Books by Yarimar Bonilla
Digital Projects by Yarimar Bonilla
This essay asks how visual representations of the postcolonial Caribbean are shaped by, and in tu... more This essay asks how visual representations of the postcolonial Caribbean are shaped by, and in turn could reshape, the political imaginary of sovereignty. Describing several different experiments with form—from conventional maps to temporal charts to animation—it argues that visualizing sovereignty is a first step in retheorizing the meaning of sovereignty itself beyond the regulatory limits of insular, nation-state autonomy. The authors call for collaborative efforts to create 'prophetic cartographies' attuned to alternative political currents and the possibility of imagining the Caribbean otherwise.
Digital Supplement for the Article "#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the raci... more Digital Supplement for the Article "#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States" by Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa. American Ethnologist, volume 42, number 1, pp. 4-17.
Papers by Yarimar Bonilla
Anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla responds to Greg Beckett and Christienna D. Fryar's engagements wi... more Anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla responds to Greg Beckett and Christienna D. Fryar's engagements with her Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment (2015). In responding to the questions raised, Bonilla lays out the conceptual and methodological orientations of the work as well as its analytical targets. The essay situates Non-Sovereign Futures within a larger problem-space of political disenchantment, argues for the need to deprovincialize the Caribbean, and brings into question perduring scholarly entanglements with the traditions of Western political thought.
After Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election, there was widespread public an... more After Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election, there was widespread public and scholarly outcry that particularized this historical moment. But the tendency to exceptionalize Trump obscures how his rise reflects long-standing political and economic currents, both domestically and globally. By contrast, the effort to deprovincialize Trump effectively locates his electoral win within broader historical, political, and economic assemblages of which it is but one part. This entails examining how colonial and racial legacies shaped perceptions of the 2016 election, as
well as the role of anthropology in the contemporary political landscape.
American Ethnologist, 2015
As thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the fatal pol... more As thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the fatal police shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown in the summer of 2014, news and commentary on the shooting, the protests, and the militarized response that followed circulated widely through social media networks. Through a theorization of hashtag usage, we discuss how and why social media platforms have become powerful sites for documenting and challenging episodes of police brutality and the misrepresentation of racialized bodies in mainstream media. We show how engaging in “hashtag activism” can forge a shared political temporality, and, additionally, we examine how social media platforms can provide strategic outlets for contesting and reimagining the materiality of racialized bodies. Our analysis combines approaches from linguistic anthropology and social movements research to investigate the semiotics of digital protest and to interrogate both the possibilities and the pitfalls of engaging in “hashtag ethnography.” [digital anthropology, digital activism, social movements, social media, semiotics, race, Twitter, Michael Brown, United States]
Over fifteen years have passed since Michel-Rolph Trouillot issued his critical call for the renu... more Over fifteen years have passed since Michel-Rolph Trouillot issued his critical call for the renunciation of Haitian exceptionalism. Trouillot's principled argument remains as urgent today as when it was first written, if not more so. Particularly in the wake of the 2010 earthquake, Haiti continues to be portrayed as extra-ordinary: exceptionally tragic, remarkably resilient, singularly radical. This essay expands Trouillot's arguments and extends his critical stance to another trope of exceptionalism in Caribbean studies: that of political sovereignty. It examines how Caribbean spaces that trouble the Westphalian order are cast as exceptions, and, following Trouillot's lead, it attempts to discern the political and intellectual perils of this casting. Echoing Trouillot, the essay calls for us to reimagine Caribbean social and political processes as ordinary—that is, to place them within their historical and geopolitical coordinates. Moreover, it urges us to shift our gaze away from the odd to the production of the norm, the universal, and the unmarked—not as transcendental principles but as localized fictions that don the mask of transcendence.
This article provides an intellectual biography of the late anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot... more This article provides an intellectual biography of the late anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Using the metaphor of Trouillot as a songwriter, it foregrounds the unique constellation of themes, approaches, and preoccupations that defined Trouillot’s life and work, regardless of genre.
Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2010
Cultural Anthropology, 2011
The act of walking represents an important (yet under examined) element of political protest and ... more The act of walking represents an important (yet under examined) element of political protest and collective action, as well as an increasingly common form of historical commemoration. In this article I examine the development of a series of "memory walks" by labor activists in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. I argue that these peripatetic practices constitute a particular spatial, kinesthetic, and sensorial form of historical and archival production. Along the way, I consider what these events reveal about postcolonial forms of archival production and the importance of historical praxis to the formation of political subjectivities.
Transition, 2013
"Must representations of slavery strike a certain mood? Can they be “wrong” not just in their fac... more "Must representations of slavery strike a certain mood? Can they be “wrong” not just in their facts, but in their affect?"
Caribbean Studies, 2012
En los primeros meses de 2009, la isla caribeña francesa de Guadalupe fue testigo de la más grand... more En los primeros meses de 2009, la isla caribeña francesa de Guadalupe fue testigo de la más grande ola de protesta social en su historia. Una coalición de 48 distintas organizaciones sindicales, políticas, económicas, culturales y cívicas llevaron a cabo una huelga general durante un periodo de 44 días en contra de los abusos económicos y la falta de iniciativa política en la isla. En este ensayo se discute el impacto de este movimiento en el imaginario político de Guadalupe y el significado del mismo para el futuro político de las Antillas Francesas. Se sugiere que la huelga generó un momento de exploración política en el cual nuevas alternativas colectivas pudieron ser invocadas y ensayadas.
Palabras clave: Guadalupe, Antillas Francesas, movimientos sociales, huelgas
Book Reviews by Yarimar Bonilla
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Books by Yarimar Bonilla
Digital Projects by Yarimar Bonilla
Papers by Yarimar Bonilla
well as the role of anthropology in the contemporary political landscape.
Palabras clave: Guadalupe, Antillas Francesas, movimientos sociales, huelgas
Book Reviews by Yarimar Bonilla
well as the role of anthropology in the contemporary political landscape.
Palabras clave: Guadalupe, Antillas Francesas, movimientos sociales, huelgas