Focused on the broad topic of national identity, the main purpose of this article is to expose the significant change suffered by that concept in the modern Antillean‑Caribbean essay‑writing. Departing from a stark pessimistic viewpoint represented in influential works by the Puerto Rican writers and intellectuals Antonio S. Pedreira, René Márquez and José. L. González, a more moderate, cautiously optimistic perspective has been put forward more recently by Antonio Benítez Rojo and Édouard Glissant. The main difference between the two positions is the replacement, in the second one, of a concern with essentialism by a more open and cosmopolitan instance centered on a pan‑Caribbean multicultural experience.
Key words: national identity, essentialism, creolization, Antillean essay, Caribbean essay
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Vol. 10 (2015)
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