NOTES
- Fernando Ortiz, “Cuban Counterpoint of Tobacco and Sugar, 1940,” as cited in Antonio Benítez-Rojo, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (Durham, NC, 1992), 172.
- These are, of course, not the words or views of the US-American performance artist Andrea Fraser but comments, actual or imagined, from visitors to the 1990 Venice biennale that were incorporated into her audio installation for the Austrian pavilion at the 1993 Venice biennale.
- For the purposes of this paper, the Caribbean is defined as follows: the chain of islands from Trinidad and Tobago in the south to the Bahamas in the north, along with Guyana, Surinam, French Guyana and Belize on the South and Central American continent.
- See, for example: Thomas Klak, Globalization and Neoliberalism:The Caribbean Context (Lanham, Roman & Littlefield, 1998); or: Carla Freeman, High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2000).
- David Held et al., “Rethinking Globalization,” in David Held and Anthony McGrew eds., The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate (Cambridge, UK, Polity, 2000),55.
- “Introduction,” in Held and McGrew eds., The Global Transformations Reader, 47.
- George Modelski, “Globalization, 1972,” in Held and McGrew eds., The Global Transformations Reader, 50–52.
- Michael Bright and Charles Geyer, “World History in a Global Age, 1995,” in Held and McGrew eds., The Global Transformations Reader, 63.
- Sidney Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (New York, Columbia University Press, 1989 (1974)); Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London, Andre Deutsch, 1964).
- I regard globalization in its present permutation as a defining characteristic of what has now been termed late modernity. I prefer the notion of late modernity over postmodernity because I agree with critics of postmodernism such as Paul Gilroy and Bruce Knauft that the claims for a radical break with modernity has been overblown, even though postmodernism allowed for groundbreaking and necessary critiques of the premises of high modernism. (See: Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1993); Bruce Knauft ed, Critically Modern (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002), 6–7) I thus regard what has been termed as “postmodernity” as a distinct “late modern” phase within the longer continuum of modernity. I am also concerned that our understanding of the modern suffers if it is confined by the narrow normativity of high modernity, as it has been understood in the metropolitan West. Rather it should embrace the inherent diversity and contradictions that exist within the world that has been created by capitalism. The modernity—and late modernity—of the Caribbean is a good example of this diversity.
- Rastafarianism developed as a popular resistance movement in the 1930s, when Jamaica was still a British colony. Rastafarians regard Africa as the legitimate homeland for all black persons and the late emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I as the black Messiah. Although some Rastafarians effectively reject a modern Western lifestyle, which they see as a colonial imposition, most opt to live as full but critical participants in this modernity.
- Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 48
- ibid.
- ibid., 4.
- Martinique's case is not unique. In the Caribbean region alone, the former French colonies of Guadeloupe, St Martin and French Guiana are also French Overseas Departments and there are other territories with comparable status such as Puerto Rico, which has been a Commonwealth or “Associated Free State” of the USA since 1952, and Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Montserrat, which are British dependencies.
- Norman Girvan, “Reinterpreting the Caribbean,” in Brian Meeks and Folke Lindahl eds., New Caribbean Thought: A Reader (Kingston, Jamaica, The Press University of the West Indies, 2001), 19–20.
- Towards a New Partnership in Responsibility Sharing (USA Department of Defense, 1996), www:defenselink.mil/pubs/allied_contrib96/France.html.
- J. Michael Dash, The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1998), 139.
- E-mail from Latamie, November 28, 2001.
- Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997 (1990)), xxi.
- J. Michael Dash, Edouard Glissant (Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1995), 24.
- Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 37.
- Dash, The Other America, 158.
- See:Veerle Poupeye, Caribbean Art (London, Thames and Hudson, 1998), 214–216.
- Octávio Zaya, Marc Latamie's Work in the XXIII International Biennale of São Paulo (São Paulo, São Paulo Biennale, 1998), www.uol.com.br/23bienal/latamie.
- Latamie, November 28, 2001.
