Curwen Best
Head of Unit
Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature
UWI, Cave Hill, Barbados

Cyberculture: Caribbean Cybercritique V2.0

Caribbean culture experienced substantial transformation in the early post-1st Iraq war (Desert Storm) years. The mounting of the second Iraq war of 2003 (and its relationship to the first war) provides a point of departure for engaging the new ways in which information about our selves and others are conveyed. The region’s location within wider global space is increasingly being marked/represented/simulated by leading edge developments in technology, communication, commerce and culture.

While Caribbean critics have always responded to shifts in global and contextual arenas, cyberculture’s immense expansion has only recently drawn out Caribbean cultural critique. Part of the challenge posed by cyberculture is its instability, and above all, the fact that it is still in its infancy. Critics have perhaps rightly not jumped headlong, but have waited to see how structures and patterns develop, before they bother about logging on to and seizing the domains of cybercritique. But in the interim, Caribbean cyberculture represents a growing set of practices and procedures. The immediate future of Caribbean cultural criticism requires an engagement with new technologies. Part of the challenge of global-positioning in many spheres of practice (academic, political, commercial etc.) has to do with the ability of participants and stakeholders to anticipate and comprehend the new and emerging field of real and virtual engagement.

In this paper I want to continue to build on ongoing research into aspects of Caribbean cultural practice as reflected primarily through the Internet.