Introduction – Early Caribbean Digital Archive (original) (raw)
Carnival not only excluded colonizers and refused their authority, it also mocked colonizers’ claims to understanding the world of enslaved people. Carnival rituals or celebrations performed right in front of colonizers demonstrated that they were unable to understand the essence or significance of these celebrations and enabled West Indians to mock the ignorance of these so-called “superiors.” As the historian J.D. Elder writes, “only the Africans are enabled to understand the ‘message’ because the very medium IS the message” (Elder 1998, 38). A large part of the rebellious nature of Carnival lies in its resistance to and impenetrability to colonial knowledge. Colonizers’ lack of understanding of Carnival reveals their absence of cultural literacy with respect to Afro-Caribbean culture. Afro-Caribbean culture is dynamic and complex, filled with traditions, rituals, and ways of life that are impossible for colonial forms of knowledge, (which deem it worthless), to grasp.
Works Cited:
Elder, J. D. "Cannes Brûlées." TDR, no. 3 (1998): 38-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146678.
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
Images Cited:
“1835 Map of Trinidad and Tobago.” Britishempire.co.uk, 2015.
https://www.britishempire.co.uk/images2/britishislands1835map.jpg.
"Sugar Cane Harvest, Trinidad, 1836", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade
and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed March 9, 2021,