- Dash, The Other America, 64–73.
- Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 159.
- Orlando Britto Jinorio, “Marc Latamie: The Sugar Company.” In Dak'Art 2000 (Dakar, Dakar Biennale, 2000), 111–113.
- For the sake of completeness, it is worth mentioning here that “brown sugar” is a US- American slang term for heroin.
- In its classic heraldic form, the fleur-de-lys (also: fleur-de-lis) appeared in gold on a blue background. It is perhaps noteworthy here that the fleur-de-lys emblem was appropriated, after the French Revolution, by Napoleon Bonaparte, whose first wife Joséphine de Beauharnais was a member of the Martiniquan plantocracy.
- Letter from Marc Latamie, November 7, 2001.
- Emma Bedford, “Dak'Art 2000: Biennale of Contemporary African Art,” in Artthrob 34 (June 2000), www.artthrob.co.za/00june.
- Latamie, November 7,2001.
- A few works by Latamie do not deal with commodity flows per se. One example is St Mauricius (1996), which consists of a small gilded statue of this black Ethiopian Saint displayed in a gilded cage. To my knowledge, this is also the only work by Latamie that includes a human figure, although there is thematic continuity in the fact that Mauricius was enslaved.
- Latamie, November 28, 2001.
- Judith Wilson, “Will the ‘New Internationalism'Be the Same Old Story? Some Art Historical Considerations,” in Jean Fisher ed., In Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts (London, Kala Press, 1994), 64.
- The recent debates on art and society in the Caribbean have in essence revolved around these questions, often fueled by controversies about the selection criteria for major local and international exhibitions and publications. So far, only a small part of these often acrimonious debates has made it to print. One example is Annie Paul's “Pirates or Parrots? A Critical Perspective on the Visual Arts in Jamaica,’” which was published in Small Axe 1 (March 1997), 49–64. In this article, Paul predictably (and, in my view, simplistically) argued that contemporary art in Jamaica is generally derivative of Western sources and standards and therefore culturally and ideologically problematic for a postcolonial society.
- Among the few locally initiated journals that offer more challenging criticism are: Revolución_Cultura (Cuba), Jamaica Journal (Jamaica), Small Axe (Jamaica and USA), Conjonction (Haiti), Cariforo (Dominican Republic) Artecubana (Cuba) and Arthème (Martinique). Of this list, only the last two are specialist art journals. Several of these journals are published only intermittently, in small editions and with limited distribution, because of a lack of funding and sufficient subscriptions. International art journals are hard to come by in the Caribbean and often available only to those who can afford costly subscriptions.
- Latamie, November 28, 2001.
- Gerardo Mosquera, “Some Problems in Transcultural Curating,” In Fisher ed., Global Visions, 135.
- The main journal article on Latamie's work so far is Octávio Zaya's “Trading Plots:The Work of Marc Latamie,” in Nka: Contemporary African Art # 4 (1996). In addition to the already cited reviews and catalogue essays, substantial critical appraisals of Latamie's work can also be found in the following exhibition catalogues: David A. Bailey, Kobena Mercer, and Catherine Ugwu. Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire (London, inIVA, 1995; Maria Llu'ïsa Borras et al, Exclusion, Fragmentacion y Paraiso: Caribe Insular (Madrid, 1998); Orlando Britto Jinorio. “Marc Latamie: The Sugar Company,” in Dak'art 2000 (Dakar, Biennale of Dakar, 2000), 111–3; Okwui Enwezor et al. Trade Routes: History and Geography (Johannesburg: Johannesburg Biennale, 1997); and Paulo Herkenhoff, Tempo (New York City, MoMA, 2002) Njami, Simon et al. Otro Pais: Escalas Africanas—Another Country: Africa Stops Over. (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Centro Atlantica, 1995). 5th Havana Biennale (Havana, Wifredo Lam Center, 1997).
- Latamie, November 28, 2001.
- Dash, The Other America, 158.
- Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 52.