Abstracts T-Z
Listed In alphabetical order by name of Author. To view abstract, click on the + sign next to the name of presenter.
Tareau, Karen. (Université des Antilles (FWI), Campus de Schœlcher (Martinique).
“Dynamiques linguistiques et langagières au contact des musiques des îles de la Dominique et de la Guadeloupe.”
“Dynamiques linguistiques et langagières au contact des musiques des îles de la Dominique et de la Guadeloupe.”
La langue créole résulte du fruit de l’interaction douloureuse de la mise en esclavage des nègres africains par les colons. Ce fruit, imbibé de colorations diverses, est issu de la langue du colonisateur – française, anglaise, espagnole, portugaise, néerlandaise – et des langues africaines du colonisé. C’est ainsi que les concepts de créolisation puis de décréolisation se conscientisent au travers de dynamiques langagières ; dynamiques qui ne cesse de révolutionner, entre autres, l’art musical de la Caraïbe. Ainsi, des musiques d’extractions africaines se réactualisent et forment grâce aux courants migratoires intra-caribéens des syncrétismes linguistiques forts enrichissants.
La cadence-Lypso, genre musical inédit des années 70, est issue de la rencontre des musiciens dominiquais, guadeloupéens et haïtiens en territoires français (Martinique, Guadeloupe).
Ce melting-pot musical a ouvert le champ des possibles – par une relexicalisation et une re-sémantisation du créole des Antilles françaises et de la Dominique – à un nouvel imaginaire créole.Celui-ci a modifié considérablement le rapport des autochtones des deux îles à la langue créole et a conduit le chercheur à admettre l’idée que la langue et la culture forment un système langagier, voire un interstice, participant à une quête identitaire contre les aliénations française et anglaise pour les territoires concernés. De nos jours, des échanges musicaux intra-caribéens (avec Haïti, Sainte-Lucie par exemple) persistent et nourrissent les processus de créolisation et de décréolisation de la langue créole de ces départements français d’Amérique, du coup régions ultrapériphériques de l’Europe.
La cadence-Lypso, genre musical inédit des années 70, est issue de la rencontre des musiciens dominiquais, guadeloupéens et haïtiens en territoires français (Martinique, Guadeloupe).
Ce melting-pot musical a ouvert le champ des possibles – par une relexicalisation et une re-sémantisation du créole des Antilles françaises et de la Dominique – à un nouvel imaginaire créole.Celui-ci a modifié considérablement le rapport des autochtones des deux îles à la langue créole et a conduit le chercheur à admettre l’idée que la langue et la culture forment un système langagier, voire un interstice, participant à une quête identitaire contre les aliénations française et anglaise pour les territoires concernés. De nos jours, des échanges musicaux intra-caribéens (avec Haïti, Sainte-Lucie par exemple) persistent et nourrissent les processus de créolisation et de décréolisation de la langue créole de ces départements français d’Amérique, du coup régions ultrapériphériques de l’Europe.
Valens, Keja. (Salem State Univ. MA):
"Virgin Islands Cookbooks: Extending National Culture."
"Virgin Islands Cookbooks: Extending National Culture."
Caribbean cookbooks from Barbados to Cuba have played key roles in independence struggles, articulating national culture against colonial rule and its legacies. Where independence falters, cookbooks can serve colonial and neo-colonial projects, continue the struggle for post-colonial sovereignty, or shift to post-national conceptions (where local culture finds sustaining structures outside the nation-state). In the Virgin Islands, independence has certainly faltered. Its cookbooks reflect and shape the Virgin Islands’ unique position at the brink of intersecting colonial, post-colonial, and post-national forces at the turn of the 21st century. An archipelago within an archipelago, the nearly 70 islands, divided between British and U.S. rule since 1917, have produced a large and uneven set of cookbooks in the past century. The great majority of Virgin Islands cookbooks are publications of the University of the Virgin Islands Cooperative Extension, at least nominally aligned with the US-directed model of the extension services and under the auspices of “territorial” government. The second largest category of Virgin Islands cookbooks are British and U.S. expatriate and tourist cookbooks. There are only a few others. Investigating if and how these Virgin Islands cookbooks extend national culture, this paper delves into such questions as: How do Virgin Islands cookbooks establish lines of connection or separation with and between the various Virgin Islands, the Caribbean, and the (neo)colonial powers? Does the preponderance of extension service, expatriate and tourist cookbooks reflect, as Frantz Fanon found under colonialism, “a veritable emaciation of national culture” (1588)? Do Virgin Islands cookbooks revivify national culture within or against persistent colonial and neocolonial structures? Do Virgin Islands cookbooks extend Virgin Islands national culture in post-national modes?
Vázquez Vélez, Raúl J. (Univ. of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus):
“The Poet in the City of Dis: Catabasis and Unmanning in Kamau Brathwaite’s Trench Town Rock.”
“The Poet in the City of Dis: Catabasis and Unmanning in Kamau Brathwaite’s Trench Town Rock.”
