Globalization Diaspora Hybridity and Identity

8/9/2019 Globalization Diaspora Hybridity and Identity

1/31

This article was downloaded by: [Loughborough University]On: 08 April 2012, At: 07:25Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Cultural StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors

and subscription information:

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcus20

GLOBALIZATION AND TRINIDAD

CARNIVAL: DIASPORA,

HYBRIDITY AND IDENTITY IN

GLOBAL CULTUREKeith Nurse

Available online: 09 Nov 2010

To cite this article: Keith Nurse (1999): GLOBALIZATION AND TRINIDAD CARNIVAL:DIASPORA, HYBRIDITY AND IDENTITY IN GLOBAL CULTURE, Cultural Studies, 13:4,

661-690

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095023899335095

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make anyrepresentation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up todate. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should beindependently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liablefor any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damageswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith or arising out of the use of this material.

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095023899335095http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcus20


2/31

Abstract

Th is article is premised on th e view that culturally, the periph ery is greatly

inuenced by the society of the centre, but the reverse is also the case. This

is a case study of the impa ct and implications for global culture of periph-

ery-to-cen tre cultural ows. It is argued that the Trinidad carn ival and the

overseas Car ibbean carnival s (e.g. Notting Hi ll, London; Caribana,

Toronto; Labour D ay, N ew York) are products of and responses to the pro-

cesses of globalization as well as transcultural and transnational form ations.

Carnival is theorized as a hybrid site for the ritual negotiation of cultural

identity and practice by the Caribbean diaspora.

Keywords

globalization; carnival; Trinidad; diaspora

Introduction

TR I N I D A D ’ S C A R N I V A L , wh ich has long been a source of inspiration for

other carnivals in the region, is now truly global. Almo st every m ajor cityin North America and Britain has a Caribbean-style carnival that is in large part

mo delled after the one found in Trinidad.1 In each respective site it is the largest

festival or event in term s of attendance and the gener ation o f econom ic activity.2

For exam ple, N otting H ill carn ival attracts over two million people over two days

Keith Nurse

GLOBALIZATION AND TRINIDAD

CARNIVAL: DIASPORA, HYBRIDITY

AND IDENTITY IN GLOBAL

CULTURE

Cultural Studies ISSN 0 950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online © Taylor & Francis Ltd

C U L T U RA L S T U D I E S 1 3 ( 4 ) 1 9 9 9 , 6 6 1 – 6 9 0

D o w n l o a d e d b y [ L o u g h b o r o u g h U n

i v e r s i t y ] a t 0 7 : 2 5 0 8 A p r i l 2 0 1 2


3/31

of activities and is considered to be the largest festival of popular culture in

Europe. Labour Day in New York and Caribana in Toronto are similarly the

largest events in the USA and Canada, respectively. As such, the overseas

Caribbean carnivals are arguably ‘the world’s most popular transnational cel-ebration’ (Manning, 1990: 36).

The globalization of Trinidad carnival is directly related to the spread and

expansion of the Caribbean diaspora in the North Atlantic after the Second

World War in response to the dem and for cheap imm igrant labour. The trans-

plantation of the Trinidad car nival to create the overseas Car ibbean carn ivals has

contributed to the growth of a cultural industry with strong export capability.

Th e overseas carn ivals have also evolved to play an im por tant sociopolitical and

cultural role for the Car ibbean diaspora. Car nival as a cultural activity is not just

about merriment, colourful pageantry, revelry and street theatre. Carnival is born out of th e st ruggle of m ar gin alize d pe oples to sh ap e a cu ltural ident ity

through resistance, liberation and catharsis. It is these values that have facilitated

its replication wh erever the Caribbean diaspora is foun d. It has acted as a bond

between th e d iasp oric com munity an d those at home, prom otin g m uch travel and

contributing to a pan-Caribbean identity. At C aribana in Toronto, for instance,

as much as one-third of the festival’s one million participants are visitors from

the Caribbean com munities in the US A (Decima, 1991). The sheer size and econ-

om ic impact of the overseas Caribbean carnivals have made them an im portant

bas is fo r tr an sn at ional dia sp oric politics.

Caribbean popular culture, the carnivals in particular, has remained largely

under-researched (Lent, 1990). Most of the research takes a historical, ethno-

graphic, anthropological and/or sociological perspective but virtually non e has

looked at carnival within the fram ework of the global cultural economy. Th is is

symptomatic of a lacuna in the eld:

W hile Third World countries are well know n as im por ters of m etropolitan

popular culture, the reverse process – the expor t of cultural products andperformances from the Third World – has evoked less discussion.

(Manning, 1990: 20)

This article attempts to redress this shortcoming in the literature. The approach

used here argues that globalization is cotemporal with modernization and the

development of capitalism over the past ve hundred years (Wallerstein, 1983).

This approach accepts that there has been a recent acceleration of the pace of

globalization but argues that this can be explained by the cyclical rhythms and

transform ations in the capitalist world economy. It differs from episodic analy-ses w hich view g lobalization as ‘a recent pheno me non associated with other social

processes called post-industrialization, post-moder nization or the disorganiza-

t ion of capitalism’ (Waters, 1995: 4).

Th e conden ce for this approach c om es from a reading of the history of the

C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S6 6 2




4/31

Caribbean’s experience of incorporation into the moder n world system. Argu-

ably, the C aribbean region, as the oldest area of E uropean overseas expansion and

colonial enterprise, can be viewed as the rst mod ernized or globalized peoples

in world history (James, 1980; M intz, 1974). For example, according to M intz(1993: 10), Caribbean peoples

were m odernized by enslavement and forced transportation; by ‘seasoning’

and coercion on time-conscious, export-oriented enterprises; by the

reshufing, redenition and reduction of gender-based roles; by racial and

status-based oppression; and by the need to reconstitute and m aintain cul-

tural form s of their own under implacable pressure. These were people

wrenche d from societies of a different sort, then thrust into remarkably

industrial settings for their time and for their appearance, and kept undercircumstances of extrem e repression. Caribbean cultures had to develop

under these unusual and, indeed, terrible conditions.

In the current debate about globalization (Kofman and Youngs, 1996; Waters,

1995) and the growth of a global culture (Featherstone, 1994; King, 1991) the

main tendency is to focus on the recent acceleration in the ow of technology,

people and resources in a Nor th to South or centre to periphery direction. In

this sense m uch of the literature on g lobalization is really a depoliticized interpre-

tation of the long-standing process of Western ization and imperialism, term s that

have become very unfashionable in these so-called postmodern times. Alterna-

tively, the ar ticle is prem ised on the view th at ‘culturally, the per iphery is greatly

inuenced by the society of the center, but the reverse is also the case’ (Patter-

son, 1994: 109). Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine the counter-ow,

the periphery -to-centre cultural ows, or w hat Patterson calls the ‘extraordinary

process of periphery-induced creolization in the cosm opolis’ (1994: 109). In this

respect it is a case study of ‘globalization in reverse’, a take on w hat Jamaican

poet Lo uise Be nnett calls ‘colonization in reverse’.3

Th e argum ent here is that the Trinidad car nival and its overseas or diasporic

offspring are both products of and respon ses to the processes of globalization as

well as ‘intercultural and transnational form ations’ that relate to the concept of

a Black Atlantic (Gilroy, 1993). Car nival is theorized as a hybrid site (Bhabha,

1994) for the ritual negotiation of cultural identity and practice between and

among various social groups. Carnival employs an ‘esthetic of resistance’

(Bakhtin, 1984) that confronts and subverts hegem onic m odes of representation

and thus acts as a counter-he gem onic tradition for the contestations and conicts

embodied in constructions of class, nation, ‘race’, gender, sexuality and ethnic-ity.

