Taking up the challenge of redefining modernity from a Caribbean
perspective instead of assuming that the North Atlantic view of
modernity is universal, Maria Cristina Fumagalli shows how the
Caribbean's contributions to the modern world not only provide a
more accurate account of the past but also have the potential to
change the way in which we imagine the future. Fumagalli uses the
myth of Medusa's gaze turning people into stone to describe the way
North Atlantic modernity freezes its "others" into a state of
perpetual backwardness that produces an ethnocentric narrative
based on homogenization, vilification, and disempowerment that
actively ignores what fails to conform to the story it wants to
tell about itself. In analyzing narratives of modernity that
originate in the Caribbean, the author explores the region's
refusal to succumb to Medusa's spell and highlights its strategies
to outstare the Gorgon.
Reflecting a diversity of texts, genres, and media, the chapters
focus on sixteenth-century engravings and paintings from the
Netherlands and Italy, a scientific romance produced at the turn of
the twentieth century by the king of the Caribbean island Redonda,
contemporary collections of poetry from the anglophone Caribbean, a
historical novel by the Guadeloupean writer Maryse Conde, a Latin
epic, a Homeric hymn, ancient Egyptian rites, fairy tales, romances
from England and Jamaica, a long narrative poem by the Nobel Prize
winner Derek Walcott, and paintings by artists from Europe and the
Americas spanning the seventeenth century to the present.
"Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity "offers an original and
creative contribution to what it means to be modern.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
