“Jamaica” by Matthew Palmer
This site emerges from two versions of the CUNY graduate course described below. It was taught first in Spring 2014 (specific details here) and then in Fall 2015 (specific details here).
Course description
In its rhizomatic structure and development, the internet is analogous to Caribbean culture: born out of disparate pieces and peoples; always already predicated on an elsewhere as home or authority; always already working to ignore geography and physical space as barriers to connection. This seminar probes the various epistemological, political and strategic ways in which cyberspace intersects with the formation and conceptualization of the Caribbean.
What constitutes the Caribbean is, of course, not a new question. As we explore the digital media productions that continue to reconfigure the social and geographic contours of the region, we will build on familiar debates surrounding study of the Caribbean. Issues to be addressed include: Geography: What challenge, if any, might cyberspace pose to our geo-centered conceptualization of Caribbean cultures? Community: In what ways do online spaces that claim (or are claimed by) the Caribbean struggle, together or individually, to articulate a cohesive culture? Archival history and voice: Does the ephemerality of online life and the economics of access endanger or enable what we may call the Caribbean subject? Identity and representation: What indeed comprises “the Caribbean subject”? How do questions of authenticity get deployed in crucial moments of tension involving diasporic subjects, particularly in the sped-up world of digital production? These questions, framed by Caribbean Studies, will be our primary focus, but they will be articulated with questions and theories from new digital media studies about knowledge production and circulation, digital boundaries and the democracy of access and usage.
In addition to examining primary digital sources, we will read articles from writers including: Stuart Hall, Kamau Brathwaite, Edouard Glissant, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, David Scott, Annie Paul, Curwen Best, Lisa Paravisini-Gebert, Anna Everett, Karim H. Karim, Lisa Nakamura, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Jennifer Brinkerhoff and others.
Image credit: “Jamaica” by Matthew Palmer.
Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
