Sanitizing De Mas: The Coloniality of Refusal in Trinidad and Tobago Carnival 

I am conducting ethnographic fieldwork for this book project to interrogate the coloniality of refusal in Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival celebrations and document how marginalized communities reclaim space within the festivities. This festival has a long ancestral history dating back to the enslavement of Africans on the islands’ plantations (and on others across the Caribbean), where, much to the dismay of the colonizers and colonial government, Black people co-opted the colonizers’ pre-Lenten masquerades to give birth to traditions that are truly radical and transformative. The annual parades remain one of the few times that Trinidadians and Tobagonians, particularly those who are Black, working class, queer, and otherwise marginalized, can occupy the streets to express themselves through creative cultural, sacred, and political rituals. Unfortunately, the celebrations have been deeply impacted by the capitalist commercialization of carnival products that rely on the mass production of costumes, popular music, and the all-inclusive party model. These developments exclude marginalized communities and are further complicated by a middle and upper-class moral panic in the society. There is also a continued refusal to acknowledge and honor these ancestral legacies. Utilizing queer, feminist, and Caribbean sexualities studies frameworks, I will theorize the coloniality of this refusal with keen attention to what racialized gendered freedom and radical space-making practices might look like for those who are marginalized in the festivities.