Caliban's Curse: M. NourbeSe Philip's “Discourse” as Challenge to White Hegemony

Abstract

African Caribbean writer, M. NourbeSe Philip in her poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” counters colonial exploitation in the Caribbean by exploding various laws laid down by the European masters. This paper deals with the ways in which Philip looks at discourse as “both an instrument and an effect of power,” to use Foucault's words, and then dismantles the established formal structure of a poem as an oppositional strategy to challenge various ideological positions of white colonial masters.