Of “Madness,” Against Babylon: A Story of Resistance, (Mis)Representation, and Paradox in the Caribbean

Greenidge, Adaeze and Gahman, Levi (2020) Of “Madness,” Against Babylon: A Story of Resistance, (Mis)Representation, and Paradox in the Caribbean. Political Geography, 80. p. 102188.

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Abstract

This article provides a postcolonial feminist account of the complex politics of the Earth People, an anti-systemic movement in Trinidad and Tobago who organised against the post-independence status quo during the 1970–1980s. The purpose of the piece is twofold. Firstly, on a scholarly level, it endeavours to (re)tell a theoretically-driven empirically-based story of the nuances that surfaced during the Earth People's resistance to “Babylon” (i.e. racial capitalism, Western institutions, rise of a post-colonial nationalist bourgeoisie). Secondly, on a political-epistemological level, we are countering conventional ways Caribbean people, histories, social movements, and the region at large are documented, studied, and ultimately written about within mainstream academia. To do so, we outline the fraught politics of (mis)representation that arise in established ethnography, with specific care afforded to the perspectives and political agency of participants from the movement. Our analysis emerges out of fieldwork guided by critical race theories, decolonial critique, feminist ethics, and community collaboration. Our methods included archival research, focus groups, oral histories, go-along interviews, and narrative inquiry with former members of the group. In general, the piece historicises the Earth People's efforts to evade and defy colonial norms, capitalist logics, and Westminster state power by “returning to nature.” Further, we offer a synopsis of movement's worldviews, social relations, and ideological standpoints, which despite being episodically paradoxical and not adopted widely throughout the Caribbean, merit further respective attention and critical scrutiny apropos regional posterity and orthodox academic knowledge production.

Item Type:	Article
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	30 Mar 2020 11:29
Last Modified:	18 Jan 2023 23:56
DOI:	10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102188
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3080907