The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective
In this second edition of The Repeating Island, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, a master of the historical novel, short story, and critical essay, continues to confront the legacy and myths of colonialism. This co-winner of the 1993 MLA Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize has been expanded to include three entirely new chapters that add a Lacanian perspective and a view of the carnivalesque to an already brilliant interpretive study of Caribbean culture. As he did in the first edition, Benítez-Rojo redefines...
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In this second edition of The Repeating Island, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, a master of the historical novel, short story, and critical essay, continues to confront the legacy and myths of colonialism. This co-winner of the 1993 MLA Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize has been expanded to include three entirely new chapters that add a Lacanian perspective and a view of the carnivalesque to an already brilliant interpretive study of Caribbean culture. As he did in the first edition, Benítez-Rojo redefines the Caribbean by drawing on history, economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, and nonlinear mathematics. His point of departure is chaos theory, which holds that order and disorder are not the antithesis of each other in nature but function as mutually generative phenomena. Benítez-Rojo argues that within the apparent disorder of the Caribbean—the area’s discontinuous landmasses, its different colonial histories, ethnic groups, languages, traditions, and politics—there emerges an “island” of paradoxes that repeats itself and gives shape to an unexpected and complex sociocultural archipelago. Benítez-Rojo illustrates this unique form of identity with powerful readings of texts by Las Casas, Guillén, Carpentier, García Márquez, Walcott, Harris, Buitrago, and Rodríguez Juliá.Library JournalChaos theory claims that within the disorder represented by nature, there are repeating regularities. Cuban writer Benitez-Rojo uses this premise to argue that, despite the Caribbean's disorder of geography, language, and politics, a repeating order exists. As a historian and literary critic, the author examines the writings of Bartolome de las Casas, Nicolas Guillen, Fernando Ortiz, Alejo Carpentier, and others. The result is a redefinition of the Caribbean culture. Benitez-Rojo (Romance languages, Amherst) is the author of numerous works of fiction and criticism. Recommended for scholars.-- Joanne Snapp, Virginia Commonwealth Univ., Richmond
Acknowledgments to the Second EditionAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The repeating island11From the plantation to the Plantation332Bartolome de Las Casas: between fiction and the inferno853Nicolas Guillen: sugar mill and poetry1124Fernando Ortiz: the Caribbean and postmodernity1505Carpentier and Harris: explorers of El Dorado1776Los panamanes, or the memory of the skin1997Viaje a la semilla, or the text as spectacle2188Nino Aviles, or history's libido2429Naming the Father, naming the Mother26510Private reflections on Garcia Marquez's Erendira27611Carnival294Epilogue313Notes317Index339
\ Library JournalChaos theory claims that within the disorder represented by nature, there are repeating regularities. Cuban writer Benitez-Rojo uses this premise to argue that, despite the Caribbean's disorder of geography, language, and politics, a repeating order exists. As a historian and literary critic, the author examines the writings of Bartolome de las Casas, Nicolas Guillen, Fernando Ortiz, Alejo Carpentier, and others. The result is a redefinition of the Caribbean culture. Benitez-Rojo (Romance languages, Amherst) is the author of numerous works of fiction and criticism. Recommended for scholars.-- Joanne Snapp, Virginia Commonwealth Univ., Richmond\ \
