ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ways in which the landscape known as the Antigua Recreation Ground (ARG) also functions as an archive and as cultural memory. Colonial records show that some 30 years after emancipation, a petition was made to the Members of the House of Assembly seeking permission for a parcel of land to form a Cricket Club. In 1864, the Antigua Cricket Club was formed. This social space, a bastion of British hegemony, saw the “masters” of the game, suffering the indignity of being blackwashed against a West Indian cricket team whose forebears were former slaves. Today, the landscape has been transformed into a multidisciplinary cultural space with carnival activities, football, concerts, track and field activities, independence activities, and parades. From once being a colonial hegemonic structure, the transformation of the landscape to a place of national pride and consciousness has paralleled the colonial struggle from abolition of slavery to self-government and finally to political independence in 1981. The author argues that because this landscape gives Antiguans a sense of identity, belonging, and human attachment, particularly through cricket and carnival, it should be “archived” as a cultural memory.
