The Dundus and the Chineyman

Abstract

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Charles V. Carnegie’s Postnationalism Prefigured (2002), this essay extends Carnegie’s insights about the inadequacy of using concepts of race as the foundation for nationalism to explore the social exclusions that are enforced in such constructions along lines of not only race but gender and sexuality as well. Taking a cue from a personal anecdote Carnegie relates in the book about the problem he poses as a “dundus” (Jamaican with albinism) for systems of racial classification, the author relies on reminiscence and a similar anecdote about his own misrecognition as “chineyman” (Chinese Jamaican) and possible “battyman” (gay man) to uncover the heterosexual and patriarchal norms that also underwrite the race/nation imaginary.