Details

Abstract / Summary

Rihanna is arguably the most commercially successful Caribbean artist in history. She is Barbadian and has been unwavering in publicly articulating her national and regional belonging. Still, there have been varied responses to Rihanna’s ascendancy, among both Barbadians and the wider Caribbean community. The responses reveal as much about our own national and regional anxieties as they do about the artist herself. The boundary-transgressing, cultural icon Rihanna is subject to anxieties about her body language and latitude from her global audiences as well; however, the essays in this collection purposely seek to de-centre the dominance of the Euro-American gaze, focusing instead on considerations of the Caribbean artist and her oeuvre from a Caribbean postcolonial corpus of academic inquiry.This collection brings together US- and Caribbean-based scholars to discuss issues of class, gender, sexuality, race, culture and economy. Using the concept of diasporic citizenship as a theoretical frame, the authors intervene in current questions of national and transnational circuits of exchange as they pertain to the commoditization and movement of culture, knowledge, values and identity. The contributors approach the subjects of Rihanna, globalization, gender and sexuality, commerce, transnationalism, Caribbean regionalism, and Barbadian national identity and development from different disciplinary and at times radically divergent perspectives. At the same time, they collectively work through the limitations, possibilities and promise of our best Caribbean imaginings.

Field of Interest

Black Studies

Copyright Message

Copyright © 2015 Hilary McD. Beckles and Heather D. Russell

Content Type

Book

Warning: Contains explicit content

No

Format

Text

Page Count

222

Publication Year

2015

Publisher

University of the West Indies Press

Place Published / Released

Kingston, Kingston Parish

Subject

Black Studies, Diversity, Music and the Arts, Representations in Culture, Musicians, Music, Popular culture, Música e Artes, Música y las Artes, Rihanna, Barbadians

Keywords and Translated Subjects

Música e Artes, Música y las Artes