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Caribbean Hybridity: Language and Identity In CARIBBEAN HYBRIDITY: LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN JOHN AGARD’S POETRY by Leanna M. Hall Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English Acadia University April, 2017 © Copyright by Leanna M. Hall, 2017 ii This thesis by Leanna M. Hall is accepted in its present form by the Department of English as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours Approved by the Thesis Supervisor __________________________ ____________________ (typed name) Date Approved by the Head of the Department __________________________ ____________________ (typed name) Date Approved by the Honours Committee __________________________ ____________________ (typed name) Date iii iv I, LEANNA HALL, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright in my thesis. _________________________________ Signature of Author _________________________________ Date v vi Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ix Chapter 1: Introducing Identity ............................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Imposing Identity .............................................................................................19 Chapter 3: Repressed Identity ............................................................................................33 Chapter 4: Hybrid Identity .................................................................................................45 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................57 vii viii ABSTRACT This thesis will examine various poems by the British-Caribbean poet John Agard in order to consider his manipulation of language as a way to understand the fluidity of identity. The thesis will argue that Agard’s poetry calls for a rethinking of identity; instead of referring to identity as a fixed state, it should be looked at as a process. In this way, the identity of any group of individuals cannot be rooted to a single influence, but rather a myriad of cultural authorities. Theorist Stuart Hall and his essay, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” will provide the framework for the exploration of the major influences on Caribbean identity. Like Agard, he positions identity not as “an already accomplished fact, we should think, instead, of identity as a production which is never complete” (Hall 222). Hall’s image of identity as a production suggests that the respective influences on identity are a representation of its fluidity. The three influences outlined in Hall’s essay will be analyzed thematically to prove that the ‘roots’ of an individual’s identity can better be explained in terms of ‘routes’ of movement and change. Within each influence there is a key transformation of the linguistic culture of the individuals which, therefore, acts as a signifier of the evolution of identity. As a result, the language and consequently the identity of Caribbean individuals are best represented in terms of hybridity. ix x CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCING IDENTITY “Challenging society is part of your ammunition as a poet…Once your poem is released into the world, you no longer have any control.” (Agard, 2016) John Agard’s Guyanese upbringing has gifted him with a plethora of poignant topics, allowing him to mix cultures, mesh languages, and create hybrid identities within his poetry. In order to verbalize his dedication to his Caribbean heritage, he invented the term “poetsonian” which is a derivative of a calypsonian, who is the musical administrator of the popular tradition of tropical calypso. Agard wishes the term to be “a signal to people that a poet is not just a person dishing out a cerebral pain for the sake of it, but is actually delighting in language and hoping that delight will become infectious” (Agard 2016). His numerous collections cover a broad scope of territory in both their form and their focus. His work is therefore subject to a variety of interpretations, one of which centers around the concept of identity and how it has been formed by history, language, and culture. My thesis explores Agard’s concern with three major aspects of cultural identity: how colonial discourse has given it a voice of resistance, how slave trade history has given it a depth of origin, and how diaspora has given it a breadth of diversity. In poems that feature a history of dislocation and disruption, Agard’s Caribbean and diasporic individuals are caught in a relationship between acceptance and belonging. This middle-ground then becomes the birthplace of hybrid identities. The cultural critic, Stuart Hall, describes this struggle for acceptance within Caribbean identities in terms of roots and routes. My thesis uses his notion of “presences” 1 as an organizing principal and theoretical framework through which I examine John Agard’s poetry. In his seminal essay, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Hall postulates that identity cannot exist as a fixed object, but rather as an incomplete and unfinished production. Hall’s idea of production can be understood through two separate aspects that relate directly to root and route, but that place a great deal more emphasis on the latter. The first describes identity as “one, shared culture, a sort of collective 'one true self',” which can be shared by a group that displays similar historical and cultural backgrounds (Hall 223). Due to the fact that this mode coalesces a group of people under a communal umbrella, it tends to be a more static and rooted position fixed by generalizations and the essentializing of identity. As a result, Hall remarks that it is “not the rediscovery but the production of identity. Not an identity grounded in the archaeology, but in the re-telling of the past” (224). The second form of identity “challenges the fixed binaries which stabilize meaning and representation and show how meaning is never finished or completed, but keeps on moving to encompass other, additional or supplementary meanings” (Hall 229). In contrast to the previous position, this facet of identity describes the Caribbean individual as being the product of multiple origins and therefore as routed. Although this form of identity is realized uniquely among subjects, it is not free from connections to the African past and subsequent European impositions. Within the essay, Hall furthers the second position of a routed identity by inserting it into different influential periods of Caribbean history, namely “Présence Africaine, Présence Européene, Présence Américaine” (230). Along with applying Hall’s theoretical concerns to Agard’s poetry, I use his metaphorical presences as an organizing principle for the succeeding chapters. However, 2 I have rearranged his chronology, beginning with the European presence, moving on to the African, and then the New World/American. Hall’s central concern is with the multiple influences on cultural identity, so he begins at the source, or roots, and then describes the impact of colonial contact. My reordering will allow for a conceptual understanding of identity as it was experienced historically in the Caribbean. Consequently, it recognizes the devastating impact of colonial violence, a physical presence that occurred prior to and was responsible for the slave trade that uprooted so many Africans from their homeland. Agard refuses to forget the impact of this encounter, its rupturing of African identity and relocation in the New World. The Europeans first brought Africa to the Caribbean via the slave trade. The rebellion from the imposition of colonial identity, therefore, allowed for a rediscovery of the African motherland and resulted in the hybrid individual of the Caribbean New World. In effect, Hall’s concluding remarks on modern black film makers could equally apply to John Agard; as such, they aptly summarize the concerns of my thesis: “This is the vocation of modern black cinemas: by allowing us to see and recognise the different parts and histories of ourselves, to construct those points of identification, those positionalities we call in retrospect our 'cultural identities'” (237). My second chapter situates Agard’s poetry within the framework of Hall’s notion of Présence Européene, and the violence that erupted from within the contact zone of the colonizer and colonized. Agard’s poetry constantly revisits the effects of the colonial encounter on Caribbean identity. My reading of selected poems in this chapter is guided by the work of three influential theorists, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha, whose thinking on the confrontation between the colonizer and the colonized can be 3 applied to Agard’s work. For example, Frantz Fanon’s psychological perspective on identity exposes the myth that colonial authority was something intended to better civilizations; likewise, Agard’s poetry reveals the reality that the European presence did enact further violence onto various civilizations. Like Fanon, Edward Said is interested in how the West constructs the Other. His claim that “Orientalism is a style of thought” recognizes the broader implications of colonial rule beyond that one geographical location (Said 2). Lastly, Homi Bhabha’s metonymical lens presents the slippage that exists between
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