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The Politics of Hybridity

Race, Gender, and Nationalism in Trinidad

University of Texas at Austin, USA Ltanikella{at}mail.utexas.edu

National and academic discourses on the Caribbean celebrate metaphors of cultural hybridity as pluralistic solutions to racial tensions and challenges to (neo-)colonial oppression within the region's nation states. When cultural hybridity is theorized and deployed as a metaphor for Caribbean national sovereignty, differences are reified and power and social inequalities erased, thereby limiting the potential of hybrid social forms and movements to challenge structural inequalities. This article critiques celebratory discourses of hybridity by focusing on Trinidadian women's writing and the ways in which Trinidadian women locate themselves in their cultural and social poetics. By rereading hybridity as a space in and through which Trinidadian women voice their subjectivities, I situate creative practice as a politics that calls into question and attends to social inequalities within Caribbean nation states.

Key Words: Caribbean • creolization • gender inequalities • nationalism • race • Trinidad

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