Heralded as the epitome of the works created during Brathwaite’s “period of salt,” Trench Town Rock presents the Jamaican capital of Kingston as an infernal space marked by crime, violence, and political corruption. Set in the aftermath of the war between Michael Manley’s People’s National Party and Edward Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party, this collection descends into personal and communal hell as it keeps alive the memory of the havoc wreaked upon the capital’s denizens by the possess as well as law enforcement, with the tacit allowance of political leaders at the time. Such proliferation of violence and death cause Kingstonians and others to become unmanned, to see themselves not only as something dehumanized by cruelty and suffering, but as sociopolitical nonentities that incarnate the postmodern paradigm of the concentration camp as Giorgio Agamben presents it in works such as Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and State of Exception. This essay builds upon these and other conclusions by focusing upon unmanning as a state/way of life that is practically inseparable from the cityscapes of Kingston long after the abolition of slavery and the achievement of Jamaican independence.
Villalobos Varela, Brenda. (Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica):
“Anansi en Costa Rica: una lectura poscolonial.”
“Anansi en Costa Rica: una lectura poscolonial.”
Los cuentos tradicionales del Hermano Araña (Anansi stworis) juegan un papel importante en la tradición oral limonense. Dichas historias en su mayoría relatan eventos de un personaje principal, Anansi, cuyo esquema de valores se distancia de los estipulados por la cultura occidental. Hasta la fecha, los estudios realizados en Costa Rica (Duncan,2015; Ketelbohn, 1994) han caracterizado al personaje de Anansi como un trinquetero, embustero y desleal, lo que es aparentemente justificado por sus condiciones sociales, políticas y económicas. Por otra parte, dichos análisis no contemplan ni cuestionan el rol de su antagonista, que es en apariencia fuerte, poderoso, y honesto. Por tanto, el objetivo principal de este trabajo es abordar los cuentos de Anansi (cuentos tradicionales recientemente escritos en criollo limonense) a partir de las teorías poscolonialistas, con el fin de descentralizar las lecturas que hasta el momento se han hecho, y deconstruir el discurso unilateral existente.
Walicek, Don E. (Univ. of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus):
“Understanding Key Strategic Alliances in the Anguilla Revolution.”
“Understanding Key Strategic Alliances in the Anguilla Revolution.”
The pathway to change championed by leaders and supporters of the Anguilla Revolution (1967-69) sets its sociopolitical struggle apart from those of other small satellite colonies in the Eastern Caribbean and the processes of decolonization that transformed larger islands in the same period. Nevertheless, researchers and other commentators have seldom examined these alongside one another. This paper discusses some of these differences and seeks to answer two main questions. First, why did Britain tend to offer behind-the-scenes support for Anguilla’s secession at the same time that it adamantly opposed the emergence of small-island nations? Second, why did the economically marginalized people of Anguilla form an alliance with members of the People’s Action Movement (PAM), a St. Kitts-based political party that defended the interests of the economic elite and oppose progressive measures benefiting workers and the poor? The paper will begin with a description of the sociohistorical and political context in which the Anguilla Revolution (1967-69) emerged. Part one will consider these differences in terms of links to marginality (Higman 1995), political disenfranchisement, and geographical “smallness.” The next part will document self-understandings of decolonization, revolution, and independence for Anguilla’s rebel leaders and Dr. Leopold Kohr, a political scientist who advised leaders to pursue a utopic vision of development appropriate for micro-states. Part three contrasts these views with positions taken by the U.S., Britain, St. Kitts, and larger Caribbean states. Information from government papers, newspaper articles, and Kohr’s (1941, 1979, 1995) scholarship will inform the discussion.
Weekes, Yvonne. (UWI, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados).
"Montserrat Volcano: Burning Creativity”."
"Montserrat Volcano: Burning Creativity”."
Since 1995, there has been a distinct development of artistic and creative works from Montserratian artistes. Borne out of the deadly rumblings of an active and often eruptive volcano on the island, and emanating principally from the forced migration of over 6000 people who left the island, Montserratian creative energies have responded to this phenomenon through photography, music, poetry and memoir writing. This paper highlights the aesthetic dimension of crisis, loss, identity and migration as a result of the volcanic activity on Montserrat. This phenomenon which resulted in two thirds of the island covered in lava, pyroclastic flow and grey ash has led to an outburst of creative imagination and a growing catalogue of creative works published and unpublished; recorded and unrecorded and known and unknown. This paper presents that sense of crisis, loss, identity and migration through the works of Chadd Cumberbatch, Professor Howard Fergus, Kevin Lewis and the writer, Yvonne Weekes. It confirms that even as humans face crisis that challenge their dignity, their livelihood and their lives, the creative artist serves a crucial role as historian, voyeur, griot, philosopher and visual storyteller.
WHITE, Fay. (UWI, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad):
“Marronage, Motherhood and Female Homoeroticism in Michelle Cliff's Abeng.
