Going global in a Caribbean locale: Traveling home in the works of Paule Marshall, Cristina Garcia, Andrea Levy and Caryl Phillips .

摘要

Contemporary theoretical discourse often cites travel as engendering a certain type of worldview, a perspective that allows for openness, empathy, and a compassionate connection with the space or community encountered. This migrant perspective, as articulated by Carol Boyce Davies, Iain Chambers, Gloria Anzaldua and others, is also correlated with a resistant subjectivity inherently oppositional to dominant and oppressive systems of power, ranging from patriarchy to (neo) colonialism. Viewing travel discourse in relation to the context of late capitalism and globalization allows us to examine the literary or cultural analyses of this subject as symptomatic of the brave new global world. My contribution to this field is consequently the incorporation of theories of globalization to make sense of the developments within travel-movement discourse. In turn, I read the literary works of Paule Marshall, Cristina Garcia, Andrea Levy and Caryl Phillips as theorizing travel in a unique way by focusing on the concept of homecoming or return. This circular journey intersects across temporal space with other migrations to and from the Caribbean, forced or economically motivated, from the Middle Passage to the more recent mass immigration towards imperial centers, such as Britain and the United States, during the 20th century. Not only does the journey back repeat the movements of the diaspora, but this travel in reverse from the metropole to the Caribbean also evokes the voyage of the colonizer and the tourist. The return is then a very specific form of travel that engages with globalization on two levels: first, by acknowledging the movement of labor and consequently migrant populations from "Third World" to "First World" countries, meeting the demands of transnational capital flow; secondly, in reference to another traveling population, tourists, who are not only bearers of globalizing culture, but are also comprised of the upwardly mobile generations following from the earlier migrations. By going global in a Caribbean locale, these novels narrate and interrogate the possibility of a resistant traveling subject within the context of globalization, contesting the boundaries separating the figures of the exile, tourist and migrant. This literature, in effect, forms a critical response to travel discourse at large by addressing the interconnectedness of travel and subjectivity while grappling with issues of transnationalism, translocality and migration.