Biography

Yarimar Bonilla is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. She received her PhD in 2008 from the University of Chicago Department of Anthropology and prior to her appointment at Rutgers she spent three years as an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Virginia and two years as a pre-doctoral Research Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies. She has published numerous articles on issues pertaining to social activism and political memory in the non-sovereign Caribbean.

Article Title

Non-Sovereign Futures? French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment

Abstract

This paper will offer an ethnographic analysis of recent political mobilizations in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Unlike the previous era of anti-colonial nationalism from which these new social movements emerge, contemporary activists do not seek “national liberation” or political independence. Instead, they are attempting to carve out new forms of political and economic autonomy within the context of French and European integration. In this paper I examine how these movements speak to the broader political context of the Caribbean in both independent and non-independent societies. Rather than casting the non-independent societies of the Caribbean as exceptions to the rule of nation-states, I argue that their relationships of constrained and negotiated autonomy are integrally linked to the contemporary challenges of self-determination and governance in our broader postcolonial world.