UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Network: Dons, Yardies and Posses: Representations of Jamaican Organised Crime Workshop 3: Jamaican Organised Crime: Aesthetics and Style Venue: University of Leicester Workshop Programme Day 1: Friday 16th November (Fielding Johnson First Floor Council Suite Room 2) 10.15-10.45 Registration and refreshments 10.45-11.00 Welcome 11.00-12.00 The Devil’s Dandruff: A Cocaine Trilogy & Modern Cautionary Tale: Work In Progress By Carol Leeming FRSA. 12.00-1.00 ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’: Bodies, Affect, and Caribbeanized Cityscapes (interactive session) 1.00-2.00 Lunch 2.00-3.30 Organised Crime and the State (panel) 3.30-4.00 Refreshment break 4.00-5.00 A Brief History of Blood Money: Reflecting on Corruption and Crime in Contemporary Jamaican Music Videos (interactive session) Day 2: Saturday 17th November (Charles Wilson Fourth Floor SR 409 Garendon) 9.15-9.30 Registration 9.30-11.00 Urban Imaginaries and the Badman Figure (panel) 11.00-11.30 Refreshment break 11.30-12.30 Badmanism and Masculinity (interactive session) 12.30-1.30 Lunch 1.30-3.00 Affect and Aesthetics in Organised Crime (panel) 3.00-3.30 Refreshment break 3.30-4.00 Concluding discussion reflecting on the progress of the project and future directions 5.00-6.30 Representing Kingston: author reading and discussion with Kei Miller and Kerry Young (Venue: Attenborough University Film Theatre) 1 Panels and interactive sessions Day 1: Friday 16th November 11.00: The Devil’s Dandruff: A Cocaine Trilogy & Modern Cautionary Tale. Work In Progress By Carol Leeming FRSA. A creative response to a legendary global drug using the medium of drama 12.00: ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’: Bodies, Affect, and CaribbeaniZed Cityscapes Interactive session led by Faith Smith (Brandeis University) and Donette Francis (University of Miami) 2.00: Organised Crime and the State Lucy Evans (University of Leicester), ‘Eco-noir, environmental crime and Esther Figueroa’s Limbo’ Anthony Harriott (University of the West Indies), ‘Power and accountability in the security domain: The extradition of Christopher Coke and the Commission of Enquiry as an instrument of security sector accountability’ Petrina Dacres (Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performance Arts), ‘Entangled Histories, Death and Violence in Jamaican Art’ Chair: Rivke Jaffe 4.00: A Brief History of Blood Money: Reflecting on Corruption and Crime in Contemporary Jamaican Music Videos Interactive session led by Zakiya McKenzie (University of Exeter) Day 2: Saturday 17th November 9.30: Urban Imaginaries and the Badman Figure Faith Smith (Brandeis University), ‘Millennial Posturing?’ David Howard (University of Oxford), ‘The aesthetics and influence of “badmen” and banditry in contemporary Jamaica’ Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam), ‘Pathologies of Infrastructure: Abjection and Connection in Kingston’s Gullies’ 2 Chair: Tracian Meikle 11.30: Badmanism and Masculinity Interactive session led by Michael Bucknor (University of the West Indies) and Lucy Evans (University of Leicester) 1.30: Affect and Aesthetics in Organised Crime Donette Francis (University of Miami), ‘Kingston in Miami’ Michael Bucknor (University of the West Indies), ‘Criminal Intimacies: Psycho-Sexual Spatialities of Jamaican Transnational Crime in Garfield Ellis’s Till I’m Laid to Rest (and Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings)’ Tracian Meikle (University of Amsterdam), ‘Memorial Murals and the Aesthetic Work of Maintaining Personhood after Death’ Chair: David Howard 3.30: Concluding discussion Concluding discussion reflecting on the progress of the project and future directions Chair: Lucy Evans and Rivke Jaffe 5.00: Author readings / Q&A: Representing Kingston Venue: Attenborough University Film Theatre Author reading and Q&A with poet, novelist and broadcaster Kei Miller and novelist and short story writer Kerry Young. Chairs: Lucy Evans and Rivke Jaffe 3 Abstracts and Bios Michael A. Bucknor (University of the West Indies, Mona) Paper title: Criminal Intimacies: Psycho-Sexual Spatialities of Jamaican Transnational Crime in Garfield Ellis’s Till I’m Laid to Rest (and Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings) Abstract: On reading the first 80 pages of Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, I began thinking about the relationship between criminal violence and queer intimacy. Indeed, James’s novel made me realize the importance of including the sexual body as a significant site for tracing the spatial imaginaries of Jamaican transnational crime. Yet, before James, there was Garfield Ellis’s novel of transnational crime ironically invoking Buju Banton (himself imprisoned for a transnational drug crime) in the title, “‘Till I am Laid to Rest.”” In tracking the extended terrain of Jamaica’s criminal activity beyond the inner city scenes and the shores of Jamaica to Miami, USA, dubbed Kingston 21, Ellis is less interested in the macro spatialities of the geographical landscape of crime and more interested in the micro spaces of intimacies which engender criminal activity. Antwi et