BEYOND CONCILIATION: ANTAGONISM AND NEGATIVITY IN CARIBBEAN HISTORICAL IMAGINARIES

As a site of intense relationality and encounter, the Caribbean has been constituted as a singular phenomenon. Its affirmation as a socio-cultural area, as the space of transculturación and syncretism, is determined by a conciliatory teleology regarding difference. To question this hegemonic cultural discourse, this essay offers a re-reading of Fernando Ortiz, Edouard Glissant and Manuel Zapata Olivella from what I will term a negative approach to and challenge of the unitary claim of identity. Through their work, I reflect on the critical potential of antagonism and violence in the construction of an alternative historical imaginary from and about the region.