Disrupting the nation : gender transformations in the Trinidad Carnival

Abstract

Author uses the presence and performance of women in Trinidad's Carnival, and the narratives surrounding them, to comprehend the linkages between Carnival and the Trinidadian national identity, between gender and the nationalist project. She contends that the public debates surrounding the perceived 'feminization' of Carnival are highly charged because it both exposes the dilemma of post-colonial nation-building and strikes at the heart of the nationalist project.