Revisiting the Past in the Age of Posts: Rememory in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child and Gisèle Pineau’s Femmes des Antilles

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-286
Author(s):  
Delphine Gras
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Racial Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gisele Pineau ◽  
The Usa

Abstract In this article, I examine how Toni Morrison and Gisèle Pineau provide timely pieces against the historical amnesia characteristic of post-racial discourse in the USA and in France. Studying Morrison’s God Help the Child (2015) and Pineau’s Femmes des Antilles: Traces et Voix (1998) side by side reveals how Morrison’s rememory is a global concept as pertinent today as when first coined in Beloved (1987). The term’s original use in the context of slavery also suggests a lens through which to read Morrison’s non-slavery era works like God Help the Child. What ultimately comes to the fore in both authors’ potent expositions of the specter of slavery haunting black women in the USA, France, and the West Indies is a rejection of historical silencing.

Archaeology of Identity and Dissonance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernice Kurchin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
North Africa ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Multiple Dimensions

In situations of displacement, disruption, and difference, humans adapt by actively creating, re-creating, and adjusting their identities using the material world. This book employs the discipline of historical archaeology to study this process as it occurs in new and challenging environments. The case studies furnish varied instances of people wresting control from others who wish to define them and of adaptive transformation by people who find themselves in new and strange worlds. The authors consider multiple aspects of identity, such as race, class, gender, and ethnicity, and look for ways to understand its fluid and intersecting nature. The book seeks to make the study of the past relevant to our globalized, postcolonized, and capitalized world. Questions of identity formation are critical in understanding the world today, in which boundaries are simultaneously breaking down and being built up, and humans are constantly adapting to the ever-changing milieu. This book tackles these questions not only in multiple dimensions of earthly space but also in a panorama of historical time. Moving from the ancient past to the unknowable future and through numerous temporal stops in between, the reader travels from New York to the Great Lakes, Britain to North Africa, and the North Atlantic to the West Indies.

Future Impossible Communities

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-102
Author(s):  
Jossianna Arroyo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Special Section ◽  
The West ◽  
Spanish Caribbean ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Intervention ◽  
Key Interventions

This response essay reviews the six contributions to the special section “Con-Federating the Archipelago: The Confederación Antillana and the West Indies Federation.” These key interventions on the Spanish Caribbean Confederation projects in the nineteenth century and the West Indies Federation in the twentieth century provoke the following questions: Could we call these two Caribbean confederation projects failures if their centrality in Caribbean political imaginaries suggests otherwise? What are some of the insights that these two projects could offer to Caribbean sociohistorical processes, culture, and political developments? Even though these two projects seem to share a similar political goal, they are also radically different. The author reviews the contributions to the special section in dialogue with examples from Puerto Rico in order to assess the critical intervention in theories of nationalism produced by the past projects of federation and the possible futures they give rise to.

scholarly journals Circumstantial evidence for the presence of monk seals in the West Indies

Oryx ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 310-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. L. Boyd ◽  
M. P. Stanfield
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Marine Species ◽  
Circumstantial Evidence ◽  
Harbour Seal ◽  
Sea Lion ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Monk Seals

Based on interviews with 93 fishermen in northern Haiti and Jamaica during 1997 an assessment was made of the likelihood that monk seals survive in this region of the West Indies. Fishermen were asked to select marine species known to them from randomly arranged pictures: 22.6 per cent (n = 21) selected monk seals. This number was significantly (P < 0.001) greater than the number who selected control species (walrus, harbour seal, and sea-lion) that they were unlikely to have observed. However, it was not significantly different (n = 19, P > 0.1) from the number who selected manatees, which are known to occur in the region in small numbers. More than 95 per cent of respondents also identified species that are known to occur commonly in the region. Further questioning of the 21 respondents who selected monk seals suggested that 16 (78 per cent) of them had seen at least one in the past 1–2 years. Those fishermen that were able to provide further descriptions gave information about size and colour that was consistent with many of these seals being monk seals. It is possible that the Caribbean monk seal is not extinct.

Distinctive services in academic librarianship

2016 ◽  
Vol 117 (9/10) ◽  
pp. 596-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasekea Harris
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
Library Service ◽  
The West ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Service Information ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Service Offering

