Considers how a taxonomy of conjugality-marriage, common-law marriage, and visiting relationships-emerged as a specialized vocabulary to apprehend and govern the postcolonial Caribbean.
250 p., This dissertation has focused on the intertextual relationship between Tituba in I, Tituba...Black Witch of Salem and Veronica in Waiting for Happiness by Maryse Condé, primarily around different figures of otherness such as birth, race, sexuality, and space in which Tituba and Veronica are victims, according to their respective reference groups. Tituba is a child born out of wedlock because Abena, her mother, was raped by an English sailor on the Atlantic coast. This would rightfully translate into the hatred her mother has for her. Veronica was born into a family of two girls when her parents were in fact expecting a boy. Race and space are also lacking elements with the protagonists. This would explain their spatial instability depending on the course of the novels. Enslaved in different families, Tituba was imprisoned for witchcraft in Salem and was later hanged in her native Barbados due to lack of real space. Veronica on the other hand sought asylum in France where she returns after her disappointment of wanting ancestral roots in Africa.
362 p., This study not only confirms the long presence of same-sex desiring peoples in the twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, but it focuses in upon the artistry and community-building techniques of these subjects as part of a paradigmatic shift in Caribbean cultural analysis. By foregrounding the work and the perspectives of same-sex desiring Trinbagonians in an analysis of Carnival masquerade, Calypso music and HIV/AIDS activism, this project also proposes a novel theoretical framework for the study of subjectivity.
