Tropic tendencies: Rhetoric, popular culture, and the anglophone Caribbean

Browne seeks to explain anglophone Caribbean cultural production from a rhetorical perspective. He argues for the existence of a distinctive Caribbean rhetoric tradition and offers a theory of what he calls the "Caribbean carnivalesque" to explain how this tradition coheres for specific effects. The carnivalesque is a key rhetorical device that operates among Caribbean people and is identifiable in every aspect of their cultural production, and it also serves as an effective theoretical device for analyzing texts created by and about Caribbean people, and for exploring how these texts constitute forms of democratic deliberation. Browne applies his formulations of the carnivalesque to a series of texts to demonstrate both how they can be analyzed and what they can potentially accomplish from a rhetorical standpoint. This critical perspective allows for a concise explanation and a coherent assessment of Caribbean discourse that moves along a logical trajectory-that is, from the formation of tradition to contemporary practice.