Emancipating the nation (again): Notes on nationalism, "modernization," and other dilemmas in post-colonial Jamaica

This paper is a preliminary discussion of some of the issues raised by the restoration of Emancipation Day to the calendar of public holidays in 1997, the 35th anniversary of independence in Jamaica, in relation to the ways i n which cultural nationalism has evolved during the post-colonial period. B ased on fieldwork both amongst members of the artistic community and in a r ural village, it addresses the multiple and complicated relationships betwe en blackness, Africanness, and Jamaicanness, and the articulation of these with ideas about progress, development, and modernization. It concludes tha t the extent to which purveyors of an officially designated Jamaican nation alism maintain a hegemony that appears fundamentally inpenetrable at the in stitutional level is dependent upon the extent to which they can (1) contro l the ways in which Africa is inserted into discourse regarding Jamaica's h eritage, and (2) accommodate racialized understandings of citizenship while never giving them explicit priority.