Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2022.2105044
J. Bryce
FOR VERY GOOD REASONS, THE HANDFUL OF books on anglophone Caribbean cinema mostly treat it as part of a larger, regional endeavour.1 Apart from Cuba, few places in the Caribbean can support their own film industry, and production proceeds by fits and starts. Despite this, the long history and cultural specificity of Jamaican film-making have resulted in a body of work that repays a closer look. Rachel Moseley-Wood’s study does not set out to be a history of Jamaican cinema, or even a comprehensive overview. What she offers is a series of case studies of key films, from pre-Independence documentaries through the seminal 70s moment of The Harder They Come (1972) 2 to Better Mus’ Come,3 made in 2010. Setting each of these within the parameters spelled out in her title – place, nation and identity – she asks what they have to tell us about how Jamaicanness has been conceived and represented on film, how this is shaped by generic conventions and how it has changed over time. The first part of the title, Show Us as We Are, sets up an expectation of the cliché “telling our own stories” variety – the idea that certain people and perspectives have direct access to the ‘truth’ or to more ‘real’ versions of it than others. In fact, the words are taken from an editorial in the Daily Gleaner in 1913, objecting to a British film company’s dramatisation of Jamaicans as “halfsavage natives” who kidnap a missionary for ransom. “We want”, it declared, “to be shown just as we are . . . as a colony without a colour problem” (2–3). Seizing on this quotation, Moseley-Wood makes it her project to deconstruct its underlying assumptions and demonstrate how irony and contradiction are built into it from the outset. Far from cliché, in other words, she proceeds to lay out a nuanced argument for a plurality of perspectives inflected by class, race, gender, politics and history. In this regard, the title is misleading and one might have wished for a more effective clue to its purpose – “contesting place, nation and identity”, for example.
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Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2022.2105026
Paul Humphrey
“SOUND THE SIRENS”, RITA INDIANA INSTRUCTS AT the beginning of her song “Como un dragón” (Like a dragon).1 In this lead single to the album Mandinga Times (2020),2 which marks her return to the musical stage, the Dominican author and singer-songwriter embodies the mandinga, a “queerly gendered creature”3 who serves as the titular inspiration for the album. Choosing the term mandinga for its multiple meanings, which encompass ethnicity, skin complexion, sexual and gender identity, as well as denoting the “end times”, “La Montra” – as Rita Indiana is known – appears as a trickster figure who develops lethal technology and lures individuals to their lab, combining folklore from the region with a queer and dystopian futurist aesthetic.4 The intertwining of Rita Indiana’s music and literary works is well documented and “Como un dragón” continues this trend, exploring themes from environmental destruction, the many forms of trafficking, and technology in the Caribbean, to Afrodiasporic spiritualities and the politics of race, gender, sexuality, and queerness across the region. Indeed, the exhortation to “sound the sirens”, prefaced by the mandinga’s own haunting call, plays on the dual meaning in the original Spanish; “suena la sirena” can mean both “sound the sirens” and “the siren sounds”, thereby invoking popular belief systems and broader folklore that have associated the siren of the seas with ensnarement, ecstasy, and death. Born from death, the genderqueer mandinga reinforces this link with the waters in numerous ways, two of which are particularly notable in this context.5 First, it invokes the ever-present history of the Middle Passage and the trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans to and between the Americas, during which physical and living death were omnipresent, the legacy of which continues today. Second, with regard to spirituality, the shared associations with death and queerness, as
丽塔·印第安纳在她的歌曲《Como un dragón》(像龙一样)的开头指示道:“发出警报。在标志着她重返音乐舞台的专辑《曼丁加时代》(Mandinga Times, 2020)的首支单曲中，这位多米尼加作家、创作歌手将“性别怪异的生物”曼丁加化身为这张专辑的名义灵感来源。“La Montra”——丽塔·印第安纳的名字——是一个骗子，他开发了致命的技术，并引诱人们到他的实验室，将该地区的民间传说与一种奇怪的、反乌托邦的未来主义美学结合在一起，因为它有多重含义，包括种族、肤色、性和性别认同，也表示“末日”丽塔·印第安纳的音乐和文学作品相互交织，这是有充分记录的，“Como un dragón”延续了这一趋势，探索的主题从环境破坏、多种形式的贩运和加勒比地区的技术，到非洲移民的精神和种族、性别、性和跨地区的酷儿政治。的确，以曼丁加自己萦绕不去的呼唤开头的“拉响警笛”的劝诫，在西班牙语原文中发挥了双重意义;“suena la sirena”既可以表示“发出塞壬的声音”，也可以表示“发出塞壬的声音”，因此，它唤起了流行的信仰体系和更广泛的民间传说，这些传说将海洋的塞壬与诱捕、狂喜和死亡联系在一起。从死亡中诞生的性别酷儿曼丁格在许多方面加强了与水的联系，其中两个方面在这篇文章中特别值得注意首先，它唤起了始终存在的中间通道历史，以及数百万非洲奴隶被贩运到美洲和在美洲之间的历史，在这段历史中，肉体和活命的死亡无处不在，其遗产今天仍在继续。第二，关于灵性，与死亡和酷儿的共同联系，就像
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Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2022.2068848
