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Ana Bringas López holds a PhD in English Studies and Professor of the Department of English at the University of Vigo (Galicia, Spain), where she teaches English literature.
His research focuses on women's literature and feminist and postcolonial theories. On these topics he has published several papers.
Feminario is a member of Research "Feminism and Resistance" at the University of Vigo, in the framework of which has organized several international conferences, courses, workshops and seminars on feminism and postcolonialism.
An approach to Caribbean literature in English I / III
By Dr. Ana Bringas López
University of Vigo (Galicia), Spain
1. Historical and cultural context
E l Anglophone Caribbean territories is composed of fourteen, twelve of which are the British Commonwealth. Ten of these territories are islands (Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda and the Bahamas) and only two are on the mainland (Belize Central America and Guyana in South America). Note that there are still some territories under British colonial sovereignty, as the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Bermuda and Montserrat.
As happened in other areas of colonial rule, there were a large number of European powers involved in the conquest and domination of the region Caribbean: Spain, England, France, Holland and Denmark. No doubt this has brought a cultural and linguistic diversity hard to match, but has also profoundly altered the relationship between the different territories, as the European colonial powers established a territorial division based on political and linguistic lines very well marked. This made the connections between the different islands were restricted almost entirely to those belonging to the same linguistic group. In addition, the linguistic fragmentation also found a distinct identity and, thus, the English-speaking Caribbean has an Double-Caribbean and Latin American identity-of the territories without speaking English, Dutch or French, all with essentially insular identity.
the Anglophone Caribbean with the Caribbean countries share any linguistic expression that makes a common history of post-colonial Caribbean territory that probably shows a more terrible the consequences of European colonization, since in this region come together the more negative aspects of colonialism. After the extermination of the native population (Arawak, Taino, Carib, including Native American tribes), came the exploitation of people displaced from their place of origin, through trade of African slave labor. Later, the system of contract labor pseudoesclavista led to the Caribbean islands for thousands of people in China and Southeast Asia, especially, but also a large number of people from Portugal, Ireland, Lebanon, etc. Thus, at present almost all of the Caribbean population, racially very hybrid, made up of people not originating from the area, with only a small group of Native American Indians, often mixed with the African population. On the political and economic consequences are also evident in the historical process of colonization, since the region form part of the "third world" with an underdeveloped economy and a very complicated political situation generally in the late independence caused a deep social conflicts, government corruption, military dictatorship, and in many cases, civil strife. From a cultural standpoint, Caribbean societies are characterized by great diversity and syncretism between different cultures that have been shaped over the centuries.
One area where this is most evident is that of religion and African religious beliefs survived in the Caribbean with the addition of so syncretic features of European Christian religions. Another outstanding example of syncretism is the development of creole languages, which evolved from contact between the West African languages \u200b\u200band European languages \u200b\u200b(mainly English and to a lesser extent, French) and even today, to Despite the hegemony of English, are the usual language of communication in almost all the population in the Anglophone Caribbean.
From the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the late fifteenth century, the islands of the Antilles (West Indies called in English) were designed as objects of exploitation rather than settler colonies. Its early history is dominated by the extermination of native populations and the fierce naval rivalry between different European powers. With the introduction in the late sixteenth century, the sugar plantation system, which used slave labor from Africa, Caribbean societies were further deteriorate relations between different human groups that inhabited them. This will be one of the most prominent of the literature and, in general, of all artistic Caribbean since its inception to the present.
Europe's population in the Anglophone Caribbean was never identified as "Caribbean", but maintained always eyes on Britain as a model. They did not consider the Caribbean as a place of permanent settlement, contrary to what happened in the American colonies. This sense of identity confusion became even more intense with the emancipation of the slave population in 1838, and since then the words "Caribbean" and "Caribbean" (in English, West Indian) were switched to group together the population is native- say, people of European origin, the free black population and the former slave. These feelings neurotic need by white people to dissociate themselves from the people of color are at the base of a number of literary works such as The White Witch of Rosehall (1929) by HG Lisser, or Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys, which reflected the inability of white people accept the logic of cultural influence exerted on them black people. The confrontation between white and black populations had one of its highest expressions in the Morant Bay Rebellion, which took place in Jamaica in 1865. The revolt of the black farming population against the white landowning class ended with the execution by the army of more than four hundred people, among them were Paul Bogle, a Baptist minister, and George William Gordon, a black MP.
