Failure: A Conceptual Proposal To Rethink The Caribbean

Abstract

I offer a conceptualization of failure as a constitutive experience of Caribbeanness. Failure produces the need to reformulate a history that turned out differently from that initially intended, encouraging the uprooting of interpretative assumptions. Rootlessness, therefore, refers not only national or geographic displacement, but also to the loss of certainties upon which our vision of the world is based. This rootlessness impels us to drift away from the epic assumptions on which social, political or national identities have been established to seek more inclusive forms of community. I show both the potential of failure and the dangers of denying it through the study of ten Hispanic Caribbean narratives written in the 21th Century.

Keywords

• Failure
• Rootlessness
• Epic
• Caribbean Literature