Whose Time Is It? Gender and Humanism in Contemporary Caribbean Feminist Advocacy

Abstract

Research Article| March 01 2010 Whose Time Is It? Gender and Humanism in Contemporary Caribbean Feminist Advocacy Michelle V. Rowley Michelle V. Rowley Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Small Axe (2010) 14 (1 (31)): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2009-040 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Michelle V. Rowley; Whose Time Is It? Gender and Humanism in Contemporary Caribbean Feminist Advocacy. Small Axe 1 March 2010; 14 (1 (31)): 1–15. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2009-040 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 Why has the category “gender” not figured transformatively in anti-colonial resistance, or nationalist politics in the region? This is a question posed in this forum by literary scholar Natasha Barnes (1991). Despite the centrality that Caribbean feminists have accorded to “gender” in their pursuit of social justice I argue that “gender's” analytical marginalization persists because the philosophical underpinnings of these nationalist/anti-colonialist projects have all but insisted upon the supplanting of gender by race. Toward this end, I examine the fraught role that “gender' plays in Frantz Fanon's work by revisiting his engagement with Mayotte Capécia's Je Suis Martiniquaise. For post-colonial subjects the assertion of one's humanity is simultaneously a claim of one's value. While, Caribbean feminists have deployed gender as the primary category through which a critique of human condition is invoked I argue that is now woefully inadequate when faced with the complex terrain of 21st century Caribbean feminist advocacy. The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Small Axe, Inc.2010 You do not currently have access to this content.