Abstract
Invited presentation for "Biotic Resistance: Eco-Caribbean Visions in Art and Exhibition Practice," an online research stream from Oxford University organized by Dr. Giulia Smith and Dr. Kate Keohane.
According to poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite, the inaugural Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta) was one of the most important events to have occurred in the region since Emancipation. Focusing on the early phase of the ongoing, transmedia festival—inaugurated in Guyana in 1972 and followed by iterations in Jamaica (1976), Cuba (1979), and Barbados (1981)—this paper presents a theory as to why. Situating its formation in contemporaneous local discourse regarding the plantation system as the paradigm for understanding Caribbean society past and present, it argues that Carifesta was at its start a sprawling, if incomplete, geography of redress. When artists and writers who envisioned what became Carifesta recommended inviting creative workers from the “multi-lingual Caribbean plantation culture” to partake, they identified, I posit, the shared matrix of the plantation system and the kinships it created as a logic for uniting the region across imperial language boundaries. By spotlighting Afrodiasporic and neo-slave (visual) narratives, the early festivals crucially turned an eye to the plantation as a site of not only racialized, oppressive economic production but also cultural vitality. Working with Brathwaite and fellow Carifesta participant Sylvia Wynter’s coevolving eco-cultural theories locating (often through gardening/plant metaphors) the roots of Caribbean culture in the provision ground and innerplantation, this paper suggests that Carifesta’s early iterations bared and celebrated a thoroughly regional cultural groundwork whitewashed by colonial aesthetics and epistemology. I put forth that the festival’s roving (re)presentation, nurturing, and dissemination of cultural traditions that flourished out of and in spite of the plantation system formed a geography of repair grown from the racialized geography of the region.
According to poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite, the inaugural Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta) was one of the most important events to have occurred in the region since Emancipation. Focusing on the early phase of the ongoing, transmedia festival—inaugurated in Guyana in 1972 and followed by iterations in Jamaica (1976), Cuba (1979), and Barbados (1981)—this paper presents a theory as to why. Situating its formation in contemporaneous local discourse regarding the plantation system as the paradigm for understanding Caribbean society past and present, it argues that Carifesta was at its start a sprawling, if incomplete, geography of redress. When artists and writers who envisioned what became Carifesta recommended inviting creative workers from the “multi-lingual Caribbean plantation culture” to partake, they identified, I posit, the shared matrix of the plantation system and the kinships it created as a logic for uniting the region across imperial language boundaries. By spotlighting Afrodiasporic and neo-slave (visual) narratives, the early festivals crucially turned an eye to the plantation as a site of not only racialized, oppressive economic production but also cultural vitality. Working with Brathwaite and fellow Carifesta participant Sylvia Wynter’s coevolving eco-cultural theories locating (often through gardening/plant metaphors) the roots of Caribbean culture in the provision ground and innerplantation, this paper suggests that Carifesta’s early iterations bared and celebrated a thoroughly regional cultural groundwork whitewashed by colonial aesthetics and epistemology. I put forth that the festival’s roving (re)presentation, nurturing, and dissemination of cultural traditions that flourished out of and in spite of the plantation system formed a geography of repair grown from the racialized geography of the region.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Unpublished - 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | Biotic Resistance: Eco-Caribbean Visions in Art and Exhibition Practice - The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Duration: 4 Nov 2021 → 21 Nov 2021 https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk/news/detail/biotic-resistance-eco-caribbean-visions-in-art-and-exhibition-practice#:~:text=Biotic%20Resistance%3A%20Eco-Caribbean%20Visions%20in%20Art%20and%20Exhibition,Fellows%2C%20Dr%20Giulia%20Smith%20and%20Dr%20Kate%20Keohane. |
Other
Other | Biotic Resistance: Eco-Caribbean Visions in Art and Exhibition Practice |
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Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
City | Oxford |
Period | 4/11/21 → 21/11/21 |
Internet address |