The study treats globalization on two levels. First, it examines the socio-

cultural and political impact of globalization on the society of Trinidad as illus-

trated by the historical evolution of the carnival festival. Second, it looks at the

G L O B A L I Z A T I O N A N D T H E T R I N I D A D C A R N I V A L 6 6 3




5/31

transnational dimensions of the festival via the expansion abroad o f the Caribbean

diaspora. Before doing so, however, it explores the theoretical and historical sig-

nicance of carnivals. It concludes with an analysis of the relationship between

carn ival, popular culture and globalization theory.

Theo rizing/h istoricizing carnival

Carnival comes from the Latin word carnivale, m eaning ‘farewell to the esh’,

essentially referring to a period of celebration of the body, of physical abandon ,

wh ere licentiousness, hedonism and sexual excess are expressed in music,

dancing, m asquerading and feasting. Alm ost all cultures have something like a

carn ival event in their ritual calendar. For instance, you can nd the carnivalesquespirit in most A frican and A sian festivals, m arket fairs, harvest celebrations and

spring fertility rights wh ich pre-date contact with Europe (Scott, 1990).

In European culture, carnival is a synthesis of pagan rituals that share the

philosophy of opposites, like the Greek D ionysian festivals, Ro man Saturnalia and

the grotesque realism of m edieval carnivalesque an d baroque theatre (Shohat and

Stam, 1994: 302). The D ionysian festivals are essentially spring or harvest feasts

celebrated at the end of the w inter, dedicated to Dionysus, also known in Latin

as Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, excess and sensual pleasure (Mar tinez and

Aldana, 1994: 26). The Rom an Saturnalia is associated w ith ‘the R oman new year

festival of the Kalends of January w hich spread throughout the Rom an em pire

and was celebrated by the relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct and the

inversion of customa ry social status’ (Cowley, 1991: 1). Accordingly, it is argued

that ‘early Christianity found pagan R om e full of Satur nalia and other C arnival-

like activity and accom m odated it by dening the season for its exercise, and by

relating it to the ne ed, in a proselytizing religion, for abstinence and penitence’

(Bishop, 1991: 7). Carnival therefore evolved to become the ‘ last ing’ before

the Lenten period in the C hristian calendar. He nce the culmination of seasonalcarn ival activities on Sh rove Tuesday, wh en sins are shriven or confessed.

M ikhail Bakhtin (1984), the Russian theorist, argues that the ‘grotesque

realism’ of carnival is the outcom e of social conict and thus is revolutionary. Its

logic is one of ambivalence to the strictures of life. It circumvents dominant

m odes of representation and objectication, and confronts the limitations of

b in ar y opposi tions. Thus th e pe ople invo lved in it are both acto rs and sp ecta tors.

Th ey are both subjects and objects of laughte r. It is essentially a process of

m asking so as to unmask. M imicry, parody, satire, role reversals and symbolic

social inversion are the m ethods used to confront class, race and gender oppres-sion. In effect, carnival is a t ime w hen the world is turned upside-down:

Car nival em braces an anticlassical esthetic that rejects for m al harm ony and

unity in favor of the asymm etrical, the heterogeneous, the oxymoronic, the





6/31

m iscegenated. Carnival’s ‘grotesque realism’ turns conventional esthetics

on its head in order to locate a new kind of popular, convulsive, rebellious

beauty, one th at dares to revea l the gro tesque rie of th e powerful and th e

latent beauty of the ‘vulgar.’ In the carnival esthetic, everything is pregnantwith its opposite, within an alternative logic of perm anent contradiction

and non-exclusive opposites that transgresses the monologic true-or-false

thinking typical of a cer tain kind of positivist rationalism.

(Shohat and Stam, 1994: 302)

There is muc h debate as to how revolutionary or rebellious carnivals are. For

exam ple, som e argue that carnivals have been used by elites as a safety-valve for

political tensions by institutionalizing these festivals and mak ing them a mec han-

ism for social release and control. Indeed, there have always been attempts bydom inant groups to tam e and sanitize the carnival, or to elim inate it altogether,

as was the case in England in the eighteenth century:

O nce upon a time in this country the natives held carnivals. Every year, at

Southwark, Bartholomew and elsewhere great fairs took place, and judging

from the popular prints that survive (such as Hogarth’s) the atmosphere

was one of drunken merr iment, vulgarity and violence. It was mostly the

labouring classes who were involved. The fairs were occasions for release

from grinding toil. They offered fantasies of art, wealth and privilege.

Henc e wome n of low repute donned the costum es of gentle ladies and per-

formed working-class versions of plays with classical themes.

Th ere was every conce ivable form o f popular entertainmen t – acrobats,

rope-dancers, dwarfs, jugglers and clowns performed ‘comick arts, dances

and songs, with scenes and machines never seen before’. W hores, pick-

pockets, peddlers of dubious wares and quack s selling all m anner of drugs,

m ingled w ith the crowd. And frequently the constables were pelted with

stones or assaulted with sticks wh en they intervened to make arrests. Theauthorities sought to restrict, and eventually ban, the great fairs, arguing

that they were a threat to Christian decenc ies and to the law an d orde r of

the kingdom. They succeeded.

(Dabydeen, 1988: 40)

The above quote highlights two important points that infor m this article. The

rst is that it illustrates how, for the dispossessed and disenchanted, carniva-

lesque rituals and arts have operated as mec hanisms for inverting, subverting

and deconstructing the mo ral and philosophical bases of societal strictures, con-ventions and power relat ions, if only temporarily and sym bolically. W hat it

shows as well is that while ‘oppressed people m ight have difculty in imag ining

the precise contours of an alternative society they have no trouble in imag ining

a reversal of the existing distribution of status and rewards’ (Shohat and Stam ,





7/31

1994: 304). The validity of the safety-valve thesis can thus be questioned. Scott

argues that:

It is surely not accu rate to proceed a s if carnival were set up ex clusively bydom inant groups to allow subor dinate groups to play at rebellion lest they

resort to the real thing. The existence and the evolving form of carnival

have been the outcom e of social conict, not the unilateral creation of

elites.

(1990: 178)

Sco tt argues that we should instead see carnival as an ‘amb iguous political victory

wrested from elites by subordinate groups’ (ibid.). He adds that:

A co mp lex social event like carn ival cannot be said to be sim ply this or that

as if it had a given, genetically programmed, function. It makes greater

sense to see car nival as the r itual site of various form s of social con ict and

symbolic manipulation, none of wh ich can be said, prima facie, to prevail.

(ibid.)

Scott’s argument resonates with that of Shohat and Stam who conclude that:

Car nivals, and carnivalesque artistic practices, are not essentially progres-

sive or regressive; it depends on who is carnivalizing whom , in what his-

torical situation, for what purposes, and in what manner. Actual carnivals

form shifting congurations of sym bolic practices, complex crisscrossings

of ideological manipulation and utopian desire, their political valence

changing w ith each context. O fcial power has at times used carnival to

channel energies that m ight otherwise have fueled popular revolt, but just

as often carnival has provoked elite anxiety and been the object of ofcial

repression.(1994: 304)

Th e second consideration that emerges from Daby deen’s observation (as quoted

above) is that the Europea n carnival form has becom e less rebellious and politi-

cally vibrant with the rise of the modern industrial culture. For example, in

Britain, by the m id-1850s the carnivalesque fairs were considered ‘out of date

and too rowdy for the respectable m id-Victorians’ (Berland, 1992: 41). In fact

Sho hat and Stam argue that ‘Europea n real-life carnivals have generally degener-

ated into the ossied repetition of perennial rituals’ (1994: 302). In contrast, thecarnivals of Latin America and the Caribbean have evolved to be dynamic and

politically engaging. Throughout the A mer icas – from R io’s carnival in Brazil

(Taylor, 1982), the carnivals of Santiago de Cuba (Brea and Millet, 1995), to the

Barranquilla carnival in Colombia (M artinez and Aldana, 1994) and all the





8/31

carnivals in between – carnivals are a reection of the conguration of social

forces and the conict that arises from them as well as the submer ged aspirations

and tensions of the respective societies. O ne analyst argues, for instance, that car-

nival is about the aestheticization of politics and ‘is thus politics masquerading beh in d cu ltural forms’ (C ohen , 199 3: 132). In Bra zi l ‘the car niva l i s in form ed by

cultural mem ories of the African ancestral past, a pagan inuence that subverts

the ofcial Catholic inst itution’ (Lawlor, 1993: 2). Throughout the Caribbean,

the carnivals in the post-independence period have been expressions of island

identity, regional harm ony and black identity (Manning, 1978).

