Creolité and Coolitude: The Indian on the Plantation Seminar

Abstract

The abolition of slavery worldwide in course of the 19th century was followed by the creation of a new source of plantation labour through various inter-imperial collaborations: indentured workers from Asia. The indentured labour diasporas that were superimposed on existent African-heritage and creole populations created through slavery, introduced new demographic and cultural elements; these, in turn, have generated specific consequences within the project of creolization that the Plantation catalysed. What are the memorial repercussions of the Indian on the Plantation? Using the concepts of ‘Creolité’ (as developed by Chamoiseau, Barnabé, and Confiant), and ‘Coolitude’ (as developed by Khal Torabully), I reveal how cultural and curatorial practices from the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean are grappling with the re-calibration of the Plantation’s symbolic economy necessitated by the entangled memories of the ‘coolie’, the ‘master’, and the ‘slave’.