Carnival time versus modern social life: a false distinction

Abstract

Closely examining the dance form of winin', ubiquitous in Trinidad and Tobago's carnival, this essay argues for the inextricability of carnival time and contemporary social life. In contrast to the notion that carnival constitutes interruptions or postponements of projects of modernity and, especially, that it invokes a temporality and social space where ideologies may be blissfully suspended, this study illustrates how this dance form articulates the status of and quest for personal freedoms in public spaces and contests a specific gender ideology. The essay describes and interrogates how winin' mediates the relationship between competing pleasures – those of the state and of the carnival reveller respectively – and illustrates the extent to which the dance form's exaggerated and hypervisible practices constitute a demand for social engagement.

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