The Mad Exotic in Caribbean Literature: Stories of Marginalisation, Commodification and Empowerment

Caribbean literature is replete with migrant figures that are viewed as both exotic and mad. Victims of what Graham Huggan has called “a particular mode of aesthetic perception”, these characters distinguish themselves by their cultural difference which might inspire initial fascination, yet results in most cases in exploitative commodification often followed by radical rejection. The iconic example of such an occurrence is of course Antoinette aka Bertha Mason in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1960). I would like to analyse similar stories of exoticization followed by marginalisation written by West Indian authors (Rhys herself but also Erna Brodber and Dionne Brand), and examine to what extent their characters manage to subvert their so-called exoticism to take advantage of it and achieve empowerment, however ambiguous this might turn out to be.