The Convict and the Colonel: A Story of Colonialism and Resistance in the Caribbean / Edition 1

by Richard Price

Overview

An election day massacre in colonial Martinique. A “mad” artist who lives in a cave. A satirical wooden bust of a white colonel. The artist’s banishment to the Devil’s Island penal colony for “impertinence.” And a young anthropologist who arrives in Martinique in 1962, on the eve of massive modernization.

In a stunning combination of scholarship and storytelling, the award-winning anthropologist Richard Price draws on long-term ethnography, archival documents, cinema and street theater, and Caribbean fiction and poetry to explore how one generation’s powerful historical metaphors could so quickly become the next generation’s trivial pursuit, how memories of oppression, inequality, and struggle could so easily become replaced by nostalgia, complicity, and celebration.

“A superb callaloo of a book. . . . Richard Price has a remarkable grasp of the literatures of the Caribbean, and draws on this resource to explore the underlying insanity of the colonial experience, as well as the bewildering complexities of the postcolonial world where memory is erased or invented according to the demands of a market modernity.”—George Lamming, author of The Pleasures of Exile

“By beautifully crafting elements as disparate as biographical data, sociological studies, literary sources, and archival documents, Richard Price’s research is more fascinating than a piece of fiction.”—Maryse Condé, author of I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

“Price does it again. Mixing eras, genres, and voices, he carries the reader through the contradictory streams of historical consciousness in the Caribbean island of Martinique. The result is as complex and as enticing as the sea it evokes.”—Michel-Rolph Trouillot, author of Silencing the Past

“Filled with insights that are at once theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic, The Convict and the Colonel is required reading for anyone interested in colonialism, memory, and contemporary Caribbean societies.”—Jennifer Cole, American Ethnologist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822338239
Publisher:	Duke University Press Books
Publication date:	10/31/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Richard Price divides his time between rural Martinique and The College of William and Mary, where he is Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of American Studies and Professor of Anthropology and History. His many books include Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension (with Sally Price); The Birth of African-American Culture (with Sidney Mintz); Alabi’s World; and First-Time: The Historical Vision of an African American People.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

October 12, 1949

Place of Birth:

Bronx, New York

Education:

B.A., Cornell University, 1971; M.F.A., Columbia University

Table of Contents

Prologue ix

I. La Guerre de Diamant: 1925 1

II. “My Own Secret”: The Life and Work of Medard Aribot 51

III. Remembering Medard, the Seine of History 121

Afterword 221

Notes 231

Source Notes 273

Illustration Credits 281

References 285

Remerciements 295

What People are Saying About This

The Pleasures of Exile - George Lamming

“A superb callaloo of a book. . . . Richard Price has a remarkable grasp of the literatures of the Caribbean, and draws on this resource to explore the underlying insanity of the colonial experience, as well as the bewildering complexities of the postcolonial world where memory is erased or invented according to the demands of a market modernity.”

Silencing the Past - Michel-Rolph Trouillot

“Price does it again. Mixing eras, genres, and voices, he carries the reader through the contradictory streams of historical consciousness in the Caribbean island of Martinique. The result is as complex and as enticing as the sea it evokes.”

American Ethnologist - Jennifer Cole

“Filled with insights that are at once theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic, The Convict and the Colonel is required reading for anyone interested in colonialism, memory, and contemporary Caribbean societies.”

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem - Maryse Conde

“By beautifully crafting elements as disparate as biographical data, sociological studies, literary sources, and archival documents, Richard Price’s research is more fascinating than a piece of fiction.”

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem - Maryse Condé

“By beautifully crafting elements as disparate as biographical data, sociological studies, literary sources, and archival documents, Richard Price’s research is more fascinating than a piece of fiction.”

Editorial Reviews

Filled with insights that are at once theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic, The Convict and the Colonel is required reading for anyone interested in colonialism, memory, and contemporary Caribbean societies.”

American Ethnologist - Jennifer Cole

Price does it again. Mixing eras, genres, and voices, he carries the reader through the contradictory streams of historical consciousness in the Caribbean island of Martinique. The result is as complex and as enticing as the sea it evokes.

Silencing the Past - Michel-Rolph Trouillot

By beautifully crafting elements as disparate as biographical data, sociological studies, literary sources, and archival documents, Richard Price’s research is more fascinating than a piece of fiction.

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem - Maryse Condé

A superb callaloo of a book. . . . Richard Price has a remarkable grasp of the literatures of the Caribbean, and draws on this resource to explore the underlying insanity of the colonial experience, as well as the bewildering complexities of the postcolonial world where memory is erased or invented according to the demands of a market modernity.

The Pleasures of Exile - George Lamming

By beautifully crafting elements as disparate as biographical data, sociological studies, literary sources, and archival documents, Richard Price’s research is more fascinating than a piece of fiction.

Maryse Cond��

“By beautifully crafting elements as disparate as biographical data, sociological studies, literary sources, and archival documents, Richard Price’s research is more fascinating than a piece of fiction.

Maryse Condé