Caribbean Without Borders

Book excerpt: One of the most salient issues in Caribbean studies is the region's linguistic and cultural fragmentation as a result of European colonization. More than five centuries later, the islands and American countries whose shores touch the Caribbean Sea still echo such maladies. The title of this book is a call towards unity, a unity that, in the words of Barbadian poet, historian and critic Kamau Brathwaite, "is submarine." In the past, nations' borders were established based on the distance a cannon ball was able to cover when fired from land out to sea. It is time to go beyond the cannon ball distances out into uncharted territories, beyond the canon, and, thus, beyond the cannon's range.This book features a selection of essays presented at the fifth annual Caribbean Without Borders conference at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. It critically delves into the fields of linguistics, history, literature, philosophy, politics, feminism, cultural studies, music, film, and art, among many others, as a means to re-visit, re-view, re-envision, re-read, re-interpret, and thus re-create a Caribbean aesthetics that looks to submarine unity, a unity that defies spatial, temporal, and social borders. The book conveys the limitless nature of the Caribbean and its rich culture, making it an appealing transdisciplinary source for a multidisciplinary academic audience.