African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
135 p., "Colonie britannique depuis 1655, la Jamaïque obtient son indépendance en 1962. Destination d'un voyage sans retour pour près d'un million d'Africains déportés, l'île est rongée par les cicatrices mémorielles de l'esclavage. Dominée par les Créoles, paupérisée et confrontée à une offre politique nationale inadaptée, la population africaine souffre de l'absence d'une identité noire revendiquée et institutionnalisée. De ce déni de reconnaissance officielle jailliront des mouvements alternatifs, dont la célèbre communauté rastafarienne. Incitant à réfléchir sur les mécanismes d'émergence des groupes identitaires, ce travail met en lumière l'importance de l'histoire et des problématiques de la mémoire dans le processus de construction des identités sociales et souligne le rôle central de la culture dans les luttes de pouvoir"--P. [4] of cover.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
284 p., An anthropological study of music as social activism and postcolonial identity development. The research for this dissertation was conducted in Trinidad and Tobago during an extended period of fieldwork from August 2003-February 2005, and during subsequent research trips from 2005 through 2008. This dissertation is a social history of the evolution of rapso, a genre of music that is heavily oriented toward poetic lyrics that advocate for social justice and the upliftment of the oppressed in Trinidad and Tobago. Grounded in oral and archival history and performance analysis, this study addresses the complex interconnections between the political economy of cultural production in Trinidad and Tobago, the politics of racial, gender, and national identity, and the individual quest for self-affirmation and meaning in life through the pursuit of artistic and activist work.
In characterizing the desperate journeys undertaken by African and Haitian refugees as today's "middle passages," Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore and Edwidge Danticat's "Children of the Sea" complicate the idea of a single origin to a transatlantic black Diaspora. The term 'middle passage' is more recently used to describe multiple crossings that transform the meaning of Diaspora into a vital and ongoing process.