The carnivals of the Am ericas, to different degrees, have acted as a ritual site

for sociocultural contestations and esthetic resistance, between a he gemonic4

European group and subordinate indigenous, creole, mestizo and African

peoples. Th ey generally embo dy rituals of social protest that critique and parodythe process of enforced hybridization and transculturation embed ded in colonial

and neocolonial society. M any of the car nival celebrations involve transgressive

activities that are aimed at redening or accommodating the resultant hetero-

geneous cultural and racial identities and contested cultural spaces that are an

outcome of globalization processes.

The Trinidad ca rn ival

The social and cultural origins of the Trinidad carnival are varied and are essen-

tially a reection of the multi-ethnic composition and history of the society.

Colonized by the Spanish after the conquest of Columbus in 1498, Trinidad, with

a small population of Spanish and indigenous Indians, was one of Spain’s mo st

underpopulated and uncultivated territories in the A m ericas. After almost three

centuries of neglect, the Spanish, in the period of the ‘Bourbon reform s’, pro-

mulgated the Cedula d e Poblacion in 1783. Its principal objective was to encour-

age migration to the island of Catholic settlers (Pearse, 1988: 4). In return theywere granted land (whites were granted twice as much as others) and received

import, trade and tax benets. The inux cam e essentially from French creole

planters, coloureds and slaves from the French West Indies: Saint Dom ingue,

Martin ique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Lucia and Grenada. This group o f

migrants were prompted by the instability generated by the French Revolution

and the fear of slave revolt (which was realized in the successful Haitian Revol-

ution of 1804) and the threat of a Franco-English war (Koningsbruggen, 1997:

11).

A rap id increase in migrants followed the Cedula: coloureds from Venezuela;Corsicans, Scots, Swiss, Germans, Ita lians from Europe; freed Afr icans from

North Am erica; slaves imported from West Africa (e.g. Yoruba); and African

creole slaves from the Br itish West Indian islands, especially Barbado s, St Vincent

and Tobago. The slave population rose the fastest, doubling between 1797 and





9/31

1810, and accounting for two-thirds of the population. An A fro-creole culture

bec am e th e wor kin g-class culture (B re reto n, 1993).

In 1797 Trinidad passed into the h ands of the British and stayed so until inde-

pendence in 1961. The French plantocracy remained the core of the agro-basedecon omy (sugar, then the coc oa industry after the crisis in the sugar trade in the

1840s) and outnumbered the British throughout the nineteenth century. The

British were the colonial adm inistrators and m erchants. Elite white and coloured

society becam e split between a subordinate English, Anglican culture and a do mi-

nant French, Catholic, creole culture, which was critical in shaping the carnival.

English culture emphasized Christmas rather than carnival. The elite culture

bec am e m ore unied an d an glicize d by the late nin eteenth centu ry, when it co l-

lapsed into a more unied anglicized culture.

The ethnic m ake-up of Trinidad becam e more com plex after the emancipationof African slaves in 1834. The resultant labour shortage on the plantations led to

the impor tation of indentured labour from A sia, a small number from Ch ina who

becam e shopkee per s an d a much larg er quan tity from India who replac ed Afr ican

labour which h ad ed from the agr icultural estates. Indian indentureship lasted

from 1845 to 1917. The late nineteenth century also saw the arrival of a small

num ber of Syrians and Lebanese who became traders and small entrepreneurs.

Trinidad by the turn of the twentieth century was a m ulticultural and diverse

ethnic com mu nity. Trinidad occupies a peculiar position in the Caribbean history

of colonialism and plantation society. According to Brereton (1993), Trinidad

deviates from the traditional conception of Caribbean society from three per-

spectives: the late entry of the colony into export-oriented p lantation agr icul-

ture; the brevity of slavery and the varied cultural experience of the African

popu lation; and the size of the m iddle class and diversity of the ethnic groups in

the imm ediate post-emancipation period. The carnival reects this com plexity

as well as exhibiting the social differentiation and con testation that cam e w ith the

global processes of European colonialism and moder nism. The result was a dis-

t inctly ‘American phenomenon’ (Nettleford, 1988: 193), a process of enforcedhybridity and interm ixture between African and European cultures, what G ilroy

refers to as the ‘double consciousness’ of the black Atlantic culture (1993).

N ettleford reinforces the po int by arguing that:

By the time the latecom er East Indians, Chinese and Lebanese from the

Levantine Coast entered the region, the rules of the gam e had been m ade;

not even the overw helm ing ma jority East Indian population of Guyana and

the sizable minority of the same group in Trinidad has jerked these coun-

tries out of their historical Euro-African or Afro-Creole realities. Car nivaland Jonkonnu are unashamedly A fro-Creole o r Euro-African expressions,

claiming a p articular authenticity over Divali (Festival of Lights) and Ho say

as genuine ancestral Caribbean expressions.

(1988: 193)





10/31

The origins of the modern-day Trinidad carnival are related to the entry of the

French p lanters and A frican slaves after the Cedula. The French, being Catholic,

bro ught with th em th e ritual of th e Chris tian Shrovetide, which extende d from

the Christm as-New Year period to the carnival. In contrast, the Protestantcolonies restricted the revelry to the Ch ristmas-N ew Year festivities. Th is differ-

ence in European culture was the source of conict between the French plan-

tocracy and British colonial administration, exemplied by the unsuccessful

attempt by the British to demote the carnival during the nineteenth century

(Cowley, 1996: 11–12).

African carnivalesque traditions, which we re reported in several Caribbean

territories since the late eighteenth century, were also brough t to the island.

Known by different names, for exam ple, gumbe, jonkonu or kambula, the car-

nivalesque activit ies of dances, drumm ing, singing and m asking were derivedfrom West African religious culture and secret societies (Warner-Lew is, 1991:

180). The carn ivalesque activities were concentrated in the Christma s-New Year

season, the traditional time of freedom and licence for the slaves during the pre-

emancipation period. These activities are viewed as an example of the ritual

expression of conict in British West Indian slave plantations, what Ro ber t Dirks

(1987) refers to a s the ‘Black Saturnalia’. Contem porary Trinidad carnival con-

tinue s to draw from these A frican traditions in ter m s of costum ing, par ticularly

in the j’ou vert5 masquerades (Warner-Lewis, 1991) which have continued to be

the most rebellious and riotous aspect of the modern-day carnival:

Jo ur O uvert m as and its masquera ders provide th e so ciety w ith a se r ie s of

shocks. They confront society with itself. Jour Ouvert is a com plete strip-

ping-off of the life mask by its players to those looking on, sharing a col-

lective experience w ith them . . . there is an unmasking in Jour Ouvert in

counter-balance to masking in the carnival parade. Jour O uvert is thus a

mirror of the player who looks into himself and into society to shape and

reshape a p antheon o f contested political events.(Alleyne-Dettmers, 1995: 334)

Th e ideology of the carnival of the w hite French elite was exclusive and aris-

tocratic: very much like the Mardi Gras of New O rleans (Edmonson, 1988).

They held ‘elaborate masquerade balls, house-to-house visiting and street prom-

enading in carriages or on foot’ (Lee, 1991: 419). The coloured m iddle class and

the African slaves were not allowed to participate, excep t as slave perform ers.

