Religion as Space for the Expression of Caribbean Identity in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This paper puts forward the idea that the religious practices of the members of the Caribbean diaspora in the United Kingdom provide a space where an alternative vision of social issues evolves in response to the pressures experienced in British society. Based on the views of Lefebvre and De Certeau, I propose that the religious experience be seen as the appropriation of a symbolic place where identity is freed from the weight of social conventions. Contrary to the dual construction of identity imposed by the reality of segregated British cities, religious space allows for the conception of an intercultural sociality, an ‘open identity’, unhindered by the weight of the specific characteristics of particularisms of the different groups. This approach to the religious experience allows me to intervene in current intellectual debates. Geographically speaking, it is a question of showing how the idea of space is necessary in the formulation of identities, as well as the role played by space in the relationship between ‘power and resistance’. More generally, it is an examination of the notion of diaspora, showing how, when coupled with the idea of hybridity, this intellectual discourse can be framed empirically.

On the Registers of Caribbean Memory of Slavery1

“…The provisional observations drawn from this case study of a Guadeloupean example cannot by themselves confirm the interpretation developed from other research Á for example, on Pentecostalist religious practices of Jamaicans in the UK (Chivallon 2001a) Á but neither do they disconfirm it. They prompt further exploration of a Caribbean sociality conceived of as multiply segmented, and as deploying, at one and the same time, several registers of belonging based on quite varied assignments of meaning.…”

“…What is hard to ignore in the case of the slave cemetery is the way certain registers of memory address the contradiction that there stands in the heart of a republican political framework, like an impertinence, a vestige of slavery that has not been reckoned with. At work there, as also in the segregated spaces of migration into British cities (Chivallon 2001a), is a confrontation with the re-formulation of an old order. And it is from that knowledge always re-actualized through the constraining force of the relationship with the other that there emerges that peculiar tendency to undo society in its oppressive aspects.…”

“…For a critical discussion on this point, see Chivallon (2002b). 4 See Chivallon (1997Chivallon ( , 1998Chivallon ( , 2001aChivallon ( , 2001bChivallon ( , 2004. 5 According to the expression of M. Hospice rewritten in Glissant (1981, p. 214).…”

Bristol and the eruption of memory: Making the slave-trading past visible

“…The research is still under way, which means that this interpretation must not be regarded as a xed or nal result. It is also important to note that the present study draws substantially from earlier work on Caribbean cultures in Downloaded by [University of Reading] at 04:07 22 December 2014 Great Britain (Chivallon 1997a(Chivallon , 2001 and in the Caribbean (Chivallon 1998). That work has helped in the construction of the interpretations proposed here, in particular those regarding 'Caribbean collectivity'.…”

Geography of Religion – Rediscovering a Subdiscipline

“…It mainly focuses on the presence of Islam in the Western world (Vertovec/Peach 1997, Dwyer 1999, Dunn 2001, Büchner 2000, Schaffer/Thieme 2001, Schmitt 2003. Religious aspects of other migration movements are looked at by Numrich (1997), Kruse/Lerner (2000), Chivallon (2001), Beatty/Ley (2003) and Henkel (2002). They are primarily studying the religious structures of the immigrant communities and discuss the question whether these are of help or hindrance for their integration into the host societies.…”