THE POLITICS OF CARNIVAL Carnival as Contentious Performance: A Comparison between Contemporary Fort- de-France, Pointe-à-Pitre, and London Carnivals Lionel Arnaud Institut d’Études politiques de Toulouse/Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France KEYWORDS ABSTRACT Caribbean In the 1970s, in a context of increased racial tensions and growing nationalist claims, the use cultural movements of rhythms, instruments, and clothing associated with Africa among the black populations of carnival performances England, Guadeloupe, and Martinique became part of a cultural and political repertoire aimed at resurrecting and denouncing a long history of subordination. Similarly, the mobilization of mobilization carnival by Afro-Caribbean activists today can be considered as a tactical choice—that is to say, politicization carnival has become part of the standardized, limited, context-dependent repertoires from which repertoire claim-making performances are drawn. resistance Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Fort-de-France, London, and Pointe-à-Pitre between 2000 and 2018, this article analyzes how cultural movements have drawn on carnivalesque aesthetics to both memorialize and display the complex history of black Caribbean populations. I argue that Caribbean carnival has been subject to constant reinterpretations since the eighteenth century and that, as such, this repertoire is not only a model or a set of limited means of action, but also a convention through which carnival groups constantly reinvent their skills and resources. Furthermore, this article shows that the repertoires mobilized by the carnival bands I study in Europe and in the Caribbean cannot be reduced to an aesthetic gesture that serves political claims, and that they are part of a historical genealogy that testifies to the irreducible character of a way of life. Journal of Festive Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 2020, 179—202. https://doi.org/10.33823/jfs.2020.2.1.24 179 Carnival as Contentious Performance: A Comparison between Contemporary Fort-de-France, Pointe-à-Pitre, and London Carnivals Lionel Arnaud 1. Roger Bastide, Les Amériques Introduction noires (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996 [1967]). Following nineteenth-century emancipations, black populations remained marginalized 2. Denis-Constant Martin, “Je across the American continent. Kept away from participation in the national economic and est un autre, nous est un même. political systems, they often used carnival as a vehicle to assert their presence and to position Culture populaire, identités et themselves against the hegemonic projects of European societies.1 While the legacy of slavery politique à propos du carnaval de Trinidad.” Revue française de fueled a desire to emancipate from the norms and codes of white “civilization,” carnival artists science politique 42, no. 5 (1992): and participants rarely explicitly memorialized their past oppression. Across the continent, 183. carnival was primarily perceived as a time and space for celebration and for individual or collective creation.2 In the Caribbean, even though it provided a stage for free expression that 3. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hid- sometimes bordered on the political—the burning of Vaval, the traditional cardboard and papier- den Transcripts (New Haven, CT: mâché figure that reigns over the Guadeloupe and Martinique carnivals, may thus be interpreted Yale University Press, 1990). as a way to wipe the slate clean and erase present inequalities—it was not a site for vocal claim- 4. In Guadeloupe and Martinique, making. the Creole expression pwofita- syon refers to the abuse of power In the 1970s, however, a variety of cultural movements challenged the “bourgeois” character of by a powerful person over some- carnival and injected it with more militant undertones in a context of increased racial tensions one he already knows is weaker and growing nationalist claims. Carnival thus left the “infrapolitical” sphere—where actions, than he is, to make him even more subordinate. gestures, and signs that criticized the dominant went mostly unnoticed—and grew into a “public transcript” of power relations that was more rebellious and subversive.3 The use of rhythms, 5. Charles Tilly, Trajectories of instruments, and clothing associated with Africa, especially, became part of a cultural and Change (Chicago: Chicago Univer- sity Press, 2006), 50, 39. political repertoire aimed at resurrecting and denouncing a long history of subordination. Deemed more “authentic,” African performance styles epitomized a desire to resist the 6. Charles Tilly, “Repertoires of neocolonial order, racism, assimilation, or, more largely, pwofitasyon.4 Contention in America and Britain, 1750-1830,” in The Dynamics of Social Movements: Resource Charles Tilly’s notion of “repertoires of contention,” defined as “prevailing forms of [collective] Mobilization, Social Control, and action” that “characterize the interaction among a specified set of collective actors” seems Tactics, ed. Mayer N. Zald and particularly fruitful when analyzing the reasons why social movements put certain artistic John David McCarthy (Cam- traditions, including carnival, at the service of political battles.5 The mobilization of the carnival bridge: Winthrop, 1979), 131. performance repertoire can indeed be considered a “strategic choice” if we consider “the 7. While these “sister islands” range of actions theoretically available” to Afro-Caribbean activists.6 In the Caribbean context, display a high degree of com- however, the use of particular drums or costumes cannot be analyzed solely as a “tactic,” insofar monality, starting of course with their simultaneous integration as slavery was not just a form of economic oppression: it also entailed a process of cultural into the French Republic after dispossession (deculturation) and the imposition of an exogenous culture (enculturation). World War II, their histories are Consequently, carnival participation by Afro-Caribbean activists in Fort-de-France, Pointe-à-Pitre, different. Occupied by the English and London is inseparable from a desire to expose the cultural dimension of neocolonialism, with from 1794 to 1802, Martinique in particular was exempted from the a view to individual and collective empowerment. first abolition of slavery (1794), which in Guadeloupe resulted To test this hypothesis, I will first review the history of carnival in Guadeloupe and Martinique— in a considerable weakening of two former colonies that became overseas départements of France in 19467—and in London, planter hegemony. This histori- where Trinidadian migrants established and developed one of the largest carnivals in the world in cal divergence may explain why Journal of Festive Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 2020, 179—202. https://doi.org/10.33823/jfs.2020.2.1.24 180 the post–World War II period. I will then analyze how groups organized in these three locations in the 1970s have drawn on carnivalesque aesthetics to both memorialize and display the complex history of black Caribbean populations. The third part of my essay will focus on the participatory nature of carnival and how it has fostered forms of resistance that are not only aesthetic but also large-scale social, political, and social—that is, embedded in values of solidarity and community. Ultimately, I will highlight the cultural mobilizations such as the “trajectories of change”8 that have affected Afro-Caribbean carnival performances so as to refute 2009 general strike have often started in Guadeloupe before the idea of fixed Afro-Caribbean cultural and political repertoire that can be learned and then spreading to Martinique. See known once and for all, and to present carnival as a convention through which carnival groups Jean-Luc Bonniol, “Janvier-mars constantly reinvent their skills and resources.9 2009, trois mois de lutte en Gua- deloupe,” Les Temps Modernes 1, nos. 662–63 (2011): 82–113. 1. The Origins of the Carnival Action Repertoire in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and London For further discussion, see Lionel Arnaud, Les tambours de Bô Kan- In its most interactionist sense, the word “repertoire” refers to a model “in which the accumulated nal. Mobilisations et résistances experience … of contenders interact with the strategies of authorities to make a limited number of culturelles en Martinique (Paris: forms of action more feasible, attractive, and frequent than many others which could, in principle, Karthala, forthcoming). serve the same interests.”10 The choice of means of action is thus restricted by situational 8. Tilly, Trajectories of Change. constraints, including cultural familiarity, the availability of certain resources to the group at a specific time, and the existence of “competing” claims by other groups.11 Carnival provides an 9. Howard S. Becker and Robert R. Faulkner, “Do You Know...?” interesting vantage point from which to investigate the dynamics of the reconstruction and The Jazz Repertoire in Action reappropriation of meaning, especially in contexts of cultural pluralism where various social (Chicago: University of Chicago groups are involved in uneven numerical, political, economic, or racial relationships. In order to Press, 2009). better understand this process of constant reinterpretation, I will begin by briefly distinguishing 10. Charles Tilly, “Nineteenth-Cen- three stages—from the arrival of carnival in the Caribbean to the development of street bands in tury Origins of Our Twentieth-Cen- the aftermath of abolition to its reinvention in the immediate