While the white population has always been a minority in most of the British Caribbean colonies had economic and social power to spare to lead the literary and artistic movement in its early stages. At present, the white population is even more minority and its power is much smaller. Many of them left the region, and only a small group continues to write and develop other artistic work. In the previous literary generation include Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey, both of Dominica, and Geoffrey Drayton of Barbados. In the latest generation include the writer Lawrence Scott, of Trinidad, author of several narrative works, and Honor Ford-Smith, of Jamaica, poet and founder of the Jamaican feminist theater group Sistren Theatre Collective.
The twentieth century in the Caribbean was characterized from its beginnings to the enormous migration flows in response mainly to the economic crisis. This process began already in the first decades after a succession of hurricanes, combined with drought, seriously jeopardizing the sugar industry. Despite the high unemployment rate, the planters preferred to import Asian labor through contracts pseudoesclavistas before hiring local workers with a decent wage. This caused great waves of migration from rural to city \u200b\u200bin territories like Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad. Moreover, in Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, hundreds of people, mostly men, migrated to Panama to work on the construction of the canal, and Cuba and the United States to work on farms as seasonal. Other movements are headed for sugar plantations of Brazil.
Emigration to the Panama Canal Zone and the United States accounted for Caribbean people making contact with the industrial and Republican ideas, which subsequently had a significant impact in the Caribbean, much of the Caribbean trade union leaders had been working in the channel and also money that entered the Caribbean in this way served to provide education to children of the working classes.
Another wave of emigration that had important implications in the deployment of troops was the Caribbean to Europe on the occasion of the First World War. This experience was a disappointment for black Caribbean soldiers, who had gone to fight for the empire with the conviction that they were British soldiers, only to discover that, despite their training and education, had a lower range of Canadian soldiers , Australia or New Zealand citizens of the empire but also white. This, together with contact with Marxist ideas which prompted the Russian Revolution, resulted in a backlash against Caribbean colonial oligarchy after the war ended. This is the germ of the nationalist movements that would eventually lead to independence.
The war years were years of economic depression and high unemployment, but also intense political and cultural. Independence movements in India in the thirties stimulated political consciousness of the Caribbean population of Asian origin, who refused to continue being exploited in work. In addition, the thirties witnessed numerous strikes and demonstrations by industry industry in St. Lucia, Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica. These social events had a profound impact on Caribbean writers of the fifties, such as George Lamming, VS Naipaul and John Hearne, who at that time were children or youth.
After the Second World War, began to build a professional class that was black and mulatto acquire more power at the expense of the white elite. At this time there developed a clear understanding of education as a path to a better future and for this, the best option was to get a government scholarship to study at an English university. This was the way to go most of the writers empezaron a publicar en torno a los años cincuenta, como V.S. Naipaul, y también muchos de los políticos y profesionales que destacaron en la vida pública caribeña en los años previos y posteriores a la descolonización, como Eric Williams, primer ministro de Trinidad y Tobago tras la independencia.
El acontecimiento político más destacable de esta época es la constitución de una Federación de las Indias Occidentales Británicas (Federation of the British West Indies). Esta Federación, que ya se había intentado constituir en ocasiones anteriores por el gobierno colonial con vistas a una administración más coordinada, sólo fue posible después de que las dos guerras mundiales created among the population a sense of Caribbean identity that allowed them to reduce inter-regional rivalry arising from insularity. The Federation was inaugurated in 1958 without the participation of countries such as Guyana (then British Guiana yet), but proved a failure and finally disbanded in 1962, leading to the first phase of decolonization.
