Own People: Race, “Altered Solidarities,” and the Limits of Culture in Trinidad

Abstract

Research Article| November 01 2014 Own People: Race, “Altered Solidarities,” and the Limits of Culture in Trinidad J. Brent Crosson J. Brent Crosson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Small Axe (2014) 18 (3 (45)): 18–34. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2826434 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation J. Brent Crosson; Own People: Race, “Altered Solidarities,” and the Limits of Culture in Trinidad. Small Axe 1 November 2014; 18 (3 (45)): 18–34. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2826434 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsSmall Axe Search Advanced Search While scholarly and popular attention has focused on both interethnic tensions and hyperdiverse mixtures in Trinidad, this article considers solidarities based neither on mixture nor on bounded, antagonistic cultures. These “altered solidarities” reflect the ways subaltern Indian and African Trinidadians have articulated trust and influence through ethnoracial difference. J. Brent Crosson constructs both a counterhistory of ethnoracial relations in Trinidad and a counternarrative to culturalist explanations for contemporary violence to foreground less-legible forms of interracial connection and intraethnic division. While these counternarratives remain provocations defined by the particular context of African and Indian relations in “rural cosmopolitan” Trinidad, altered solidarities point toward wider interventions in debates that surround pluralism, creolization theory, and the delimitation of national, ethnic, or political communities. Race relations, Trinidad, Indo-Caribbean, Afro-Caribbean, solidarity through difference © Small Axe, Inc.2014 You do not currently have access to this content.