Performing the History: Contesting Historical Narratives in Trinidad and Tobago

This article examines the popularization of historical ideas and the cultivation of an historical consciousness and imagination in post-independence Trinidad. It focuses on the way in which a particular version of the past—the Creole nationalist narrative—was constructed and popularized by a nationalist movement. It then examines the emergence, dissemination, and popularization of a contesting Afro-centric narrative in the post-independence period. The emphasis is less on the content of the narrative than on the method of dissemination. It argues that those narratives that were dependent only on the scribal method for transmission could not compete with those that utilized the oral mode. The article therefore focuses on the use of the local calypso tradition in the popularizing of historical narratives.