This paper uses postcolonial theory to analyze Jamaica Kincaid's quasi-autobiographical book, A Small Place. Kincaid's critique of tourism in Antigua reverses traditional travel writing trends in which First World perceptions of the Third World dominate. She discursively dismantles the imaginative geographies of empire that cement binary oppositions, such as tourist/native and black/white. She collapses these binaries to illustrate the intricate ways in which the global neocolonial ethos created by economic dependencies manifest. Arguing that tourism is implicated in this hegemonic process, she utilizes the metaphor of a guided tour to redirect the imperial gaze. Kincaid argues that legacies of colonial oppression can change once tourist and host value the same things in the shared space of the contact zone.
Glissant "published in 1981 two books which, although primarily concerned with the crisis identity and productivity that prevails in the French West Indies, must command the attention of any reader interested in the future development of the Caribbean region. The first is a socio-political study entitled Le Discours antillais; its companion piece is a work of fiction, La Case du commandeur. Their importance...for the rest of the region lie in their author's unique of sense of the historical and cultural ties by which Martinique and Guadeloupe are inherently attached to the surrounding islands. This attachment, however-- for which he has coined the term antillanite --he considers to be imperilled by France's intention to 'assimilate' her Overseas Departments not only politically, but culturally and economically." (author)
