Jamaica's Difficult subjects: negotiating sovereignty in Anglophone Caribbean literature and criticism

Synopsis

Recognizing That In The Contemporary Postcolonial Moment, National Identity And Cultural Nationalism Are No Longer The Primary Modes Of Imagining Sovereignty, Sheri-marie Harrison Argues That Postcolonial Critics Must Move Beyond An Identity-based Orthodoxy As They Examine Problems Of Sovereignty. In Jamaica's Difficult Subjects: Negotiating Sovereignty In Anglophone Caribbean Literature And Criticism, Harrison Describes What She Calls Difficult Steps - Subjects That Disrupt Essentialized Notions Of Identity As Equivalent To Sovereignty. She Argues That These Subjects Function As A Call For Postcolonial Critics To Broaden Their Critical Horizons Beyond The Usual Questions Of National Identity And Exclusion/inclusion. Harrison Turns To Jamaican Novels, Creative Nonfiction, And Films From The 1960s To The Present And Demonstrates How They Complicate Standard Notions Of The Relationship Between National Identity And Sovereignty. She Constructs A Lineage Between The Difficult Subjects In Classic Caribbean Texts Like Wide Sargasso Sea By Jean Rhys And The Harder They Come By Perry Henzell And Contemporary Writing By Marlon James And Patricia Powell. What Results Is A Sweeping New History Of Caribbean Literature And Criticism That Reconfigures How We Understand Both Past And Present Writing. Jamaica's Difficult Subjects Rethink How Sovereignty Is Imagined, Organized, And Policed In The Postcolonial Caribbean, Opening New Possibilities For Reading Multiple Generations Of Caribbean Writing. -- From Back Cover. Introduction. The Politics Of Sovereignty In Postcolonial West Indian Literary Discourse -- Who Worked This Evil, Brought This Distance Between Us?: Sex And Sovereignty In Sylvia Wynter's The Hills Of Hebron -- What You Say, Elsa?: Postconolian Sovereignty And Gendered Self-actualization -- No, My Girl, Try Bertha: Race, Gender, Nation, And Criticism In Wide Sargasso Sea And Lionheart Gal -- Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Nation: Queering Twenty-first-century Caribbean Literature. Sheri-marie Harrison. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 181-188) And Index.