ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights one specific and emerging trend in participatory planning as it is developing in the Caribbean. It presents an argument for the project of radical democracy, which was developed by Laclau and Mouffe. The chapter purposes to encourage debate concerning this particular democratic theory, and its applicability to the Caribbean region. The nature of politics in the Caribbean can be explored from another perspective, which involves consideration of the difference between 'politics' and 'the political'. The poetry of the Nobel Prize-winning Derek Walcott, from a different perspective, illustrates the importance which many Caribbean peoples - particularly through artistic movements - place upon creating their own identity. The chapter argues that participatory planning should be just as much concerned with challenging the hegemonic language of development, which oppresses the formation of new collective identities and social movements concerned with bringing to the fore different Caribbean identities, as anything else.
