Ideological crossings: ‘you’ and the pragmatics of negation in Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place

Abstract

In her description of her native island (Antigua), Jamaica Kincaid invites the reader for a generic crossing in A Small Place—the book is not a novel but an essay—and, more importantly, an ideological crossing: the author brings us to think the colonial and post-colonial wound from the point of view of the colonised. If this work deserves a stylistic treatment, it is for the penetrating force of its rhetoric of anger. In its subtle resort to stylistic devices and linguistic tools, Kincaid’s style is disarming. Not only does it forcibly interpellate the reader with the second person pronoun “you” but it gives pragmatic strength to utterances that seem to be particularly simple on the surface. What will be highlighted in this paper is the powerfulness of the writing: it will primarily focus on the play with personal pronouns and the abundant use of negation, under all its forms, where Kincaid’s satire skilfully finds its place.