Paper short abstract:

This paper will debate the sovereign place of the cultural in the Caribbean’s South Asian diaspora. It will explore whether contemporary Indo-Trinidadian forms of image-making, celebration and performance might offer contrapuntal opportunities to assert ownership and ‘belonging’ in the face of state-sanctioned notions of diasporic difference.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from long-term fieldwork since 2004, this paper will explore Indo-Trinidadian or 'East Indian' contributions to the aesthetic dimension of diaspora experience, focusing on image-making, celebration and performance in the Southern Caribbean. Trinidad has a large community of those descended from South Asians who came shortly after Emancipation as indentured labourers, alongside an equally large number of the descendants of enslaved Africans. Against the background of this unusual demography, Trinidadian nationhood has become a space for the production of ethnic signifiers condensed in forms of official 'culture'.

This paper will ask how the prevailing, state-sanctioned forms of Trinidadian 'Indianness' are being renegotiated in popular contexts, in ways that throw light on contemporary, counter-hegemonic ownership of cultural practices within diasporic space. How do image-makers, wedding performers, and the singer-songwriters of Chutney and other identified 'East Indian' musicians, struggle to offer alternatives to the legacies of 'Indianness' instituted during decolonization?

Much research in anthropology and visual and material culture studies continues to insist on framing cultural objects as significations of national place, transnational connection, political position, or ethnic 'belonging'. This has yet to confront the allure of a commoditized aesthetic of diaspora culture in which cultural practices are assigned the singular role of media of representation. A closer discussion of their aesthetic presence under the rubric of ownership reveals how the cultural might refuse such a status.