Zaira Simone
IN 2013, CARICOM LAUNCHED THE CARICOM REPARATIONS COMMISSION (CRC), comprised of scholars, activists, and government officials from Jamaica, Barbados, St Lucia, Guyana, Suriname, Antigua, St Vincent, and Trinidad and Tobago.1 Members of the commission work with national reparation task forces and committees in the Caribbean and international supporting organisations to enhance their claims. Thus far the CRC has developed a “Ten Point Action Plan”, a public statement that identifies the legacies of slavery and colonialism and makes demands for those European governments that profited from slavery and colonialism to issue an apology and to participate in a reparations programme aimed at enhancing social and economic development in the region.2 Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the CRC has continued their outreach efforts largely through social media. In July 2020 at a press conference, which featured Barbadian prime minister and chair of the prime ministerial subcommittee for reparations, Mia Mottley, CRC chair Sir Hilary Beckles announced the CRC’s proposal for a three-day summit, which would involve the participation of governments, the private sector and the Church of England to discuss how “how to honour this debt to the Caribbean”.3 In this essay, I explore how contemporary claims for reparations in the Caribbean challenge us to think differently about the scope and limitations of certain strands of what Cedric J. Robinson called the black radical tradition.4 Today, reparation activists situate their claims within a genealogy of Caribbean black radical responses, from the Haitian Revolution to the intellectual interventions of Caribbean thinkers and the lived experiences of those impacted by native genocide, chattel slavery and indentureship – Sir Hilary Beckles’s essay “The Reparation Movement: Greatest Political Tide” and Verene A. Shepherd’s and Ahmed Reid’s “Women, Slavery and the Reparation Movement in the Caribbean”5 are such examples. Reading Raymond Williams, Ruth Wilson Gilmore maintains that the black radical tradition is a liminal practice that is defined by a conscious
{"title":"Caribbean Repair","authors":"Zaira Simone","doi":"10.1080/00086495.2022.2068848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2022.2068848","url":null,"abstract":"IN 2013, CARICOM LAUNCHED THE CARICOM REPARATIONS COMMISSION (CRC), comprised of scholars, activists, and government officials from Jamaica, Barbados, St Lucia, Guyana, Suriname, Antigua, St Vincent, and Trinidad and Tobago.1 Members of the commission work with national reparation task forces and committees in the Caribbean and international supporting organisations to enhance their claims. Thus far the CRC has developed a “Ten Point Action Plan”, a public statement that identifies the legacies of slavery and colonialism and makes demands for those European governments that profited from slavery and colonialism to issue an apology and to participate in a reparations programme aimed at enhancing social and economic development in the region.2 Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the CRC has continued their outreach efforts largely through social media. In July 2020 at a press conference, which featured Barbadian prime minister and chair of the prime ministerial subcommittee for reparations, Mia Mottley, CRC chair Sir Hilary Beckles announced the CRC’s proposal for a three-day summit, which would involve the participation of governments, the private sector and the Church of England to discuss how “how to honour this debt to the Caribbean”.3 In this essay, I explore how contemporary claims for reparations in the Caribbean challenge us to think differently about the scope and limitations of certain strands of what Cedric J. Robinson called the black radical tradition.4 Today, reparation activists situate their claims within a genealogy of Caribbean black radical responses, from the Haitian Revolution to the intellectual interventions of Caribbean thinkers and the lived experiences of those impacted by native genocide, chattel slavery and indentureship – Sir Hilary Beckles’s essay “The Reparation Movement: Greatest Political Tide” and Verene A. Shepherd’s and Ahmed Reid’s “Women, Slavery and the Reparation Movement in the Caribbean”5 are such examples. Reading Raymond Williams, Ruth Wilson Gilmore maintains that the black radical tradition is a liminal practice that is defined by a conscious","PeriodicalId":35039,"journal":{"name":"Caribbean Quarterly","volume":"68 1","pages":"217 - 233"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43755162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2022.2068855
B. Berrian
