Caribbean Literature: Scum on the Barrel Bottom's Backside

When conservatives complain about the canon, they always come back to contemporary Caribbean literature.  To study or advocate the studying of contemporary Caribbean literature is proof positive you're a "scholar" who only teaches works that flatter your progressive politics.

Studying contemporary Caribbean literature is bad enough, but studying the work of contemporary Caribbean women—who write novels in which all people do is cut and consume mangoes in a highly symbolic way—is even worse.

Studying contemporary Caribbean women is bad enough, but studying the work of contemporary Caribbean lesbians—who write novels in which women cut and consume mangoes in an even more highly symbolic way, since they define themselves by the bananas they don't cut and consume—is worse still.

Studying contemporary Caribbean lesbians is bad enough, but studying the work of contemporary science fiction Caribbean lesbians—who write novels in which women cut and consume highly symbolic mangoes in a future in which there are no more bananas—is the worst of all.

(Adapted from this comment.)

Comments

[The Constructivist]

I'm teaching our Black Women Writers course for the first time in my career next semester. I want to thank you in advance for writing my syllabus for me.

[riz]

Ok, this post expresses in a wonderfully pithy way, the reason I've been unhappy in graduate school for so long. In any case, I have been reading your blog for the longest time. I discovered it some 3 years ago, but this is the first time I'm commenting. I used to say I was specializing in Postcolonial Studies, but because I just found the local politics of that subcategory so indisdious i switched to to New Media. I don't understand why fightimg with the rightist line of defending the canon, we all come to be trapped in some nebulous zone of cultural relativism and facetious multicultural politics...i could go on, but I'll spare everyone.

[SEK]

TC: Teaching Nalo Hopkinson, are you, with a little Octavia Butler thrown in for bland, maybe? (Butler not being Caribbean, but contemporary, black, lesbian and science fiction.)

Riz: is this logic actually operative in the field, though? I mean, I took the Postcolonial Feminisms critical theory workshop when I got to Irvine, and yes, there were plenty of people participating in the Oppression Olympics ... but those were insecure first year grad students fluffing their feathers in an attempt to show they belonged at UCI. I'm not particularly conversant with postcolonial studies anymore, but what I have read has been solid work. (That's the literary studies, I should add, not the more theoretical material, i.e. I find Spivak unconvincing, but people have done some stellar work using her.)

[riz]

i didn't mean to convey that people weren't doing good work in postcolonial studies. the activities of the 'oppression olympics' have shifted - i am finding there's a thin line between what counts in the field, and the positioning of oneself within any intellectual community (particularly mine). that constant struggle to position and re-position oneself gets exhausting because it is saturated with personal and therefore political consequences. So i am not sure how well it is possible to separate 'work in the field' from the personal implications and private ethics of traversing that field (i.e, writing, publishing, organizing etc.)

[CJ]

Present indicative verbs in English only take the -s ending when the subject is third person singular. For example,

I come
you (singular) come
he/she/it comes
we come
you (plural) come
they come

Typos are no big deal, but when a post contains the same error three times you have to wonder about the writing skills of its author.

[SEK]

CJ, I despair my writing skills daily, but in this case, blame the editor: I adapted it from a comment, and glossed over some of the tenses (even in editing), as I was reading what I thought I'd written, instead of what I had.

Let this be a lesson to you.*

*By which I mean, "me."

[The Constructivist]

When the syllabus come, you'll be the first to know.

[violet]

This might be a commentary on me but, uh...

Recommend some books in that last category? Must... read...