The European upper class, in their masquerading, acted out themes relating to

the carnivalesque dialectic. For examp le, Johnson indicates that the white menpretended to be black ‘negue jardin’ (garden niggers or eld slaves) based on ‘the

bel iefs th at th e slaves were childish, se nsuous, he donist ic , and th e planters were

responsible, serious and civilized’ (1988: xiii). W hite wom en, on the other hand,

‘dressed themselves as coloured wom en, pretending that their husbands desired





11/31

them as they did their mulatoo mistresses’ (ibid.). This example illustrates how

race, sexuality and colonialism intersect to reproduce and perpetuate the spec-

tacle of the ‘other’ (Hall, 1997; Young, 1995).

The emancipation of African slaves in 1834 led to a reordering of thecarnival. The for mer slaves selected to celebrate their newly won freedom in car-

nivalesque style by reproducing and re-enacting the cannes brulees or Canboulay 6

procession on the night of 1 August, the date of their emancipation. In the eyes

of the European elite ‘the carnival had degenerated into a noisy and disorderly

amusement for the lower classes’ (Pearse, 1988: 20). The response from ofcial

culture was clear and unambiguous. The editor of the Port-of-Spain G azette argued

in 1838 that ‘the custom o f keeping the C arnival by allowing th e lower order o f

society to run about the streets in wretched masquerade belongs to other days,

and ought to be abolished in our own’ (quoted in Pearse, 1988: 22). The African-ization of the carnival provoked the construction of a racist stereotypical dis-

course. As Pearse indicates,‘the wh ite elite of the society withdrew from public

participation and the comments of their journalistic representatives became

increasingly hostile and condescending’ (1988: 21). The car nival festivities were

stigmatized as savage, vulgar, indecent, demonic, dangerous, rebellious, and c on-

sequently earn ed the title of ‘Jamette’, from the French ‘diam etre’, meaning the

underworld or the ‘other half’ (Crowley, 1988: 47). This mode of representation

facilitated surveillance and governmentability (Bhabha, 1994) which the

m oder n-day carnival still grapp les with in the n egotiation of cultural identities.

Th e carnival of the post-em ancipation period developed into an annual ritual

of social protest and resistance by the African population against the hegemony

of the European elite. Several attem pts were m ade to abolish the carnival, but to

no avail. Between 1878 and 1881 the po lice applied strong controls on the car-

nival. Things nally came to a head in 1881 resulting in what is known as the Can-

boulay riots. In the wake of the riots an accomm odation was brokered between

the authorities and the revellers. Subsequent years saw the carnival become more

orderly and sanitized. M asquerading at night, the carrying of lighted torches,stickghting, drum ming, dancing and congregations of people numbering ten or

more became prohibited under the 1884 Peace Preservation Ordinance

(Rohlehr, 1990: 30). By the 1890s, the carnival was brought under more effec-

tive control by the police, the coloured m iddle class began to participate in the

festival, carnival com petitions eme rged and the merch ants becam e aware of the

comm ercial benets (Pearse, 1988; Powrie, 1988). The fest ival took on a form

w hich in m any respects is still evident tod ay.

From the early twentieth century the carnival became consolidated. Three

m ain art-forms em erged to represent the distinctiveness of Trinidad carnival. Thecalypso,7 like its predecessor, the African songs, was didactic and satirical, and pro-

vided for political and social com me ntary (Rohlehr, 1990); the steelpan, or pan,8

w hich em erged after the Second World War, was the successor to the tambo o-

bam boo 9 and the A frican drum that was banned by the colonial authorities in the





12/31

1880s; and the masquerade or mas10 acted as a subversive form of street theatre

that challenged the Eurocentric sociocultural and political order (Hill, 1972). The

African ethos became central to the carnival and in m any ways gave it a new and

innovative spirit:

For if the mim etic tradition cam e to Trinidad in the form of the C arnivals

of the French plantocracy, the African slaves brought their own traditions

of masquerade and ritual as well but, and this may be more crucial, they

brought th e music, th e dan ce and the en er gy which it has to day an d whic h

the Africans, (moreso perhaps than any other segme nt of the population)

have, since slavery, been sustaining.

(B ishop, 1991: 8)

Early in the twentieth century the carnival became m ore com mercialized,

internationalized and ethnically pluralistic. Th e late nineteenth-cen tury refor-

mulations of the car nival facilitated the entry of all classes into the festival. For

the working classes the new co ntext required adjustment and innovation. The

African drums were replaced by the tamb oo-bamboo, the African protest songs

bec am e an glicized , th e performan ces bec am e more co mm ercia lized w ith th e

advent of calypso tents, and som e of the best exponents of the art-for m travelled

and recorded their music abroad. The middle classes’ entry into the carnival rep-

resented a periodic ‘safety-valve’ from their isolated position in society, having

rejected the black m asses and been rejected by the wh ites. It also allowed them

a temporary escape from the strictures of middle-class respectability (Burton,

1997); thus the primary value of carnival for them was the ‘excitement factor’

(Powrie, 1988). The participation of the white elite remained very much an

‘uptown affair’ reminiscent of the pre-emancipation carnival. The ir repression

of the working-class art-form s continued, as is evident in the Theatre and Dance

Hall Ordinance of 1934, wh ich allowed for police censorship and regulation of

calypsonians. Th e race, colour and class stratication of the plantation society stillrema ined evident, as the following quote from E rrol Hill illustrates so vividly:

The social classes still kept apart. In the m ain, one group o f revelers playing

traditional masquerades would tramp through the streets chanting cho-

ruses to the tambour-bamboo and bottle and spoon orchestras. Another

group of revelers led by their chantwell, and dancing to calypso refrains

accom panied by string-band mu sic, were drawn from the coloured middle-

class. Yet a third group parading in carriages or on a at-bed decorated

trucks and dressed as pirates, gypsies or harem damsels were from the highcoloured and wh ite merc hant and property classes.

(1972: 27)

The carnival began to emerge as a national festival after the Second World





13/31

War. The middle classes abandoned their oats for ma squerading in the streets

and becam e the m ain producers of what became k nown as ‘pretty ma s’: depoliti-

cized, fantasy-oriented costuming. The work ing classes transform ed the tamboo-

bam boos in to th e steelpan, th e world’s m ost re ce nt percuss ive inst rumen t. Therise of the independence and nationalist movements required populist symbols

to mobilize the population. On achieving independence, the Prime Minister, Dr

Eric W illiams, seized the initiative and established the Carnival Development

Com mittee (wh ich becam e the National Carnival Comm ission in the late 1980s)

in his rst year of governm ent. The C arnival proved to be an ideal political

vehicle for constructing an ‘imagined comm unity’ (Anderson, 1983) in a diverse

ethnic society:

It was indigenous, it cut across race, class, colour and creed. Importantly,it was still a festival with w hich the urban m asses strongly identied. M ore

than any other festival it could ex press the d istinctive Trinidadian style.

(Lee, 1991: 429)

The carnival also proved to be something of a safety valve for the political and

econom ic elite, as Lee explains:

The mounting tensions and conicts created by capitalism, the looming

shadow of racist politics, the bogey-man of economic collapse and a sudden

return to poverty are annually forgotten in the carnival season as the popu-

lation, anaesthetized by alcohol, drugs, music and wining, fetes its troubles

away.

(ibid.: 430)

Since the 1970s the carnival has been promoted, at hom e and abroad, either

as the ‘Greatest Show on E arth’ or a ‘Trini Party’ and, as such, much em phasis

w as placed on multiracial harm ony (‘national unity’), colourful pageantry (‘car-nival is colour’), fun-loving lyrics (‘soca par ty’) and body-revealing costumes

(‘bum bum time’). In the wake of the oil boom 11 of the 1970 s the carnival festi-

val, like the society, went through a process of rapid com mercialization and

modernization through competition and the professionalization of a number of

services (e.g. mas designer, pan arranger, fete promoter). The m asquerade bands

bec am e la rg er, m ore lavish (p retty mas), expe nsive an d at tract ive to th e m iddle

class. Traditional costuming such as devils, bats, minstrels, wild indians, sailors,

jab-jab s, jab mola si an d burro quites became displaced. Steel band s virtu ally dis-

appeared from the roadway during the days of carnival because of trafc con-gestion and the pan’s inability to compete with the electronic sound systems of

the DJs and the mobile music bands. As a result, steelbands were essentially

restricted to com petition events exce pt at j’ ou vert. Calypso music began moving

away from social commentary related to the tent format towards soca12 music





14/31

which has simpler lyrics and a heavier baseline and so a greater appeal at the

dance-halls and fetes. The vocalists from the m usic bands emerged to be the new

star performe rs.

Th ese transform ations are reected in shifts in gender, ethnicity and classroles in the festival. For instance, wome n have become the dom inant masquer-

aders, outnumbering me n by a ratio of four or ve to one and donning costumes

that emphasize sexuality and facilitate wining.13 The female masqueraders are

‘primarily working women whose lives are bedeviled by the triple roles of

consort, mother and employee’ (Bishop, 1991: 11). For them, playing mas has

bec ome ‘an enabling process in that it affords them a freedom which real life

denies and consequently makes real life bearable’ (B ishop, 1991: 11) . This is not a

new phenom enon. From the earliest days of the festival women have been chal-

lenging dom inant representations of fem ale sexuality, respectability and accessto public spaces (Ahye, 1991). W hat appears to be new is the increased partici-

pation of middle- and upper-class women as well as Indian women. The increased

participation of wom en in car nival is not only restricted to activities that use the

body as a si te of re si stan ce (A llen, 199 8). Female par ticipat io n in pan, tr ad ition-

ally a male domain, has also expanded, particularly among young women w ho

learn to play the pan at secondary school. This trend relates to the broadening

role of women in the society as well as the transitions that are taking place in

Caribbean masculinities. It also speaks to the dynam ic nature of the festival. As

Daniel M iller notes, the festival ‘seems to c hange its implications almost every

decade, facing about to address different aspects of Trinidadian society, now

emancipation, now class, now gender’ (1994: 130).

Since the 1990s carnival has become big business, especially in term s of cul-

tural tourism and cultural industry in each of the three key art-forms: mas, pan

and calypso. The Trinidad carnival has grown to be the premier festival in the

region, attracting between thirty and forty thousand visitors for the festival

which generates foreign exc hange earnings of over US$30 m illion. The car nival

arts have emerged to be the linchpin of the cultural industry sector which is inthe top ten foreign exchange e arners in the economy. The carnivalists benet

from the transnational economic ows that have been generated by the growth

of the overseas Caribbean carnivals in North A mer ica and Europe. The consoli-

dation of the diasporic com mu nity has led to the creation of year-round work for

musical artists, masquerade designers and other professionals from Trinidad. The

top calypsonians and music bands now enjoy regular work overseas from April

to October, outside of the traditional carnival season wh ich runs from January

to March each year. In addition, carnivalists have been able to tap into m arkets

outside of the diasporic com munities; for example, Peter Minshall, one of thetop mas designers, contributed to the costum ing and choreography for the

opening and closing ceremonies at the Barcelona and Atlanta Olym pics; and

several calypsonians and steelband ensembles travel throughout the world per-

forming in concerts and festivals (Nu rse, 1996, 1997).





15/31

The overseas Caribbean car nivals

It is estimated that there are over sixty overseas Caribbean carnivals in North

America and Europe.14 No other carnival can claim to have spawned so manyoffspring. These are festivals that are patterned on the Trinidad carnival or

borrow heavily from it in th at th ey incor por ate th e ar ti st ic fo rm s (p an , mas and

calypso) and the A fro-creole celebratory traditions (street parade/ theatre) of the

Trinidad carnival. O rganized by the diasporic Caribbean comm unities, the over-

seas carnivals have com e to symb olize the quest for ‘psychic, if not physical

return’ to an imagined ancestral past (Nettleford, 1988: 197) and the search for

a ‘pan-Car ibbean unity, a dem onstration of the fragile but persistent belief that

“All o’ we is one” ’ (Manning, 1990: 22). In the UK alone, there are as many as

thirty carnivals that fall into this category. They are held during the sum me rmonths rather than in the pre-Lenten or Shrovetide period associated with the

Ch ristian calendar. The m ain parade routes are generally through the city centre

or within the connes of the immigrant community – the former is predomi-

nant, especially with the larger carnivals.

Like its parent, the overseas carnival is hybrid in form and inuence. The

Jo nko nnu m asks of Jamaica and th e Bah am as, not reected in th e Tr in idad ca r-

nival, are clearly evident in m any of these carnivals, thereby making them pan-

Caribbean in scope. The car nivals have over time incorporated carnivalesque

traditions from other imm igrant comm unities: South A mericans (e.g. Brazilians),

Africans and A sians. For instance, it is not uncharacteristic to see Brazilian samba

drum me rs and dancers parading through the streets of London, Toronto or New

York during Notting Hill, Caribana or Labour Day. The w hite population in the

respective locations have also become par ticipants, largely as spectators, but

increasingly as fest ival managers, m asqueraders and pan players. Another

development is that the art-forms and the celebratory traditions of the overseas

Caribbean carnivals have been borrowed, appropriated or integrated into Euro-

pean carnivals to enhance them . Indeed, in some instances, the European carni-vals have been totally transform ed. Exam ples of this are the Barrow-in-Furness

and Luton carnivals w here there is a long tradition of British carnival. One also

nds a sim ilar trend taking place in carnivals in France, Germ any, the Nether-

lands, Switzerland and Sweden, as they draw inspiration from the success of the

Notting H ill carnival.

The rst overseas Caribbean carnival began in the 1920s in Harlem, New

York. This festival was later to becom e the Labour D ay celebrations in 1947,

the name that it goes by today (Nunley and Bettleheim, 1988: 166). The m ajor

overseas Caribbean carnivals, for example, Notting Hill and Caribana, becameinstitutionalized during the mid- to late 1960s at the peak in Caribbean

m igration. Nunley and Bettleheim (1988) relate the t iming to the rise in

nationalism in the Caribbean with the independence movement of the 1950s

and 1960s. The em ergence of the carnivals can also be related to the rise of black





16/31

power consciousness. The growth in the number and size of the overseas

Caribbean carnivals came in two waves. The r st involved the consolidation of

the early carnivals during the 1960s until the m id-1970s. From the m id-1970s,

two parallel developme nts took place: the early carnivals expanded in size by bro adening th e appeal of th e fe st iv al, fo r example , play ing reggae music; an d,

through demon stration effect, a numb er of sm aller carnivals em erged as satel-

lites to the larger, older ones.

Th e carn ivals have developed to be a means to prom ote cultural identity and

sociopolitical integration within the Caribbean diasporic community as well as

with the host society. Th e diversity in participation suggests that the overseas

Caribbean carnivals have become multicultural or poly-ethnic festivals (Cohen,

1993). For instance, M anning argues that the overseas Caribbean carnivals

provide:

a kind of social therapy that overcom es the separation and isolation impo sed

by the diasp or a and re store s to West In dian im m ig ran ts both a se nse of

com munity w ith each other and sense of connection to the culture that they

claim as a birthright. Politically, however, there is m ore to these carnivals

than cultural nostalgia. They are also a m eans through w hich West Indians

seek and sym bolize integration into the metropolitan society, by coming to

terms with the opportunit ies, as well as the constraints, that surround

them.

