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Uptake, Action and Generic Dissent in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry

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Uptake, Action and Generic Dissent in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry WRITING GENRE, WRITING RESISTANCE: UPTAKE, ACTION AND GENERIC DISSENT IN ANGLOPHONE CARIBBEAN POETRY A Dissertation Presented By Dania Annese Dwyer to The Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts August 2018 Writing Genre, Writing Resistance: Uptake, Action and Generic Dissent in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry. A dissertation presented By Dania A. Dwyer ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University August 2018 1 Abstract This dissertation looks at the strategies that have been undertaken by Anglophone Caribbean poets seeking to revise the history of the Caribbean through genre. I consider how texts written in literary genres respond to particular historical and social exigencies by co-opting antecedent colonial genres in ways that transgress them. In doing so, I take up questions from Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) that ask whether a theory of social action might be applied to literary works, and place Caribbean history and cultural studies in conversation with sociolinguistics and genre theory in literature and RGS. Using the poetry collections of Olive Senior, Kei Miller and Linton Kwesi Johnson as case studies, I argue that West Indian poetry pushes the theoretical envelope of literary analysis and invites an approach that incorporates rhetorical genre theory — specifically Carolyn Miller’s theory of genre as social action and Anne Freadman’s theory of uptake—to unearth the full potential of the text. 2 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 Dedication 4 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Chapter I: Writing Genres, Literary Genre, and Genre as Resistance 24 Chapter II: “Remembered Contents, Changed Contexts”: Revising History through Generic Uptake in Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics 42 CHAPTER III: Mapping Generic Immapancy: Kei Miller’s The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion 75 Chapter IV: Language and Generic Resistance in Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Mi Revalueshanary Fren 108 Conclusion 131 Works Cited 138 3 I dedicate this project to my mother, Ivorine, whose incredible sacrifice helped me complete this project; and to my children, Danielle and Duke, for whom my every sacrifice has been worthwhile. 4 Acknowledgements Completing a dissertation is no easy feat and I am indebted to many individuals for helping me bring this to fruition. I want to thank my mother, Ivorine, who first saw my abilities and recommended I pursue studies in English, and later put her life on hold to help me take care of my daughter, Danielle, as I prepared the prospectus for this project. I must also thank my father, Kenneth, who came to my rescue when my son was born in the midst of my trying to finish the dissertation, defend, and move states to take up a full-time faculty position. Without their love, sacrifice, and confidence in me, I could not have finished when I did. I am immensely grateful for husband, Dave, who helped me throughout my program by providing a sense of security at home and by giving me frequent assurance that I was pursuing the path meant for me. My daughter Danielle, whom I had during the first year of doctoral studies, prayed not only for this project, but also for umpteen A+’s throughout my program, and looked to me as her ultimate role model — this pushed me to make her and my son, Duke, proud. I am also indebted to my mentor and former lecturer, Dr. Nadi Edwards, whose mentorship has served a guiding hand at pivotal moments in my career, and whose feedback on my project in its early stages helped me revise my ideas and point them in productive new directions; and to Dr. Michael Bucknor, whose encouragement and scholarship have always motivated me to be better. Finally, I must express gratitude to my committee members, Professor Mya Poe (Chair), Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Professor Nicole Aljoe and Professor Neal Lerner, who provided excellent suggestions as I wrote. I am particularly grateful for Professor Poe, whose incredible generosity and insight carried me through my darkest moments and propelled me onward to completion. She is an example for me as I seek to build my career in higher education. 5 Introduction The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), the premier examinations body in the English- speaking Caribbean, in its Caribbean Examinations Council Teacher’s Guide for the Teaching of English B makes a compelling case for poetry that it does not make for prose fiction and drama. Poetry is described, perhaps idealized, as the genre of the people. It is the genre that they live. According to the guide: Caribbean people are characterised internationally by our innate capacity to be creatively expressive in speech, music and movement. This creative expressiveness is manifested in our common daily lived encounters on the streets, as much as they are exhibited by the finest exemplars of Caribbean artistes who have earned international acclaim. West Indian children live poetry (CXC Guide). In contrast, for drama, the guide highlights the genre’s distinction from poetry and prose, and the need for it to be taught in a way that attends to the dramatic elements of a given play. Drama “reflects attitudes, values and beliefs that are portrayed in a way to develop a student’s sense of empathy as they see their own humanity reflected in literary characters and situations” (14). While there is an acknowledgement of the alignment of the genre with the expressive nature of Caribbean people in the language from the guide, there is not a case made for drama as the generic embodiment of the people. In like manner, the section on the teaching of prose does not forge an implicit connection with Caribbean society and collective identity. Instead, with prose fiction, the focus is on the effect of the genre on readers: “Every line of prose is consciously chosen to create a particular effect or effects. Very often writers revel in the tensions between the mind and the heart of the reader, sometimes even more so than their fascination with that tension between the minds and hearts of their characters. Diverse interpretations are possible because each reader brings 6 something unique from his/her own experience to interpret or understand what the writer writes” (28). While the explicit connection to Caribbean identity and poetry is obvious in the guide, implicit in this statement on poetry is a hierarchical understanding of genres in the Caribbean context with poetry most closely aligned with what people in the Caribbean live. In fact, poetry in the Caribbean enjoys an esteemed stature in the hierarchy of literary genres and Caribbean people view it as the “real” embodiment of the fragmented and complex reality of Caribbean existence. Laurence Breiner, in his seminal work on Caribbean poetry, notes the very prominent status that poetry holds in post-independence Caribbean culture and society owing to many factors like the closeness of poets to political figures, the inherent dramaticality of Caribbean society and the small scale of that society. Breiner argues: It is frequently observed that poetry seems to play an unusually prominent role in West Indian society since Independence. The implied comparison is with the English-speaking world, and perhaps underestimates the role of poetry in Ireland or Anglophone Africa, but the observation remains valid. To some degree this prominence has to do with preexisting conditions: the small scale of the society, the close links of many individual poets with political figures, a culture of dramaticality... the openness to popular culture, especially music (reggae and calypso), the appeal of public performance, the enthusiastic acceptance of overt social responsibility” (3). At very key moments in Jamaican history and politics, for example, poems are written and recited any and everywhere from small makeshift stages in rural community centers to formal state functions such as the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence Ceremony held yearly. News items of varying degrees of importance routinely serve as material for poems written and recited with many going “viral” on social media. Poetry is understood (by both the poets and the communities they 7 serve) to be the trusted expression of the people and the genre that reveals who we are to ourselves and helps direct us to where we would like to be as a people. Brathwaite and others, too, in thinking of “a literature that addresses a whole society, are thinking of poetry and drama more than fiction,” Breiner contends. Caribbean poet Nourbese Philip concurs, theorizing in her essay “The Habit of: Poetry, Rats and Cats” that poetry in general is “risk taking of the highest order, otherwise known as working on the edge...reintrojecting forgotten histories.” It is a dynamic genre: [It is] constantly changing depending on who is reading it. The polyvocular. The multiplicity of voices. That is the New World… Here: first the Caribbean, then the Americas. Site of massive, traumatic and often fatal interruptions - for aboriginal peoples, for the African, the Asian, and even the European. To “write” about it in a logical, linear way is to do a second violence. To the experience, the memory - the remembering (Philip 116). [1] In this sense, the poetry of the Caribbean has been conscious of itself as the genre of the masses, and the one that should function as the voice of the people. One case in point is Mervyn Morris’ assessment of the poetry performance of dub poet Mutabaruka at the 1989 Anti-Drugs Concert in Jamaica as more than a mere poetry presentation but a performance that set the genre in a very clear context that attends to specific social and economic factors.
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