Conference Program: 

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In their reflections on and from the Caribbean, Édouard Glissant and Antonio Benítez-Rojo refer to it as a complex space marked by connections, overflowing, ruptures, and shared imaginings (Benítez-Rojo 1986, 1998; Glissant 2010). The Caribbean emerges as a dynamic site where histories, cultures, and languages intersect and diverge in ways that challenge fixed boundaries and linear narratives. Glissant’s notion of the ‘relation’ emphasizes the Caribbean as a place of continual interaction and transformation, where identity is shaped through a web of ongoing cultural exchanges and creolization. Similarly, Benítez-Rojo highlights the ‘repetitive multiplicity’ of Caribbean experience, underscoring how overlapping histories produce both cohesion and fragmentation.

Considering the Caribbean’s multifaceted history and its ongoing tensions and complexities, the planned symposium focuses on the exploration and critical reflection of three modes of relationality: connection, bond, and fracture. These notions serve to form a framework to discuss historical and current events, processes, and phenomena in the Caribbean (both insular and continental).  One point of interest will be to analyze how these three elements are conceptualized and approached by researchers, including categorization, identification of nodal points, and methodological proposals. Additionally, we seek to examine how connection, bond, and fracture have shaped the region in various dimensions, such as the production of perceptions and narratives, internal and transoceanic commercial, social, and political dynamics, the configuration of families, and the formation of specific cultural landscapes.

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Organizers:

• Norah El Gammal (Chair of Western European Literatures, European University Viadrina).
• Micely Díaz Espaillat (Center for Development Research, University of Bonn).
• Dr. Johana Caterina Mantilla Oliveros (Department of Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn).