Telling Other Stories: Dominican Black Cosmopolitanism in Aída Cartagena Portalatín's Tablero

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I examine divergent ideological impulses at play in the oeuvre of Aída Cartagena Portalatín (Dominican Republic, 1918–94), including Eurocentric cosmopolitanism, nationalism (of a leftist variety), and pan-Africanism. By exploring key moments in Cartagena's intellectual development and analyzing her 1978 short story collection Tablero (Blackboard), I argue that such apparent incongruities should be understood through the lens of what I call Dominican black cosmopolitanism, a writerly performance of intersectionality that strategically employs contradictory notions of culture and citizenship to illuminate the complex history of the Dominican Republic and propose a new model of national identity. Drawing on Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo's conceptualization of black cosmopolitanism and an innovative body of scholarship on Dominican history and identity, I show how Cartagena deploys opposing discourses within a single text to reimagine Dominican identity in a global context, elucidate the Afro-Dominican experience, and plumb the liberating possibilities of pan-African alliances.