The Sands of Un-Certainty: Tidalectically Synthesizing Nature and Culture in Derek Walcott's Omeros

"The tidalectic, a tidal dialectic between the land, the sea, and the beach, is as follows: the land embodies the hypothesis, the sea the antithesis, and the beach the synthesis. Because the beach serves as the synthesizing locus for a Caribbean poetics of beginnings in Omeros, I am adapting Kamau Brathwaite's neologism of the tidalectic to re-name the threefold relation between these natural spaces, as opposed to Hegel's dialectic, which would abrogate the spirit and intention of a Caribbean nation-making poem. The use of the tidalectic is redefined as a poetic nod to Walcott's adamic act of re-naming and as a cue to the overall aim of this undertaking, which is to re-view Omeros through first and foremost a rebuttal of the very name that has kept it as an outpost of the very same empire it wishes to expel."