After the failure of the Federation and after the independence of the first territories in 1962, there were new inter-regional rivalries and came to threaten the fragile alliance was consolidated anticolonialist between middle and working classes. This period begins to become evident a strong U.S. presence in the Caribbean policy, which, in a territory like Guyana resulted in devastating racial riots between the populations of Asian and African origin, a tension that continues today.
In the sixties the Caribbean social structure has changed considerably. Along with the new elite of color, appeared also another social group formed by the most economically depressed urban classes. In Jamaica the Rastafarian movement somehow became the symbol of the claims of this group. Rastafarianism, originally a religious-philosophical movement appeared in the thirties and advocating the back to Africa as the true home of black people, was transformed into a broader movement of social and political nature which brought together the feeling of rejection of the values \u200b\u200bthat underpinned the post-colonial society. From Jamaica expanded rapidly by other Caribbean countries like Trinidad and Dominica, and even among the black communities of the United States, Canada and Britain. His rejection of European cultural heritage and linguistic creativity proved very attractive to a number of writers who were no longer identify with the image of the mulatto elite that emerged in the fifties and looking for racial self-assertion. With access to the lower classes education, began to form a group of writers who depicted in his works the living conditions of these classes. At the same time, these became more visible through social protest conveyed by expressions such as Caribbean music calypso and reggae (Bob Marley as its international exponent). In connection with this genre, dub poetry appeared, consisting of the recitation of verses sung over a reggae instrumental background. Its main proponents were Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jamaican living in Britain, and Mutabaruka, Jamaica.
the early eighties, the sense of political optimism that was present in the region suffered a setback with two events that took place in October 1983: the assassination of Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, at the hands of hardliners in his party (the New Jewel Movement) and less a week later, the invasion of the island, under the leadership of the United States and with the participation of troops from several Caribbean countries. From the economic point of view, the situation was not too good either, because the Caribbean countries were unable to cope with the huge international debts incurred during the seventies and came under heavy pressure from the International Monetary Fund . In addition, the hyper-tourism in the area began to show from the ecological point of view. The dominant feeling among the population was of being overwhelmed by an anonymous lifestyle based on consumerism fierce, and had resulted in the cultural disintegration. Thus, again there was a scattering of Caribbean and Caribbean immigrants to the U.S., Canada and Europe in search of better economic and cultural opportunities. From the literary point of view, the most notable of this era is the emergence of female literary voices, both in the region and in the diaspora, which drew on a tradition of African creative preserved not only in the Caribbean, with precursors such as A Marson and Louise Bennett-but also in the African-American environment, where authors such as Alice Walker or Toni Morrison major roads were opening for black writers worldwide.
During the nineties and early twenty-first century, the situation in the Caribbean continues to be similar to that of the eighties, but has greatly increased inter-regional cooperation. Is the creation in 1994 of the Association of Caribbean States (Association of Caribbean States), based in Trinidad and Tobago and which groups countries and island continental various linguistic expressions. This association was created at the initiative of Caricom (Caribbean Community), which since 1973 brings together the English-speaking Caribbean countries, along with others such as Haiti and Suriname, in addition to several other associate members and observers, among which are the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Colombia. The Association of Caribbean States seeks to give boost to the economy of the region, a fairly weak and strong external dependence.
is an important initiative, because for the first time is making a serious attempt to overcome cultural and political barriers between nations are very close geographically. Moreover, the English-speaking Caribbean continues to suffer a huge political and cultural influence of the United States, both through tourism and the media. The writers and writers in their works constantly denounce the lack of cultural sovereignty and the need to develop independent indigenous cultural models. Thousands of Caribbean and Caribbean countries are still scattered throughout the world and at the same time, strongly linked to their place of origin, although there is generational change is an inevitable loss of cultural identification with a land that for many young people who were born in Britain, the United States or Canada, and not her own land but the land of their parents.
