Marc Brudzinski  (University of Miami)
Caribbean Transcolonial: Martinique and Puerto Rico Between Nation and Region

Exchanges between visiting artists and politicians from these two Caribbean places in the 1980s and 1990s were often built around the assumption that Martinique and Puerto Rico held similarly neo-colonial relationships with Paris and Washington, respectively. The reflections produced by these exchanges did not necessarily re-affirm the primacy of the colony/métropole paradigm that characterizes many postcolonial inquiries. Instead, they have explored the category of the "regional." The "regional" in the Caribbean opens a compelling but slippery terrain, since it can be posited so variously : in terms that assume the existence of nation-states, in terms that question the relevance of the nation-state, as well as in terms that simply re-inscribe a colonial world-model.

In this paper, then, I examine the "transcolonial" relationship between Martinique and Puerto Rico in order to interrogate the usefulness of certain postcolonial tropes of inquiry. Taking as my point of departure the November 1998 trip to Martinique that was made by Puerto Rican politicians seeking regional support for their bid to become a US state, I analyze the terms of their discussion and investigate the resonance of "colony," "nation" and "region" in late twentieth-century Puerto Rico and Martinique. I then turn to the essays and fiction of Puerto Rican artist Ana Lydia Vega to see how her experiences in Martinique question the premises of the Éloge de la créolité. In these exchanges, the unique role played by the "regional" category allows me to probe the relevance of postcolonial inquiry in the Caribbean, and thereby dialog with recent critiques by Françoise Lionnet and Shalini Puri.