Ecology of the Provision Grounds (original) (raw)

2007

Abstract

Over three decades ago, Sylvia Wynter argued in her article “Novel and History, Plot and Plantation” (1971) that models of Caribbean history and literature could be understood in the racial, economic, and cultural divisions between the master’s plantation on the one hand and the slaves' provision grounds on the other. Although Wynter's insights into the spatial geographies of Caribbean culture have been largely overlooked, they have tremendous relevance to the ways in which scholars excavate Caribbean history and the ‘ground’ on which cultural archeology is conducted. In this paper, I explore Wynter’s ideas on the ways in which the violence of modernity alienated humans from nature and the implications of this alienation for the Caribbean novel. Wynter has already employed this tension between plantation and provision ground in her analysis of Vic Reid’s New Day (1949) but I’d like to explore how this model might work by considering Wynter’s first and only novel, The Hills o...

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