al’s work on “postcolonial intimacies,” Lisa Lowe’s idea of “proximate intimacies” which can be cross-referenced with Sedgwick’s enumeration of “homosocial” intimacies and Christina Sharpe’s concept of “monstruous intimacies” have all been instrumental in my reading of criminal intimacies in these novels. While there are smaller material sites such as the car, the vault and the briefcases/bags of money that work as motifs of criminality in Ellis’ novel, the major geographical sites of Sufferer’s Heights and the cityscapes of Miami are shrouded in secrecy and the criminal enterprise is primarily registered in the sonic spaces of ghetto-grapevine gossip. By turning attention to the “emotional geographies” (Antwi) of these novels, this paper mines “rapes and coerced intimacies” as well as homosocial friendships as a way of mapping the psycho-sexual dimension of Jamaican transnational crime. Author Bio: Dr. Michael A. Bucknor is an Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Literatures in English and the Public Orator of the Mona Campus, UWI. He serves on the editorial boards of Caribbean Quarterly, Issues in Critical Investigation and Lucayos, and is Senior Editor of the Journal of West Indian Literature. He is also co-editor with Alison Donnell of The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature and carries out research on Austin Clarke, Caribbean-Canadian writing, postcolonial literatures and theory, diaspora studies, masculinities and popular culture. He is completing a book manuscript entitled, “Performing Masculinities in Jamaican Popular Culture.” Carol Leeming FRSA The Devils Dandruff A Cocaine Trilogy & Modern Cautionary Tale: Work In Progress A Creative Response to a Legendary Global Drug Using The Medium of Drama Abstract My writing project began with my interest firstly, in the Coca Plant and later Cocaine, the substance derived from the Coca plant, and how it is used in the present day, specifically the impact of its global illegal trade across the world and its affect on individual lives and society 4 The Coca plant is viewed as sacred and beneficial by the peoples of South America, this attracted me as a writer of magic realism narratives. I plan to highlight the Coca plant, and its derivative Cocaine, through human stories, foregrounding legend and myth, associated with the Coca plant. Looking at the way the Coca plant is seen as primarily benign, but its derivative Cocaine is more taboo, and its centrality to the lives of diverse characters, within three dramatic narratives, set in very different contemporary locations. Highlighting the contrasting ways, in which Cocaine is interwoven in their lives, in seemingly positive but ultimately negative ways. The three narrative dramas of the trilogy are titled as follows: The Don The Nurse The Model I would like to share synopsis, character descriptions, and a brief extract of the first drama, a short scene with the character of the Jamaican Don and his Wife. Author bio Carol Leeming is a multi-disciplinary, international artist from Leicester. A polymath, she is Artistic Director/Lead Artist of Dare to Diva Company, working in Literature, Performing Arts & Digital Media. Carol is the Winner of East Midlands Women’s Award 2017, for Outstanding Woman in Arts, Media & Music. Carol is a multi-award winning writer, a published poet, recipient of Ena Young Poetry Award & Siobhan Logan Writing for Listeners Award. Her plays have been performed at Curve and Brighton Dome theatres, and broadcast on national BBC Radio 4. Carol’s roles include playwright, dramaturge, singer /songwriter, composer, performer, musician, director/film maker, cultural critic and curator. Carol also received the African Caribbean Citizens Forum Awards for contribution to Arts & Entertainment and the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she received an MBE for Services to the Arts and to Culture in Leicester. Petrina Dacres (Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performance Arts) Paper Title: Entangled Histories, Death and Violence in Jamaican Art Abstract This paper considers how visuality mediates state authority by analysing the artworks of several contemporary artists in Jamaica such as: Michael Robinson, Camille Chedda, Ebony Patterson, Omari Ra, Stanford Watson, Christopher Irons and Phillip Thomas. In the immediate decades after Independence in Jamaica visuality was used to disseminate political authority through history. This was exemplified by the heroic sculptures and history paintings of the 1960s and 1970s. The work of the artists in review in this paper subvert the heroic iconography and demonstrate the complexity and limitations of state authority and leadership. The paper considers how their works offer up what Mirzoeff (2011) describes as a “counterhistory of visuality.” The works under consideration engage themes of power, death and violence. The paper examines the form and content of the images in relation to the recent history of (state) violence and a vernacular and diasporic visual economy of death and memory. Earlier 1960s anxieties over the role of violence in the constitution of the politico-historical subject are also 5 addressed.