ABSTRACT
Mike Featherstone, for example, speaks of creolization in global culture as a process of mixture, incorporation and syncretism. This chapter offers a located historical account of the meaning of creolization within Caribbean culture and theory, tracing how a theoretical term developed in the Caribbean in contexts of transatlantic slavery and colonialism was 'uprooted' and 'regrounded' in the quite different context of metropolitan self-theory. The national and transnational formations sketched are crucial to understanding how Caribbean theory is located within global discourses, and how it moves across them. The chapter highlights how theories of creolization are inflected by the particular locations and specific political conditions in which they arise and shows how metropolitan global theory pirates peripheral theory for the reproduction of its own discourses of power. Creolization is an ambiguous word with many different and even incommensurable meanings within its Caribbean context and beyond.
