Between a past and present consciousness : critiques of the development of the Caymanian people / by Christopher A. Williams

In an age of rampant xenophobia and the nativist imperative to undo globalization for a return to a bygone, "purer" age, can patently modern identities indefinitely sustain their messages of inclusion and equality? This volume serves to answer this and other pressing existential questions by tracing the development of the Caymanian people from the colonial era into our modern globalized, multicultural age. The emergence of Caymanian nationalism is extensively analyzed and confirmed as a phenomenon that was preceded by fragmented Caymanian identities informed by issues of race and class. Despite this, the native Caymanian people were able to successfully jettison their race-thinking, and in so doing, began to see themselves as members of a singular nationality. This notion of national and cultural solidarity, as this book details, has become a vexing issue, and is now being duly tested given the astonishing numbers of immigrants in Cayman, many of whom are keen to become Caymanians themselves

Includes bibliographical references and index

Between a past and present consciousness: a theoretical survey and philosophical analysis of identity-shaping concepts relative to Caribbean cultural development, with implications for the Cayman Islands -- Into the past: the importance of chattel slavery in Grand Cayman -- Between a past-present liminality: accounting for the effects of Jamaica and Jamaicans on the national[ist] collective Cayman consciousness -- Perpetuation, imagination, and subjectivity: investigating the effects of expressed traditionalist Caymanian memories on selected social and cultural identities -- The "traditional" rails against the modern: an extensive interrogation of present-day Caymanian rhetorical cultural positions relative to Pirates Week

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