Journal of E Astern C Arib Bean Stu Dies V Ol. 42, N O. 3, D Ecemb Er 2017
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Jo urnal of E as te CONTENTS rn C Vol. 42, No. 3, December 2017 arib bea Special Issue n S tu Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in the Caribbean: dies Vol. 42, No. 3, December 2017 Transdisciplinary Engagements Guest Editors’ Note Halimah A.F. DeShong and Charmaine Crawford Protecting Feminist Futures in the Caribbean’s Contemporary • Eudine Barriteau V Interrogating Approaches to Caribbean Feminist ought Tonya Haynes Valuing Caring Work Tracy Robinson ol. 42, N “ e Will to Forget”: Silence and Minimisation in Men’s Talk on Violence o Halimah A.F. DeShong . 3, D Let’s Liberate the Bullers! Toronto Human Rights Activism and Implications ec for Caribbean Strategies emb Nikoli Attai er 2017 De ling the Feminine?: Women Who Kill – Female Criminality in Jamaica at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Shakira Maxwell Contributors Call for Papers – JECS Announcement – SALISES 20th Annual Conference Editorial Staff Editor Dr. Don Marshall Managing Editor Dr. Latoya Lazarus Editorial Assistant Mrs. Melanie Callender–Forde Publications Secretary Ms. Jacqueline Thompson Editorial Advisory Board Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles Vice Chancellor, UWI, Regional Headquarters, Mona, Prof. Jacqueline Braveboy-Wagner City College of New York, USA Prof. Simon Jones-Hendrickson University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, USVI Prof. Andy Knight Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Canada Prof. Rhoda Reddock Former Deputy Principal, UWI, St. Augustine Editorial Committee Prof. Eudine Barriteau Principal, Pro Vice Chancellor, UWI, Cave Hill Prof. Nlandu Mamingi Faculty of Social Sciences, UWI, Cave Hill, Prof. Winston Moore School for Graduate Studies and Research, UWI, Cave Hill Prof. Curwen Best Faculty of Humanities and Education, UWI, Cave Hill Ms. Beverley Hinds Librarian, SALISES, UWI, Cave Hill Dr. Sherma Roberts Faculty of Social Sciences, UWI, Cave Hill Dr. Halimah DeShong Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Cave Hill Dr. Yanique Hume Faculty of Humanities and Education, UWI, Cave Hill The Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies (JECS) is the leading social science journal covering the Eastern Caribbean area. It is published tri-annually by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, in April, August and December. Established in 1975 as the Bulletin of Eastern Caribbean Affairs, it was upgraded to a full peer review academic journal from Volume 22, 1997. The JECS is concerned with scholarly and methodological inquiries into the political, social, economical, business and environmental challenges of the Eastern Caribbean and small states. Subscription Rates are: Barbados BDS$115.00 per volume BDS$29.00 per issue Caribbean US$82.00 per volume US$21.00 per issue International US$105.00 per volume US$27.00 per issue Air Mail by special arrangement All enquiries should be directed to Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies, Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies, P.O. Box 64, Bridgetown, Barbados: Tel: (246) 417-4478 Fax (246) 424-7291 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/salises. Cover design by Joy Maynard. © 2017 All rights reserved. Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, UWI, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados ISSN: 1028-8813 CONTENTS Vol. 42, No. 3, December 2017 Special Issue Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in the Caribbean: Transdisciplinary Engagements Guest Editors: Halimah A.F. DeShong and Charmaine Crawford Articles Page Guest Editors’ Note …….………………………………………..………..….…1 Halimah A.F. DeShong and Charmaine Crawford Protecting Feminist Futures in the Caribbean’s Contemporary……………….....7 Eudine Barriteau Interrogating Approaches to Caribbean Feminist Thought……………….....….26 Tonya Haynes Valuing Caring Work………………………….…….....………...….....….….....59 Tracy Robinson “The Will to Forget”: Silence and Minimisation in Men’s Talk on Violence……………………………………………………….……………80 Halimah A.F. DeShong Let’s Liberate the Bullers! Toronto Human Rights Activism and Implications for Caribbean Strategies……………………………..….…….97 Nikoli Attai Defiling the Feminine?: Women Who Kill – Female Criminality in Jamaica at the Turn of the Twentieth Century………….……………….