The Caribbean Region: An Open Frontier in Anthropological Theory

When ‘blood speaks’: naming the father and the mystics of kinship in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean

“…The contemporary Dominican couvade features neither the ‘public ritual’ (Douglas [1975]: 173) practised by their Kalinago forebears (Taylor ; and other Amerindians: Rival : 622; Rivière ) involving strict food taboos and behavioural prescriptions, nor the ‘private experience’ (Douglas [1975]) of fathers in metropolitan contexts like the United States (Reed ) who are left to independently fathom or ignore bodily symptoms in the absence of a public couvade script (as Joel noted). Rather, the Caribbean stands somewhere in‐between (a reflection of its ambivalent experience of modernity: Trouillot : 20‐1), inheriting a sense of bodily enchantment from Kalinago and African ancestors (and arguably medieval Europeans too: Olmos & Paravisini‐Gebert : 14‐15), but without consensus on the matter and no definitive couvade pre/proscriptions. Rather, this Creole couvade is worked out ‘ vai ki vai ’ (kwéyòl for improvised ‘bit by bit’) through dialogue with peers and elders, whilst drawing on various strands of folk reproductive knowledge, magical belief, and biomedicine.…”

On the social ground beneath our feet: for a cosmopolitan anthropology

“…The Caribbean has historically occupied an ambiguous place within anthropology. The history and heterogeneity of Caribbean societies, and their inescapable colonial nature, meant that anthropologists could not rely on the dominant tropes of pre‐contact authenticity and purity of early‐ and mid‐20th‐century anthropology (Trouillot 1992: 22). Put simply, most people in the Caribbean came from somewhere else and were therefore not considered suitable anthropological subjects.…”

“…Put simply, most people in the Caribbean came from somewhere else and were therefore not considered suitable anthropological subjects. The Caribbean thus remained an ambiguous space for Western academia: not quite white enough for sociology, and not quite native enough for anthropology (Trouillot 1992: 20). Furthermore, it was not geo‐strategically important enough to merit funding from any major funding agencies, at least in the USA (Gupta and Ferguson 1997: 9).…”

Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012)

“…6 Trouillot's work was, from the beginning, also energized by the idea that no one has the monopoly on historical knowledge. 15 Trouillot described Caribbean societies as "inescapably historical" and "inherently colonial." But he also tried, from the very beginning of his intellectual career, to concretize it.…”