{"id":14901,"date":"2011-07-14T00:59:46","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T00:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14901"},"modified":"2011-07-14T01:01:36","modified_gmt":"2011-07-14T01:01:36","slug":"gender-mixed-race-relations-and-dougla-identities-in-indo-caribbean-women%e2%80%99s-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14901","title":{"rendered":"Gender, Mixed Race Relations and Dougla Identities in Indo-Caribbean Women\u2019s Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gender, Mixed Race Relations and Dougla Identities in Indo-Caribbean Women\u2019s Fiction<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

6th International Conference of Caribbean Women’s Writing: Comparative Critical Conversations<\/a>
\nGoldsmiths, University of London
\nCentre for Caribbean Studies
\n2011-06-24 through 2011-06-25<\/p>\n

Christine Vogt-William<\/a><\/strong>
\nJohann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany<\/em><\/p>\n

Once a pejorative term in Hindi meaning \u2018bastard\u2019, dougla<\/a> is used nowadays to designate those of African and Indian parentage in the Caribbean. Relations between African and Indian communities in the Caribbean have been fraught, due to the divide-and-rule policies implemented by the colonial plantocracy<\/a>, missionaries and state regimes, in order to discourage interracial solidarity and cooperation. Vijay Prashad<\/a> observes: \u201cthe descendants of the coolies<\/a> and the slaves have struggled against the legacy of both social fractures and of the mobility of some at the expense of others\u201c (Prashad, 2001: 95). Yet, despite this there were transcultural alliances between Afro-Caribbeans and Indo-Caribbeans. However the figure of the dougla was considered by many middle class Indians as a potential threat to Indian cultural coherence and by extension to a powerful political lobby under the demographic category of \u201cEast Indian\u201d (Prashad, 2001: 83). Indo-Caribbean culture, history and literature cannot be examined without acknowledging the transcultural aspects of dougla heritages.<\/p>\n

The focus of my paper will be on how gender and mixed race relations are addressed in novels by Indo-Trinidadian-Canadian writers Ramabai Espinet<\/a> and Shani Mootoo<\/a>. The genre of the novel could be read as an adequate site to address the interrogation of hybrid identities with a view to engendering a Caribbean feminist dougla poetics, since literature is \u201ca medium that is not understood to be exclusively the cultural capital of Indo- or Afro-Trinidadians\u201d (Puri, 2004: 206). Gender roles and expectations from both Indo-Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean communities inform and complicate racial relations\u2014factors which are rendered even more complex due to the histories of slavery and indentured labour and how these served to shape Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean women\u2019s self-perceptions. In view of these histories, I read The Swinging Bridge<\/em> (Espinet) and He Drown She in the Sea<\/em> (Mootoo) with the aim of charting spaces to articulate alternative perspectives normally disallowed by hegemonic racial representations (Afro-Creole and Indian \u201cMother Culture\u201d), which also repress the gender and class inequalities within Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean communities. These spaces then might provide the dougla potential of disrupting dominant racial and gendered stereotypes, thus allowing for specifically transcultural feminist interventions in prevalent gender and race imagery.<\/p>\n

For more information, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gender, Mixed Race Relations and Dougla Identities in Indo-Caribbean Women\u2019s Fiction 6th International Conference of Caribbean Women’s Writing: Comparative Critical Conversations Goldsmiths, University of London Centre for Caribbean Studies 2011-06-24 through 2011-06-25 Christine Vogt-William Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany Once a pejorative term in Hindi meaning \u2018bastard\u2019, dougla is used nowadays to designate those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,125,1196,8,14,25],"tags":[6863,6866,6864,6865],"class_list":["post-14901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latincarib","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-papers","category-women","tag-christine-vogt-william","tag-conference-of-caribbean-womens-writing","tag-ramabai-espinet","tag-shani-mootoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}