1973 Caribbean Situationist Map and Political Broadside of the Caribbean

This is a 1973 Caribbean Situationist map and political broadside that was included with a record distributed by the organization. It includes Situationist philosophical texts and relates incidents of political unrest and black nationalism throughout the Caribbean in the preceding years.

A Closer Look

This map covers the Caribbean from Florida and the southern United States to Suriname and Guyana. Recent demonstrations, strikes, uprisings, and oppositional political violence are noted, beginning with the 1963 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to 1973. Typical of the Situationists, the descriptions of these events are critical not only of the forces of capitalism and imperialism but also of the highly structured and hierarchical trade unions and, in Cuba, Communist party-state organs. The map is surrounded by a long excerpt from Raoul Vaneigem's 1967 book Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations, most often known in English as The Revolution of Everyday Life, as well as a shorter excerpt from Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, key Situationist texts.

The Situationist International and the Caribbean

The Situationist International was a revolutionary avant-garde movement that emerged in the 1950s in France from the avant-garde Lettrist art movement and is often considered part of the 'New Left' that emerged in the post-World War II period. They developed a reputation for highly provocative and even outrageous public acts, most famously disrupting a televised Easter Mass in 1950 to read a proclamation ending with the line 'We proclaim the death of the Christ-god, so that Man may live at last.' Though their writings are often criticized for being abstruse and incomprehensible and for being much clearer on what they oppose than what they propose, the Situationists did promote a consistent set of ideas centered on subjectivity, anti-capitalism, and collective action. Their influence peaked during the May 1968 student and worker demonstrations in France, where Situationist-inspired slogans ('Sous les pavés, la plage!' and 'Il est interdit d'interdire') became rallying cries for the entire movement, or at least the student portion of it.

Though the Situationists were mostly based in France, their thought often intersected with anti-colonial struggles and shared their rejection of both the colonial/capitalist world and orthodox Marxism. Fancying themselves as provocateurs, the Situationists saved some of their harshest criticism for the Old Left (Orthodox Marxists and Stalinists in particular). This criticism was the root of their denunciation of 'Trevor Menroe,' that is, Trevor Munroe (1944 - present), a leader in the Jamaican labor movement and a prominent intellectual in Caribbean Leftist movements who was still a Stalinist.

This sheet was included inside a record jacket (the outside of the jacket being an enlarged image of the map) for vinyl album of recorded speeches of 'Fundi' (born George Myers, also known as Joseph Edwards or simply 'the Caribbean Situationist'). Fundi was a leader of the Jamaican New Left who drew on several intellectual strands, including Situationism, Trotskyism, Black Nationalism, and Rastafarianism. This example of the record was mailed from the Caribbean Situationists based in London to One Purse in Oakland, California, a Situationist-inspired political group.

Wider Historical Context

Although historians have increasingly recognized the global dimensions of the protest movements of the late 1960s, most of the attention remains fixed on the United States, Europe, China, Mexico, and South America. The role of the Caribbean region in these movements is less well-known, but as this map demonstrates, there is a strong case to be made for overlap between events there and wider developments worldwide. Many issues in the Caribbean were similar to those in other regions - decolonization and anti-imperialism, anger at the American presence in Vietnam and in other covert or overt actions related to the Cold War, fury at the Soviets for similar maneuverings (particularly the crushing of the Prague Spring), a breakdown of the organizations of the Old Left at the national and international level (underway since the death of Stalin), a search for new forms of political organization, a generational divide between the post-World War II generation and their parents, and so on. But the Caribbean also had some distinguishing characteristics when compared to student and worker movements elsewhere, especially the opposition to direct British and American military intervention (a much more immediate threat than in some other regions) and the influence of Black Nationalist, Pan-African, and, in Jamaica, Rastafarian movements. This environment also resulted in distinct forms of cultural production, most notably Reggae music, which was closely connected to Rastafarianism and deeply infused with themes of social justice.

Publication History and Census

This map was produced by the 'Caribbean Situationist' based in London in 1973 to accompany a vinyl record of political speeches. The record was reissued c. 1975 by the London Situationist organization News from Everywhere with a modified version of the map on the record jacket. Either issue of the map and record is very rare today. Only one example of the record is noted in the OCLC, held by Yale University, though it is unclear if they also hold this map insert. We, unfortunately, do now have the record.