Contradictory Violence

This study combines approaches of the humanities and social sciences to explore contemporary Caribbean narratives of the historical trauma of slavery and the revolutionary or subversive strategies of anti-colonial struggle. Drawing on various works (novels, films, plays, political pamphlets) by writers and activists such as Frantz Fanon, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Michelle Cliff, Erna Brodber, Wilson Harris, Iris Morales, Nicholasa Mohr, Culture Clash, and The Young Lords, the project traces narratives of historical slave uprisings, Maroon wars, and struggles against colonial and neo-colonial governments in and around the Caribbean. Contradictoy Violence addresses questions of the legitimacy of violence in the struggle for liberation, the price to be paid by individuals and groups for the decision to begin such a forceful struggle, the possibility of escaping the colonizers' value-system through 'reverse discourse,' and the limits and possibilities of 'writing violence.' In a reversal of older master narratives of the postcolonial nation, contemporary Caribbean works have produced new definitions of nationhood which nevertheless keep the nation intact as a site of agency and create an alternative vision of the Americas which could serve to 'remap' the geo-political boundaries existing on the American continent today.