The Political Ecology of Storms in Caribbean Literature

Abstract

In this chapter, Sharae Deckard explores the metaphorics and aesthetics of tropical storms and ocean-borne “disasters” in Caribbean fictions. The essay considers how Caribbean writers use storm-events to construct liminal narrative spaces which overturn social hierarchies and behaviours; to figure the operations and intrusions of ‘disaster capitalism’; and, finally, to generate formal disruptions that revitalize the possibility of collective action or consciousness in the face of the stasis or amnesia produced by colonialism and/or neo-colonialism in the service of neoliberal capital. Surveying texts from the Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanophone Caribbean, the chapter examines the ways in which the radical disruptive potential of tropical storms is embedded in literary form. In so doing, it demonstrates how storm aesthetics can correspond to political ecologies and materialize the specific socio-ecological conditions from which they emerge.

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