Postcolonial Caribbean Thought and Aesthetics

Catalog description

Ever since the arrival of Europeans, the Caribbean has been marked by repeated inflections of violence in all its forms, be it physical, cultural, epistemic, gendered, or environmental. As indigenous populations and enslaved Africans in the plantation system developed strategies for survival, new, creolized cultures of resistance began to emerge, standing against a history marked by centuries of colonialism, slavery, imperialism, nationalism, and the slow, brutal impositions of neoliberalism. This course offers an overview of these developments through a transdisciplinary approach including theory, history, literature, and music. We will discuss how writers and artists across languages spoken in the Caribbean, including its diaspora in the United States, address colonialism in their work and engage in a pan-Caribbean conversation aiming at breaking from the legacies of historical violence.