Early Groundings for a Circum-Caribbean Integrationist Thought

Extract

---

Early Groundings for a Circum-Caribbean Integrationist Thought

"archipelago: fragments: a geological plate being crushed by the pacific's curve, cracking open yucatan; the arctic/north american monolith: hence cuba, hispaniola, puerto rico: continental outriders and the dust of the bahamas. atlantic africa pushing up the beaches of our eastern seawards"1

"What does this other America mean to us? What do we mean to it? Before its dense and multiple presence, we seem to fade into insignificance. Would we simply be several drops left by this immense river after it had broken up and slowed down? Could we in fact be the other source, I mean the necessary stop where it gathers together its energy for the journey? In one way or another, the Caribbean is the outgrowth of America. The part that breaks free of the continent and yet is linked to the whole."2

Introduction

From region, to nation, to region in "a pendulum oscillation which privileges neither one side nor the other" is how Margaret Shrimpton describes the territories of the Circum Caribbean. She continues " [we need) to read the mainland region not as one single unit opposed in a binary sense to the island Caribbean, but as differentiated area, with the similar one and diverse dynamics and migrant patterns that are evident in the islands"3. Any theorization about the Circum-Caribbean as a subregional entity is quite recent therefore comparative studies which embrace the area are still sparse. However, the last decade of the 20th Century heralds an important moment in the exploration of the relations, concept...

See the full content of this document

---