Priscilla R. Appama (Monash University, South African Campus)
Why do we study the ‘Caribbean’? The reasons are various and some, more meaningful than others. We probably find it fascinating, worth working on, trendy, exotic, meaningful in our globalizing (‘creole’) world, a fertile terrain for new theories and so on. The Caribbean that we often study in our discipline (Literary & Cultural Studies) is the one presented to us by writers, artists and intellectuals – in this paper though, we will focus more on the written productions of/on the Caribbean. Can we speak of a Caribbean writing? If we do a comparative analysis of some literary works across the French and the British Caribbean and their respective diasporas (for e.g. Naipaul, Chamoiseau, Kincaid), there is no doubt that we will find some common themes, connections, influences and dialogues that can also take the shape of criticism, disapproval and so on (for e.g., the criticisms made by some Caribbean writers against Naipaul). But do these common points pertain specifically to the Caribbean (literature)? In our ‘hybrid’ and ‘trans-’ global world, in which the basic and trendy ingredients are mixity, ‘metissage’, creolisation etc., are not all writers more ‘international’, more ‘transnational’ than ever? Inventing and re-inventing the ‘Caribbean’ (or the idea of the ‘Caribbean’) is probably then to be envisaged as a constant process, not only in Caribbean literature but also in other literatures around the world.
