Carne Vale (Goodbye to Flesh?): Caribbean Carnival, Notions of the Flesh and Christian Ambivalence about the Body

Abstract

This paper interrogates the popular notions of sexuality that lay behind the women’s bodily displays during Trinidad Carnival, the iconic Carnival experience in the region, and contrasts these to some Christian notions of the body and sexuality, which see the body (‘the flesh’) and sexuality, as problematic even sinful, as is captured in the word “carnal”/“fleshly”. Carne Vale, “goodbye to flesh”, plays on the Christian roots of Carnival, the religious festival before the solemnity of Lent when meat is given up. It hints at Christian notions of body which devalue physical being and oftentimes view it as the site of sinfulness and temptation. It argues that Caribbean women have subverted and continue to subvert such negative valuations by engaging in carnivalesque masquerade that revalues bodies, especially colonised female bodies.