------ Top of Digital Veins:
http://vetasdigital.blogspot.com
Ana Bringas López holds a PhD in English Studies and Professor of the Department of English at the University of Vigo (Galicia, Spain), where she teaches English literature.
His research focuses on women's literature and feminist and postcolonial theories. On these topics he has published several papers.
Feminario is a member of Research "Feminism and Resistance" at the University of Vigo, in the framework of which has organized several international conferences, courses, workshops and seminars on feminism and postcolonialism.
An approach to Caribbean literature in English I / III
By Dr. Ana Bringas López
University of Vigo (Galicia), Spain
1. Historical and cultural context
E l Anglophone Caribbean territories is composed of fourteen, twelve of which are the British Commonwealth. Ten of these territories are islands (Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda and the Bahamas) and only two are on the mainland (Belize Central America and Guyana in South America). Note that there are still some territories under British colonial sovereignty, as the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Bermuda and Montserrat.
As happened in other areas of colonial rule, there were a large number of European powers involved in the conquest and domination of the region Caribbean: Spain, England, France, Holland and Denmark. No doubt this has brought a cultural and linguistic diversity hard to match, but has also profoundly altered the relationship between the different territories, as the European colonial powers established a territorial division based on political and linguistic lines very well marked. This made the connections between the different islands were restricted almost entirely to those belonging to the same linguistic group. In addition, the linguistic fragmentation also found a distinct identity and, thus, the English-speaking Caribbean has an Double-Caribbean and Latin American identity-of the territories without speaking English, Dutch or French, all with essentially insular identity.
the Anglophone Caribbean with the Caribbean countries share any linguistic expression that makes a common history of post-colonial Caribbean territory that probably shows a more terrible the consequences of European colonization, since in this region come together the more negative aspects of colonialism. After the extermination of the native population (Arawak, Taino, Carib, including Native American tribes), came the exploitation of people displaced from their place of origin, through trade of African slave labor. Later, the system of contract labor pseudoesclavista led to the Caribbean islands for thousands of people in China and Southeast Asia, especially, but also a large number of people from Portugal, Ireland, Lebanon, etc. Thus, at present almost all of the Caribbean population, racially very hybrid, made up of people not originating from the area, with only a small group of Native American Indians, often mixed with the African population. On the political and economic consequences are also evident in the historical process of colonization, since the region form part of the "third world" with an underdeveloped economy and a very complicated political situation generally in the late independence caused a deep social conflicts, government corruption, military dictatorship, and in many cases, civil strife. From a cultural standpoint, Caribbean societies are characterized by great diversity and syncretism between different cultures that have been shaped over the centuries.
One area where this is most evident is that of religion and African religious beliefs survived in the Caribbean with the addition of so syncretic features of European Christian religions. Another outstanding example of syncretism is the development of creole languages, which evolved from contact between the West African languages \u200b\u200band European languages \u200b\u200b(mainly English and to a lesser extent, French) and even today, to Despite the hegemony of English, are the usual language of communication in almost all the population in the Anglophone Caribbean.
From the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the late fifteenth century, the islands of the Antilles (West Indies called in English) were designed as objects of exploitation rather than settler colonies. Its early history is dominated by the extermination of native populations and the fierce naval rivalry between different European powers. With the introduction in the late sixteenth century, the sugar plantation system, which used slave labor from Africa, Caribbean societies were further deteriorate relations between different human groups that inhabited them. This will be one of the most prominent of the literature and, in general, of all artistic Caribbean since its inception to the present.
Europe's population in the Anglophone Caribbean was never identified as "Caribbean", but maintained always eyes on Britain as a model. They did not consider the Caribbean as a place of permanent settlement, contrary to what happened in the American colonies. This sense of identity confusion became even more intense with the emancipation of the slave population in 1838, and since then the words "Caribbean" and "Caribbean" (in English, West Indian) were switched to group together the population is native- say, people of European origin, the free black population and the former slave. These feelings neurotic need by white people to dissociate themselves from the people of color are at the base of a number of literary works such as The White Witch of Rosehall (1929) by HG Lisser, or Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys, which reflected the inability of white people accept the logic of cultural influence exerted on them black people. The confrontation between white and black populations had one of its highest expressions in the Morant Bay Rebellion, which took place in Jamaica in 1865. The revolt of the black farming population against the white landowning class ended with the execution by the army of more than four hundred people, among them were Paul Bogle, a Baptist minister, and George William Gordon, a black MP.
