“Just Ask Mi 'Bout Brooklyn:” West Indian Identities, Transgeographies, and Livin
“JUST ASK MI ’BOUT BROOKLYN:” WEST INDIAN IDENTITIES, TRANSGEOGRAPHIES, AND LIVING REGGAE CULTURE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sabia McCoy-Torres August 2015 © 2015 Sabia McCoy-Torres “JUST ASK MI ’BOUT BROOKLYN:” WEST INDIAN IDENTITIES, TRANSGEOGRAPHIES, AND LIVING REGGAE CULTURE Sabia McCoy-Torres, Ph.D. Cornell University 2015 This ethnography explores the symbiotic relationship between the West Indian Diaspora and performance based, Jamaican originated, reggae culture. The field site was Brooklyn, New York. I analyze the intersections of reggae with racial and cultural identity construction, expressions of gender and sexuality, transnationalism, and place making practices. The formation of a local, West Indian led, reggae related economy is also a subject of focus. In order to theorize the impact West Indians have on Brooklyn and their subjectivities, I develop the concepts transgeographies and figurative citizenship. I argue that the West Indian Diaspora creates transgeographic cultural places that specific sociocultural practices and performance help to form. I offer that performance, action, and material alteration coalesce to physically transform space and imbue it with affect and sensory elements that together constitute links to the various nations of the Caribbean. The West Indian geographies of Brooklyn are thereby brought inside the Caribbean space expanding how geography is conceived of as an analytic. Emergent diasporic subjectivities are formed within these transgeographic cultural places, one of them being what I term figurative citizenship. This work also includes analyses of the relationship of West Indians to U.S.
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