The Imaginary is everywhere in representations of the Caribbean Islands and their people and has been ever since their discoverers dreamt themselves arriving, triumphant, in the Indies. This book poses a provocative question: When the Imaginary occupies the place of the Real, as in Caribbean culture and European projections of that culture, how does the Real position itself? Michele Praeger seeks an answer by bringing the Caribbean discourses of French traditional criticism and American social sciences, particularly history and psychoanalysis, into conversation with the imaginings of the...