Reviewed by: Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intra-Colonial Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context by Yolanda Martínez San Miguel Lanny Thompson Yolanda Martínez San Miguel. 2014. Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intra-Colonial Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. xiii + 277 pp. ISBN: 9781137413062. Yolanda Martínez San Miguel’s book is a sophisticated, intriguing, and highly readable tour de force of comparative literary criticism. The title, “Coloniality of Diasporas,” refers to intra-colonial migrations: movements of people between colonies and metropolis of the same imperial regime. In this way she focuses upon diasporic dispersions within empires which, strictly speaking, are neither transnational nor global. These migrants do not traverse the borders of nation-states; they do not wander the supposed open spaces of the globalized earth. This allows the author to offer us readings that run across the grain of post-colonial “obsessions” with nationalism and of Caribbean fascinations with “hybridity.” She offers us innovative interpretations of the conflicted and complex cultural, racial, and sexual identities, as expressed in literature, that do not necessarily coincide with nationalist canons. The book’s central motif is that of diaspora originating in the Caribbean, but not limited to that geographical area. Several chapters follow migrants to the metropolis (France and the United States); two chapters take us far from the Caribbean into the Philippines and to the edges of the Spanish empire in the Pacific. Martínez San Miguel does not make any explicit argument regarding the “repeating islands” of the Caribbean cultural area, only to imply that its multi-vocal and multilingual literatures are comparable and share certain diasporic experiences. Her perspective is “archipelagic.” That is, she does not focus on insular, national, or regional “units”; rather, she adopts a methodology that locates islands within their (post)colonial contexts and from this vantage point delineates theoretically relevant comparisons within and across archipelagos. Martínez San Miguel has the patience of a measured professor in explaining the various historical contexts, the definition of the theoretical terms, the controversies in the literature, and the etymology of the historical and contemporary lexicon: pirate, filibuster, archipelago, and sexile. The chapters move effortlessly from the seventeenth century pirates, on to nineteenth century literary resistance to colonialism, then [End Page 237] to twentieth century issues of creole languages, the racialization of the Caribbean diaspora in the metropolis, and finally to contemporary “sexiles”, those who migrate to the metropolis due to their non-normative sexuality. The author posits unexpected, but clearly justified, literary comparisons, while juggling several languages: French, Spanish (and Spanglish), and English. She makes liberal use of longish quotes in the original language followed by English translations where needed. The first section (two chapters) centers upon the shifting historical meanings of “filibuster.” The first chapter compares the narrative of the Pacific voyages of Puerto Rican born Alonso Ramírez (as told to Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora) with the memoirs of Père Labat, a French friar captured by Spanish pirates in the Caribbean. These two narratives deploy the often ambiguous distinction between independent pirates who stole and traded contraband and filibusters who were commissioned by rival empires to do the same. Both types of adventurers crossed borders, not of nation-states, rather of empires, and their identities and interests were forged in the interstices of sovereignty. By the nineteenth century, however, the meaning of “filibuster” had shifted and tripled. First, it referred to United States adventurers who tried to take control of small countries, especially in Central America. Second, it referred to the hindrance or disruption of normal legislative processes. Finally, it referred to those who sought emancipation and separation from the Spanish Empire. In the second chapter, Martínez San Miguel plays upon the second (obstructionist) and third (nationalist) meaning, in order to pull out the ambiguities of two canonical texts: Filibusterismo (by José Rizal of the Philippines) and Cecilia Valdés (by Cirilio Villaverde of Cuba). In this chapter, Martínez San Miguel argues that like the pirate/filibusters of the seventeenth century, the filibusters of the nineteenth century questioned the imperial order without proposing a sovereign state constituted by a unified imaginary community (nation). The...
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Mar 31, 2015
Marlon Winedt 
Open Access