The Trope of Flattening and the Complexities of Difference: An Account of Trinidad Carnival (original) (raw)
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The Other Half: The Articulation of Carnival in Nineteenth-century Trinidad.
Carnival: Theory and Practice, edited by Christopher Innes et al., 2013
,Tlh. custom of feasting,Shrcuetid,e-theaseumed prototype of Carni-I val in Trinidad*was introduced by the Spanish and later enriched with diuertis*ements brought by FYench Creoles. During Chrisfunac holidays, Catholic familis of the planter class visited each other for dinner or lunch. In the following weeks, they atteuded concerts and balls. lVhen Ash Wednesday appmached, they went on a procession in a line of decorated carriages uaccompanied by musicians playing such irrstruments ae the violin, guitar, bandol, mandolin, and chac-chac or maracas" (Carr 1992, 868). In pre+mancipation Trinidad, Carnival was a Catholic festi\ral of the dominant class with European origins-it was not publicly open, spatially or temporally, to people of color.
Insights for the analysis of the festivities: carnival seen by Social Sciences
Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, 2019
Festivities not always are taken seriously as objects of study, but they have long attracted the attention of social scientists and other researchers. However, its analysis tends to be restricted and enclosed in some classical conceptions that, although relevant and useful, have become mere buzzwords and do not live up to the richness and complexity of this field of study. This article aims to provide some insights for the analysis of the festivities, focusing particularly on carnival and the way it has been treated by Social Sciences. It begins by exposing and discussing some theoretical recurrences -namely the theories of inversion, escape valve, resistance and communitas -and then presents other analytical perspectives that look at different facets of the festivities -cultural, social, economic and political -thus suggesting more in-depth and committed approaches to social reality and less hostage to the abstraction and dryness of theoretical models.
2015
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Caribbean Quilt
This paper focuses on the history of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago and how the country molded the event to become a staple of nationalism following independence in the 20th century. It explores the historical beginnings of Carnival, from slavery to indentured servitude to modern-day Trinidad. It looks at how becoming a mascot of Trinidadian culture was achieved in two ways—the representation and rhetoric of the event and how it became a commodity that politicians could use to prove a robust national culture to the world. It takes on central themes of unification, regardless of race, class, or culture, and how the event tells the history of this island, even with the costumes and enthralling music. It touches on how Carnival reflects cultural and political movements throughout the country's history, how it became significant for social changes after independence, and how it could withstand the infiltration of global capitalism and still present a story about Trinidad's cult...
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'determinant' of this value is the position of the ethnic groups to the widely-construed division of labour (see Mintz, 1987; Williams, 1960). This process of ethnic identity construction involves 'sensing likeness' in a population historically characterized by a plurality of differences, and attachg meaning (and thus value) to those identities. Part of this perception is also based on a comparison of self to the 'Other'. In the case of Afio-Trinidadians, historically, the 'Other' has largely been the white Europeans who have dominated them, and the Indians, whom at some points in history they have dominated. Therefore, in a similar way that conceptualizations of being 'white', have traditionally been formulated against the black 'Other', Afio-Trinidadian-ness is constructed against, and in relation to (among others) the East Indian 'Other' to whom they have at some points in history felt a sense of superiority, and at other points have perceived as a threat.
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"On my island there is this phenomena known as the Trinidad Carnival. I am interested in the evolution of this Carnival and the factors that allow it to resonate with some Caribbean people. The history of the island is directly connected to the history of the festival..."
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Black and native's bodies became the undesirable of the colonial society of the Americas, in the performance of the Carnival they embodied the monsters (and the fears) of the ruling race, but at the same time, they embodied their gods and devils, the music and rituals of their cultural heritage. The Carnival became a liminal space where different traditions and aesthetics were in a cultural conversation and negotiation, with varying layers of meaning and a different symbolic relation for each community. This study will demonstrate how the Carnival in the region of the Caribbean works in two directions. One as a medium of cultural negotiations between different groups and races during different historical periods, where Catholic traditions in their colonizing project experienced a syncretic process with the African diaspora's folk and the Native's artistic representations. The second, as a counter public's device of appropriation of different spaces and moments. By taking the streets and the squares in the Caribbean cities, the Carnival gives a voice, a narrative to mixed populations who are looking for new identities. Thus the carnival enables a counter-discourse against the status-quo and, at the same time, a space to create communal identity and commitment.
The Impotence of Dragons: Playing Devil in the Trinidad Carnival
TDR/The Drama Review, 1998
As dusk settled over Trinidad, we made our way north from Port of Spain to watch the Devils gather on Paramin Mountain. This was my first visit to the Trinidad Carnival, arguably "the greatest annual theatrical spectacle of all time" (Hill 1972:3), and it was now Carnival Monday. I ...
Inventing the Carnival: Contemporary Festivities, Tradition and Imaginaries
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Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of festivities in the Czech Republic can be observed, constructed after a historical form of the rural carnival ("masopust"). They reveal the needs and intentions of contemporary urban society, which manipulates elements of the carnival in the context of contemporary activities. We focus on the way the structural units of the festivity are selected and appropriated by people within the construction of its contemporary form. The ethnomusicological and ethnochoreological approach enables us to refl ect the cognitive process of the participants who makes visible their personal as well as collective experience of the festivity and provides us information about social relationships, culture and collective memory produced together with images of the time. The qualitative fi eld research took place in several districts of Prague and its suburbs, based on relationships between place and interests.