Representing Gender-Based Violence: Literature, Performance and Activism in the Anglophone Caribbean

A 2013 World Health Organisation study found that globally, 35% of women have experienced intimate partner violence or sexual assault, and low to middle income countries of the global South are disproportionately affected. Presented by the WHO and the UN as a global public health crisis, GBV is particularly pervasive in Anglophone Caribbean countries, which have some of the highest rates of reported rape and feminicide in the world.

Homophobic and transphobic violence is also regarded as an urgent human rights issue in the region. Despite the launch, in recent years, of government programmes in the Anglophone Caribbean dedicated to combatting GBV, it remains a critical issue in the region.

Research on GBV, which is mainly social science based, has recently shifted from strategies which focus on individuals, such as developing support services for victims, enhancing women's safety and working with perpetrators, to a broader focus on the sociocultural contexts and structural inequalities which generate GBV. There has been a corresponding policy shift towards primary prevention (an approach which aims to prevent GBV before it occurs), and in 2015 the UN called for an increase in primary prevention programmes globally.

Despite the current emphasis in GBV research, activism and policy on the cultural contexts of GBV and the need for a 'culture change', there is no sustained scholarly work on how literary and cultural production reflects the norms and attitudes which underpin GBV, or on its potential to critique those norms, transform attitudes, and generate change. Additionally, research on GBV has focused primarily on the experiences of women in the global North.

The project will address these gaps by analysing the complex ways in which twenty-first century Caribbean literary and performance cultures shape, reinforce or resist dominant perspectives on and narratives of GBV. The gender dynamics of Jamaican dancehall culture, a genre once associated with misogyny and homophobia, are changing. Moreover, a pilot study led by the PI identified an emerging body of soca songs by female artists which are challenging gender roles and norms, a thriving spoken word movement in Trinidad which is breaking new ground in its treatment of issues such as sexual violence, intimate partner violence, homophobic violence and toxic masculinities, and an expanding corpus of Caribbean fiction, drama and poetry which critically engages with the topic of GBV.

The study also found that increasing numbers of Caribbean writers and musicians are participating in public debate on GBV both at live events and via social media.

The project will investigate the use of these aesthetic forms as sites of activism against GBV, while also generating new creative work. Working with writers, spoken word poets, dancehall artists and performing arts collectives, the project team will engage young people in anti-GBV activism through the following initiatives: 1.) a fiction and poetry commission targeted at writers under 30 from across the region; 2.) a five-week workshop series in three schools in Trinidad where 60 students aged 13-17 will watch, discuss and perform a spoken word play and produce their own scripts; 3.) a five-week workshop series in three schools in Jamaica where 60 students aged 13-17 will write, perform and record dancehall songs, which will be collated into an open access digital archive.

Outputs will include a fiction and poetry anthology, an annotated edition of the spoken word play Common Grounds with an introduction, notes and an integrated facilitation guide, a toolkit on performing arts approaches to GBV education, a journal special issue, and journal articles. The research will benefit the secondary school students who are directly involved, the collaborating organisations and creative practitioners, and the wider public within and beyond the region who will have access to the project's live, print and digital outputs.