…..122 Shakira Maxwell Contributors 152 Call for Papers – JECS 154 Announcement – SALISES 20th Annual Conference 156 Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies Vol. 42, No. 3, December 2017 pp. 1– 6 SPECIAL ISSUE Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in the Caribbean: Transdisciplinary Engagements Halimah A.F. DeShong and Charmaine Crawford Guest Editors’ Note In 2011, the Institute for Gender and Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit (IGDS:NBU) of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus hosted a symposium entitled Contemporary Issues in Caribbean Research on Gender and Feminism which brought together scholars from a wide cross section of disciplines to explore the assembling of feminist explanatory frameworks in the Caribbean. What became clear during this event were the differently located engagements with (Caribbean) feminist analytical tools by participants. The intellectual effort arising from this 2011 symposium functioned as catalyst for this special issue of the Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies (JECS) on “Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in the Caribbean: Transdisciplinary Engagements.” Many of the articles began as papers presented at this symposium. The inclusion of these essays exemplifies the mobility of feminist theoretical and analytical approaches and ideas across a variety of fields and disciplines including Law, Management Studies, History, Gender Studies, Political Science, Sociology and Social Work. We think specifically about how the ideas, concepts and theories emerging from feminist scholarship (itself a transdisciplinary field) travel across the often fictive and politically reified disciplinary boundaries. The different articles in this collection can be regarded as located within, in relation to, and/or in conversation with Caribbean feminist scholarship. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary as a regional entity of The UWI, the IGDS has stood at the forefront of teaching, research and outreach in feminist, gender, masculinity and sexuality studies toward social transformation. Similar to developments across the Units of the IGDS, the Nita Barrow Unit at Cave Hill has been a key source of knowledge generation in this field and has collaborated with scholars within The UWI, the wider region and diaspora, to produce critical transdisciplinary work in gender, masculinities, sexualities and development studies. Over the years, the IGDS has produced several edited collections that Copyright © Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, UWI, (Cave Hill), 2017 Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies 2 represent the multiple ways in which scholars within and outside of the Institute engage feminist analytical approaches (See Bailey and Leo-Rhynie 2004; Barriteau 2003, 2012; Barriteau and Cobley 2001, 2006; DeShong and Kempadoo forthcoming; Hosein and Outar 2016; Hosein and Parpart 2017; Parpart, Connelly and Barriteau 2000; Mohammed 1998, 2001; Reddock 2004). These publications, along with the emergence of the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies at the IGDS, St. Augustine Unit in 2007, mark the maturation of the IGDS as fully engaged in transdisciplinary scholarship. This special issue of JECS continues this tradition. The authors included in this JECS collection examine how gender and or sexuality intersect race, class, nationality and other mechanisms of power and difference in shaping socio-cultural relations in a colonial and post-colonial Caribbean landscape. With a recognition that scholars engage the analytical concepts of feminist thought, such as gender and patriarchy/patriarchal relations, from a variety of disciplinary locations with varying attachments to feminism, this collection along with another forthcoming in the JECS brings together scholarship on gender, sexuality and feminist studies in the Caribbean. We use the prefix ‘trans’ to signify the critical ways in which these conceptual tools travel across disciplines, interrupting, disrupting and reconfiguring how social and political phenomena, as well as identity relations are understood and redefined beyond singular and linear ways of being and knowing. Much of Caribbean gender, feminist and sexuality studies is often defined as both multi- and inter-disciplinary. Multidisciplanarity refers to the ways in which gender and feminist knowledge is created from a variety of disciplinary locations, while interdisciplarity captures the convergences of several disciplinary bounded spaces in the creation of feminist knowledge. We argue that transdisciplinary engagements on gender, sexuality and feminism signal the simultaneity of these multi- and inter-disciplinary flows evident in knowledge creation processes across diverse philosophical, temporal and spatial configurations. The collection opens with the keynote lecture delivered by Professor V. Eudine Barriteau (first Head of the IGDS, Nita Barrow Unit) at the 2011 Symposium. The incisive analysis for which Barriteau is known in theorising Caribbean gender systems is featured in her address as she issues a call for us to continue and to intensify strategies required for “Protecting Feminist Futures in the Caribbean’s Contemporary.” The ‘contemporary’ is mobilised in her analysis to signal continuities and ruptures in the spatiotemporality of what we often regard as past, present and future. In so