Three Caribbean conferences in Jamaica and Haiti, 2016

Abstract

The Caribbean region regularly engenders and hosts intellectually stimulating educational and cultural events. In a visit this year to Jamaica, my country of origin, I experienced three of these events in June and July. It struck me that each had a richly postcolonial element of challenging negative legacies of colonialism, which have often solidified into current norms such as insufficiently tackling intellectual exclusion, neglecting material local problems, and downplaying or ignoring local achievement and culture. I reflect below on how the conferences contributed to countering such problems and establishing creative practices in intellectual culture.