Ronald Cummings is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. His work focuses on Caribbean Literature and Black diaspora studies. He has co-edited two critical volumes; The Fire That Time : Transnational Black Radicalism and the Sir George Williams Occupation (with Nalini Mohabir) and Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970–2020 (with Alison Donnell). He is also the editor of Make the World New: The Poetry of Lillian Allen.
Title: “On Capture Land.”
Abstract: Among the narratives recounted in Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return, is a story of Rastafari longing for return. This discussion considers that story, told to Brand by a friend, alongside Chronixx’s song “Capture Land” and Nabil Elderkin’s short film, “Captureland.” In reading these works together, I use the concept of “captureland” to engage with the question of the authority of maps. I also examine how these works narrate land, coloniality and the politics of longing and belonging in diaspora and how they each locate Black life in and through different sites and scenes of (dis)orientation.