(1990: 35)

Manning’s explanation of the signicance of carnivals to the Caribbean dia-

spora is supported by the observations of Dabydeen:

For those of us resident in Br itain, the Notting H ill carnival is our living

link with this ancestral history, our chief m eans of keeping in touch w ith

the ghosts of ‘back hom e’. In a society wh ich constantly threatens or dimin-ishes black efforts, carnival has become an occasion for self-assertion, for

striking back – not w ith bricks and bottles but by beating pan, by conjur-

ing music from steel, itself a symbol of the way we can convert steely

oppression into celebration. We take over the drab streets and infuse them

with our colours. The m emo ry of the hardship of the cold winter gone,

and that to come, is eclipsed in the heat of music. We regroup our scat-

tered black communities from Birm ingham, Manchester, Glasgow and all

over the kingdom to one spot in London: a com ing together of proud cel-

ebration.(1988: 40)

Dabyde en goe s on to to illustrate that the carn ivals are an integrative force in an

otherwise segregated social milieu:





17/31

We also pull in crowds of native whites, Europeans, Japanese, Arabs, to

witness and participate in our entertainme nt, bringing alien peoples

together in a swam p or com munity of festivity. Carnival breaks down bar-

riers of colour, race, nationality, age, gender. And the police who wouldnorm ally arrest us for doing those things (making noise, exhibitionism,

drinking, or simply being black) are made to smile and be ever so courte-

ous, giving direction, telling you the time, crossing old people over to the

other side, undertaking all manner of unusual tasks. They fear that bricks

and bottles would y if they behaved as norm al. Thus the sight of smiling

policem en is absorbed into the general m asquerade.

(ibid.)

From another perspective it is argued that the overseas carnivals reectrather than contest institutionalized social hierarch ies. In each of the m ajor over-

seas car nivals the festival has bee n represented in w ays w hich t into the colon ial-

ist discourse of race, gender, nation and em pire (Bhabha, 1994). The festival has

suffered from racial and sexual stigmas and stereotypes in the media which are

based on co nst ructions of ‘o th er ness’ and ‘b lackness’. This si tu atio n beca me

heighte ned as the car nivals becam e larger and therefore more threatening to the

prevailing order. In the early phase, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the

carn ivals were viewed as exotic, received little if any press and were essentially

tolerated by the state authorities. From the mid-1970s, as attendance at the fes-

tivals enlarged, the carnivals became m ore menacing and policing escalated,

resulting in a backlash from the imm igrant Caribbean comm unity. Violent clashes

between th e Br itish police an d th e Nott ing H ill ca rnival cam e to the fo re in th e

m id- to late 1970s (Gutzmore, 1993). Similar confrontations occurred at the

other major overseas carnivals in New York and Toronto (Buff, 1997; M anning,

1983, 1990). Through a gendered lens ‘black’ male participants in the fest ivals

have been portrayed as ‘dangerous’ and ‘criminal’. Female participants, on the

other hand, are viewed as ‘erotic’ and ‘promiscuous’ (Hernandez-Ramdwar,1996).

These m odes of representation have come in tandem with heightened sur-

veillance mechanisms from the state and the police. In the case of London, the

expe nditure by the state on the po licing of the festival is several times larger than

its contribution to the staging of the festival. Th e politics of cultural represen-

tation has negatively affected the viability of the overseas carnivals. The adver se

publicity and racialized stigm as of violence, crim e and disorder has allowed for

the blockage of investments from the public and private sectors in spite of the

fact that the carnivals have proved to be violence-free relative to other largepublic events or festivals. In the case of the U K, for instance, ofcial gures show

that Notting Hill, which attracts two million people, has fewer reported inci-

dents of crime than the G lastonbur y rock festival which attracts 60,000 people.15

Yet the gene ral perception is that Notting H ill is more v iolence-prone.





18/31

Und er increased sur veillance the carnivals becam e m ore contained and con-

trolled during the 1980s. The perspective of governm ents, business leaders and

the me dia began changing w hen it was recognized that the carnivals were m ajor

tourist attractions and generated signicant sums in visitor expend itures. Forexample, the publication of a 1990 visitor survey of Caribana, wh ich showed that

the festival generated Cnd$96 million from 500,000 attendees (Decim a, 1991),

resulted in the Provincial Minister of Tourism and Recreation visiting Trinidad

in 1995 to see how the parent festival operated. Provincial fund ing for the festi-

val increased accordingly. In 1995, for the rst time, London’s Notting Hill car-

nival was sponsored by a large multinational corporation. The C oca-Cola

company, under it s product Lilt , a ‘ tropical’ beverage, paid the organizers

£150,000 for the festival to be called the ‘Lilt Notting Hill Carnival’ and for

exclusive rights to advertise along the masquerade route and to sell its softdrinks. That same year the BBC produced and televised a program m e on the

thirty-year history of the Notting Hill carnival. By the mid–1990s, as one Can-

adian analyst puts it, the carnivals were reduced to a few journalistic essentials:

‘the po licing and control of the crowd, the potential for violence, the weather,

island images, the size of the crowd, the city economy and, most recently, the

great potential benet for the provincial tourist industry’ (Gallaugher, 1995).

These developments created concern am ong some analysts. For example, Am kpa

argues that:

strategies for incorpo rating and neutralizing the po litical efcacies of car-

nivals by black com munities are already at work. Transnational corpora-

tions are beginning to sponso r some of the festivals and are contributing to

creating a m ass comm ercialized audience under the guise of bogus m ulti-

culturalisms.

(1993: 6)

Ano ther analyst saw the increasing role of the state in these term s:

The funding bodies appear to treat it as a social policy as part of the race

relations syndrome : a neutralised form of exotica to entertain the tourists,

providing images of Black wom en dancing with policemen, or failing this,

footage for the m edia to construct distortions and m is(sed)representations.

M oreover, this view also sees that, if not for the problems it causes the

police, courts, local authorit ies, and auditors, Carnival could be another

enterprising venture.

(McMil lan, 1990: 13–14)

In this respect one can argue that the sociopolitical and cultural conicts, based

on race, class, gender, ethnicity, nation and empire that are embedded in the

Trinidad car nival were transplanted to the m etropolitan context. In m any ways





19/31

the overseas carnivals, like the Trinidad parent, have become trapped between

the negative imagery of stigmas and stereotypes, the co-optive strategies of capi-

talist and state o rganizations and the desires of the car nivalists for ofcial funding

and validation.For the host societies in North Am erica and Europe, the overseas Caribbean

carnivals also allowed for an open and public display of the socioeconomic and

politico-cultural tensions that exist between the organs of oppression (i.e. the

state, police, media, church, school) and the C aribbean population. The carni-

valesque esthetic and politics confronted the hegemonic discourse and modes of

representation as they relate to stereotypes dealing with race, sexual behaviour

and crim inal activity. At o ne level it has forced a m ulticulturalism on to the

agenda. In other ways, it illustrates how little things have changed in term s of the

hegemonic colonialist discourse and imperialist structures.There is some debate as to whether the overseas carnivals have lost their

revolutionary potential, wh ether they have been co-opted a nd incorporated into

the capitalist production system. The issue, however, is that the host societies

have not remained untouched by the carnivals. They have forced a Caribbean

consciousness on their host societies. The C aribbean carnivals have not only

grown in size but they have also ‘colonized’ other carnivals, especially in Europe.

This has occurred largely because the Trinidad-inspired carnivals have a com-

petitive advantage in the kinetic movement of the costumes and the vibrancy of

the m usic and dancing. Thus, ‘once the liberating forces of ma s are felt by citi-

zens of these cities, they may learn to play mas as well’ (Nunley and Bettleheim,

1988: 181). They have reintroduced magic, fantasy and wonderm ent into the

long ossied carnivals of Europe and its diaspora (Nor th Am erica). From this

perspective one can argue that the overseas Caribbean carnivals are a powerful

cultural force which has expanded the g eoeconomic and geopolitical space for

Caribbean people, both at hom e and abroad. Awam Am kpa, in comm enting on

the Caribbean carnivals in the UK, for instance, notes that:

As victims of enforced hybridity due to displacem ents and marg inalizations

experienced in the h istories of the islands, the carnival performances recall

the African and the Asian origins of comm unities, and these do not only

hybridize the identities of people they share spaces w ith, but also the dom i-

nant culture to whose centre they have migrated.

