Symbolic Revolution in the Text: A Study of Selected Poems by Contemporary Caribbean Women Writer

Abstract

The question of what makes a text revolutionary or subversive yields engaging possibilities when posed in relation to the contemporary poetry of Anglophone Caribbean women writers. This is particularly true with the poems of the Jamaicans Jean 'binta' Breeze, Olive Senior and Lorna Goodison, the Grenadian Merle Collins and the Guyanese Grace Nichols. At first sight, these texts radiate elements of unpredictability and embody an exCiting locomotion of juxtaposed linguistic and cultural opposites. Examining these rarely analysed texts through the logic of French sociologist and theorist Pierre Bourdieu endows these revolutionary qualities With the ability to transcend the realms of the text and move into those of society at large.

The litde acknowledged notion of "symbolic revolution" is part of a rich conceptual toolkit offered by Bourdieu in his writings. He presents an intricate analysis of the realms of power and the position of the social agent within these realms. His portrayal of the field of cultural production encompassing arts and literature is of particular significance to this study. Writers, because of the considerable "cultural capital" they possess, are capable in this case of acting as spokespersons for a multitude of dominated groups with which they empathize by virtue of their positions. This, in turn, enables a disrupting and reshaping of the subjective, mental constructs that form one of the pillars of society. Instances of symbolic revolution appear as multitudinous moments of friction and "collision of opposites" associated with conflicting fields and social realms. Because of the link established between taste and class, this disruption threatens to transcend the boundaries of the text into those of society at large.