Constructing Vernacular Culture in the Trans-Caribbean

(Paperback)

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In this volume, the editors and authors strive to understand the evolving Trans-Caribbean as a discontinuous, displacing and displaced, transnational space. It considers the imagined community in the islands as its psycho-social homeland, while simultaneously pursuing different cultural strategies of redefining and resisting colonial "homeland" conventions (which Kamau Brathwaite appropriately termed the "inner plantation"). Thus, the Trans-Caribbean is suspended in a double-dialectic, which opposes both the hegemonic metropolitan space inhabited, as well as the romanticized, yet colonialized, "inner plantation," whose transcendence via migration perpetually turns out to be an illusion. Given this, cultural production and migration remain at the vortex of the Trans-Caribbean.
The construction of cultural products in the Trans-Caribbeanunderstood as a collection of social and new migratory practicesboth reflects and contests post-colonial metropolitan hegemonies. Following Arjun Appadurai's distinction, these homogenizing and heterogenizing counter-trends in Trans-Cariabbean spaces can be observed through cultural transactions manifesting themselves as ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, cityscapes, ideoscapes, etc.
For the purposes of this book the editors invited anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, linguists, liberal arts and gender studies specialists, as well as cultural and literary historians to begin drawing some of the diasporic trajectories on the huge canvas of cultural production throughout the Trans-Caribbean.Constructing Vernacular Culture in the Trans-Caribbean will find its audience among scholars in cultural studies, migration, literary theory, and cultural criticism who have a special interest in Caribbean and Latin American Studies, as well as among students and scholars of migration and postcolonialism and postmodernity in general.

Reviews

This volume is an excellent addition to the literature on Caribbean and trans-nationalism. Its pluri-disciplinary approach bridges several academic fields and provides provocative reflections on the interweaving of varied trans-national cultural practices. Its well-written essays are grounded in cogent sociological and literary analyses as well as rich ethnographic data from various trans-Caribbean locations. -- 2008 * Anthropological Quarterly *
All of the authors advance the idea of a trans-Caribbean as an effective way of discussing new movements, migrations, and hybridities.... I would highly recommend the book as a reader in courses focusing on Caribbean studies and the Caribbean and/or African disapora. -- Kimberly Eison Simmons, 2010 * New West Indian Guide *
Holger Henke and Karl-Heinz Magister have done a masterful job in bringing together the intellectual energies of fifteen scholars grappling with the process of identity formation, transnationalism, and hybridity within Caribbean disporas in locations like New York, Toronto, and London.... -- Dwaine Plaza, Oregon State University
Holger Henke and Karl-Heinz Magister have done a masterful job in bringing together the intellectual energies of fifteen scholars grappling with the process of identity formation, transnationalism, and hybridity within Caribbean disporas in locations like New York, Toronto, and London. -- Dwaine Plaza, Oregon State University
The collection provides rich material to fuel ongoing discussions about the interaction between national and transnational aspects of Caribbean culture. Its breadth is a clear strength, with the cross-disciplinary nature of the contributions offering a refreshingly broad approach. * H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online *

Author Bio

Holger W. Henke is assistant professor of political science at Metropolitan College of New York and editor of Crossing Over: Comparing Recent Migration in the United States and Europe (Lexington 2005). Karl-Heinz Magister is a researcher at the Center for Literary Studies in Berlin.