(1993: 6)

It is also the case that the Caribbean carnivals, because they are forged from

the struggles against slavery, abhor closure and are inherently democratic andparticipatory. All are welcom e once they accept that ‘carnival suspends hierar-

chical distinctions, barriers, norm s, and prohibit ions, install ing instead a quali-

tatively different kind of comm unication based on “free and familiar contact” ’

(Shohat and Stam, 1994: 306). As Lawlor puts it, ‘carnival has no bouncers at





20/31

the door, no guards at the gate: it lets everyone and everything in’ (Lawlor,

1993: 3).

O ne of the neg ative consequ ences of this is that the carnivals have the ch arac-

teristics of free or collective goods and thus allow for free riding. At m ost of thecarnivals the people who make money contribute little if any nancial resource

in term s of grants or business sponsorship (e.g. hotels, restaurants, bars, airlines,

ground transportation, state authorities) while the organizers of the festival

generally run on m eagre nancial resources. As a result, the Caribbean carnivals

exhibit something of a contradiction: the carnivals generate large sums of m oney

but the org aniz in g units reta in ve ry litt le of th e pro ts. This al so occurs bec au se

the carnival organizers have not adopted enough o f an entrepreneu rial approach

to the festival. For this reason mo st of the carnivals nd them selves in a position

of resource dependenc y upon state and city authorities or corporate entities. Th econtributions are then generally viewed as subsidies rather than investments in

the public art process or festival tourism. W hen the carnivals are funded the

amounts granted are generally small relative to the mainstream arts and to the

economic impact that the festival makes.

From a political economy perspective the overseas carnivals are at a his-

torical turning po int. In the last decade they have grown in size and popularity

beyond anyone’s w ildest dream s. They have outg rown the manag er ia l an d en tre-

preneurial capabilities of the festival organizers. A nd they have becom e an indis-

pensable part of the respective cities’ tourism and festival calendar. This scenario

establishes an interesting context for the future of the overseas carnivals. In the

current recession-plagued period w here m ost developed country state agencies

nd them selves under severe nancial constraints, there is a strong tem ptation

to cut funds to the ar ts, especially ‘so-called’ multicultural or ethnic art. The shift

in the political spectrum to the right of centre has also made for a less suppor t-

ive environm ent. Th ese trends signal that the actors involved in putting on the

carnivals must begin to develop a strategy to enhance their income-earning

prospects independent of public support that is philanthropic in nature or cor-porate investment that are based on crass com me rcialism. Failure in this regard

is likely to result in the carnivals eventually being disbanded or taken over by

state agen cies or cor porate entities.

Th ese concer ns raises the issue of political consciousness and praxis within

the Caribbean com m unity. In term s of the transnational cultural politics of car-

nival, the Caribbean diaspora is not an entirely hom ogeneous group. There are

a number of schisms that impact on the politics of the overseas carnivals.

Jam aic an s outnum ber other is la nders (e.g. Tr in idadians) by a significa nt ra tio,

notably in the UK, and consequently there has been a strong contest between both g ro ups over what sh ould be in th e carniva l: reg gae ve rsus ca lypso ; static

sound system s versus mobile sound trucks. In part, the posit ion of Jamaicans

can be explained by the strength of their popular culture in the metropolitan

context. Another major conflict has been between Afro-Caribbean and





21/31

Indo-Caribbean g roups, especially in Toronto, where there is a s izeable Indian

population from Guyana and Trinidad. M uch heated debate has em erged as to

w hether the festival should be por trayed as a ‘Caribbean’ festival rather than a

‘black’ or Afro-Caribbean event. The former being viewed as more inclusivewas favoured by the Indo-Ca ribbean comm unity. Th is contrasts with the situ-

ation in the U K, w here the carnival has shifted from a ‘Caribbean thing’ to being

a ‘black Brit ish’ and even a national fest ival. The success of the carnivals has

encoura ged the jockeying for positions of power and ownership w ithin the festi-

val. In m any respects these contestations mirror the inherent fragmentation of

a multi-ethnic community and the process of continuous negotiation of iden-

tity that follows accordingly.

In sum, it is evident that, for the Caribbean diaspora, carnival has eme rged

as a basis for asser ting a pan-Caribb ean cultural identity and as a mode of resist-ance in an otherw ise alienating environm ent. Th e carnivals have also allowed for

integration as well as contestation with the dominant white population in

addition to the other imm igrant com munities within the host societies. In

tandem , the carnivals have had to confront colonialist and imp erialist discourses

and p ractices reminiscent of the threats faced by the parent carn ival in the nine-

teenth century. Financial challenges along with schisms based on race, ethnicity,

gender and nationality have factored in the Caribbean community’s ability to

m aximize on the geopolitical, econom ic and cultural space that the festival has

created. These conclusions reinforce the view that carnivals, like other popular

culture form s, involve the aestheticization of politics and are keenly contested by

different interest groups and social forces (Cohen, 1993), and thus defy simplis-

tic generalizations which view transgression and co-optation in oppositional

terms.

Trinidad carnival, globalization a nd p opular culture

Caribbean culture and society occupies a distinctive position in modern world

history. It is the rst area of the non-Eu ropean world to be fully incorporated

into the service of global capitalist development through export-oriented pro-

duction systems and impor t-dependent consumption structures and styles. In

this vein, it is argued that the region has the mo st penetrated and extroverted

society and economy, and has been grappling with the cultural challenges of

globalization and modernity for some ve hundred years.

Th e region’s historical developm ent has been shaped by the virtual exterm i-

nation of the indigenous population, the domination of a transplanted Europeanelite, the enslavement of Africans, the indentureship of A sians and the integration

of other groups from the M iddle East. The attendant processes of colonization

and imperialism created in its wake a new society, a modern culture, one

grou nded in the logic of capitalist accum ulation, social stratication and cultural





22/31

hybridization – all inform ed by racial, gender, ethnic and status-based oppres-

sion (M intz, 1993).

In the context of these structural rigidities the region has developed a

capacity to engage globalization and modernity creatively and politically bydrawing upon its popular cultures as a source of cultural identity while partici-

pating in the dominant Europeanized culture. Caribbean popular culture forms

have been an important mechanism for political resistance and social protest

against European cultural hegem ony by marginalized groups, especially the

African diasporic populations throughout the region. Carnival has been an arena

for the public display, negotiation and con testation of the varied so cial tensions

and struggles of the society. Car nival is one of the m ost accurate representations

of a society, as it allows for the unmasking of hidden transcripts and agendas

(Scott, 1990). For instance, Stuart Hall argues that popular culture:

is an arena that is profoundly mythic. It is a theater of popular desires, a

theater of popular fantasies. It is where we discover and play with the

identications of ourselves, whe re we are imagined, wh ere we are repre-

sented, not only to the audiences out there who do not get the me ssage,

but to ourse lves fo r th e rst tim e.

(1992: 32)

Hall also reminds us that popular culture operates in a contradictory space

bec au se ‘ it is ro oted in popula r ex perien ce an d availab le fo r ex pro pr ia tion at one

and the same time’ (ibid.: 26). As a result there tends to be a ne line between

popular cultural practice and hegemonic culture in terms of resistance and

incorporation:

popular culture has historically become the dominant form of global

culture, so it is at the same time the scene, par excellence, of commodi-

cation, of the industries where culture enters directly into the circuits of adominant technology – the circuits of power and capital.

But it can never be simplied or explained in ter ms of the simple binary

oppo sitions that are still habitually used to ma p it out: high and low; resist-

ance versus incorporation; authentic versus inauthentic; experiential

versus form al; opposition versus hom ogenization.

(ibid.)

