Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Introduction: Caribbean Unity in Nature, History, and Prospects -- The Name and the Mystery -- The Physical Environment -- Conquest and Domination -- The Cultural Geography -- Forging the Modern World Imperially -- The Languages and Cultures -- On Knowing the Caribbean -- The Musical Turn -- The Last Resort of Culture -- The Rhythms of Success -- Shrinking Thought Horizons -- Farewell to the Future -- Musical Consolation -- 1 Colonial Migration and Theoric Awakening -- An Antillean's Voyage of Discovery -- A Theoric Preamble -- Knowledge in My Father's House -- Invasion and Two-Way Mobility -- Foreign Domination, Native Identity -- Child Labor, Invasion, Migration -- Power, Authority, and the Resistive Spirit -- On the Partiality of Book Learning -- Inequity in the Market of Ideas -- Western Education and Colonial Alterity -- Reading with an Attitude -- Commitment to Theory and Ethnic Predicament -- Ethnicity at Siege in the Global Society -- The Enduring Significance of Borders -- Intellectual Self-Defense in Caribbean Thought -- 2 The Endless History: The Caribbean versus Western Discourse -- A Zone of Alterity -- On Negative Ontology -- Haiti in the Antillean World -- Alter Native Creolity -- History as |