"For through this experience made you, original victim floating toward the sea's abysses, an exception, it became something shared and made us, the descendants, one people among others. Peoples do not live on exception. Relation is not made up of things that are foreign but of shared knowledge. This experience of the abyss can now be said to be the best element of exchange." --Glissant, 1997
In this seminar, we will think with Glissant as well as others on how the Caribbean is a space of "relation." One of the main questions that we will address throughout the course is what are the historical, social, and physical mechanisms that define the Caribbean and its relationship to other geographies produced through slavery and colonialism? To answer this question we will engage the work of geographers, historians, and anthropologists, interested in the formation of political, cultural, and economic life in the Caribbean. |