Hall therefore enco urages us to m ove away from the essentializing of differ-

ence through the con struction of simple binary oppo sitions to focus on culturalpositionality wh ere the e mp hasis is on appreciating the ‘dialogic strategies an d

hybrid form s essential to the diaspora aesthetic’ (1992: 29). This approach to

understanding the politics and poetics of popular culture is premised on the

view that ‘identity is not singular or monolithic and is instead “multiple,





23/31

shifting, and often sel f-contradictory identity . . . made up of heterogeneous

and heteronomous representations of gender, race, and class” ’ (Tucker, 1990:

7). Therefore, in Caribbean culture one can say clearly that there are no pure

form s and that everything is hybridized or the result of the confluence of severalcultural traditions. Th e dynam ics of this exper ience on the African diaspora has

been desc ribed as one of ‘d ouble co nsc iousnes s’ by Pa ul Gilroy (1 993). T he

nego tiation of cultural identity by Caribbean p eople takes on an additional twist

with the emergence of a diaspora in North America and Europe after the

Second World War, w hat Stuart Ha ll (1991) refers to as the ‘twice diasporized’

peoples.

The above approach appears to have some relevance for interpreting the

sociocultural and political signicance o f Caribbean car nivals and other m odes of

popular culture. For instance, the debate between resistance and incorporation isclearly evident in discussions about Caribbean popular culture given the long

history of participation in the global circuits of capitalist industry. Car ibbean

music has been commercialized and internationalized since the turn of the

century w hen recording companies like C olumbia and Victor recorded calypsos

in Trinidad (Hill, 1993; Rohlehr, 1990). In recent decades reggae has grown to

bec om e th e do m inant Third World ar t- fo rm in th e global ci rc ui t. It is th erefo re

argued that reggae has moved from being a local art-form to become a global

com mod ity. It is also argued that this transition did not occur without some

am ount of corporate manipulation and textual reconguration to meet perceived

Western m arket considerations. For example, Carolyn C ooper, in commenting

on the inter nationalization of reggae m usic, notes that ‘raw talent would no t have

bee n e noug h w ithout the operat ions o f inte rnat io nal ca pi ta l’ (1 993: 5). Cush m an

also argues that ‘in its diffusion, reggae m usic was transformed from a form of

cultural criticism into a cultural com mod ity’ (1991: 18–19).

The carnival industry seems poised to experience some of these contesta-

tions as it becomes further com modied. It is also evident that the g lobalization

of carnival has empowered C aribbean peop le at hom e and in the diaspora throughan expansion of geopolitical, econom ic and cultural space. The rapid growth of

attendance and e conomic activity at Ca ribbean carnivals in Nor th Am erica and

Britain illustrates the underexplored political and economic potential of

Caribbean popular culture (Nurse, 1996, 1997). The question that emerges,

therefore, is what is the transform ational potential of the various m odes of

Caribbean popular culture in terms of deepening the process of cultural con-

dence, building a sustainable and cohesive C aribbean identity, and facilitating a

reorientation of the dom inant developme nt paradigm such that greater attention

would be given to indigenous resources and capabilities? These concerns areechoed by Nettleford:

But to the ordinary people, festival arts are m ore than minstrelsy; they

afrm the use of the mask, literally and metaphorically, in coming to terms





24/31

or coping with an environment that has yet to work in their interest, a

society that is yet to be m astered and controlled by them, despite the

com ing of Independence.

(1988: 194)

Trinidad car nival and glob alization theo ry

The foregoing analysis of the historical and g lobal significance of Trinidad car-

nival presents som e challenges to globalization theory. It sugge sts that the

globalization of Trinidad carn ival needs to be viewed as a dua l process: the first

relates to the localization of global influences and the secon d involves the glo baliz-

ation of local impulses. Drawing from the case of Trinidad carnival one can there-fore argue that the formation of carnival in Trinidad is based upon the

localization of global influences. The Trinidad carnival is the historical outcome

of the hybridization of multiple ethnicities and cultures brought together under

the rubric of colonial and capitalist expansion. New identities are forged and

negotiated in the process. On the other hand, the exportation of carnival to

overseas diasporic comm unities refers to the globalization of the local. The

overseas Caribbean carnivals have grown in scale and scope beyond the

confines of the immigrant population to embrace, if not ‘colonize’, the wider

comm unity in the respective host societies. This is what is referred to as

‘globalization in reverse’. In sum, the overseas carnivals have becom e a basis

for pan-Caribbean identity, a m echanism for social integration into metro-

politan society and a ritual act of transnational, transcultural, transgressive poli-

tics.

An other observation is that historically, core societies are the ones most

involved in the globalization of their local culture. For example, in most devel-

oped econom ies cultural industry expor ts are seen as par t of foreign econom ic

policy. They recognize that per petuating or transplanting one’s culture is a criti-cal factor in inuencing international public opinion, attitude and value judge-

me nt. Peripheral societies are those that are mo re subject to impor ting cultural

inuences as opposed to expor ting them . It is also the case that when periph-

eral societies expor t their culture they often lack the organizational capability

and the political and economic leverage to control or maximize the commer-

cial returns. Th is is in ma rked contrast to the capabilities of core societies whe re

there is not only an a bility to maxim ize on expor ts but also to co-opt impor ted

cultures. W hat it comes down to is who is globalizing whom . In this business

there are ‘globalizers’ and ‘globalizees’, those wh o are the producers and thosewho are just consum ers of global culture. In this regard, it is far too premature

to argue, as Appadurai (1994) has suggested, that centre–periphery theories

lack explanatory capability when it comes to transform ations in the global cul-

tural econ omy.





25/31

From this perspective one can argue that Trinidad, like other periphe ral coun-

tries, has been on th e receiving end of globalization excep t in the case of its car-

nival. Th is is to say that in an evaluation of globalization an appreciation for the

resultant political hierarchies and asymm etries must be evident and caution should be em ployed so as not to co ns tr uct new myth ologie s of chang e that dep olitici ze

the systemic properties of the capitalist world system (Waller stein, 1983). In this

regard, it is critical that the relevant historical period is conceptualized. Th e case

of the Trinidad carn ival suggests that the growth of historical capitalism in the past

ve h undred years is pivotal to u nderstanding the causal relations and social forces

that shaped and have evolved from the festival, both locally and globally, both in

the recent past and the longue du rée.

Another critical methodological issue is the conceptualization of space.

Beca use of the heavy reliance o n statecentric and nationalist analyses in the socialsciences a wide array of activities and structures have escaped mainstream

thought. The argum ent here is that the world has not changed as much as some

m ake out, rather, it is that our awareness of change has been sharpened by the

inadequacy of conventional thought. For example, one of the m ajor contributions

of postcolonial theo ry has been to introduce diaspora as a unit of analysis. This

approac h is particularly applicable to the case of Trinidad carnival, given the dual

processes of globalization identied. The Trinidad carnival and its overseas off-

spring ts into Gilroy’s concept of a Black Atlantic (1993) where ‘double con-

sciousness’ and transnationalism are focal processes in the Caribbean’s

experience with globalization.

The study of the Trinidad carnival and its overseas offspring illustrates

that globalization presents opportunities for some reversal in hegemonic

trends. However, the case study shows that globalization is not a benign process

and that there are limited possibilities for transform ation, given the strictures

and rigidities in the global political econom y. T he limitations are systemic in

nature in that they relate to large-scale, long-term processes such as colonial-

i st d iscourse (Bhabha, 1994) and imperia li sm (Addo, 1986). In per iphera lsocieties the political and economic elite are generally insecure and view the

social protest in popular culture with mu ch trepidation. They are therefore

loath to acknowledge, far more invest in, the globalizing potential of the local

popular culture. They are m ore likely to denigrate and marginalize it, and

failing that, to co-opt it. Conseq uently, the tendency is for local capabilities not

to be fully m aximized at home. This suggests that the future contribution of

Trinidad carnival to global culture may begin to move outside the control of

the parent carnival and the home territory if a localized global strategy is not

developed.Historically, the carnivalesque spirit of festivity, laughter and irreverence

Globalization Diaspora Hybridity and Identity

Documents