Poetics of the Colonial Plantation in the Caribbean
Poetics of the Colonial Plantation in the Caribbean
an archive of an impossible silence
This investigation responds to the ubiquity of plantation tropes evidenced in numerous works of contemporary art depicting life in the Caribbean since the beginning of the 20th century. Through the study of contemporary installation pieces, and by integrating visual arts, literature, economic politics, and social history,this re4search further develops the idea of the plantation as a migratory concept defined by the interconnection of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism.
The installation pieces discussed have the potential to produce an archive for a contemporary historiography of plantations that can update and rebuild memory. This work compiles new poetics that seek to exist within its own impossibility of existence; an archive of silence, of the seemingly invisible, the oppressed, and memory.
The installation pieces discussed have the potential to produce an archive for a contemporary historiography of plantations that can update and rebuild memory. This work compiles new poetics that seek to exist within its own impossibility of existence; an archive of silence, of the seemingly invisible, the oppressed, and memory.