Ruminations

On The Concept

Of Caribbeanness

By Marsha Pearce



"Do we only understand who we are through difference, through division, through separation? Does Caribbeanness, therefore, mean not French, not Canadian, not American, not British, not German?"

“Caribbean” is a root word. “Caribbean” is also a “route” (Stuart Hall) word – it can offer one way to travel; one path in practices of self-articulation. When you add the suffix “-ness” to the root/route, the resultant word is one that compels you to confront a condition of being – that condition or quality of “being Caribbean.” What then is Caribbeanness? What characterises or constitutes being Caribbean?

The Discourse of Cultural Identity

To begin to seek answers to such questions, it is necessary to acknowledge that any consideration of notions of Caribbeanness happens within discourses. Which discourse serves as a suitable point of departure? Which discourse shapes the way we talk about and define what it is to be Caribbean? I first look to the discourse of cultural identity: Hall sees this as “…a very clear and powerful discourse…[which promotes the idea] that the culture of a people is at root…a question of its essence, a question of the fundamentals of a culture.”[1] Hall observes that within this discourse, these “fundamentals” become “a kind of ground for our identities, something stabilised, around which we can organise…our sense of belonging.”[2] The Caribbean has certainly been distilled to fundamentals determined by Euro-American ways of seeing. The Caribbean has been caught in what Mimi Sheller declares might be called “a politics of the picturesque,”[3] whereby writings and visuals have foregrounded certain “fundamentals,” which have framed and determined how the region is conceived and experienced.

Tourism Discourse

Within the discourse of cultural identity, there exists a subset: the tourism discourse, and, it is here that I look to next. The suffix – that “-ness” – is amplified in travel writing and imagery in ways that conjure up the Caribbean through such descriptors as: a paradise fantasy; tropical oasis; unspoiled, carefree islands “where life is sweet…where the people and the sun will embrace you.”[4] Caribbeanness is evoked in such icons as white sand, waving coconut palms and memorable sunsets – all bordered by the pristine, brilliant blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. Tourism discourse is an important step in a progression of thought about Caribbeanness because tourism discourse offers a view of the Caribbean from outside. Is an outsider view valid? Does the view from outside encapsulate the true (and the question of truth naturally enters issues of identity) Caribbean? What about the view from inside? Hall tells us that “far from only coming from the still small point of truth inside us, identities actually come from outside, they are the way in which we are recognised and then come to step into the place of the recognition which others give us. Without the others there is no self, there is no self-recognition.”[5] The view from outside, therefore, allows Caribbean people to consider the identities thrust upon them; the outsider perspective compels Caribbean people to accept/admit/acknowledge what is “seen” in them on the one hand, and to challenge identities with counter/insider perspectives, on the other.

Authenticity: A Question of Truth

The issue of truth is complex – truth according to whom? In what context is something true? “Truth,” therefore, begs for further consideration. What is that “real” Caribbean quality? What does it mean to be truly Caribbean? Does being truly Caribbean imply a separation from other cultures? After all, Veerle Poupeye observes, “authenticity in Caribbean art is measured by its independence from the Western artistic canons.”[6] Does this measurement apply to the people? Do we only understand who we are through difference, through division, through separation? Does Caribbeanness, therefore, mean not French, not Canadian, not American, not British, not German? This marking of difference is evident within the region, at the level of language: The region is divided into the French-speaking, Spanish-speaking, Anglophone and Dutch-speaking areas. Difference is also seen at the level of nationalism: O. Nigel Bolland refers to what Jamaican historian Franklin Knight calls “fragmented nationalism” as he writes: “…people identify strongly as Haitians or Cubans or Jamaicans, but rarely as ‘Caribbeans.’ ”[7] Can we, then speak of a French sense of being Caribbean in contrast to a Spanish Caribbeanness? Are we only truly Barbadian or only authentically Vincentian (authentically made only through sharp divisions)? Is there an overarching sense of Caribbeanness – one that transcends language, geographical borders and site-specific socio-cultural nuances, flags and coats of arms?

