“White” Guadeloupeans of “Mixed” Ancestry
Complicating Analyses of Whiteness and White Supremacy
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Abstract
This article explores the various ways in which Guadeloupeans of mixed African and European ancestry who are perceived as White self-identify in relation to their family and individual trajectories. This partial analysis is based on half-dozen semistructured interviews carried out in the course of researching nationalism, race, and ethnicity in Guadeloupe. Complicating rigid definitions of Whiteness and White supremacy, this article interprets the intricate meanings of Whiteness in the specific context of Guadeloupe, and its complex articulation with material and symbolic privilege.
Contributor Notes
Ary Gordien holds a PhD in anthropology and is a Research Fellow at the Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique, affiliated with the LARCA, the Anglophone Studies Department of Université de Paris. Following a Master's thesis on Black Antillean gay scenes in Paris, his dissertation explored the multiple politicizations of collective identification and belonging in Guadeloupe. Over the course of a first postdoctoral fellowship funded by the French National Agency for Research, he investigated the Jamaican National Reparation Council. During his second postdoctoral fellowship at Université Paris Vincennes, he conducted an ethnographic study of antiracist organizations in Seine-Saint-Denis and designed a curriculum and degree on antiracism. His current research compares ethnic and racial relations in the Anglophone and French Caribbean. Email: ary.gordien@univ-paris-diderot.fr