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Reflecting on the relationship between memory, power, and national identity, this book examines the complex reactions of the people of the Caribbean to the 500th anniversary of Columbus´s discovery of the New World. Viala analyzes the ways in which Columbus became a reservoir of metaphors to confront anxieties of the present with myths of the past.

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Introduction: The Post-Columbus Syndrome: A Comparative Approach to Caribbean Memory in the Longue Durée PART I: POST-COLUMBUS SYSTEMS OF MEMORY: RECYCLING HERITAGE IN THE CARIBBEAN 1. Transculturation as Commemoration: Fernando Ortiz, the Cuban Longue Durée, and the Role of Columbus 2. Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Transnational Anamnesis: Creolising Columbus in the English Caribbean Collective Memory 3. The Snake, the Shore, and Columbus: Edouard Glissant´s Anamnesis of the French département d´outre-mer 4. Anamnesis, Chaos, and Columbus: Antonio Benítez Rojo and the Caribbean ´feedback-machine´ PART II: ANAMNESIS CARIBENSIS: COLUMBUS IN 1992 5. Columbus, the Memorious: Commemorations of the 500th Anniversary of the Discovery of the New World in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic 6. Christopher Columbus in the English Caribbean: Commemoration and Performance in Jamaica 7. Columbus in Martinique and Guadeloupe: Amnesia and Commemoration in the French Outremer 8. Columbus, the Scapegoat, and the Zombie: Performance and Tales of the National Memory in Haiti Conclusion: Towards an Archipelagic Memory

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"In The Post-Columbus Syndrome, Fabienne Viala takes the reader on a tour de force of the Caribbean´s history, politics and art, using the 500th anniversary of Columbus´s arrival in the Americas as its focal point of analysis. ... The book´s seamless flow through several art forms and genres constitutes one of its greatest merits: the reader engages with Haitian novels, theatre in Martinique, Jamaican dub poetry and performative arts in Puerto Rico, amongst others." (Jorge Sarasola, OCCT Oxford Comparative Criticism Translation, occt.ox.ac.uk, June, 2018)

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Fabienne Viala is Associate Professor of Hispanic and Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick, UK.

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