Towards a trans-Caribbean poetics: A new aesthetic of power and resistance

Flores-Rodriguez, Daynali

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Description

Title

Towards a trans-Caribbean poetics: A new aesthetic of power and resistance

Author(s)

Flores-Rodriguez, Daynali

Issue Date

2011-05-25T15:02:22Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Palencia-Roth, Michael

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Palencia-Roth, Michael

Committee Member(s)

• Castro, Nancy E.
• Goldman, Dara E.
• Tosta, Luciano

Department of Study

Comparative & World Literature

Discipline

Comparative Literature

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Trans-Caribbean Poetics
• Caribbean literature
• Latin American literature
• Caribbean literature - History and criticism
• Latin American literature - history and criticism
• Junot Diaz
• Edwidge Danticat
• Julia Alvarez
• Caribbean fiction - 20th century

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes how Caribbean-American writers living elsewhere challenge common ideas about power, violence and oppression through the reinterpretation of Caribbean dictatorial regimes in their fiction, and how their stories fare in comparison to other narrative traditions such as the Latin American dictator novel genre. The works of Julia Alvarez (The Dominican Republic), Edwidge Danticat (Haiti) and Junot Díaz (The Dominican Republic) share thematic and biographical similarities and reveal an emerging aesthetic with definite textual and thematic traits that I identify as Trans-Caribbean, a poetics with four main constitutive aspects. First, it addresses the tensions between individualism and collectivism in Caribbean discourse. Second it addresses the implicit role of logo centrism in shaping cultural narratives. Third, it presents fragmentation as a phenomenon that is both discursive and thematic. Finally, it develops the multiple strategies of visual and linguistic disruption in order to suspend normative representations of Caribbean identity. Trans-Caribbean Poetics is trans-continental, fragmentary, personal, relational and multilingual and suggests a plausible model to analyze discursive relations in a transnational context.

Graduation Semester

2011-05

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Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2011 Daynali Flores-Rodriguez

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