Hi all,
I'm not able to post my Passport essay to Dropbox. Unfortunately my essay was saved on my PC that recently kicked the bucket. Here is my outline. I hope I did this correctly.
-Anahi
The most notorious street of Port of Spain's gritty inner city is presented in V.S. Naipaul's semi-autobiographical novel, Miguel Street (1959). The novel is widely accepted as a normative representation of Trinidadian culture, despite Naipaul's acerbic pronouncements, most notable being, "nothing was made in Trinidad" (14). When speaking of his own work, Naipaul reflects, "For works to last, they must have a certain clear-sightedness. And to achieve that, one perhaps needs a few prejudices" (17). Naipaul's so-called authorial clarity distorts the native cultural productions in Miguel Street. Why does Naipaul elect to portray the denizens of Miguel Street, the poet, the craftsmen, and the domestic worker, as unimaginative, inadequate characters? To best understand Naipaul's scathing characterizations, I will support my close reading of the text, including Calypso lyrics and newspaper headlines, with post-colonial theory.
Annotated Bibliography
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993.
Gilroy's expansive account of black identity on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing on the sailing ship, slavery and music.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins, White Masks . New York: Grove Press, 1952.
Fanon utilizes post-colonial and psychoanalytic theory to examine the consequences of living as a colonial subject.
Naipaul, V.S.. Miguel Street. New York: Random House, 1959.
Naipaul's semi-autobiographical novel that depicts quotidian life of Port of Spain, Trinidad and the author's coming of age.
Spivak Chakravorty, Gayatri. "Can the Subaltern Speak?". Critical Inquiry 1988: 66-111.
Spivak's intervention in post-colonial, feminist, and psychoanalytic criticism that attempts to locate the subaltern and interrogate dominant world views.
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