Transinsular Networks of the Caribbean Seascape

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the sea as a metonym for visualising the Caribbean island experience. This paper argues that islanders’ relations with the sea are maintained through a double condition of connection and isolation, alienation and familiarity. This paper’s theoretical position is informed by ‘transinsularism’, an approach that addresses how insular identities are constituted in relation to other island spaces. This paper’s argument is contextualised with historical and ethnographic material on the island of Culebra, an offshore municipality of Puerto Rico. The historical material addresses the colonisation of Culebra in the 1880s by interests of the Spanish Crown, the occupation of the island by the US Navy and its liberation. The sea features at the foreground of these processes. This paper concludes that islanders maintain a sense of specific insular regard while self-consciously engaged in multiple network-generating networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Transinsularism
• Caribbean
• maritime ethnography
• archipelagraphy

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is an agency of the US federal government within the US Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife and natural habitats.