Pretty Mas’: Visuality and Performance in Trinidad and Tobago’s contemporary carnival, West Indies. Maica Gugolati To cite this version: Maica Gugolati. Pretty Mas’: Visuality and Performance in Trinidad and Tobago’s contemporary carnival, West Indies.. Social Anthropology and ethnology. EHESS, 2018. English. tel-02390189 HAL Id: tel-02390189 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02390189 Submitted on 2 Dec 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. “For my mother, citizen of one world and many” Kwame Anthony Appiah. 2006, Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in a World of Strangers. God planted a rice field one year. “One day a message came to God saying, ‘God, the pintards are eating up all of your rice. If you don’t do something about it, there won’t be any rice to reap”. So God called the Angel Michael and told him “Here Michael, you take this gun and go down to my rice fields and kill those pintards. They are eating up all my rice and I did not plant rice for them”. Then Michael took the gun to shoot the pintards but when the pintards saw him they flew up into a tree and began to sing and clap their wings together in rhythm. Michael came up to the tree and “pointed the gun but the song and the rhythm were so compelling that he forgot to pull the trigger. With the gun still pointed he began to keep time with the wing clapping. Then he laid the gun down and danced until he was exhausted.” Then, he went back to God without accomplishing the mission. God called Gabriel to carry out the same mission. But it happened exactly the same as with Michael: Gabriel began to dance and forgot all about God’s rice field for a whole day. Too ashamed to go back to God, Gabriel gave the gun to Peter who was sent to perform the same action and he too came back without killing them. “So, God took the gun and went down to His rice fields Himself. The pintards flew up into the tree again. They saw it was God Himself, so they sang a new song and put on a double rhythm. God aimed the gun, but before He knew it He was dancing and because of the song He didn’t care whether he saved any rice or not. So, He said, ‘I can’t kill these pintards, […] but I do want my rice fields so I know what I will do. There is the world that I have made and so far, it is sad and nobody is happy there and nothing goes right. I’ll send these pintards down there to take music and laughter so the world can forget its troubles’.” Zora Neale Hurston. 1990, “God and the Pintards” 259-261. Tell my Horse. Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. 2 Words of thanks The work of producing a doctoral thesis is a solitary exercise, but it is also an opportunity for discovering different ways of being supported by important people who have accompanied me on my journey, each one in their special way. First of all I want to thank my supervisor for his patience and his trust in the way this research has developed. I deeply thank Akeila, Desire, Marisa, Paul, Ravindranath and Ryan for their deep friendship, their constant support in my life, and for their willingness to discuss issues and opinions with me even at the very last minute. I thank them deeply for suggesting that I “come back home” at difficult moments over these years, where “home” for them meant Trinidad. I want to dedicate a special thanks to Christopher Cozier, Eniola Adelekan and Tamara Tam- Cruickshank who patiently and passionately philosophized with me during all these years of research. I want to thank deeply all my friends here in France, with special gratitude to José, Suomi and Roque for their understanding and the support and love they never stopped showing me. And I thank Abdoulaye and Euclide for their liberating laughter and dancing. I want to thank two people who are not in this world anymore, my grandmother, Mina, and my mother, Marita, who have been with me and supported me on this doctoral journey with all the love and faith they had in me. This thesis is dedicated to my mother. I want to thank Cinzia for her doctoral amulet, which seems to have fulfilled its mission, and I thank Ana Maria deeply for her unending personal, academic and spiritual support. I want to thank my family, specifically my greataunt Aldina and my cousins, Debora and Elettra, for their love. Last but not least, I want to thank my father, Michele, who has never stopped believing in me and in what I am doing, and who always wishes me to achieve my passions. This thesis is the fruit of collaborations, debates, limes and deep relationships where life has been shared and will always be part of my being. Many other individuals should be mentioned in this section, and I ask you too to accept my grateful thanks. 3 Résumé Cette recherche traite de la forme la plus contemporaine de mascarade du carnaval de Trinidad (République de Trinidad-et-Tobago, Caraïbe Anglophone), connue sous l’appellation Pretty Mas’. Cette dernière s’imprègne d’une esthétique nommée Bikini & Beads, pratiquée en majorité par les femmes et de jeunes participants. C’est la forme de mascarade la plus commerciale du pays et le modèle de carnavals diasporiques à travers le monde. L’objet de cette recherche est d’expliquer comment l’aspect visuel de la mascarade tend à transformer cette performance carnavalesque en spectacle. Je montre que la valeur historique de la pratique du carnaval évolue dans la forme contemporaine Bikini & Beads, où les joueurs portent de simples bikinis en guise de costumes. Cette recherche aborde également la question de la représentation de soi à travers ce style de carnaval où le corps des participants se substitue au costume. Les joueurs y affirment leur individualité et leur volonté d’interpréter des histoires autoréférentielles. La visibilité du joueur et de la joueuse devient un moyen d’affirmation de soi, ce qui modifie la pratique performative de la mascarade. J’analyse ensuite l’impact du visuel sur le management de ce style de mascarade. La recherche de visibilité des joueurs et la nécessité d’impressionner les publics modifient l’organisation des groupes de carnaval et la création des costumes. Le désir de reconnaissance publique des participants influe sur la pratique performative et représentationnelle de la mascarade. En privilégiant l’aspect visuel de l’évènement, la performance carnavalesque devient prévisible et reproductible pour son exportation dans les festivals internationaux. Mots clés : Anthropologie Visuelle, Caraïbes, Carnaval, Genre, Performance, Postcolonialisme. 4 Abstract This research is about the most current form of carnival masquerade on the island of Trinidad (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies), known as Pretty Mas'. Pretty Mas' is imbued with a masquerade style named Bikini & Beads, which is mostly practiced by women and young participants. It is the most commercial form of masquerade in the country and is the model for diaspora carnivals around the world. The object of this research is to explain how the visual aspect of this masquerade tends to transform the carnival performance into a spectacle. I show how the historical value of carnival practice has evolved into the contemporary form of Bikini & Beads, where players wear simple bikinis as costumes. This research deals with the question of self-representation through this masquerade style where the participants' bodies replace the costumes. In doing so players affirm their individuality and willingness to interpret self-referential stories. The player's visibility becomes a mean of asserting oneself, which modifies the performative practice of the masquerade. I then analyze the visual impact on the management of this form of performance and costuming. The players' search for visibility and their need to impress the public have changed the organization of carnival groups and the creation of costumes. The participants' desire for public recognition influences the performative and representational practice of the masquerade. I conclude by affirming that the emphasis on the visual aspect of the event makes the carnival performance more predictable and reproducible so it can be exported to the international festivals. Keywords: Carnival, Gender, Performance, Postcolonialism, Visual Anthropology, West Indies. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Illustrations 9 Résumé en français 13 Glossary 76 1. Introduction 78 1. How did I get here? 78 2. Historical context and population 81 2.1. History and geography 82 2.2. Political narratives 84 2.3. Demography, religion and income levels 85 3. Situating the theoretical frame 87 4. Carnival, what am I looking at? 89 5. Positionality and local perception of my presence in the field 92 6. Methodologies for the enquiry 94 6.1. The interview methodology 96 6.2. Debates with local associations 99 6.3. Participation 100 7. Methodology for the visual material 101 7.1. The use of photograph in the corpus 103 8. Methodology in writing the corpus 105 9. The structure of the thesis 107 2.