A Creolized Approach to Gender and Sex: The Example of Guadeloupe and Guyana
Guillemaut, Françoise
A Creolized Approach to Gender and Sex: The Example of Guadeloupe and Guyana - 2014.
94
Besides its geographical locations, the French territories of Guadeloupe and Guiana share a Caribbean and South-American culture but are under French rule of laws and norms. An anthropological research was undertaken (2008-2012) in Guadeloupe and Guiana, to explore the construction of gender norms with regards to HIV prevention. The question of gender in the Caribbean has multiple paradoxical roots in colonial history, in the creation, in 1946, of French “Départements,” in independence movements (creole nationalism) and in the creolisation of the Caribbean world. The research brings to the fore the interplay and tensions that these socio-historical constructions have had and still have on sexuality and gender, creating a “gender and sexual apparatus.” The analysis of these paradoxes can highlight the ideological constructions that bring sexuality on the stage of politics. Analyzes of historical accounts, as well as the application of metropolitan public policies associated with Creole nationalism also reveal the social, economic and political constraints that help to shape gender relations. How does western standards of nuclear family and monogamy organise or “creolise” together with so called Caribbean norms regarding matrifocality or multi-partnership? What do contemporary tensions and paradoxes in gender relation display? How do Caribbean women free themselves from the burden of “respectability” that they should endorse? How do men cope with their ambiguous social position?These are some of the questions that this article attempts to explore by mobilizing an interpretative framework inspired by postcolonial studies and gender, class and race intersectionality theory.Through the imposition of Western subjectivity via the control of bodies, gender, reproduction and sexualities a “post-colonial bio-power” is revealed at the expense of a creolized way of life, paradoxically powered by Creole nationalism.
A Creolized Approach to Gender and Sex: The Example of Guadeloupe and Guyana - 2014.
94
Besides its geographical locations, the French territories of Guadeloupe and Guiana share a Caribbean and South-American culture but are under French rule of laws and norms. An anthropological research was undertaken (2008-2012) in Guadeloupe and Guiana, to explore the construction of gender norms with regards to HIV prevention. The question of gender in the Caribbean has multiple paradoxical roots in colonial history, in the creation, in 1946, of French “Départements,” in independence movements (creole nationalism) and in the creolisation of the Caribbean world. The research brings to the fore the interplay and tensions that these socio-historical constructions have had and still have on sexuality and gender, creating a “gender and sexual apparatus.” The analysis of these paradoxes can highlight the ideological constructions that bring sexuality on the stage of politics. Analyzes of historical accounts, as well as the application of metropolitan public policies associated with Creole nationalism also reveal the social, economic and political constraints that help to shape gender relations. How does western standards of nuclear family and monogamy organise or “creolise” together with so called Caribbean norms regarding matrifocality or multi-partnership? What do contemporary tensions and paradoxes in gender relation display? How do Caribbean women free themselves from the burden of “respectability” that they should endorse? How do men cope with their ambiguous social position?These are some of the questions that this article attempts to explore by mobilizing an interpretative framework inspired by postcolonial studies and gender, class and race intersectionality theory.Through the imposition of Western subjectivity via the control of bodies, gender, reproduction and sexualities a “post-colonial bio-power” is revealed at the expense of a creolized way of life, paradoxically powered by Creole nationalism.
Réseaux sociaux