3 Review(s)

A significant focus of the Nita Barrow Unit of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies has been on the centring of power in Caribbean scholarship on gender. This collection explores the theme of power to expose the disruptions and dangers lurking in Caribbean discourses on gender and love when these are approached from interrogating the currencies of power continuously circulating in their operations. Love and Power: Caribbean Discourses on Gender makes several major contributions. The chapters are vibrant and grounded in the complex realities of the contemporary Caribbean even as they challenge canonical thought. The authors simultaneously critique and create knowledge about the lives of women and men within the Caribbean and its diaspora. They employ a range of analytical frameworks to dissect history, international relations, philosophy, intimate partner violence, feminist thought and activism, mothering, masculinities, diasporic migration, international finance, entrepreneurship, erotica, and desire. The book ruptures the feminist silences around love, lust and living in Caribbean societies and discourses. It problematizes the intersections of love and power, love and the power of the erotic, and gender and the love of power. The volume offers a significant contribution to Caribbean thought by documenting the work of scholars who are creating a multidisciplinary language on relations of gender.