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Popular political cultures and the Caribbean carnival: Carnival is a rich resource for cultural resistance as well as pleasure
- Popular political cultures and the Caribbean carnivalCarnival is a rich resource for cultural resistance as well as pleasure
As a huge, Caribbean-led, culturally hybridised, inter-ethnic festival of popular artistic creativity and social critique, the Caribbean carnival deserves much more serious attention than it has so far received. The media tends to reduce carnival to glamorous female bodies, jerk chicken, soca music and outlandish costumes. We aim to demonstrate here that there are elements of Caribbean carnival that carry a radical message, support the display of bodies of every type, and present costumes that carry important social messages, often explaining historical events and commenting on injustice. The interpretation of carnival as performative and playful is incontestable, we suggest, but what is less commonly analysed is the play of power, and resistance to power, within the various performances that constitute carnival.
The glittering carnival enthusiastically represented by photographers, advertisers, cultural boosters and tourist agencies is the result of a complex interweaving of power among the organisers; between organisers and funders (public and private); between organisers, participants and the regulatory bodies (particularly the police); between and inside the mas camps (the sites in which carnival masquerades are built); between men and women, young and old; and sometimes, muted but [End Page 34]
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HBMDM in 2017, featuring 'King' David Oluwale. All photos in this article by Max Farrar
present, between the ethnic groups who inject their life-force into the carnival. In this article we restrict our analysis to the gender politics of carnival and the insertion of political messages into the building and performing of carnival costumes. Our aim is to show that, when understood as a cacophony of signs that can be deconstructed historically and politically, the Caribbean carnival is a resource for cultural resistance and for social progress.
A brief history of carnival
The Caribbean carnival has its roots in Africa, Europe and South Asia. One forerunner is the masquerade, which first arrived in Trinidad with French settlers [End Page 35] in the late eighteenth century. The white French elite's masked balls, as well as their masked parades through the streets as they visited each other's homes, introduced the 'world turned upside down' element of carnival in Europe into Trinidad. Playfulness is carnival's essence, and masking is the key to its subversion of the established order. In 1827 a white colonial man in Port of Spain commented: 'Ovid's Metamorphoses were nothing compared to the changes that took place … A party of ladies, having converted themselves into a party of brigands, assailed me in my quarters and nearly frightened me out of my wits': in true carnival fashion, men's power was here (briefly) overturned. From Christmas to Ash Wednesday in Trinidad, the whites' 'long succession of festivities and pleasures' set the tone for all subsequent carnivals. A French history of Trinidad published in 1882 reported: 'Brilliant as fireworks were their [the whites'] cascades of witticisms, verbal sallies, and comic buffoonery'.1
Even while they were enslaved, Africans had held their own dances and celebrations, drawing from their African traditions and engaging in their own role-reversal, mocking their masters' behaviour and dress. And after emancipation in 1838, the newly liberated merged these celebrations with a ritual known as Cannes Brûlées (Canboulay). This was based on a re-enactment of putting out fires in the cane fields (a task slaves were often called upon to carry out), and was in part an act of resistance and in part a harvest ritual.2 This ritual re-enactment, like so many carnival cultural forms, was seemingly contradictory, celebrating both the extinguishing and the starting of cane field fires. The colonial authorities made strenuous efforts to ban Canboulay, prompting the 'Canboulay riots' of 1881 and 1884, which then resulted in further heavy restrictions. Port of Spain's Chief of Police commented:
After the Emancipation of the Slaves things were materially altered, the ancient lines of demarcation were obliterated and as a natural consequence the carnival degenerated into a noisy and disorderly amusement for the lower classes.3
Many...
