A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being

by Kaiama L. Glover

Overview

In A Regarded Self Kaiama L. Glover champions unruly female protagonists who adamantly refuse the constraints of coercive communities. Reading novels by Marie Chauvet, Maryse Condé, René Depestre, Marlon James, and Jamaica Kincaid, Glover shows how these authors' women characters enact practices of freedom that privilege the self in ways unmediated and unrestricted by group affiliation. The women of these texts offend, disturb, and reorder the world around them. They challenge the primacy of the community over the individual and propose provocative forms of subjecthood. Highlighting the style and the stakes of these women's radical ethics of self-regard, Glover reframes Caribbean literary studies in ways that critique the moral principles, politicized perspectives, and established critical frameworks that so often govern contemporary reading practices. She asks readers and critics of postcolonial literature to question their own gendered expectations and to embrace less constrictive modes of theorization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478012757
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	12/04/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	602 KB

About the Author

Kaiama L. Glover is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is coeditor of The Haiti Reader: History, Culture, Politics, also published by Duke University Press, and author of Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon.

Table of Contents

Introduction  1
1. Self-Love | Tituba  39
2. Self-Possession | Hadriana  68
3. Self-Defense | Lotus  111
4. Self-Preservation | Xuela  146
5. Self-Regard | Lilith  188
Epilogue  219
Notes  225
Works Cited  249
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A Regarded Self therefore serves as an invaluable example of a study in self-disorientation, in being nimbly reactive and empathetic against the ossifying tendencies of many identity-based politics, while simultaneously opening up a more inclusive discursive space for selfhood that refuses to exclude any desires, no matter how selfish they may seem."

Ariel - Jake J. McGuirk

Kaiama L. Glover’s A Regarded Self is a thought-provoking and innovative contribution to Caribbean literary criticism as it subversively engages with Caribbean ideological idiosyncrasies and self-reflexively unsettles established academic positions. . . .  Its combination of textual and extra-textual analysis provides a comprehensive insight into anglophone and francophone Caribbean literature, culture and scholarship.”

KULT Online - Isabella Kalte

Kaiama L. Glover's magnificently written A Regarded Self recovers voices long relegated to the margins. It is also a new and thrilling kind of criticism, uncompromising in its resistance to generalities about Afro-Atlantic and Caribbean Studies. Seamlessly joining literary reflection and oral history, it unveils a new understanding of the aesthetic and the political. For once returned to their significant histories in the Caribbean, these magisterial terms gain force and momentum. Glover's unparalleled analyses of Maryse Condé, René Depestre, and Jamaica Kincaid make readers rethink the nature of mastery and subjection, as well as the false divide between sacred and profane.

Haiti, History, and the Gods - Colin Dayan

A Regarded Self is about disorderly women who endlessly unsettle any given structure. . . . Glover invites us to think through what it would mean to endlessly unsettle ourselves and everything around us.

Ideas - Marietta Kosma

In this rigorous and elegantly executed book, Kaiama L. Glover performs the disorderly womanness that she theorizes by offering feminist challenges to established Caribbean scholarly practices, tropes, and readings that reinforce masculinist valorizations of ‘community.’ Offering innovative, unconventional perspectives on well-known literary texts, A Regarded Self stands to be an important work.

Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders - Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley

In her groundbreaking new book, A Regarded Self, Kaiama Glover proposes an innovative theoretical framework for reappraising the role of Caribbean women in literature and literary criticism.... This book will appeal to both specialist and general readers, but it is particularly compelling in its enactment of a new way of approaching literature from the region.

L'Esprit Créateur - Bonnie Thomas

Glover’s writing style remains fun and engaging throughout, her thoughts informative, and her thesis well-plotted. . . . ARegarded Self delivers a compelling analysis of Caribbean women writers and their traditionally unlikeable heroines, devoting itself to intersectionality and avoiding reiterations of previous scholarship.

European Journal of American Studies - Kieran Leeds

Reading across some of the linguistic barriers within the Caribbean, [Glover] offers a text essential to scholars of Caribbean studies and which may be used to facilitate conversations across the islands (and scholarly departments). Always reading against the grain, always illuminating (the costs of ) our own readerly proclivities, [A Regarded Self] does not disappoint.