“Marronage, Motherhood and Female Homoeroticism in Michelle Cliff's Abeng.
An examination of Caribbean history reveals the non-existence of homosexual subjects and subjectivities. In fact, conventional convictions and conversations concerning alternative sexuality in the Caribbean generally sanction the silencing of homosexual subjects, whose erotic expressions transgress cultural codes. The absence of homosexual experiences in the Caribbean’s historiography is problematic as history is intimately connected with identity. With this in mind, this paper focuses on Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1984), a novel which fundamentally reconstructs the Caribbean’s androcentric and heterosexist historical narrative and makes audible silenced female homosexual voices. Representations of mother-daughter imagery and female same-sex desire in Cliff’s Abeng undermine and subvert prevailing structures and schemes. Female protagonists in the novel resist and rebel against colonial control, patriarchal power and hegemonic ideology.
Wood, Beverley A. (UWI, Cave Hill Campus):
“Christians in the Crop Over Festival: the Case of the Experience and the Ultimate Calypso Tents.”
“Christians in the Crop Over Festival: the Case of the Experience and the Ultimate Calypso Tents.”
Since 2004 the Experience Calypso Tent has been pitched during the annual Crop Over Festival in Barbados. As the first self-proclaimed gospel tent in Barbados it endured criticism from detractors both within and outside of the Christian arena. While the debate on whether or not there is a place for Christians in Crop Over continued to simmer, in 2008, a second gospel tent – the Ultimate Calypso Tent- was established. These two tents consistently challenge the barriers placed between the gospel and the country’s major cultural expression – the Crop Over festival.
These openly religious entities continue each year to infiltrate the Festival at several levels. From as early as 2004, members of the tents have reached both the semi-finals and the finals of the Pic-of-the Crop competition. This is perhaps the most celebrated competition of the festival. Tent members have also competed at the Party Monarch competition and performed at the Cohobblopot show. Music from the tents has served as accompaniment for the religious Walk Holy Kadooment band as it ‘masqueraded’ on the road on Kadooment Day. Nevertheless issues of the role of the tents and their place in Festival continue to feature each year.
With at least 12 years active involvement in the Festival as the basis of this examination, this presentation considers first the involvement of the tents in the festival, the debates which have emerged as a result, and the impact, from the perspective of the tents, on the Festival.
These openly religious entities continue each year to infiltrate the Festival at several levels. From as early as 2004, members of the tents have reached both the semi-finals and the finals of the Pic-of-the Crop competition. This is perhaps the most celebrated competition of the festival. Tent members have also competed at the Party Monarch competition and performed at the Cohobblopot show. Music from the tents has served as accompaniment for the religious Walk Holy Kadooment band as it ‘masqueraded’ on the road on Kadooment Day. Nevertheless issues of the role of the tents and their place in Festival continue to feature each year.
With at least 12 years active involvement in the Festival as the basis of this examination, this presentation considers first the involvement of the tents in the festival, the debates which have emerged as a result, and the impact, from the perspective of the tents, on the Festival.
Zamor, Hélène. (UWI, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados):
“Village shops: a comparative analysis of the Barbadian rum shops and the Martinican Debits de la Regie.”
“Village shops: a comparative analysis of the Barbadian rum shops and the Martinican Debits de la Regie.”
The Caribbean region is well-known for its diversified culture and traditions. Village shops as they are often called have received considerable attention from scholars working in different fields including Anthropology, Culture, History, Sociology and others. In the past, they played a great role in our communities in the sense that they provided basic goods to many families. Prior to the rising of marts and supermarkets in the fifties and sixties, Barbadian rum shops and Martinican Debits de la Regie owners ran their businesses on a credit system. Clients purchased their items and paid for them either at the end of the week or at the end of the month. Research has shown that rum shops owe their existence to the seventeenth-century taverns which spread across Bridgetown soon after the British came to Barbados in 1627. However, Debits de la Regie developed in the thirties and sprang in both rural and urban areas in Martinique. The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast both Barbadian rum shops and Martinican Debits de la Regie from a cultural, historical and social perspective.
Zúñiga Argüello, René. (Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica): “The speakers’ view on Limon Kriyol’s current situation.”
Limon Kryol has been present in Costa Rica for almost 150 years now. Changes as varied as individual attitudes, lack of political interest, stigmatization coming from within the speakers and outsiders, and a change in the superstratum language have built a fragmented vision of what Limon Kryol is. This reality has contributed to a decreasing usage of the language, especially among younger generations. Universidad Nacional has developed a project which attempts to evaluate the language’s vitality and state of endangerment by describing the current sociolinguistic situation of the language according to UNESCO’s parameters (2013). This paper provides part of those findings in regards to one of the most important factors in terms of language attitudes: the speakers view. During a year this research has carried out observations, questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. Data analyzed in this work refers to the way speakers perceive their language in regards to different factors and taking into account social variables such as age, gender and social status. Findings show that Limon Kryol has been restricted not only to fewer functional domains, but also to play an encryptive function among its users.