Philip Nanton

Frontiers of the Caribbean

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In this innovative and engaging book, Caribbean poet and scholar Philip Nanton explores the idea of the frontier - a concept most commonly associated with the colonial past but revived by Nanton as an essential analytical tool in interpreting the postcolonial present, with particular relevance to the Caribbean region. Nanton takes the notion of the frontier beyond a physical boundary to suggest that it is a site of balance between civilisation and wilderness, the former overdetermined and the latter almost lost in postcolonial discourse. For Nanton, the two exist in a state of symbiosis: wilderness is necessarily implicated in any discussion of civilisation. He sees the frontier as a moral landscape where the two notions meet and clash, at rural and urban, collective and individual and national and international levels. Nanton illuminates the enduring importance of the frontier by focusing his attention on the little-studied multi-island state of St Vincent and the Grenadines. He examines how it is defined and imagined in the balance between an imposed civilised order and an untameable wild that is forever encroaching. He discerns frontier traits in the adventurous coastal wanderings of the fisherman, sailor and sea-port smuggler, the hill-wandering woodcutter, the urban dame-school teacher and the mountainside ganja-grower, noting the continuing metaphorical power within Caribbean society of the figure of the pioneer. But the frontier has historically been and remains a global production. Expanding his focus, Nanton investigates how contemporary processes of globalisation have shaped the region and how they connect to the shifting relationship of civilisation and wilderness - noting in particular the search for the exotic and the remnant wild by international tourism.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Manchester University Press
• Seitenzahl: 170
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Januar 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 222mm x 145mm x 13mm
• Gewicht: 355g
• ISBN-13: 9781526113740
• ISBN-10: 1526113740
• Artikelnr.: 47482762

Autorenporträt

Philip Nanton is a scholarly writer and a published poet. He is Honorary Research Associate at the University of Birmingham and occasional lecturer at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies, Barbados. He has made several radio documentaries on Caribbean literature and culture for the BBC.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword: The Roaring by R.M. Kirkwood Introduction 1 Pirates of the
Caribbean: frontier patterns old and new 2 Locating the frontier in St.
Vincent and the Grenadines 3 Civilization and wilderness: the St. Vincent
and the Grenadines context 4 Frontier retentions 5 Writing the St. Vincent
frontier 6 Shifting rural and urban frontiers in St. Vincent 7 Conclusion
by way of afterword Index