On the Question of Caribbean Studies

This essay urges that in considering the question of Caribbean studies we think not only about the substantive content of our work but also about the senses in which this work makes assumptions about the idea and project of Caribbean studies as a conceptual-ideological field. The essay briefly refers to two generative moments in the history of Caribbean studies: one in the 1950s framed around M. G. Smith's A Framework for Caribbean Studies and another in the 1970s framed around Kamau Brathwaite's "Caribbean Man in Space and Time." The point in considering these moments in the figuring and refiguring of Caribbean studies is to encourage a certain kind of history of ideas, namely, one that thinks through the kinds of ideological-conceptual problem-spaces that shape and orient their respective formulations.