Citizenship from Below
eBook - PDF

Citizenship from Below

Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Citizenship from Below

Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom

About this book

Citizenship from Below boldly revises the history of the struggles for freedom by emancipated peoples in post-slavery Jamaica, post-independence Haiti, and the wider Caribbean by focusing on the interplay between the state, the body, race, and sexuality. Mimi Sheller offers a new theory of "citizenship from below" to describe the contest between "proper" spaces of legitimate high politics and the disavowed politics of lived embodiment. While acknowledging the internal contradictions and damaging exclusions of subaltern self-empowerment, Sheller roots out from beneath the historical archive traces of a deeper freedom, one expressed through bodily performances, familial relationships, cultivation of the land, and sacred worship.

Attending to the hidden linkages among intimate realms and the public sphere, Sheller explores specific struggles for freedom, including women's political activism in Jamaica; the role of discourses of "manhood" in the making of free subjects, soldiers, and citizens; the fiercely ethnonationalist discourses that excluded South Asian and African indentured workers; the sexual politics of the low-bass beats and "bottoms up" moves in the dancehall; and the struggle for reproductive and LGBT rights and against homophobia in the contemporary Caribbean. Through her creative use of archival sources and emphasis on the connections between intimacy, violence, and citizenship, Sheller enriches critical theories of embodied freedom, sexual citizenship, and erotic agency in all post-slavery societies.


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Yes, you can access Citizenship from Below by Mimi Sheller in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Latin American & Caribbean History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
works 
cited
manuscript 
sources 
and 
archives
England
Baptist 
Missionary 
Society 
Archives 
(
bms
), 
Angus 
Library, 
Regents 
College, 
Oxford
WI/5 
Jamaica 
Correspondence
Extracts 
from 
Letters 
Written 
by 
bms
Missionaries
, 
bound 
vol., 
1840–46
Public 
Record 
O≈ce 
(
pro
), 
London
Colonial 
O≈ce 
(
co)
137, 
Original 
Correspondence 
of 
Jamaican 
Governors
Colonial 
O≈ce 
(
co)
142/1
Colonial 
O≈ce 
(
co)
884/2 
Condential 
Print, 
no. 
2: 
Papers 
Relating 
to 
the 
Insurrec-
tion 
in 
Jamaica, 
October, 
1865. 
Printed 
for 
the 
Use 
of 
the 
Cabinet, 
December 
1865.
pro 
30/48/42 
Edward 
Cardwell 
Papers: 
August–December 
1865. 
Correspondence
with 
Governor 
Eyre.
pro 
30/48/44 
Edward 
Cardwell 
Papers: 
1865–66. 
Extracts 
from 
Colonial 
O≈ce 
Con-
dential 
Prints, 
Proceedings 
of 
the 
Jamaica 
Royal 
Commission 
of 
Enquiry, 
press
cuttings, 
draft 
manuscript 
reports.
Foreign 
O≈ce 
(
fo)
35/1–35/29, 
General 
Correspondence, 
Haiti, 
1825–44
Report 
of 
the 
Jamaica 
Royal 
Commission 
[
jrc
], 
parts 
1–2 
(London: 
G. 
E. 
Eyre 
and
William 
Spottiswoode, 
1866)
School 
of 
Oriental 
and 
African 
Studies, 
University 
of 
London
Wesleyan 
Methodist 
Missionary 
Society 
Archives 
(
wmms
)
West 
Indies 
Correspondence, 
Haiti, 
1834–57
West 
Indies 
Correspondence, 
Jamaica, 
1838–65, 
boxes 
195–99
Council 
of 
World 
Missions, 
London 
Missionary 
Society 
Archives 
(
lms
)
1837–69, 
boxes 
2–9

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Introduction
  4. One: History from the Bottom(s) Up
  5. Two: Quasheba, Mother, Queen
  6. Three: Her Majesty’s Sable Subjects
  7. Four: Lost Glimpses of 1865
  8. Five: Sword-Bearing Citizens
  9. Six: ‘‘You Signed My Name, but Not My Feet’’
  10. Seven: Arboreal Landscapes of Power and Resistance
  11. Eight: Returning the Tourist Gaze
  12. Nine: Erotic Agency and a Queer Caribbean Freedom
  13. Notes
  14. Works Cited
  15. Index