H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews - Jocelyn Sutton Franklin

"Readers should be able to work their ways out of the boxes that define texts and approach them closely from less controlled zones. As such, Glover’s A Regarded Self is a timely and much-needed book, in these times when readers may feel compelled to pay allegiance to the labels and theories in vogue before actually regarding the source book itself."

Public Books - Andrée-Anne Kekeh-Dika

"A Regarded Self therefore serves as an invaluable example of a study in self-disorientation, in being nimbly reactive and empathetic against the ossifying tendencies of many identity-based politics, while simultaneously opening up a more inclusive discursive space for selfhood that refuses to exclude any desires, no matter how selfish they may seem."--Jake J. McGuirk "Ariel" (1/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Glover's writing style remains fun and engaging throughout, her thoughts informative, and her thesis well-plotted. . . . ARegarded Self delivers a compelling analysis of Caribbean women writers and their traditionally unlikeable heroines, devoting itself to intersectionality and avoiding reiterations of previous scholarship."--Kieran Leeds "European Journal of American Studies" (3/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Reading across some of the linguistic barriers within the Caribbean, [Glover] offers a text essential to scholars of Caribbean studies and which may be used to facilitate conversations across the islands (and scholarly departments). Always reading against the grain, always illuminating (the costs of ) our own readerly proclivities, [A Regarded Self] does not disappoint."--Jocelyn Sutton Franklin "H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews" (8/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"A Regarded Self is about disorderly women who endlessly unsettle any given structure. . . . Glover invites us to think through what it would mean to endlessly unsettle ourselves and everything around us."--Marietta Kosma "Ideas" (8/31/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"Kaiama L. Glover's A Regarded Self is a thought-provoking and innovative contribution to Caribbean literary criticism as it subversively engages with Caribbean ideological idiosyncrasies and self-reflexively unsettles established academic positions. . . . Its combination of textual and extra-textual analysis provides a comprehensive insight into anglophone and francophone Caribbean literature, culture and scholarship."

--Isabella Kalte "KULT Online" (5/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"In her groundbreaking new book, A Regarded Self, Kaiama Glover proposes an innovative theoretical framework for reappraising the role of Caribbean women in literature and literary criticism.... This book will appeal to both specialist and general readers, but it is particularly compelling in its enactment of a new way of approaching literature from the region."--Bonnie Thomas "L'Esprit Créateur" (11/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"Readers should be able to work their ways out of the boxes that define texts and approach them closely from less controlled zones. As such, Glover's A Regarded Self is a timely and much-needed book, in these times when readers may feel compelled to pay allegiance to the labels and theories in vogue before actually regarding the source book itself."--Andrée-Anne Kekeh-Dika "Public Books" (2/23/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"In this rigorous and elegantly executed book, Kaiama L. Glover performs the disorderly womanness that she theorizes by offering feminist challenges to established Caribbean scholarly practices, tropes, and readings that reinforce masculinist valorizations of 'community.' Offering innovative, unconventional perspectives on well-known literary texts, A Regarded Self stands to be an important work."--Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley, author of "Ezili's Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders"

"Kaiama L. Glover's magnificently written A Regarded Self recovers voices long relegated to the margins. It is also a new and thrilling kind of criticism, uncompromising in its resistance to generalities about Afro-Atlantic and Caribbean Studies. Seamlessly joining literary reflection and oral history, it unveils a new understanding of the aesthetic and the political. For once returned to their significant histories in the Caribbean, these magisterial terms gain force and momentum. Glover's unparalleled analyses of Maryse Condé, René Depestre, and Jamaica Kincaid make readers rethink the nature of mastery and subjection, as well as the false divide between sacred and profane."--Colin Dayan, author of "Haiti, History, and the Gods"

From the Publisher

"Readers should be able to work their ways out of the boxes that define texts and approach them closely from less controlled zones. As such, Glover’s A Regarded Self is a timely and much-needed book, in these times when readers may feel compelled to pay allegiance to the labels and theories in vogue before actually regarding the source book itself."

Public Books - Andrée-Anne Kekeh-Dika

In this rigorous and elegantly executed book, Kaiama L. Glover performs the disorderly womanness that she theorizes by offering feminist challenges to established Caribbean scholarly practices, tropes, and readings that reinforce masculinist valorizations of ‘community.’ Offering innovative, unconventional perspectives on well-known literary texts, A Regarded Self stands to be an important work.

Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders - Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley