Coral Theory of Diaspora: Island Ecology and Geology as Identity

• In Event: Identity, Ecology and citizenship

Description for Program

The island of Barbados formed as the tectonic plates beneath the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean clashed. Coral reefs formed and pushed toward the surface. As one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth coral reefs sustain a symbiotic cycle of life and death. Furthering diasporic theories that invite us to “imagine beyond the binary” (Clark 1989), this preliminary paper uses the history of coral formation of Barbados to rethink diasporic identity. This work uses coral as a metaphor to add to theories of the wake, tidalectics, and black shoals through a geological lens that gives attention to the way that coral islands and diasporic identities are both produced through the simultaneity of heres and elsewheres, presences and absences, stillness and movement.

Author

• Lia T. Bascomb, Georgia State University