Being said/seen to care: Masculine silences and emerging visibilities of intimate fatherhood in dominica, lesser antilles

Abstract

This chapter explores the dissonant discursive construction of paternal care in Dominica. It examines how fathers' care is spoken about and performed in varied and divergent ways; how concepts of care as both material provision and emotional labour are in everyday circulation on the island, though, verbalised or hushed context- and class-specific ways. The chapter demonstrates how paternal care is discursively formed through everyday speech, public statements, silences, and quotidian practices. I am interested here in how discourse affords recognition-whether/how fathers are said, and thus seen, to care for their children in Dominica and, by extension, the Caribbean. Grounded in 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean, the study draws on a methodologically eclectic approach (including analyses of quotidian conversation, semi-structured interviews, observations, family planning materials, television, and social media) to argue that Dominican fathers are finding burgeoning descriptive voice for their care, and in the process demanding a broader imagining of Caribbean fatherhood.