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The Construction of an Essentialist Mixed-Race' Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean Novel

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The Construction of an Essentialist Mixed-Race' Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean Novel THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ESSENTIALIST MIXED-RACE' IDENTITY IN THE ANGLOPHONE CARIBBEAN NOVEL 1914 -1998 A thesis submitted to the University of London in part fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Melissa PERSAUD Goldsmiths College University of London Supervisor: Dr Helen Carr March 2000 ýý-ýýý ti r1 ,ý ý. ABSTRACT This thesis examines the portrayal of the 'mixed-race' person in twentieth-century Caribbean literature. The premise that their portrayal has been limited by essentialised racial stereotypes is investigated and the conclusion is reached that these stereotypes have been founded in nineteenth century theories of racial hybridity. The development of this racial theory is explored and reveals that the concept of hybridity was generated through imperialistic and colonial endeavours to support a policy of racial subjugation predicated by European economic desire to exploit non-white peoples. In the Caribbean this took the form of African slavery, and the need to keep the 'races' separate and unequal under this system led to the demonisation of 'mixed-race' people of African and European descent. Despite attempts to prevent the proliferation of a 'mixed-race' population, their increasing numbers led to further plantocratic strategies to divide the 'mixed-race' and black population in order to maintain white socio-economic supremacy. This thesis finds that the literary construction of 'mixed-race' identity has been grounded in a biologised fallacy of `hybridity'. Despite recent attempts to appropriate the term `hybridity' as a cultural metaphor, hybridity itself remains entrenched in nineteenth century notions of absolute racial difference. The biological concept of `mixed-race' degeneracy coupled with the white engineered racial divisions within Caribbean society has left the 'mixed-race' person in an ambivalent position. Although the Caribbean novel has spearheaded an awareness of European colonial oppression and has challenged racial stereotypes of black people, offering positive portrayals of Afro-Caribbean identity, the portrayal of the 'mixed- race' person remains limited. The development of indigenous and, subsequently, diasporic Caribbean literature has tended to perpetuate the stereotype of the deviant `mixed-race' person, previously popularised in the nineteenth century European novel on the Caribbean. 2 Acknowledgements I would firstly like to thank my supervisor, Dr Helen Carr, for her guidance and astute comments, questions and criticism. Thanks also must go to the Department of English at Goldsmiths College for their generous assistance which enabled me to continue my studies. A special thank you to Hans, for the computer and much more! A particular mention must be made to Professor Merle Collins, my one time tutor, who set me on the right path. My thanks to my family, and particularly to my husband, Ricardo, who always believed in me. Finally, but most importantly, I would like to thank my two daughters, Rochana and Monisha, for being who they are, and for inspiring me, as their mother, to write. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 1 Introduction: Finding A Space 5 2 Hybridity And `Mixed-Race' Degeneracy: Fallacy and Fiction 27 3 `Degeneracy' And Sexuality: Nymphomaniacs And Other Negatives 52 4 Slave Or Free: The 'Mixed-Race' Person in Slave Society 75 5 The Changing Order 107 6 Nationhood And ('Mixed') Race Consciousness 134 7 Afrocentricity Versus Eurocentricity: The Problem Of Racial Essentialism 162 8 Diaspora Writing: `No Place For In-Betweens' 197 9 Conclusion 228 Bibliography 241 4 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: FINDING A SPACE The aim of this thesis is to examine whether Caribbean fiction has helped to create a fallacious image of the 'mixed-race' person and to assess whether this portrayal has been influenced by European racial theories. Caribbean writers have actively written an indigenous history that had been suppressed through colonial control of the education system in the Caribbean. As AP Maingot puts it "[i]n an area where the poet, novelist and, indeed, the song writer, have very often provided the best descriptions of social reality, Caribbeanists learned early to incorporate their work not merely as data but as worthy conceptualizations of their societies". ' With the premise that literature acts not only as a form of social and historical comment but also as an instigator of social ideology, this thesis questions to what extent Caribbean literature produces and perpetuates a racially essentialist ideology that feeds into repeated constructions of 'mixed-race' identities. To