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CARNIVALIZING PHILOSOPHY: TRINIDAD CARNIVAL, CARIBBEAN THOUGHT, AND THE INFLUENCE OF WEST AFRICAN YORUBA PHILOSOPHY
Full text linkThis dissertation explores the philosophical dimensions of the Trinidad Carnival as a critical site for decolonizing and reimagining philosophical discourse. Situated in the twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, a nation shaped by the confluence of cultures and the legacies of deterritorialization, this study investigates the interplay between Yorùbá cosmology, West African diasporic traditions, and Caribbean cultural expression. Trinidad Carnival serves not merely as a festivity but as a living philosophy that embodies resilience, creativity, and communal consciousness that resists Eurocentric paradigms. This dissertation proposes a multidimensional framework that infuses philosophical inquiry with Trinidad Carnival\u27s aesthetics, spontaneity, and subversive ethos. Grounded in Yorùbá ontology, particularly the wisdom of Ọ̣̀rúnmìla, this approach challenges the rigid, hierarchical structures of European philosophy by fostering pluralism, relationality, and dynamic epistemologies. I introduce my concept of Carnivalizing Philosophy, which posits that cultural art forms like Trinidad Carnival provide alternative methodologies and epistemic tools for interrogating notions of Being, individuality, and collectivity, thus expanding the boundaries of philosophical thought.
By engaging with the embodied and performative dimensions of Trinidad Carnival, this work uncovers how aesthetic expression can serve as a transformative philosophical practice. Through a synthesis of philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, and performance theory, this dissertation illuminates the enduring influence of Yorùbá cosmology in shaping Caribbean ii identity. It provides a framework for understanding the complexities of cultural negotiation and transformation. Carnivalizing Philosophy advocates for a radical reorientation of philosophy, urging scholars to embrace diverse voices, histories, and modes of expression. This approach underscores the transformative potential of integrating cultural aesthetics into philosophical discourse by reclaiming the legacies of West African and Caribbean traditions.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1066/thumbnail.jp
MOURNING-ARTS —MAPPING MULTISPECIES AESTHETIC-ETHICAL PATHWAYS
Full text linkContemporary time is marked by the proliferation of the endings of many worlds and as such the pivotal question becomes how can we become attuned, responsive, and responsible to these myriads of endings that are both material and immaterial, insensible and unintelligible to our limiting, human-only sense experience? This dissertation, oriented as an ongoing remapping project along both ethical and aesthetic fault-lines, argues and responds performatively to the imperative that thinking (as well as human-only iterations of time, space, and identity) itself be re-thought, re-defined, and practiced within the transfiguration of mourning and of the spectral— a transformation of thinking into mourning as generative, participatory, and performative mourning-with divergent, marginalized, and multispecies storytellers, participants, and ghosts. Mourning is both a deconstructing and generative constituting force that disrupts singular narratives of human exceptionalism, allowing for anthropocentrism to become loosened from classic ideologies and discourses, specifically the entrenchment of us versus them within human thinking and mapping practices. Outside of the limits of human sense experience, language, and representation mourning-with performs a reconfigured, epistemological pathway that creates a transfiguration of the ethical within aesthetics, an alternate space of ongoing weaving that I call vi the aesthetic-ethical pathway. This pathway, performed here through the methodological weaving practice of bringing together philosophical theory with narrative through the geographical motifs of land and sea, enables the work of an ongoing heteroglossic-hospitality that enlarges ecological consciousness and engages that which resists human-only senses, language, and mapping practices and enacts the space wherein we can begin to imagine equitable futurities for all manner of being to live and die well. Encountering both material and immaterial lines and threads that compose our shared and entangled worlds in-trouble requires a multispecies, more- than-human, and posthuman aesthetic-ethical imagination that allows for an ongoing poiesis of interrelationality and interdependence—the ongoing poiesis of mourning-arts.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1065/thumbnail.jp
Summertime in the Belgrades : August 22, 2025
No full texthttps://digitalmaine.com/summertime_in_the_belgrades/1238/thumbnail.jp
Maine IT Newsletter : March 2025
No full texthttps://digitalmaine.com/oit_newsletters/1073/thumbnail.jp
Maine IT Newsletter : April 2025
No full texthttps://digitalmaine.com/oit_newsletters/1074/thumbnail.jp
CONTAMEDIATION; IDENTITY OF THE IGBO AFRICAN MASK AS EMBODIMENT OF SELF AND SPIRIT
No full textBy engaging Heidegger’s notion of existential analysis, being-with, care, this dissertation introduces the term Contamediation, as the condition that collaborates, contaminates and mediates in the ongoing discourse on change in human flourishing through embodiment of self, spirit and nature. Sunnification is also introduced as shedding of light on the truth of existence through African philosophy of mask. I argue that the Igbo African mask functions not only as aesthetic art object, created through longstanding masking traditions, but also functions in a metaphysical realm that influences socio-cultural values. The identity of the mask in single or multi-faced configurations embodies spirit as a union of forces that permeates, animates and controls the workings of the mask through ritual entanglement. To demonstrate an ongoing hegemonic relationship of spirit, we elaborate on the idea of the Greek God, the One, Igbo God, Chukwu, and the Christian God in context of David Driskell’s artwork, Spirits Watching, along with works by other artists.vii The paper illuminates a trans-historical transformation and metamorphoses of extraction and relocation, through selected philosophical thinkers such as Derrida, Althusser, Sloterdijk and others, and elaborates on the nature of masked language as well as social and ideological structures that create a deviation from originary modes of reference in human consciousness and existence. The role of the artist philosopher, exemplified by Ana Mendieta, Nietzsche, and others, calls for freedom of expression, while further analysis is given to the notion of repatriation of the African mask to its place of origin, and to the impact of reparation on existential flourishing. Karl Jaspers reminds us in Kant, of inexhaustible possibilities that are tied to subject/object understanding within limits of experience, and we situate transcendental philosophy in self- understanding through self-consciousness.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1074/thumbnail.jp
Town Clerk Record Book Vol 6 1928-1939
No full texthttps://digitalmaine.com/westport_island_town_clerk_record_books/1007/thumbnail.jp
MAINE BACK RIVER 110325-5059
No full text2025 Oblique Coastal Air Photos flown by Maine Imaging Project Name: Oblique Coastal Air Photos 2025https://digitalmaine.com/mgs_geologic_field_photos/23546/thumbnail.jp