Re-Constructing Place and Space

Book excerpt: Cultural traditions transmitted within the primary and secondary migratory communities of the Caribbean are continually subject to loss, gain and reinterpretation. Communication practices play a role in these processes as they help to sustain and challenge the diasporic subjectivities of the Caribbean. Re-Constructing Place and Space: Media, Culture, Discourse and the Constitution of Caribbean Diasporas seeks to explore the influence of embodied, discursive and mediated communicative forms on the construction and maintenance of Caribbean diasporic communities. The volume emerged from the 2009 New Media and the Global Diaspora Symposium: Exploring Media in Caribbean Diasporas held at Roger Williams University in the United States. The event sought to encourage interdisciplinary academic discourse on Caribbean migratory populations, foregrounding the role of communicative practices in sustaining their traditions. In keeping with the spirit of the symposium, this volume applies a transdisciplinary lens to understanding the diversity and complexity of Caribbean peoples’ production of and engagement with communication practices. The objectives for the book are two-fold. The general objective is to contribute to discourse on diasporic identity and performativity. The more specific aim of the book is to present a more complex picture of peoples from the Caribbean region and their diasporic communities. —From the Introduction