Welcome to Migranthood!

Welcome to Migranthood!

Speaking at a conference on identity in 1987,
Stuart Hall said, "My own sense of identity has
always depended on the fact of being a migrant..
[Now] I find myself centered at last. Now that in
the postmodern age you all feel so dispersed. I've
become centered: what I thought of as dispersed
and fragmented comes paradoxically, to be the
representative modern experience. Welcome to
migranthood!"

This seminar will primarily engage the works of
Sylvia Wynter, Stuart Hall, Frantz Fanon, Edouard
Glissant, and C.L.R. James. What about the
geography and history of the Caribbean harbors
such groundbreaking perspectives? All these
thinkers have provided frameworks that speak to
not only their specific conditions, but seem to
hold truths worth articulating in our increasingly
destabilized, dispersed, globalized present.

We will approach seminal texts by each of the
above authors in relation to the specific social
forces of their time. We will also pair the texts
with corresponding influences and discourses:
Gramsci with Hall, Marx with James, Foucault with
Wynter and psychoanalysis with Fanon.

Also, through the work of Dionne Brand, Steve
McQueen, Sung Tieu, many others we will think
about how the above discourses can make their way
into literature, film, installation and other
forms.

Lastly, we will continually focus on the
relationship between theory and praxis in the
works and lives of these individuals and in our
own lives.