It is probably true that critics of African and Afro-American literature were trained to think of the institution of literature essentially as a set of Western texts. The methods devised to read these texts are culture-specific and temporal-specific, and they are text-specific as well. We learn to read the text at hand. And texts have a curious habit of generating other texts that resemble themselves . . . Black writers, like critics of black literature, learn to write by reading literature, especially the canonical texts of the Western tradition. Consequently, black texts resemble other Western texts . . . But black formal repetition always repeats with a difference, a black difference that manifests itself in specific language use. And the repository that contains the language that is the source--and the reflection--of black difference is the black English vernacular tradition. -- --Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Signifying Monkey (1988).
In the above quote, Gates gives the essence (emboldened) of his theory on the black signifyin' text. If "African" and "Afro-American" were to be replaced (though not ignored since some of the writers in question are of African descent) with a less ethnic-based "Caribbean," or more specifically "Anglo-Caribbean" text, how might the concept of signifyin' apply?
First of all, what can be understood by the term "Anglo-Caribbean" text? Would there be a clear tradition of language usage in these texts?
And in the cases where there is evidence of their repetition of Western texts, are there notable differences from such texts? If so, what are those differences?
Those are some of the questions I set out to explore in the books by Guyanese writers I had gathered to read and share when I began this journey in 2007. Of course, I have since broadened into works by other Caribbean writers, and I have digressed from that academic-focused approach. I now mostly say what the book is about and how I (and sometimes how others) feel about it, and occasionally I compare it to others like it and such...I review them, rather than dig for signifyin' elements or purposes. That's not to say those elements aren't there. That's to say I have reserved that particular quest for another forum.
These days, I have adapted signifyin' to a more blogabble approach, which now loosely describes the way I interpret what I read--I do examine language to some degree--and my overall goal to participate in signifying the work of Caribbean writers. But those initial signifyin' questions remain close by.
