BookThe Dominican racial imaginary: surveying the landscape of race and ...
Author
Title
- The Dominican racial imaginary: surveying the landscape of race and nation in Hispaniola.
Published
- New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016.
HLAS annotation
HLAS annotation
- The 2013 decision by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic stripping Dominicans of Haitian descent of their citizenship has prompted numerous re-examinations of the relationship between race and national identity on the island of Hispaniola. Heated debates within the Dominican Republic and its diaspora, and within academia as well as beyond it, have pointed to the tortuous historical relationship between the two neighboring countries. Many observers have concluded that Dominicanness has always been defined along racial lines and in sharp binary opposition to Haiti, leading many Dominicans of African descent to deny that aspect of their identity. While recognizing said obfuscation as the "official" Dominican discourse on race and nation, a combined product of Spanish colonialism and (mis)interpretations by agents of the US in the 1860s, Milagros Ricourt challenges the notion of a monolithic Dominican national identity. Using historical archival research combined with ethnographic work in the southern and eastern regions of the Dominican Republic as well as in the Dominican diaspora in New York City, Ricourt paints a nuanced and complex picture in which Dominicans of African descent have resisted the official discourse, sometimes crafting alternatives, in diverse ways from everyday religious and cultural practices, to literary and academic spaces, to electoral politics and social movement protest. [JLR]
More Information
Description
- 187 p.: bibl., ill., index, maps.
HLAS subjects
LC subjects
- Racism--Dominican Republic--History.
- Ethnicity--Dominican Republic--History.
- Nationalism--Dominican Republic--History.
- Blacks--Dominican Republic--History.
- Creoles--Dominican Republic--History.
- Cultural pluralism--Dominican Republic--History.
- Anti-racism--Dominican Republic--History.
- Dominican Republic--Race relations--History.
- Dominican Republic--Social life and customs.
- Dominican Republic--Social conditions.
Contents
- Introduction -- Border at the crossroad -- The Creolization of race -- Cimarrones : the seed of subversion -- Criollismo religioso -- Race, identity, and nation.
Notes
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-181) and index.
Series
- Critical Caribbean studies
ISBN
- 9780813584485 (hardcover : alk. paper)
- 9780813584478 (pbk.)
Incorrect ISBN
- 9780813584492 (e-book (epub))
- 9780813584508 (e-book (web pdf))
HLAS topic/discipline search
HLAS volume records
HLAS contributor
- José A. Laguarta Ramírez