Martin Alleyne

Postgraduate Student/Temporary Lecturer
Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature
UWI, Cave Hill, Barbados

Beyond Nationalism: The impact of globalization on the expression of Anglophone West Indian prose fiction of the late 20th Century

Prior to the 1980s, West Indian literature was dominated by the need to resist colonial hegemony as means of establishing a national/regional/cultural identity. A direct consequence of this was the production of a literature signified by strategies which have been denoted as post-colonial. At the fore front of these techniques were notions of appropriation and abrogation and the assertion of nation language, techniques which reflected the strong advocacy for political and cultural independence depicted in novels of the 1950 - 1970 period. This nationalistic surge for independence served as the rallying point for writers of the pre-independence phase of the West Indian society. Undoubtedly, this impetus correlated with the global and regional nationalist movements fighting for freedom from colonial rule during the 1940s and 1950s. For the most part, novels written during the 1950-1970 era were shaped in the social realist form, and infused with Afrocentric and East Indian cultural makers. Focusing on the life of the Apeasant@ in West Indian society, the objective was to demarginalize the former colonial. However, novels such as those written by Wilson Harris experimented with postmodernist techniques, techniques which some critics classify under the title of Amagic realism@. Notably, Harris=s work with its concept of cultural hybridity is an early indication of the kind of transcultural and transnational influence that would begin to envelope the novel of the late 20th century. The late 20th century would also witness the shift from the affronting of the marginalized B a characteristic feature of early post-colonial writingB to the concentration on engagement with history B the need to re-humanize the former slave; this being a strong aspect of the post-modernist venture.

This paper attempts to argue that in the post-independence period, and subsequent to the attainment of political and cultural freedom, the Anglophone West Indian novel entered a phase in which globalization, both as a political, economic and cultural system, has diffused the strong sense of national/regional/cultural identity, and apparent political sovereignty which pervaded the novel before the 1980s. Accompanying this diffusion of a sense of nationalistic fervour is the awareness that the new novelists are more concerned with the quest for identity as an individual in contrast to that of reclaiming a collective identity.