date very little research has been done which focuses specifically on 'mixed-race' identity within Anglophone Caribbean literature. Therefore, in many ways, this work acts as 'ground-breaking' research that examines the myths developed within the literature to define 'mixed-race' identity and opens up new and less stereotypical discussions regarding 'mixed-race' people within Caribbean literature and society. The introduction has been divided into three parts. The first part addresses the theoretical approach and looks at some of the problems and limitations of postcolonial theory and cultural studies. The second section examines the need and/or relevance of a discussion on the representation of the `mixed-race' person in Caribbean literature within a cultural S context that has generally been perceived as archetypically `mixed' anyway. The third part gives a summary of each chapter. Theoretical approaches The premise of the thesis is that literature is not merely an inert aesthetic but a proactive form of media. As such this thesis is concerned with the way in which literature informs both our lives and our thoughts. I would support the argument that the term 'fiction' can be misleading, as it divides the so-called reality of lived lives from those of the imagination. Imagination does not come from outside the realm of lived experience, but rather draws from and plays its part in creating it. The concept of `race' is popularly thought of in absolute and biologised ways, and the legacy of nineteenth (and eighteenth) century scientific racism lives on in popular culture. These beliefs are not innate, they are learned - not because of any mass global accessing of original manuscripts, but because such ideologies are constantly re-constructed and disseminated through a multitude of media. One such medium is the novel, and this thesis sets out to examine the Caribbean novel specifically. By using these literary texts as examples of `mixed-race' representations, rather than analysing them as literary compositions per se, this thesis aims to explicate one way in which a paradigm for 'mixed- race' behaviour/identity is dispersed into popular thought and culture. Throughout this thesis the term `mixed-race' has been placed in inverted commas to indicate that, whilst the term is used as it is a recognised descriptive, because of its pejorative connotations and because it implies an absoluteness of 'pure' race exists, I find this term problematic. Other writers opening the discourse on `mixed-race' identity are finding similar difficulties and possible alternative terms have been put forward. One example can be found in Scattered Belongings by Jayne 0 Ifekwunigwe, who offers her 6 "formulations of metis(se) and metissage as stand-in responses to the limitations and 2 ambiguities of existing terms". Because I am interested particularly in the way the content of the novel creates a perception of sociohistorical reality in the reader, from chapter four, in which I examine the significance of the slave period, I have chronologized the historical moment depicted by the novel rather than privilege the historical moment of the author. This is not to say that the time in which the author lives/writes is not relevant to the way in which they develop their portrayal of the 'mixed-race' character; as Edward Said argues, "a literary text is commonly supposed to gain some of its identity from its historical moment interacting with the 3 attentions, judgements, scholarship and performances of its readers". However, I would argue that the relationship between the novel's subject and reader is primary. By this I mean that a novel written, for example, on the slave period, regardless of whether it is written during the 1950s or the 1980s, will largely influence thoughts in the reader on the slave period itself, not on the historical moment of authorship. As such, a myth of sociohistorical actuality is created in terms of how the 'mixed-race' person is viewed as a participant of that 'history'. Thus, even within the contemporary cultural arena, the identity of the `mixed-race' person has not been exorcised from the limited stereotype of the 'mixed- race' overseer whose collusion with the white hegemony is absolute. The chapters that follow are, in the main, written with a detailed opening discussion on the sociohistorical period depicted by the novels chosen for analysis. This approach has been taken in order to both elucidate and counteract the ways in which the 'mixed-race' character is set 'historically' by the novels. In Kenneth Ramchand's pioneering work, The West Indian Novel and its Background (1983), Ramchand writes that his work is "an attempt to see the West Indian novel in its social and cultural context". 4 He argues that the "contexts are presented in order to make the novels more easily accessible, and not because of a primary interest in the conditions 5 that are said to have produced
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