While the white population has always been a minority in most of the British Caribbean colonies had economic and social power to spare to lead the literary and artistic movement in its early stages. At present, the white population is even more minority and its power is much smaller. Many of them left the region, and only a small group continues to write and develop other artistic work. In the previous literary generation include Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey, both of Dominica, and Geoffrey Drayton of Barbados. In the latest generation include the writer Lawrence Scott, of Trinidad, author of several narrative works, and Honor Ford-Smith, of Jamaica, poet and founder of the Jamaican feminist theater group Sistren Theatre Collective.
The twentieth century in the Caribbean was characterized from its beginnings to the enormous migration flows in response mainly to the economic crisis. This process began already in the first decades after a succession of hurricanes, combined with drought, seriously jeopardizing the sugar industry. Despite the high unemployment rate, the planters preferred to import Asian labor through contracts pseudoesclavistas before hiring local workers with a decent wage. This caused great waves of migration from rural to city \u200b\u200bin territories like Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad. Moreover, in Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, hundreds of people, mostly men, migrated to Panama to work on the construction of the canal, and Cuba and the United States to work on farms as seasonal. Other movements are headed for sugar plantations of Brazil.
Emigration to the Panama Canal Zone and the United States accounted for Caribbean people making contact with the industrial and Republican ideas, which subsequently had a significant impact in the Caribbean, much of the Caribbean trade union leaders had been working in the channel and also money that entered the Caribbean in this way served to provide education to children of the working classes.
Another wave of emigration that had important implications in the deployment of troops was the Caribbean to Europe on the occasion of the First World War. This experience was a disappointment for black Caribbean soldiers, who had gone to fight for the empire with the conviction that they were British soldiers, only to discover that, despite their training and education, had a lower range of Canadian soldiers , Australia or New Zealand citizens of the empire but also white. This, together with contact with Marxist ideas which prompted the Russian Revolution, resulted in a backlash against Caribbean colonial oligarchy after the war ended. This is the germ of the nationalist movements that would eventually lead to independence.
The war years were years of economic depression and high unemployment, but also intense political and cultural. Independence movements in India in the thirties stimulated political consciousness of the Caribbean population of Asian origin, who refused to continue being exploited in work. In addition, the thirties witnessed numerous strikes and demonstrations by industry industry in St. Lucia, Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica. These social events had a profound impact on Caribbean writers of the fifties, such as George Lamming, VS Naipaul and John Hearne, who at that time were children or youth.
After the Second World War, began to build a professional class that was black and mulatto acquire more power at the expense of the white elite. At this time there developed a clear understanding of education as a path to a better future and for this, the best option was to get a government scholarship to study at an English university. This was the way to go most of the writers empezaron a publicar en torno a los años cincuenta, como V.S. Naipaul, y también muchos de los políticos y profesionales que destacaron en la vida pública caribeña en los años previos y posteriores a la descolonización, como Eric Williams, primer ministro de Trinidad y Tobago tras la independencia.
El acontecimiento político más destacable de esta época es la constitución de una Federación de las Indias Occidentales Británicas (Federation of the British West Indies). Esta Federación, que ya se había intentado constituir en ocasiones anteriores por el gobierno colonial con vistas a una administración más coordinada, sólo fue posible después de que las dos guerras mundiales created among the population a sense of Caribbean identity that allowed them to reduce inter-regional rivalry arising from insularity. The Federation was inaugurated in 1958 without the participation of countries such as Guyana (then British Guiana yet), but proved a failure and finally disbanded in 1962, leading to the first phase of decolonization.
