A Worldbuilding Moment: Aesthetics and Economics in the Caribbean Festival of Arts’ (Carifesta) Revolutionary Era, 1966-1981
| dc.contributor.advisor | López-Durán, Fabiola | |
| dc.creator | Rooney, Adrienne A | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-09-01T20:22:29Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2023-08 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-08-11 | |
| dc.date.submitted | August 2023 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2023-09-01T20:22:29Z | |
| dc.description | EMBARGO NOTE: This item is embargoed until 2029-08-01 | |
| dc.description.abstract | A Worldbuilding Moment tells a story of the early years of the Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta), a roving, multimedia, multilingual, and still semi-regularly recurring festival. Homing in on what I call Carifesta’s “revolutionary era”—comprising its founding, inauguration in Guyana (1972), and iterations in Jamaica (1976), Cuba (1979), and Barbados (1981), after which it went into an unplanned decade-long hibernation—it shows how artists, intellectuals, and audiences reveled, imagined, and debated at the festivals among cultural production from the Caribbean islands, mainland countries touched by the Caribbean Sea, and beyond. Coevolving with economic efforts for pan-Caribbean integration, Carifesta embodied a dream to unite a region fragmented by Danish, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish colonial empires. The first book-length academic study of the festival, A Worldbuilding Moment adds depth and historic clarity to understanding Carifesta’s emergence and entanglements with regional integration. It shows, too, that the early festivals were entwined with a hope for a new world order marked by self-government, cultural sovereignty, and an economic model distinct from the colonial capitalist system. Hubs of leftist discourse, (ethno)nationalist politics, boycotts, and Cold War and Nonaligned political diplomacy, Carifesta played a multidimensional role in postcolonial worldbuilding in a moment shaped by the Bandung Conference, the Cuban Revolution, strivings for West Indian unity, Pan-Africanism, and Black Power. A plurality of hopes shaped Carifesta, and decolonization generally; however, centering artists, artworks, theorists, and political figures, A Worldbuilding Moment argues that, varied hopes aside, the “Carifesta complex”—a concept I coin—fundamentally ruptured one of the most profound tenets of colonial logic: a logic deeming the “wider Caribbean” where the plantation reigned a site for economic extraction—or later touristic pleasure—not cultural production. Situating the festival as a (temporary and imperfect) rejoinder to the multilingual plantation system, I show that racial, class, and dependency (cultural) politics rooted in the plantation system were not absent from the festivals. However, I emphasize how such forces were redressed within these intricate, (at times contested) groundbreaking gatherings integral to a moment of envisioning a new world order and redrawing the terms and imaginary of the region. | |
| dc.embargo.lift | 2029-08-01 | |
| dc.embargo.terms | 2029-08-01 | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Rooney, Adrienne A. "A Worldbuilding Moment: Aesthetics and Economics in the Caribbean Festival of Arts' (Carifesta) Revolutionary Era, 1966-1981." (2023) Diss., Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115260. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115260 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.rights | Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder. | |
| dc.subject | Colonialism | |
| dc.subject | Decolonization | |
| dc.subject | Development | |
| dc.subject | Epistemology | |
| dc.subject | Exhibitions | |
| dc.subject | Plantation | |
| dc.subject | Popular culture | |
| dc.subject | Race | |
| dc.title | A Worldbuilding Moment: Aesthetics and Economics in the Caribbean Festival of Arts’ (Carifesta) Revolutionary Era, 1966-1981 | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | Text | |
| thesis.degree.department | Art History | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Humanities | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Rice University | |
| thesis.degree.level | Doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy |