Yarimar Bonilla


Yarimar Bonilla Assistant Professor PhD University of Chicago 2008
I am a cultural anthropologist interested in the relationship between political and historical praxis. My research is based in what I describe as the non-sovereign Caribbean: societies with lingering colonial relationships and ambiguous political identities that disrupt traditional understandings of citizenship, nationality, sovereignty, autonomy, and political subjectivity. I am particularly attentive to the possibilities of political struggle outside of the traditional rubrics of state and nation building, and to the construction of political identities that disrupt the assumed relationships between a land, a people, and a state. These political concerns have combined with an interest in the place of history in the Caribbean imagination, and in the ways in which Caribbean populations understand and negotiate their past - particularly their experiences with colonialism and slavery. I am currently working on my first book (based on my dissertation) which is an ethnographic study of labor activism in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. In this manuscript I argue that a new kind of labor politics has emerged in the French postcolonial world that combines the ideological and tactical traditions of previous nationalist and anti-colonial struggles with the political strength of the French labor movement. The result is a particular kind of "postcolonial syndicalism" that infuses traditional labor struggles with battles over collective memory, cultural preservation, political autonomy, and historical consciousness. Throughout the manuscript I pay close attention to the ways in which the past, and in particular the slave past, is mobilized in the context of labor. I examine how union leaders frame their actions within a tradition of slave resistance and how they characterize their movement as a form of marronage, thus invoking past forms of slave resistance and the formation of alternative communities on the fringes of plantation society. I argue that the metaphor of marronage provides a model of both rupture and entanglement which speaks to the complicated relationships that Guadeloupean labor activists currently sustain with the French state and its institutions. In addition to my work in Guadeloupe, I am also in the process of developing a larger program of comparative research in the non-sovereign Caribbean that will seek to re-theorize the colonial legacies and contemporary politics of the region. By approaching the region through the frame of the "non-sovereign" I seek to break with the linguistic divides that have plagued the field of Caribbean studies in order to bring together research on the French, English, and Spanish speaking Caribbean in ways that will help elucidate points of commonality in both the historical trajectories and contemporary political forms and processes of the region. Please visit my new Shanti website: http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/ybonilla/ Specializations Caribbean Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Social Movements, Political Anthropology, Collective Memory and the Production of History. Courses: Caribbean Perspectives, The Anthropology of Dissent, The Problem of History in the New World, Colonialism and Empire, Collective Memory and Historical Production, Ethnographic Methods. Selected Publications: In preparation. The Past is Made by Walking: Memory Walks and the Production of History in Guadeloupe. Forthcoming: Reinventing the Mass Strike: Prefigurative Politics in Contemporary Guadeloupe. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (March 2010) 2009. Guadeloupe on Strike: A New Political Chapter in the French Antilles. NACLA Report on the Americas 42(3):6-10 — https://nacla.org/node/files/A04203008_1.pdf 2009 Labor and Protest in Guadeloupe. International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. Immanuel Ness, Ed. Blackwell pp 1468-1471 (http://issuu.com/ybon/docs/encyclopediaentry)

Assistant Professor
PhD University of Chicago 2008

I am a cultural anthropologist interested in the relationship between political and historical praxis. My research is based in what I describe as the non-sovereign Caribbean: societies with lingering colonial relationships and ambiguous political identities that disrupt traditional understandings of citizenship, nationality, sovereignty, autonomy, and political subjectivity. I am particularly attentive to the possibilities of political struggle outside of the traditional rubrics of state and nation building, and to the construction of political identities that disrupt the assumed relationships between a land, a people, and a state. These political concerns have combined with an interest in the place of history in the Caribbean imagination, and in the ways in which Caribbean populations understand and negotiate their past - particularly their experiences with colonialism and slavery.

I am currently working on my first book (based on my dissertation) which is an ethnographic study of labor activism in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. In this manuscript I argue that a new kind of labor politics has emerged in the French postcolonial world that combines the ideological and tactical traditions of previous nationalist and anti-colonial struggles with the political strength of the French labor movement. The result is a particular kind of "postcolonial syndicalism" that infuses traditional labor struggles with battles over collective memory, cultural preservation, political autonomy, and historical consciousness. Throughout the manuscript I pay close attention to the ways in which the past, and in particular the slave past, is mobilized in the context of labor. I examine how union leaders frame their actions within a tradition of slave resistance and how they characterize their movement as a form of marronage, thus invoking past forms of slave resistance and the formation of alternative communities on the fringes of plantation society. I argue that the metaphor of marronage provides a model of both rupture and entanglement which speaks to the complicated relationships that Guadeloupean labor activists currently sustain with the French state and its institutions.

In addition to my work in Guadeloupe, I am also in the process of developing a larger program of comparative research in the non-sovereign Caribbean that will seek to re-theorize the colonial legacies and contemporary politics of the region. By approaching the region through the frame of the "non-sovereign" I seek to break with the linguistic divides that have plagued the field of Caribbean studies in order to bring together research on the French, English, and Spanish speaking Caribbean in ways that will help elucidate points of commonality in both the historical trajectories and contemporary political forms and processes of the region.

Please visit my new Shanti website: http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/ybonilla/

Specializations

Caribbean Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Social Movements, Political
Anthropology, Collective Memory and the Production of History.

Courses:

Caribbean Perspectives, The Anthropology of Dissent, The Problem of History in the New World, Colonialism and Empire, Collective Memory and Historical Production, Ethnographic Methods.

Selected Publications:

In preparation. The Past is Made by Walking: Memory Walks and the Production of History in Guadeloupe.
Forthcoming: Reinventing the Mass Strike: Prefigurative Politics in Contemporary Guadeloupe. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (March 2010)
2009. Guadeloupe on Strike: A New Political Chapter in the French Antilles. NACLA Report on the Americas 42(3):6-10 — https://nacla.org/node/files/A04203008_1.pdf
2009 Labor and Protest in Guadeloupe. International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. Immanuel Ness, Ed. Blackwell pp 1468-1471 (http://issuu.com/ybon/docs/encyclopediaentry)