sitting on a bus trying to read by gender womens studies assigned readings but i'm particularly moved by this quote and wanted to share it with you. it's from an article by hazel v. carby entitled "postcolonial translations."
"in the north american imagination the caribbean is overwhelmingly located in relation to two dominant discourses, tourism and an unwelcome source of migrants. the first reduces the region to america's backyard - a paradise for the realization of hedonistic desire; the second positions its subjects as abject, as 'boat-people' in a common, hateful euphemism. the aim is to explore the ways in which what has been represented as "caribbeanness," is not, in fact, fixed in relation to any particular geographic space but, on the contrary, is a condition of movement over-determined by global forces enacted at a local level."first - i wonder if you find this interesting. i realize this is kind of out of the blue for you, relative to the context in which it's been placed for me (i.e. 1/3 through a semester in a class about these kind of topics). more importantly, i hope, is the discussion it could generate. here goes: i think she does a superb job of breaking down the labels and constructions of nationality. we americans relate to caribbeans and the caribbean in an extremely exploitative way (tourist industry) but refuse to grant them any rights in "our" country. the paragraph is lined with detailed examples and craks open a space for new discourse - a discourse of redefinition, of, possibly, self-definition. the class that i'm reading this for is different than most of my other classes. the readings, for one, elicit new discourse - spaces to talk about concepts previously hidden by current discourses...which is what most of my other classes focus on (and praise) - the learning and reinforcement of specific and particular theories, which are, in most cases, archaic and cliche. this class is radical. rather than reading aristotle and kant to get a better understanding of ethics, we push our own boundaries - boundaries we didn't know we had - to feel what ethics means, to feel out the space it fills. (not necessarily to say anything bad about studying aristotle or kant) back to the quote. i find it interesting that these people (caribbeans) are not defined by where they're from (the caribbean), but rather the movements of which they're a part. i realize most of what i've said are only basic comments, but i'm interested to hear what you have to say.
