Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Cartographic Memories and Geographies of Pain: Bodily Representations in Caribbean Women's Art

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    umi-umd-3883.pdf (1.904Mb)
    No. of downloads: 2545

    Date
    2006-11-08
    Author
    Wallace, Belinda Deneen
    Advisor
    Collins, Merle
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Definitely, this dissertation's central intellectual and political aims are rooted in a guiding principle of Caribbean womanhood; and, with black women's bodies located at the center, the goal of this study is to provide new alternatives to understanding "writing the body" by looking to Caribbean women's cultural products as sites of theory formation. The artists and the works selected for this study demonstrate an awareness of the need for a re-evaluation of the metaphor of writing the body which takes into account the specificities of race, ethnicity and nationality. To that end, this study focuses on texts and performances by Caribbean women in order to examine the development of a Caribbean feminist consciousness and its ability to not only convey but also legitimate Caribbean female perspectives and experiences. Dionne Brand, Edwidge Danticat, Marion Hall, Joan Riley and Myriam Warner-Vieyra provide us with an opportunity to trace the processes through which Caribbean women artists write their own bodies and how those bodies can be used to explore larger issues around identity, geography and history. In the music and performances of Marion Hall this project looks closely at the intricacies that comprise women's sexuality, sexual autonomy and sexual identity beyond their objectification as sexual objects for men. In Warner-Vierya's Juletane, Riley's The Unbelonging and Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory, the study examines the metropolis as a source of contamination that forces us to recognize madness as a socio-cultural and historical construct with gender specific consequences. Finally, the study concludes with Danticat's The Farming of Bones and Brand's In Another Place, Not Here, where it investigates literary representations of the female body as a representative text that disrupts the official narrative and brings forth a uniquely female historical subjectivity.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/4097
    Collections
    • English Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility