Memory and the Archival Turn in Caribbean Literature and Culture - Hardcover

by Marta Fernández Campa (Author)

This book discusses an archival turn in the work of contemporary Caribbean writers and visual artists across linguistic locations and whose work engages critically with various historical narratives and colonial and postcolonial records. This refiguration opens a critical space and retells stories and histories previously occluded in/by those records, and in spaces of the public sphere. Through poetics and aesthetics of fragmentation largely influenced by music and popular culture, their work encourages contrapuntal ways of (re)thinking histories; ways that interrogate the influence of colonial narratives in processes of silencing but also centre the knowledge found in oral histories and other forms of artistic archives outside official repositories. Discussing literature and selected artwork by artists from Britain, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago, Memory and the Archival Turn in Caribbean Literature and Culture demonstrates the historiographical significance of artistic and cultural production.

Back Jacket

This book discusses an archival turn in the work of contemporary Caribbean writers and visual artists across linguistic locations and whose work engages critically with various historical narratives and colonial and postcolonial records. This refiguration opens a critical space and retells stories and histories previously occluded in/by those records, and in spaces of the public sphere. Through poetics and aesthetics of fragmentation largely influenced by music and popular culture, their work encourages contrapuntal ways of (re)thinking histories; ways that interrogate the influence of colonial narratives in processes of silencing but also centre the knowledge found in oral histories and other forms of artistic archives outside official repositories. Discussing literature and selected artwork by artists from Britain, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago, Memory and the Archival Turn in Caribbean Literature and Culture demonstrates the historiographical significance of artistic and cultural production.

Marta Fernández Campa is an associate lecturer at Goldsmiths University, and a former Fulbright scholar and Leverhulme fellow. She has researched and taught at the University of East Anglia, UK, the University of Saint Louis, Spain, and the University of Miami, USA. Her work has appeared in Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970-2020, Vol. 3, and in journals such as Anthurium, Callaloo, Journal of West Indian Literature and Small Axe.

Author Biography

Dr. Marta Fernández Campa is an independent scholar whose research and writing focuses on historical memory, Caribbean literature, and visual culture. She is a former Fulbright and Leverhulme fellow and has researched and taught at various universities including the University of East Anglia and the University of Saint Louis (Madrid). She has edited a special issue on Caribbean archives in the Journal of West Indian Literature. Her work has appeared in the anthology Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970-2020, Vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press), and in journals such as Anthurium, Callaloo, Comma and Small Axe.