After the failure of the Federation and after the independence of the first territories in 1962, there were new inter-regional rivalries and came to threaten the fragile alliance was consolidated anticolonialist between middle and working classes. This period begins to become evident a strong U.S. presence in the Caribbean policy, which, in a territory like Guyana resulted in devastating racial riots between the populations of Asian and African origin, a tension that continues today.
In the sixties the Caribbean social structure has changed considerably. Along with the new elite of color, appeared also another social group formed by the most economically depressed urban classes. In Jamaica the Rastafarian movement somehow became the symbol of the claims of this group. Rastafarianism, originally a religious-philosophical movement appeared in the thirties and advocating the back to Africa as the true home of black people, was transformed into a broader movement of social and political nature which brought together the feeling of rejection of the values \u200b\u200bthat underpinned the post-colonial society. From Jamaica expanded rapidly by other Caribbean countries like Trinidad and Dominica, and even among the black communities of the United States, Canada and Britain. His rejection of European cultural heritage and linguistic creativity proved very attractive to a number of writers who were no longer identify with the image of the mulatto elite that emerged in the fifties and looking for racial self-assertion. With access to the lower classes education, began to form a group of writers who depicted in his works the living conditions of these classes. At the same time, these became more visible through social protest conveyed by expressions such as Caribbean music calypso and reggae (Bob Marley as its international exponent). In connection with this genre, dub poetry appeared, consisting of the recitation of verses sung over a reggae instrumental background. Its main proponents were Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jamaican living in Britain, and Mutabaruka, Jamaica.
the early eighties, the sense of political optimism that was present in the region suffered a setback with two events that took place in October 1983: the assassination of Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, at the hands of hardliners in his party (the New Jewel Movement) and less a week later, the invasion of the island, under the leadership of the United States and with the participation of troops from several Caribbean countries. From the economic point of view, the situation was not too good either, because the Caribbean countries were unable to cope with the huge international debts incurred during the seventies and came under heavy pressure from the International Monetary Fund . In addition, the hyper-tourism in the area began to show from the ecological point of view. The dominant feeling among the population was of being overwhelmed by an anonymous lifestyle based on consumerism fierce, and had resulted in the cultural disintegration. Thus, again there was a scattering of Caribbean and Caribbean immigrants to the U.S., Canada and Europe in search of better economic and cultural opportunities. From the literary point of view, the most notable of this era is the emergence of female literary voices, both in the region and in the diaspora, which drew on a tradition of African creative preserved not only in the Caribbean, with precursors such as A Marson and Louise Bennett-but also in the African-American environment, where authors such as Alice Walker or Toni Morrison major roads were opening for black writers worldwide.
During the nineties and early twenty-first century, the situation in the Caribbean continues to be similar to that of the eighties, but has greatly increased inter-regional cooperation. Is the creation in 1994 of the Association of Caribbean States (Association of Caribbean States), based in Trinidad and Tobago and which groups countries and island continental various linguistic expressions. This association was created at the initiative of Caricom (Caribbean Community), which since 1973 brings together the English-speaking Caribbean countries, along with others such as Haiti and Suriname, in addition to several other associate members and observers, among which are the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Colombia. The Association of Caribbean States seeks to give boost to the economy of the region, a fairly weak and strong external dependence.
is an important initiative, because for the first time is making a serious attempt to overcome cultural and political barriers between nations are very close geographically. Moreover, the English-speaking Caribbean continues to suffer a huge political and cultural influence of the United States, both through tourism and the media. The writers and writers in their works constantly denounce the lack of cultural sovereignty and the need to develop independent indigenous cultural models. Thousands of Caribbean and Caribbean countries are still scattered throughout the world and at the same time, strongly linked to their place of origin, although there is generational change is an inevitable loss of cultural identification with a land that for many young people who were born in Britain, the United States or Canada, and not her own land but the land of their parents.
------ Top of Digital Veins:
http://vetasdigital.blogspot.com