A Sense of Caribbeanness 

One Sense:

Cuban intellectual Antonio Benítez-Rojo emphasises connections/relations rather than separation in a proposal for Caribbeanness. He uses Chaos theory to advance the notion that there is some Caribbean constant (Chaos theory involves an adherence to rules within a system despite an apparent randomness or lack of order). Benítez-Rojo sees the Caribbean as a “meta-archipelago” without boundaries or centre. He sees the Caribbean as defying place but always holding to a rhythm, a particular response or “certain kind of way” that is Caribbean.  For him, the Caribbean seems to copy itself wherever it is found (America, New Zealand, China, Russia), creating different copies each time – each copy comprising connections between seemingly disparate cultural elements – but always maintaining “Caribbeanness.” According to Benítez-Rojo, that “Caribbeanness,” that “kind of way,” that rule that is obeyed, is improvisation. 

Another Sense:

Again, I look to Benítez-Rojo, for while his notion of the meta-archipelago gives free space; a boundlessness; an openness to what it might mean “to be Caribbean,” he also takes us back to a very specific location; a particular place in history – in Caribbean experience. Benítez-Rojo suggests that the plantation is that persistent quality of our being; he declares “the plantation…lies within the memory of the people of the Caribbean. It is what inspires…[our] performance.”[8] He proposes that the Caribbean propensity for producing different copies of itself; for producing spontaneous concoctions in which varying cultural fragments are pulled apart, reformed, combined, repelled and yet attracted, began on the plantation. He calls the plantation “the black hole”[9] that draws Caribbean expressions. Benítez-Rojo writes: “…hidden within the samba there are the ancient pulsations brought by the African diaspora, the memory of sacred drums and the words of the griot. But there are also the rhythms of the sugar mill’s machines, the machete stroke that cuts the cane, the overseer’s lash and the planter’s language, music and dance. Later there came other rhythms, from India, from China and from Java…finally, all these rhythms mixed with one another to form a…complex polyrhythmic orchestration…”[10] Is Caribbeanness without centre and, at the same time, forever expressed from a centre?

To Be or Not to Be: Is that the Question?

To ask whether “being Caribbean” is possible with and without a centre puts a spotlight on what Jamaican scholar Rex Nettleford describes the Caribbean as having: a paradox of being.[11] Nettleford observes that the region continues in a “process in which contradictions battle to forge new synthesis.”[12] Caribbeanness is everything and yet, something. Nettleford writes: “the typical Caribbean person is…part-African, part-European, part-Asian, part-Native American but totally Caribbean.”[13] Benítez-Rojo concurs. He observes – as he discusses Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat – that “her identity is in the hyphen, that is, in neither place: Danticat is a Caribbean writer.”[14] The issue of Caribbeanness is not, therefore, a question of either/or positions; the question: “to be or not to be?” is not relevant here. “Being Caribbean” may perhaps best be seen as a condition of forever “becoming” – a synthesis between nothing and being. Yet, how do we faithfully articulate, visualise, verbalise an in-between state without choosing “this” and rejecting “that?” How do we capture, document or express a paradox? How do we depict or portray a hyphen?

Bibliography

Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. “Three Words Toward Creolization,” The Birth of Caribbean Civilisation: A Century of Ideas about Culture and Identity, Nation and Society. Ed. O. Nigel Bolland. Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers; Oxford: James Currey Publishers, 2004, 161-169.

---. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. 2nd ed. Trans. James E. Maraniss. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996.

Bolland, O. Nigel. Introduction.  The Birth of Caribbean Civilisation: A Century of Ideas about Culture and Identity, Nation and Society. Ed. O. Nigel Bolland. Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers; Oxford: James Currey Publishers, 2004, xvi-xxvii.

Hall, Stuart. “Myths of Caribbean Identity,” The Birth of Caribbean Civilisation: A Century of Ideas about Culture and Identity, Nation and Society. Ed. O. Nigel Bolland. Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers; Oxford: James Currey Publishers, 2004, 578 -590.

---. “The Spectacle of the Other,” Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Ed. Stuart Hall. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage, 1997. 225-279.

Nettleford, Rex. Caribbean Cultural Identity The Case of Jamaica: An Essay in Cultural Dynamics. Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers; Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2003.

Poupeye, Veerle. Caribbean Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998.

Sheller, Mimi. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.