The Problem of the Hero(ine) in Caribbean History

Abstract

This is the revised text of the 21st Elsa Goveia Lecture, given at Cave Hill, Barbados in March 2004. It examines, first, how Caribbean historiography, during and after the moment of constitutional decolonization, had had an important investment in the idea of the hero. This way of seeing and writing history through exceptional individuals was an unexamined legacy of the colonial experience, and has distorted our approach to the Caribbean past. It proposes that a new kind of Caribbean history might be based on a curiosity about why people choose ‘heroic’ or un-‘heroic’ paths, and on a sensitivity to weakness, vulnerability, and the complexities of personality.

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