On Being as Passage and Plurality of Self: Postcolonial Caribbean Identity in Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey
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Caribbean literature
post-colonial theory
deconstruction
diaspora
language
bearing witness
Chicana/o Studies
Comparative Literature
Creative Writing
Ethnic Studies
History
Indigenous Studies
Latina/o Studies
Modern Languages
Philosophy
Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
Reading and Language
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Abstract
This essay examines questions of home and identity in a postcolonial Caribbean context. Situating itself in the dialogue between continental philosophy and postcolonial theory, this research explores how identity formations are processes which negotiate fragmentary demands of being as well as the various ruptures and dislocations that are resultants of colonization. This paper proposes that in thinking of postcolonial identities, we must explicitly and necessarily consider multiplicity, alterity, diaspora, and interstitial spaces. Focusing on Merle Hodge's novel Crick Crack, Monkey, this essay thinks through protagonist Tee's process of becoming, a process which is fluid, dynamic, and never complete. In doing so, this research explores questions about race, enslavement, bearing witness, language, space and place, and (literal and metaphoric) diasporic movements.