341 Lecture: Locating the Caribbean in Time and Space Part 1
Horaceyim
LocatingtheCaribbeaninSpaceTimeand.pptxPart 1
Locating the Caribbean in Space, Time and the Imagination
Agenda
Review meanings of culture and popular culture
Lessons from J Mohammed
Hegemonic & Counterhegemonic moves
Remember, culture is…
Culture
Culture is how we make the world meaningful
We use symbols/codes/languages to name the world and its concepts
Our cultural practices emerge from our cultural contexts and they reinforce those cultural contexts
Popular Culture
Folk
Mass
Political zone
Meaning and Power
All meaning is political
Politics is a fight over meaning
Mohammed Six Moments in Caribbean History
Indigenous Occupation
European Invasion
Plantation Society
Enslavement of Africans
Indentureship of Indians, Chinese, Portuguese
Independence
Post Independence
Globalization
For a relatively stable region…
The Caribbean was formed by imperial violence
Inter-European wars fought in the Caribbean
Genocide of the indigenous people
Dispossession of the European landless poor
Enslavement of the Africans
Imperialism in India as one ‘push factor’ for indentureship
In addition to violence…
Hegemony
Imperialism is also about the production of knowledge
Production of a sense of superiority
Production of ideas about non-European inferiority
Knowledge makes it possible to imagine
Knowledge makes it possible to justify actions
Ethnocentrism & Eurocentrism
Mohammed- Ethnocentrism
“Until recently, Caribbean history was written by scholars with a distinctly ethnocentric outlook; that is, everything was judged by mainstream ideas in developed countries.” page 93
Shohat & Stam Eurocentrism
“Eurocentrism is an idealized notion of the West. It organizes forms of knowledge in ways that are flattering to the Eurocentric imaginary.” page 14
Shohat & Stam: Features of Eurocentrism
History, Hegemony & Counter Hegemony
Indigenous Life
Occupation of the region long before Columbus
500 years
Misnaming, Erasure & Caricature
“European historians used labels for native peoples that were later revealed to be wrong” Mohammed page 96
Carib, Arawak
Taino Kalinago, Ciboney, Lucayo
Genocide
Post invasion
The quest for
Recognition
Land rights
representation
European Invasion
From trade to land settlement
Hubris of “discovery”
“mania” for hierarchy, ranking,
Diverse European groups settled in the Caribbean
Privateers
Buccaneers
Pirates
Hollywood and the ‘romance’ of pirates
Second sons
Laws of primogeniture
Absentee owners
The managerial class
Those dispossessed of land
Prisoners of War
The poor
Plantation Society
The plantation was a political, economic, and social system
Mono crop
Production for external market
Absentee ownership
Severe/brutal controls placed on those placed at the bottom of the society
Racism & classism used to determine who would be on the bottom
Shifting racial ideas about Europeans, Indigenous people, Africans
Plantation society and enslavement
Excerpt Reuters chronology who banned slavery when
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-slavery/chronology-who-banned-slavery-when-idUSL1561464920070322
1444 beginning of European enslavement of Africans
1792 Denmark bans import of slaves to West Indian colonies although the law took effect from 1803
1807 Britain bans slave trading
1811 Spain abolishes slaver however Cuban slave owners rejected
1813 Sweden bans slave trading
1817 France bans slave trading not effective until 1826
1833 Britain Abolition of Slavery Act beginning of “Period of Apprenticeship”
1846 Danish proclaims emancipation in Danish West Indies
1848 France abolishes slavery
1851 Brazil abolishes slave trading
1858 Portugal abolishes slavery but starts 20 year apprenticeship
1862 US Emancipation Proclamation 1863 13th Amendment
1886 Cuba – slavery is abolished
Enslavement and Resistance
Enslavement
Approx. 12 million Africans forcibly removed
Millions died in the Middle Passage
Enslavement was brutal, often fatal
Constant resistance
Multiple forms of resistance
Maroonage
Cultural retention
Work stoppage
Perpetual revolution
“The Caribbean has produced a unique culture with a bewildering variety of faces, forms and customs all bound together by the underlying rhythm of Africa.” Family of the Caribbean
Plantation Society –Post Emancipation
Religion
Roman Catholic responses
Anglican/Episcopalian responses
1838 to 1930s – The long 100 years
Anglicization
Colonial Education
Ruthless laws
Movement
Land ownership
Saving
Cultural expression
Plantation owners managed to ensure that wages hardly changed for 100 years
Plantation Society & Indentureship
Reasons
Labor shortages on the larger islands
Efforts to keep wage prices low
1838 -1917 Indentureship in English speaking Caribbean
Imperialism and labor sources
Portugal, China, Indonesia, India
Right to return OR the right to a plot of land
Restricted to the plantations
Debt used as form of control
Cultural retention in indentureship vs enslavement
Family of the Caribbean
Divide and Rule
“The region is also linked by a shared history of imperialist exploitation through slavery in the plantation system which separated these territories for more than three centuries by deliberately placing artificial barriers between them”
Theory of pluralism vs Theory of creolization
Defining Creolization
…a cultural process … which, for purposes of clarification may be divided into two aspects of itself: ac/culturation, which is the yoking (by force and example, deriving from power/prestige); and inter/culturation, which is an unplanned, unstructured but osmotic relationship proceeding from this yoke. The creolization which results (and it is a process not a product), becomes the tentative cultural norm of the society. Kamau Bratwaite
Mottos of Caribbean Nation States
Jamaica
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
People’s Cooperative Republic of Guyana
Family of the Caribbean & efforts to resist cultural imperialism
Independence – Media and Development
Cultural Imperialism & the push for a New World Information and Communication Order
The international communication system “favors a small number of countries at the expense of the majority thanks to a conception of liberty peculiar to those who own or control the communication media and who are frequently the very same people who own or control the means of production.” Masmoudi, Tunisia’s delegate to Unesco
Cultural Policies
Push for Caribbean production
Summary
Culture, meaning and power
History of the Caribbean
Many different people migrated or were forced to migrate to the Caribbean
Imperialism as both violence and struggle over meaning making
Hegemony & Counter Hegemony
Independence & creolization
Media & cultural policy
Resistance to cultural imperialism
