Cosmopolitan or mongrel

Créolité, hybridity and 'douglarisation'in Trinidad

Bibliographic Data

ID5778484
AuthorsEve Walsh Stoddard (St. Lawrence University), Eve stoddard (St Lawrence University, New York), Grant H Cornwell (St Lawrence University, New York)
Year1999
Volume2
Issue3
Pages331-353
Publication date1999-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1367-5494 • E-ISSN: 1460-3551
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/136754949900200303
OpenAlexW2078666427
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited11

The article examines a Trimdadian calypso and its reception as a case study to weigh the discourses of hybridity, creolisation, and a local variant, 'douglarisation'. In cultural studies discourse, 'creolisation' is often used synonymously with hybridization. However, it is a different metaphor, with a different genealogy, and is much more grounded in specific histories and places, namely the New World sites of plantation slavery. In Trinidad, the pejorative term 'dougla' sigmfies the offspring of a union between persons of African and Indian ancestry, while 'douglarisation' denotes the contested processes of Afro- and Indo-Trinidadian interculturation. 'Douglarisation' can be read as a particular instance of both hybridity and creolisation, but with very different implications. We argue that hybridity and creolisation advance different political agendas, the former attentive to multiple roots and the latter to new connections

Hybridity · Pejorative · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy