Project Title

“The Pornographic Isle”: Jamaica and the Purchase of Postcolonial Modernity

Project Description

“The Pornographic Isle”: Jamaica and the Purchase of Postcolonial Modernity, traces the multiple imaginaries of erotic sovereignty that have been articulated through the circulation practices, the aesthetic investments, and the performance cultures of pornography in late colonial and postcolonial Jamaica. An archaeological and interdisciplinary inquiry, the project reads a diverse historical, literary, and visual set of archives from the early twentieth century to the contemporary moment, considering how pornography underwrites multiple and sometimes contradictory visions of what it means to be a modern Caribbean subject.