Fleshy textualities: Laughter in Caribbean literature Seminar
- Time:
- 13:00 - 14:00
- Date:
- 23 May 2018
- Venue:
- 65b/1005 (Burgess Building), Avenue Campus, SO17 1BF
Event details
Part of the CIPCS Seminar Series Spring 2018. Download the full programme below.
This paper forms part of a long term writing project, about laughter in Caribbean literature. The paper theorises that laughter as an embodied practice (not as a synonym for humour) can be read not only in the content, but also in the textuality and in the wider political geographies of some Caribbean novels. It focuses in particular on two novels: Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘See Now Then’ where laughter is heard and felt in the musicality of the novel; and also (time permitting) on Maryse Conde’s comments about the writing of ‘Moi Tituba: Sorciere Noire de Salem’, in which she proclaims: “I split my sides laughing while writing this book” (quoted in Pfaff, Conversations with Maryse Conde, 1996, p. 60). The paper ultimately asks what work is done when laughter is taken seriously in Caribbean novels.
Speaker information
Dr Patricia Noxolo , University of Birmingham. Senior Lecturer In Human Geography, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham