Expressing Them Selves: Orality in Contemporary English Caribbean Short Fiction as a key Signifier in the Assertion of Cultural Identity

Abstract

[ES] El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la cualidad oral del relato corto contemporáneo del Caribe anglófono como un importante indicador de identidad cultural, a través de seis relatos cortos de autores caribeños (Olive Senior, Velma Pollard, Makeda Silvera, Earl Lovelace, Michael Anthony e Ismith Khan). Dicho análisis se centra principalmente en el aspecto formal de estos relatos, donde resalta una estética oral denominada oraliteratura —patentada por una fuerte tradición oral— como elemento estilístico significativo a través del cual los autores expresan y reafirman una identidad cultural. Y esta intención se traduce en un discurso narrativo en ocasiones militante y subversivo de resistencia cultural que cuestiona y socava la supremacía del discurso cultural y estético heredado de Occidente (Anglocentrismo), y se convierte en estrategia para contrarrestar la falta de autonomía cultural de estos pueblos caribeños, derivada de un pasado colonial de dominación cultural europea y del imperialismo cultural norteamericano en la era postcolonial.

[EN] This work analyses the oral quality of contemporary English Caribbean short fiction as a stylistic signifier for the expression of cultural identity, through the study of six short stories by Anglo-Caribbean authors (Olive Senior, Velma Pollard, Makeda Silvera, Michael Anthony, Ismith Khan, and Earl Lovelace). This analysis focuses on the formal context of these works, revealing an oraliterary aesthetic sponsored by a powerful oral tradition still present in these societies and that becomes a narrative strategy for the articulation of cultural identity. This reaffirmation of “the oral” in “the literary” brings forth, then, a narrative discourse of cultural resistance, at times militant and subversive, which looks critically upon an Anglocentric cultural discourse and undermines its predominance, in an attempt to regain a cultural autonomy for these societies that have suffered European colonial domination in the past and American cultural imperialism in the postcolonial era.