Carnivalizing the Nation: Reassessing the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival as an Inclusive Platform for Local and Diaspora Cultural Identity
type: CreativeWork
description: Trinidad and Tobago's 2020 National Cultural policy ostensibly seeks to build the twin islands’ cultural confidence through the development of a unifying and empowering national cultural identity. However, this research asserts that the current policy undermines these national goals by approaching its community through problematic colonial, nationalist frameworks and through centralizing the annual carnival festival. This positioning poses several key problems. First, it reinscribes the colonial cultural identity of the island. Second, this nationalist, Christian colonial approach reinforces a binary of belonging and non-belonging that excludes minoritized, diasporic, and non-conforming gender communities. Third, by centralizing carnival in cultural policy, the Trinbagonian national government promotes a one-dimensional story of the island, its culture, and its history. This policy paper seeks to dismantle these limiting worldviews and their tangible manifestations by emphasizing Trinbagonian culture as one founded in fusion, movement, and inclusivity. Movement is inherent in Trinbagonian culture. I use carnival to study the framing of cultural identity because the carnivalesque or trans dimensional qualities of carnival parallel the trans -national ones of cultural identity. Hence, to study this fluidity within the culture, I locate carnivalesque, the spirit of becoming, within carnival spaces. I then locate carnivalesque within quotidian culture through Trinidad and Tobago's liming culture. Liming exhibits carnivalesque qualities of chaos, relation, imagination, and eroticism, making this system of informal and formal transformative socializing spaces. I investigate cultural policy with a decolonial cultural studies framework as opposed to a neoliberal policy oriented one. Neoliberal methods, which policy makers use, are market oriented. Thus, they centralize economic reform policies. This approach preserves the focus of aesthetic culture over quotidian culture. A…
abstract: Trinidad and Tobago's 2020 National Cultural policy ostensibly seeks to build the twin islands’ cultural confidence through the development of a unifying and empowering national cultural identity. However, this research asserts that the current policy undermines these national goals by approaching its community through problematic colonial, nationalist frameworks and through centralizing the annual carnival festival. This positioning poses several key problems. First, it reinscribes the colonial cultural identity of the island. Second, this nationalist, Christian colonial approach reinforces a binary of belonging and non-belonging that excludes minoritized, diasporic, and non-conforming gender communities. Third, by centralizing carnival in cultural policy, the Trinbagonian national government promotes a one-dimensional story of the island, its culture, and its history. This policy paper seeks to dismantle these limiting worldviews and their tangible manifestations by emphasizing Trinbagonian culture as one founded in fusion, movement, and inclusivity. Movement is inherent in Trinbagonian culture. I use carnival to study the framing of cultural identity because the carnivalesque or trans dimensional qualities of carnival parallel the trans -national ones of cultural identity. Hence, to study this fluidity within the culture, I locate carnivalesque, the spirit of becoming, within carnival spaces. I then locate carnivalesque within quotidian culture through Trinidad and Tobago's liming culture. Liming exhibits carnivalesque qualities of chaos, relation, imagination, and eroticism, making this system of informal and formal transformative socializing spaces. I investigate cultural policy with a decolonial cultural studies framework as opposed to a neoliberal policy oriented one. Neoliberal methods, which policy makers use, are market oriented. Thus, they centralize economic reform policies. This approach preserves the focus of aesthetic culture over quotidian culture. A…
author: Bissoondatt, Shari
keywords: Carnival, Cultural Policy, Diaspora, Gender, Caribbean Languages and Societies, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
date published: 2022-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:40:15Z
provider: Claremont Graduate University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Claremont Graduate University