Wcs;Noises In The Blood - Softcover

Cooper, Carolyn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333578244 ISBN 13: 9780333578247

Publisher: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993

Synopsis

This volume examines the problem of the relationship between the written work and orality in Jamaican society and culture. Jamaica's oral tradition is exemplified in the contemporary explosion of performance poetry and the popularity of reggae music. In the development of a national consciousness and the accompanying search for identity, it is not only the bonds of economic dependence which need to be broken, but the iron hoops of cultural dependence. This has proved a difficult task, as the colonial educational legacy stressed the importance of the written word and literary text. This book illustrates the paradox that although technology can enslave by exposing dependent cultures to foreign models, it can also liberate by enabling the sounds of the spoken word to ripple through the airwaves. This can be an exhilerating experience for those to whom the written word is a closed book. This study is subversive - it inverts the accepted categories of high-culture and, in doing so, reformulates the terms of nationalist discourse, making a forceful contribution towards the revindication of a submerged and for long a neglected, if not despised, popular culture.

About this title

Review:

"Cooper's collection is not only an important contribution to the study of Jamaican literature, but is also of wider significance."
--"Anglistik"

"An engaging contribution to cultural studies that decenters over-reliance on the novel and the scribal end of the written-oral continuum in discussions of Caribbean culture."
--Ruth E. Lindeborg," Research in African Literatures"

""Noises in the Blood" is a highly original and important study that will change the direction of literary/cultural studies in the Caribbean. Fascinating and forcefully written."--Stewart Brown, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham

"Noises in the Blood is a highly original and important study that will change the direction of literary/cultural studies in the Caribbean. Fascinating and forcefully written."--Stewart Brown, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham

"Noises in the Blood theorizes aspects of Caribbean popular culture in an exciting and new manner."--Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Wellesley College

"Carolyn Cooper's book is lively, stimulating, challenging, witty, and skillfully-written. Noises in the Blood is the kind of text that a range of scholars and specialists and general readers in oral literature, cultural studies, African diaspora and Caribbean studies, popular culture, and cross-cultural literatures will find useful, helpful, and necessary."--Carole Boyce Davies, State University of New York, Binghamton

From the Back Cover:

""Noises in the Blood" theorizes aspects of Caribbean popular culture in an exciting and new manner."--Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Wellesley College

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Caribbean
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0333578244
• ISBN 13: 9780333578247
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224