The Lost New World of Caribbean Studies

Recalling an Un-American Puerto Rico Project

Bibliographic Data

ID4195220
AuthorsHarvey Neptune (0009-0005-3574-3175, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume17
Issue2
Pages172-185
Publication date2013-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSmall Axe A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1534-6714 • E-ISSN: 0799-0537
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/07990537-2323382
OpenAlexW2103809740
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited11

Caribbean studies, institutionalized from inception as part of the "third world," might be beneficially reconceptualized minus the postwar geopolitical presumptions of three worlds and, remapped, instead, within the two-world schema. To resituate the Caribbean this way enables recognition of the region as an inaugural space in the invention of a modern consciousness—not as a problematic tertiary portion of the globe where modernity is a belated burden. In advancing this case for a hemispheric recasting of the Caribbeanist field, it helps to reread a little-known essay that took the New World approach to the region. Titled "Paths to National Self-Discovery: USA and Puerto Rico," it first appeared in 1956 and was written by Daniel J. Boorstin, a historian of the United States. Unlike conventional scholarship on the Caribbean, including the definitive work, The People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology , Boorstin's essay framed Puerto Rico within the familiar "New World" rather than the exotic "third world" in relation to First World North America

Caribbean island · Caribbean region · Ethnology · Geography · Latin Americans · Political science · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Ecology

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