Purpose Collection content is no longer the primary distinctive signifier of excellence in the present libraries. In an information market where technology has increased access to content, thereby providing resources at one’s fingertips, the provision of services is increasingly becoming a distinctive signifier of excellence and quality. In such an open/service-oriented marketplace, what are the services that are signifiers of excellence and consequently distinguish a library? This paper aims to review select literature within the USA to identify the services that are signifiers of excellence and that will consequently distinguish a library in the current era and investigate the extent to which said services identified in the review of the literature are provided by the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona library, but focus specifically on only those that meet the additional criteria of placing the UWI Mona library as either the first to introduce the service in Jamaica or as the only library in Jamaica with the particular service offering. These two additional criteria provide the added signature or uniqueness essential to being distinguished. Design/methodology/approach Through the use of a mixed methods research, this paper highlights library service offerings considered as distinctive signifiers of excellence within the American literature and also within the UWI Mona Library – that will distinguish a library. Findings This paper reveals services incorporating technology, the library as a place/space, teaching and research and personal attention to users as distinctive signifiers of excellence. In this regard, within the UWI Mona Library, services offered such as the Virtual Reference Service, Extended Opening Service, Halls of Residence Librarian Service, Information Commons Service, Information Literacy Service and the West Indies and Special Collection Research Service were found to incorporate the aforementioned service themes and placed the UWI Mona library as either the first to introduce the service in Jamaica or as the only library in Jamaica with the particular service offering, consequently distinguishing the UWI Mona Library from other academic libraries in Jamaica. Originality/value This paper is of value, as it provides the library and information community with an outline of services that distinguish a library; it offers library managers in Jamaica and the rest of the world the opportunity to compare services in their libraries with that of other libraries as outlined within the literature review as well as within the UWI Mona library; it highlights how the UWI Mona library, an academic library in the Caribbean, compares on the international library scene, with particular reference to the USA; it informs current and potential library users of how the UWI Mona library is trending in service culture and a focus on distinctive services can promote a community of academic library service best practice.

A brief account of the hibiscus mealybug Maconellicoccus hirsutus (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), a pest of agriculture and horticulture, with descriptions of two related species from southern Asia

1996 ◽  
Vol 86 (5) ◽  
pp. 617-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.J. Williams
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Related Species ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Food Crops ◽  
The West ◽  
Maconellicoccus Hirsutus ◽  
Southern Asia ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Plant Produce ◽  
Extensive Damage

AbstractThe mealybug Maconellicoccus hirsutus (Green) occurs in many tropical and subtropical parts of the Old World and extends into some temperate areas. It has now reached the West Indies where it is causing extensive damage to plants. There is concern that it may be introduced to the southern USA and to Central and South America. A brief account is given of reported damage caused by M. hirsutus to some commercial and food crops in Asia and Africa and the species is redescribed. M. multipori (Takahashi), now known from a wide area in southern Asia, is redescribed, and M. ramchensissp. n. from Nepal, is described as new. These two species are closely related to M. hirsutus and can easily be mistaken for it. M. hirsutus and M. multipori are sometimes intercepted at quarantine inspection of plants and plant produce in the USA and Europe. In order to aid identification, a key is provided to the eight species presently included in the genus Maconellicoccus Ezzat.

scholarly journals Vore gamle tropekolonier..? – Tropekolonierne som danske erindringssteder

2018 ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Astrid Nonbo Andersen
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
General Picture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Places Of Memory ◽  
Long Time

The knowledge of the Danish colonial past has for a very long time played a minorrole in the general picture of Danish History in Denmark. Within the past 10-15years however the former Danish tropic colonies in the West Africa, East Indiaand the West Indies have attracted a growing number of Danish visitors in searchfor the colonial past. This has led to a number of renovation projects sponsoredby Danish agents in collaboration with the local authorities in the former tropiccolonies. This article takes its analytical starting point in the French HistorianPierre Nora’s notion of places of memory (lieux de mémoire) and deals with someof the problems of both a philosophical and political kind that spring from thesenew initiatives.

First Admissions of Native-Born and Immigrants to Psychiatric Hospitals in South-East England 1976

1981 ◽  
Vol 139 (6) ◽  
pp. 506-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Dean ◽  
D. Walsh ◽  
H. Downing ◽  
E. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Marital Status ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Psychiatric Hospitals ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Expected Number ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
South East England

SummaryIn the past, birthplace has frequently been omitted in completing the Sheet, but in 1976, over 91 per cent of all first admissions to psychiatric hospitals in South-East England were analysed by birthplace, sex, age-group and marital status. First admissions for schizophrenia were five times the expected number for immigrants from New Commonwealth America (the West Indies), four times the expected number for immigrants from New Commonwealth Africa (mostly ethnic Asians) and three times the expected number from India. Immigrants from Pakistan and the remaining New Commonwealth Asian countries did not show a significantly higher than expected number of admissions for schizophrenia, and their first admissions for alcoholic psychosis and alcoholism, psychoneuroses and personality and behaviour disorders were significantly fewer than expected. First admissions for schizophrenia were also significantly more than expected among immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Poland, but not from Italy.

scholarly journals The Spider Genus Trachelas (Araneae, Clubionidae) in the Vest Indies

1972 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur M. Chickering
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
National Science Foundation ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Deep Appreciation ◽  
National Science ◽  
Comparative Zoology ◽  
Males And Females

As I have frequently done in the past, I am again expressing my deep appreciation for the continued help and encouragement in the pursuit of my studies extended to me by the staff of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. The National Science Foundation has aided me very materially by awarding me Grants GB-18o1 and GB-5o13. Other foundations, not specifically mentioned here, have also aided me in my studies and collecting trips in Central America and the West Indies. Dr. J. G. Sheals and Mr. D. J. Clark, British Museum (Natural History), have kindly loaned me males and females of Trachelas femoralis Simon from St. Vincent, B. W. I.

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