Towards indigenous feminist theorizing in the caribbean (original) (raw)

Decolonizing Feminism: The Home-Grown Roots of Caribbean Women's Movement

1997

in these times of increased interest in Caribbean women -ideal canvases, it would appear, on which to theorize on the postfeminist, postcolonial, chaos-driven societ ies of the twentieth century-to speak of our history, our literature, the quality of our feminism or lack thereof, as if we con st ituted a homogeneous block, an undivided, unfragmented and unfragment able ent ity-knowable, understandable, whole. Caribbean feminism is often discussed in much the same way,as something graspable, perceptible, complete -perhaps different from u.s. and European variables but nonetheless compre hensible, unequivocal. Reference is often made in these discussions to the race and class differences that separate women in Caribbean societies, most often in a perfunctory aside about not assuming that the discussion that has preceded it appl ies to all women in the region. But these denials can be rather elliptical, ma naging nonetheless to infer th at one could after all continue to seek to un dersta nd all Caribbean women through what they share with other women as wome n if we only remi nd our audie nces that the differe nces allow, like political polls, for plus or minus three percentage points of error.

Introduction: Women and Gender: Looking Toward "Caribbeanness

Journal of international women's studies, 2016

In this special issue of the JIWS, fourteen authors explore varying iterations of "Caribbeanness" and what it means to identify its specific cultural unity through diversity in literature, various forms of activism, and constructions of feminism, identity, femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. In the closing essay of his seminal Caribbean Discourse, Edouard Glissant distinguishes between the identification of Caribbeanness as both a dream and a reality; "The notion of antillanite, or Caribbeanness, emerges from a reality that we will have to question, but also corresponds to a dream that we must clarify and whose legitimacy must be demonstrated" (Glissant 221). As the just late Jamaican poet, novelist, and essayist Michelle Cliff, who lived in Jamaica and the US wrote, "Caribbeanness as a concept cannot be narrowed down to a particular space" and thus any clarification of the term must move beyond the physical geography of the region into the diaspora...

Diversity, Difference and Caribbean Feminism: The Challenge of AntiRacism

Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, Issue 1, 2007

The Caribbean, as with other parts of the New World, has been shaped by racialized constructs since the beginning of its modern history in the late 15 th Century. Caribbean history is closely related the emergence of modern racism, usually dated at the point of the encounter between Europe, Africa and the New World. Feminist scholars have contributed a great deal towards deconstructing the categories of 'race', ethnicity' and 'nation' and exposing their gendered character. Women, in particular, have been 'othered' in relation to each other and positioned as markers of "racial' 'ethnic and national difference. This paper analyses the changing ways in which feminist activists of the Anglophone Caribbean women's movement have addressed issues of 'race' and ethnicity. It examines how they have interacted, negotiated, and created alliances and coalitions or sought to challenge racialized hierarchies and divisions in their everyday praxis. The work of the early 20 th Century feminists of the Anglophone Caribbean is addressed: women who were conscious of their African/Indian heritage at a time of great European colonial power. It also explores the anti-racist work of feminist activists at the end of that century, in the very different context of Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana at the high point of the Caribbean Women's movement in the 1980s and 1990s. 2 'Race' has also been recognised internationally as a contemporary global construct, as evidenced by the recently held World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought

2016

Aims of the Series New Caribbean Studies series seeks to contribute to Caribbean selfunderstanding, to intervene in the terms of global engagement with the region, and to extend Caribbean Studies' role in reinventing various disciplines and their methodologies well beyond the Caribbean. The series especially solicits humanities-informed and interdisciplinary scholarship from across the region's language traditions.

Stories in Caribbean Feminism: Reflections on the Twentieth Century

Written and delivered as the Fifth Anniversary Public Lecture of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, this paper explores first hand lived anecdotes of incidents and ideas that make up the history of Caribbean feminism in the twentieth century

Introduction: “The Unexpected Caribbean” Part II

Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 2021

When conceptualizing "The Unexpected Caribbean" special issue for the journal of Women, Gender, and Families of Color, we, as editors, sought to contest many of the stereotypical visualizations of the Caribbean and its diasporas and highlight some of the unexpected counternarratives and innovations in representation that appear in literature, the arts, and society. Focusing on women, gender, and families allowed us to consider how Caribbean women-typically disempowered by the restrictions of the colonial and patriarchal systems in which they have lived-have risen to the forefront of making change in their communities and cultures. We strove to emphasize the numerous roles and contributions of women in the circum-Caribbeanboth past and present-and how a variety of configurations of gender and issues pertaining to family wrestle with notions of "Otherness, " regardless of time or space. We therefore called for essays that countered neo/colonial conscriptions of the Caribbean as a destination for tourists; or as a region needing "saving" by foreign business investors, missionaries, environmental groups, and other types of not-for-profit organizations; or as a site for the consumption or extraction of laborers (including sex workers), natural resources, and cultures. As we argued in the introduction to the spring 2021 issue, far from being exotic and isolated islands suitable only as vacation locales or spaces of dire poverty where natural disasters and epidemiological crises repeatedly strike, Caribbean societies have long been realms of incredible intellectual and artistic production and political resistance. The articles gathered for that first issue testify to the fact: novelist Apricot Irving, who spent years of her childhood in Haiti as the daughter of missionaries, contested

Inescapable Entanglements: Notes on Caribbean Feminist Engagement

Introduction It is an incredible honour to have been invited to share this twentieth birthday of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies. I would like to thank the faculty, staff and students for their amazing warmth and hospitality. Let me take this opportunity to also recognize Professor Barbara Bailey, whose commitment to gender equality is manifested not just in her contribution as Regional Coordinator of the IGDS, but in the work she has accomplished nationally, regionally and internationally. In particular, Professor Bailey’s commitment to education and the foundational texts in Caribbean Gender Studies that she has co-authored/coedited are an amazing legacy for generations of scholars to come. We know that the IGDS was a dimension of women’s and feminist activism in the Caribbean, from WAND to CAFRA, from Sistren to NUDE. We had taken our struggle to the academy, making these institutional spaces the site of our demands for recognition. Today the IGDS boasts a regional programme with a superb publication record, training undergraduate and graduate students, initiating collaborations with academic partners and communities. It extends itself to wider communities, whether it is the open access feminist journal at St Augustine, the work at Mona with Haitian colleagues after the earthquake to develop a certificate programme in Gender Studies, or the Summer Institute in Gender Studies at Cave Hill which brings together university students, farmers, civil servants, community activists and police officers from across the region.

Cathexis, Catharsis, and the Challenge to Contemporary Caribbean Feminist Theorizing

2013

For decades, Caribbean feminist and gender scholars have been dissatisfied with unequal North-South discursive exchanges, an osmotic process Eudine Barriteau defines as “imported theoretical constructs that did not stimulate critiques of epistemologies, methodologies and practices, and [sic] therefore reinforced and maintained exclusions and invisibility around key dimensions of women‟s lives” (Barriteau 2003, 3). Conversely, Patricia Mohammed seeks to subvert “the artists and architects of colonisation [who] attempted to achieve opacity [of Caribbean self-imaging] by overlays of the same tone in order to obliterate cultures” (373).