Against the City: What Derek Walcott Has to Teach Us about the City Imaginary

Abstract

The basic argument of this article is that the Caribbean author, Derek Walcott, illuminates how the concept of “the city” can be used to enable a geopolitical system of centralized power seated in culturally, politically, and economically significant nodes (i.e., “cities”). In short, following Walcott, the concept of “the city” at times serves as a cultural technology to justify colonization, the monopolization of political power, and the domination of so-called peripheral sites. “The city” is not always a neutral descriptor of a given geographical locus, but instead can be a cultural technology of power insofar as it is at times a concept employed in order to garner control over an extended territory from a socio-political center. To demonstrate this thesis, I engage in a close reading of Derek Walcott’s theoretical essays and epic poem, Omeros (1990).