"Any attempt to trace the many resonances that historically have been attached to the creole figure in Caribbean literature and culture will be inflected by the long and pervading presence of colonialism in the region and its attendant corollary of hierarchical social separation and difference based on perceptions of race. Indeed, the ambivalent desire and subjective misrecognition that lay at the heart of historical writing about colonialism and racism have tended to frame the issues of monstrosity and exclusion that produced the creole as part and parcel of wider colonial discourses. Thus, the shifting and increasingly unstable inscription of the creole figure echoes, in a certain sense, certain critical ambiguities of politics and temporality that color the colonial encounter and its aftermath. Specifically, in the contemporary English- and French-speaking Caribbean, the multiplicity, displacement, and creative instability that undergird creole-driven theories of postcolonial performance have supplanted this category's suspect beginnings as colonialism's model for the fearfully unnameable and unplaceable hybrid monstrosity, and now increasingly shape the substance of much of the artistic and creative work emerging from the region." --The Author
"C.L..R. James' 1938 seminal text, The Black Jacobins, and Eric Williams' 1944 tour de force, Capitalism and Slavery, constitute much more than foundational works in West Indian nationalist historiography. Both authors, born in colonial Trinidad and writing Caribbean history within its Atlantic context, made significant contributions to development discourse within the traditions of Enlightenment Idealism. As critical realists they considered popular historiography indispensable to any attempt to root philosophical ideals within recognizable terms of everyday living. In The Black Jacobins, James documents the struggles of the enslaved peoples of St. Dominique, the mercantile showpiece of French colonial capitalism in the West Indies for freedom and social justice. In addition, he details the transformation of this successful anti-slavery rebellion into something much more elaborate in terms of Atlantic history--the creation of Haiti, the Caribbean's first nation-state. In Capitalism and Slavery, Williams expands and develops the paradigm of African labor enslavement and European capital liberation, first outlined by James in The Black Jacobins, that became the basis of the revolutionary reorganization of productivity for European economic development." (author)
Part of the vision depicted in the novels Middle Passage and Mimic Men is that the image local history is the scenery and landscape. Expresses idea that colonization creates nothing. It is obvious in a place, thrives there then disappears.
"[Examines] le développement historique et socio-économique des Caraïbes dans le roman de Paule Marshall: The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (publié en 1963), à travers la relation de deux femmes, l'une noire, l'autre blanche, dont les destins et l'héritage sont liés à l'histoire particulière des relations de genre caractéristiques de l'esclavage et de la vie sur les plantations." (Refdoc.fr)
Focuses on the book "Casa-grande e senzala," by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. In his book, Freyre introduces the idea of Brazilian racial democracy (democracia racial) and analyzes the views of black people in Brazil. Freyre and his ideas were said to be controversial and racist and many believed that these ideas created myths within society
Discusses C.L.R. James's chronicle of the history of the Haitian revolution of 1843 in his book 'The Black Jacobins.' Contrast between the behavior of the Haitian slaves during the working day and their conversations around the supper fire; Conscious organization of the Caribbean nation; Processes of communication that took place in the midst of conflicts.
Considers the second part of Eric Williams book Capitalism and Slavery, where he argues that "Britain's changing attitude to slavery and the slave trade was essentially a function of her changing economic situation and interest." Looks at the Williams' "interpretation of Pitt's conduct, of the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, and of Palmerston and the suppression of the foreign slave trade."
