Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought pp 133–151Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Comparative Caribbean Feminisms: Jahaji-bhain in Carnival

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: New Caribbean Studies ((NCARS))

Abstract

This chapter argues that Indo-Caribbean feminist thought must engage Afro-Caribbean feminist analyses of women’s Carnival performances through a comparative methodology based on minimal incommensurability. By discussing two Indian women’s participation in Trinidad Carnival, and going beyond the trope of chutney-soca as the quintessential Indo-Caribbean Carnival space, I show how their desires and needs as feters and masqueraders can be analyzed through theorizations of feminism in nineteenth century jamette performances by Afro-Caribbean feminists. However, to bring comparative feminist analysis to bear on these ethno-racially distinct groups of Caribbean women, I frame the specificities of Indian women’s feminism within the jahaji-bhain concept, both locally and transnationally.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Works Cited

  • Baksh-Soodeen, Rawwida. 1998. Issues of Difference in Contemporary Caribbean Feminism. Feminist Review 59(1): 74–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, Natasha. 2000. Body Talk: Notes on Women and Spectacle in Contemporary Trinidad Carnival. Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 7: 93–105.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bettelheim, Judith. 1998. Women in Masquerade and Performance. African Arts 31(2): 68–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edmondson, Belinda. 2009. Caribbean Middlebrow: Leisure Culture and the Middle Class. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franco, Pamela R. 1998. ‘Dressing up and Looking Good’: Afro-Creole Female Maskers. African Arts 31(2): 62–67, 91, 95–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2000. The ‘Unruly Woman’ in Nineteenth-Century Trinidad Carnival. Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 4(1): 60–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, Carla. 2014. Entrepreneurial Selves: Neoliberal Respectability and the Making of a Caribbean Middle Class. Durham: Duke University Press Books.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hosein, Gabrielle. 2012. Modern Negotiations: Indo-Trinidadian Girlhood and Gender Differential Creolization. In Indo-Caribbean Feminisms: Charting Crossings in Geography, Discourse and Politics, eds. Gabrielle Hosein and Lisa Outar. Special issue, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 6: 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mahabir, Joy, and Mariam Pirbhai, eds. 2012. Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Melas, Natalie. 2006. All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mohammed, Patricia. 1999. From Myth to Symbolism: The Construction of Indian Femininity and Masculinity in Post-Indentured Trinidad. In Matikor: The Politics of Identity for Indo-Caribbean Women, ed. Rosanne Kanhai, 62–99. St. Augustine: University of the West Indies, School of Continuing Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. Like Sugar in Coffee: Third Wave Feminism and the Caribbean. Social and Economic Studies 52(3): 5–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Munasinghe, Viranjini. 1997. Culture Creators and Culture Bearers: The Interface Between Race and Ethnicity in Trinidad. Transforming Anthropology 6(1–2): 72–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. Callaloo or Tossed Salad?: East Indians and the Cultural Politics of Identity in Trinidad. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Niranjana, Tejaswini. 2006. Mobilizing India: Women, Music, and Migration Between India and Trinidad. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pinto, Samantha. 2010. ‘Why Must All Girls Want to Be Flag Women?’: Postcolonial Sexualities, National Reception, and Caribbean Soca Performance. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 10(1): 137–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prentice, Rebecca. 2015. Thiefing a Chance: Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad. Kindle edition. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puri, Shalini. 2004. The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism, and Cultural Hybridity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Scher, Philip W. 2004. Carnival and the Formation of a Caribbean Transnation, 1st edn. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scher, Philip W., and Garth L. Green. 2007. Trinidad Carnival: The Cultural Politics of a Transnational Festival. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singh, Kavita Ashana. 2012. A Schizophrenic Metaphor? Disciplining Creoleness. Transforming Anthropology 20(2): 172–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. English Department, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Kavita Ashana Singh

Authors
  1. Kavita Ashana Singh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kavita Ashana Singh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago, WI

    Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

  2. Independent Scholar, New York, NY, USA

    Lisa Outar

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Singh, K.A. (2016). Comparative Caribbean Feminisms: Jahaji-bhain in Carnival. In: Hosein, G.J., Outar, L. (eds) Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55937-1_9

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation