Caribbean Inhospitality

The Caribbean has a global reputation for extending unparalleled hospitality to foreign guests. Yet local citizens express feeling alienated from the Caribbean nations they call home. Here, Natalie LaurenBelisleprobes the relationship between these incompatible narratives of Caribbean life. Departing from tourist-centered critiques of the Caribbean's visitor economy,Belisleinstead gives primacy to the political life of the Caribbean citizen-subject within a broader hospitality regime. Reading literary, cinematic, and digital texts that traverse the Spanish, Anglophone, and Francophone Caribbean,Belisleinterprets citizens' estrangement through misdirected political deliberation and demonstrates thatinhospitalityis institutionalized through the aesthetic, reproducing itself in the laws that condition belonging and membership in the nation-state. Ultimately,Caribbean Inhospitalityrecasts the decay of nation/state sovereignty in the postcolonial Caribbean within the contours of neoliberalism, international relations, and cosmopolitanism.