Abstract

The cultural plurality and experiential diversity which characterizes much of the Caribbean has created a wealth of contexts and perspectives in Caribbean literature and discourse. The near total decimation of pre-Columbian cultures, centuries of slavery and indentured servitude, and the often uninterrupted presence of the West throughout the region, however, has greatly complicated the identification of a Pan-Caribbean view of experience and expression. This study explores three important contemporary responses to the complexities of constructing a Pan-Caribbean theory of culture and discourse: the Cuban cultural anthropologist Fernando Ortiz's theory of transculturacion; his compatriot, the writer and critic Antonio Benitez Rojo's concept of positive cultural dissipation; and, the Martinican writer and critic Edouard Glissant's poetique de la Relation. As a comparative analysis will show, while the theories of Ortiz and Benitez Rojo are divided by fifty years, and those of Benitez Rojo and Glissant are separated by distinct political and cultural contexts, key similarities can be found among these approaches that suggest a kind of theoretical continuum of Pan-Caribbean cultural identity. Moreover, each of these theories addresses central themes and issues, unique unto the Caribbean, which suggests that a reading of the Caribbean's manifold expressions of culture may benefit from comparison with concepts found in the philosophy of quantum physics and chaos theory. Theoretical paradigms drawn from the concept of complementarity, created by the theoretical physicist Niels Bohr, for instance, help to explain how each of these writer's understanding of the dialogue between Western and autochthonous sources of culture contributes to their alternative reading of Caribbean discourse. Meanwhile, the theory of dissipative structures, found in the physicist Ilya Prigogine's work on non-linear thermodynamics, will clarify how these alternative readings of Caribbean culture can simultaneously maintain cultural diversity and cultural unification. Comparative analyses based on contemporary scientific theories, then, can contribute to a more-encompassing, yet non-essentialized, understanding of Pan-Caribbean cultural identity that extends beyond cultural, historical, political or geographical boundaries