ABSTRACT
In Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Dub: Finding Ceremony (2020), finding a common language, mythology, or “ceremony” for Afro-Caribbeans outside the Western canon is crucial. Literature, history, and knowledge, as we conceive them today, are deeply rooted in the Western tradition. This means that the concept of self as a sentient, human subject has traditionally been constructed as male and white, whereas the rest, especially women and racialized peoples, are constructed as non-human Others. By engaging in a close reading of Dub: Finding Ceremony, this chapter acknowledges the Caribbean as a space of vulnerability and resilience in which Gumbs honors the memory of those enslaved and lost in the Middle Passage and in the aftermath of slavery. By paying tribute to Jamaican philosopher and writer Sylvia Wynter’s rich body of work, Gumbs explores in Dub alternatives to a colonially distorted notion of the human (Man). The poet envisions the emergence of new, free black individuals in an enriching dialogue with the ocean, the land, and the whole planet.
