Creolisation in the Caribbean

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Question #5: Why is the Creolisation theory considered a more useful means of theorizing the Caribbean? How has Douglarisation contributed to the identity debate? Even though there is a separation created by geographic distances and different independent states, it is still possible to talk in general terms of the Caribbean, and of Caribbean literature. The common experience of colonialism, displacement, slavery, indenture, emancipation and nationalism has shaped most West Indian environments, creating a unity of experience that can be identified as particularly Caribbean. These general experiences, more importantly have been the breading ground of a whole new society and culture, than can be defined most effectively by employing the…show more content…
Many Caribbean writers have addressed the issue of creolisation and the creation of a unique Caribbean identity in their works. Many of them wrote in an attempt to capture the very meaning and significance of a West Indian world, using novels of childhood as their medium.Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin, Michael Anthony’s The Year in San Fernando, McDonald’s The Humming Bird Tree, Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack Monkey and Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea were all in part attempts at capturing and savouring something of the essence of Caribbean life through the developing consciousness of the child. Somehow the discovery and identification with this world seemed better and more accurately revealed through the impressions of the growing child. V.S. Naipaul and Samuel Selvon assessed the merits of the creolisation of the East Indian in A House for Mr. Biswas and A Brighter Sun respectively. In both novels exploration centered on the creolisation of the East Indian and on the nature and quality of his adjustment in the colonial society. Indian characters moved from enclosed peasant worlds into a wider colonial world, and the movement was in both novels an exploration and a growth in awareness and sensibility. This creolisation or mixing of cultures is evident
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