Neoliberal Aesthetics and Plantation Ecosystems: Commercialization and gender dynamics in contemporary carnival

• In Event: Sociology of the Body and Embodiment Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Embodiment in Politics, Resistance, and Social Movements

Abstract

I examine the material and ideological conditions of cultural production, gender roles and gender performance in Trinidad and Tobago carnival. I explore continuity and change in the use of carnival practices (performance, rhetoric and aesthetics) as tools of resistance and the evolution of the aesthetics of adult masquerade (mas). Using an intersectional analysis, I interrogate how ideas about beauty, fashion, and body politics are impacted by social media, globalization and the impact on contemporary mas as political speech. I am asking several questions: are ancestral tools of creativity, methods of dissidence and resistance being used in contemporary cultural space intentionally or unintentionally, and how is that affected by the shifts in gender representation in mas? Through the lens of cultural resistance, I am considering how women have engaged notions of citizenship, humanity, and the performance of gender as an articulation of national or regional identity and the connection to the economies of mas. Simultaneously, in a connected digital information ecosystem, how have the aesthetics of modern mas facilitated innovation while preserving the original objectives of political speech, social protest and forceful representations of Black ritual and cultural life.

Author

• Leslie Foncette, University of Maryland-Eastern Shore