Identity and Multicultural Discourses in Jamaica Kincaid's Essays

Abstract

This article analyses three essays by Jamaica Kincaid, an afro Caribbean writer currently living in the United States. The selected essays -"In History", "The Little Revenge from the Periphery" and "On Seeing England for the First Time"- are analyzed from a perspective that combines Raymond Williams' cultural materialism and Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analyses. The article shows, on one hand, the particular ways in which Kincaid approaches the colonization of the Caribbean and, on the other, how Kincaid's essays draw from and take part in the contemporary field of academic and political debates about multiculturahsm, struggles for recognition and identity politics.