The clothing economy of Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance  

Oleh:

Cohen, Hella Bloom

Jenis: Article from Article
Dalam koleksi: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature vol. 49 no. 1 (Mar. 2014), page 81-98.
Topik: Aesthetics; carnival; costume; craft; economics; Lovelace; material culture; neoliberalism; postcolonial; The Dragon Can’t Dance
Fulltext: The clothing economy of Earl Lovelace's.pdf (705.84KB)

Isi artikel

This article positions chapter three, “The Dragon”, as the crux of Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace’s postcolonial novel, The Dragon Can’t Dance. Chapter three chronicles the ancestral narrative of protagonist and King of Carnival, Aldrick, in and through his carnival costume’s construction, demonstrating that the handicraft tradition of Carnival is central to understanding the sense of loss permeating the novel’s Afro-Trinidadian space. I use aesthetics and the anthropological concepts of symbolic capital and inalienable possessions to explore the tension expressed by the fact that costumes and clothing exist both inside and outside of capital. I consider why the economy of the fictional Calvary Hill neighbourhood restricts fiscal exhibition but uses clothing and costuming to articulate social condition, and how Lovelace invokes neoliberal economics threatening native costume craft traditions.

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