial beings are forced to adopt and speak an imposed language which is not their own, they adopt and participate in the world and civilization of

14880-564: The world. In June of the year 1600, the Afro–Iberian woman Francisca de Figueroa requested from the King of Spain his permission for her to emigrate from Europe to New Granada, and reunite with her daughter, Juana de Figueroa. As a subaltern woman, Francisca repressed her native African language, and spoke her request in Peninsular Spanish, the official language of Colonial Latin America . As

15004-423: Was critical of Brown's direction in making the magazine less literary and more celebrity-oriented. Kincaid recalls that when she was a writer for The New Yorker , she would often be questioned, particularly by women, on how she was able to obtain her position. Kincaid felt that these questions were posed because she was a young black woman "from nowhere… I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from

15128-400: Was cut off from her family until her return to Antigua 20 years later". In 1979, Kincaid married the composer and Bennington College professor Allen Shawn , son of longtime The New Yorker editor William Shawn and brother of actor Wallace Shawn . The couple divorced in 2002. They have two children: a son, Harold, a graduate of Northeastern University , a music producer/songwriter who

15252-472: Was intelligent and frequently tested at the top of her class, Kincaid's mother removed her from school at 16 to help support the family when her third and last brother was born, because her stepfather was ill and could no longer provide for the family. In 1966, when Kincaid was 17, her mother sent her to Scarsdale , a wealthy suburb of New York City, to work as an au pair . After this move, Kincaid refused to send money home; "she left no forwarding address and

15376-409: Was thought to affect the intellectual and moral reformation of the coloured peoples of the lesser cultures of the world. That such a divinely established, natural harmony among the human races of the world would be possible, because everyone has an assigned cultural identity , a social place, and an economic role within an imperial colony. Thus: The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races, by

#945054