{"title":"Remembering the Zouk Singer Patrick Saint-Éloi of Guadeloupe","authors":"B. Berrian","doi":"10.1080/00086495.2022.2068855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2022.2068855","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35039,"journal":{"name":"Caribbean Quarterly","volume":"68 1","pages":"280 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44400366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2022.2068847
Wedsly Turenne Guerrier
FéLIX MORISSEAU-LEROY (1912–98) WAS ONE OF THE most prolific Haitian writers, populist intellectuals and Haitian Creole language activists of the twentieth century. The legendary performance on 23 July 1953, at the Rex Theatre in Port-au-Prince, of Antigòn,1 his cultural adaptation of Sophocles’s Antigone into Haitian Creole, is considered a watershed moment in language and theatre history. Yet there were other significant literary accomplishments in MorisseauLeroy’s corpus that have thus far not received the scholarly attention that they warrant. Chief among these is his poem (penned in 1951) entitled “Simon Sireneyen” (Simon of Cyrene)2 in which he dismantles and recasts one of the Bible’s most acclaimed stories, that of the Passion Narrative. In it, as he did throughout his literary career, Morisseau-Leroy displays, in a particularly inventive manner, Haitian Creole as an instrument of empowerment. In this article, I will first discuss some aspects of his biography that include an overview of the Indigenist and Négritude movements that shaped Morisseau-Leroy’s optic, the multiple efforts he undertook to promote Haitian Creole in Haiti as well as abroad, and the conditions under which he went into exile. Second, I will provide the context for my analysis of his poetic narrative “Simon Sireneyen”.3 This specific poem was selected for its concept, depth of scope and vibrancy, and the ways in which it crystallises Morisseau-Leroy’s capacity to take on universal cultural suppositions about one of the most emblematic figures of Western history, Jesus Christ, and subvert traditional interpretations about the manner of his death. In so doing, Morisseau-Leroy alluded to the universality of the struggle for social, racial and economic equity, and he imagined and proposed an alternative social order, imbued tragedy with humour, and created a literary
{"title":"Poetic Defiance","authors":"Wedsly Turenne Guerrier","doi":"10.1080/00086495.2022.2068847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2022.2068847","url":null,"abstract":"FéLIX MORISSEAU-LEROY (1912–98) WAS ONE OF THE most prolific Haitian writers, populist intellectuals and Haitian Creole language activists of the twentieth century. The legendary performance on 23 July 1953, at the Rex Theatre in Port-au-Prince, of Antigòn,1 his cultural adaptation of Sophocles’s Antigone into Haitian Creole, is considered a watershed moment in language and theatre history. Yet there were other significant literary accomplishments in MorisseauLeroy’s corpus that have thus far not received the scholarly attention that they warrant. Chief among these is his poem (penned in 1951) entitled “Simon Sireneyen” (Simon of Cyrene)2 in which he dismantles and recasts one of the Bible’s most acclaimed stories, that of the Passion Narrative. In it, as he did throughout his literary career, Morisseau-Leroy displays, in a particularly inventive manner, Haitian Creole as an instrument of empowerment. In this article, I will first discuss some aspects of his biography that include an overview of the Indigenist and Négritude movements that shaped Morisseau-Leroy’s optic, the multiple efforts he undertook to promote Haitian Creole in Haiti as well as abroad, and the conditions under which he went into exile. Second, I will provide the context for my analysis of his poetic narrative “Simon Sireneyen”.3 This specific poem was selected for its concept, depth of scope and vibrancy, and the ways in which it crystallises Morisseau-Leroy’s capacity to take on universal cultural suppositions about one of the most emblematic figures of Western history, Jesus Christ, and subvert traditional interpretations about the manner of his death. In so doing, Morisseau-Leroy alluded to the universality of the struggle for social, racial and economic equity, and he imagined and proposed an alternative social order, imbued tragedy with humour, and created a literary","PeriodicalId":35039,"journal":{"name":"Caribbean Quarterly","volume":"68 1","pages":"194 - 216"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46290180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2022.2068859
F. Ledgister
{"title":"The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti","authors":"F. Ledgister","doi":"10.1080/00086495.2022.2068859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2022.2068859","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35039,"journal":{"name":"Caribbean Quarterly","volume":"68 1","pages":"304 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43723695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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