The contemporary backdrop for this essay emphasizes such contexts for future Caribbean studies and particularly for conceiving of Caribbean visual culture. It considers ways the exploration of Caribbean art practices and research of Caribbean visual culture might require reconsideration as global and interconnected structures requiring a transnational and intercultural approach. Insight of contemporary Caribbean visual culture is inextricably linked to circulation of knowledge and production of global culture and visual representation.
This article discusses the concept of ole negar, which is considered as a racial stereotype in the culture of Jamaica that is incomprehensible to foreigners and even to the people of the country. It explores how the term "ole negar" is being used by the Jamaicans. It cites the possibility of the term to be used in referring to the poorest class of black people in the country.
The author responds to articles in the journal by Kevin Gaines and Patricia Saunders concerning her book Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Particular focus is given to the notion of outsiderness regarding the status of black women and Caribbean women within radical and intellectual traditions. Lessons from the life and political career of political activist Claudia Jones are explored.
The author explores themes of Black masculinity using both historic and contemporary examples. He discusses "neoliberal" expectations regarding sexual orientation, family life, and self-fulfillment. He explores alternate definitions of gender as exhibited in the self-portraits by Abdi Osman and Syrus Ware.
An essay is presented on tropicalized and touristic imagery in colonial photographs and its impact on black histories. It offers critiques on current uses of old touristic postcards as it offers unproblematic historical evidence. It examines the ways in which black inhabitants resisted and critiqued this tropicalization of the islands with an account on how a swimming pool became a site of political protest against tourism's demand for a picturesque and disciplined black population.
This essay examines public discussions around skin bleaching in Jamaica and demonstrates that a discourse of pathology is a dominant frame of meaning used to explain this practice. I argue that the practice of bleaching destabilizes popular conceptions of blackness that rely on an understanding of the body as immutable and naturally marked by race. Depicting skin bleaching as pathological attempts to recenter hegemonic conceptions of blackness and to discipline bodies so that they adhere to them.;
his essay reads Madison Smartt Bell's Haitian trilogy in the context of contemporary Haitian literature, and considers why Haitian writers have tended not to evoke the revolution in their work, and why it is an American author has produced the most ambitious work of Haitian historical fiction of recent times.;
Amy Beckford Bailey (1895–1990) was one of the politically engaged women present at the birth of the Jamaican nation in the 1930s and 1940s. Although she is widely known in Jamaica for her outstanding achievements as teacher, social worker, and feminist, what is less known is her large body of public writing. An examination of this writing broadens our sense of her accomplishments and enriches our understanding of this decisive period in the evolution of Jamaican and West Indian history, politics, and intellectual traditions.;
Analyzing the ongoing problem of Caribbean racial exploitation, particularly fear signified through one of the most potent Caribbean symbols, dreadlocks, I argue that Medusa's alterity is altered by Rastafarians' snake-like hair, but the transformative power of Rasta dreadlocks is contested through certain cinematic depictions of dread.;
