International
Conference - “What is Postcolonial Thought? Panel: Mémoires et Historicité.
University of the Antilles Schoelcher
Campus, Martinique from November 23-25, 2015.
Caribbean
Historic Memory: The Restoration of Indigenous Performance Practices
Abstract: A direct
result of colonialism has been the erasure of the colonial subject's historic
memory. The most evident form of physical erasure has been the myth of decimation
of the Caribbean indigenous subject, but also the known historic practice of
making the indigenous invisible to the area, the respective countries, their
inhabitants and the indigenous subject him/herself. This is why in the last few
decades; communities of indigenous descendants in the Caribbean have been
involved in a process of memory restoration in the subjunctive, meaning how indigenous
performance practices could have been, as opposed to how they really were. This
process has been activated, mainly, through the re-enactment of performance
practices believed to be extinct until they became visibly active. However, the
erasure and invisibility has been true only because the indigenous voices have
been systematically silenced by dominant exogenous ideologies. This paper looks
at the gaps between what has been said and what has been embodied, between what
has been published and what has remained part of the repertoire of Caribbean
indigenous performance practices. This study proposes new ways to engage
Caribbean writers, artists and cultural workers with restoring cultural and
historic memory in order to clear a colonial past that remains an obstacle in
building new indigenous historicities. The process, documented in the paper:
the areito, the lace dance, the dance restoration and its performance, reclaims
new spaces for indigenous communities to demand cultural reparations, historic
memory and embodied spirituality.
