In the Western world, the Caribbean has long been considered an Edenic paradise. As a result, it has attracted legions of tourists from around the world seeking to escape the crushing mundanity of their daily existence. While popular culture would have you believe otherwise, many Caribbean natives are unhappy with the countless masses of tourists who frequent the region each year. Caribbean writers, in particular, have expressed contempt and outrage at the tourism industry and the economic and environmental exploitation it brings. Adele S. Newson-Hurst and Munashe Furusa attest that, for Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid, "tourism involves more than the accepted notion of the act of traveling for recreational or leisure purposes [...] Significantly , [his] definition creatively connects tourism with a new economic order underpinned by injustice” (Newson-Hurst 142). Newson-Hurst and Furusa argue that Kincaid “links tourism to the imperial order and its commodified conception, relegating the other to a subhuman category for [colonial] consumption” (142). They argue that Kincaid's work "challenges and subverts assumptions about the [Caribbean] that are based on the 'imperial text' that posits the people of the [Caribbean] as the 'other' whose primary role is to appease the recreational and economic interests of the North” (141). My aim is to expand this claim by examining how Kincaid, in his short work A Small Place, employs postcolonial counter-discursive strategies to resist and combat exploitative imperialist attitudes toward the Caribbean and West Indies. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayResistance through counter-discourse is a fundamental aspect of training and the study of postcolonial texts. Helen Tiffin, in her work “Post-Colonial Literatures and Counter-Discourse,” asserts that “the project of postcolonial literatures [is] to investigate and intervene in European textual capture and containment of colonial and postcolonial space. in this space. original and continuous confinement” (Tiffin 101). This, of course, is accomplished through counter-discourse, which, according to Tiffin, "does not seek to overthrow the dominant in order to take its place, but [...] to develop textual strategies which [...] .] expose and erode [the biases] of the dominant discourse” (99). In other words, the goal of counter-discourse, at least in this particular context, is not to overthrow and replace the hegemonic discourse perpetuated by imperialist ideology but rather to reveal and then exploit the cracks in its foundations. Counter-discursive strategies, according to Tiffin, “involve a mapping of the dominant discourse, a reading and exposure of its underlying assumptions, and the dismantling [sic] of these assumptions from the cross-cultural perspective of the imperially subjectivized “local.” '” (101). For the purposes of my analysis, I will pay particular attention to the last item on Tiffin's list: the dismantling of long-standing assumptions and biases established and taken as fact by the dominant ideology. Kincaid – the “imperially subjective local” in this scenario – subverts the Orientalist conception of the Caribbean as a tropical paradise filled with, in the words of Leah Rosenberg, “‘island music,’ pristine beaches, [a] staff of 'Attentive black waiting, and [...] freedom to dance and make love with unauthorized partners in the North' (Rosenberg 361). Kincaid achieves this through the use of two strategies: first, by showing his readers the realityof Antiguan life; and second, by placing these same readers in the position of the “imperially subjective local” locked outside the hegemonic discourse with its voice appropriated by the narrative of the colonial master. There has been debate over when and why the Caribbean and West Indies came to be considered a paradise on earth. Rosenberg lists several factors, including "the loss of Britain's empire and the rise of the United States to imperial superpower, on the one hand, and, on the other, the struggle of the United States United for Civil Rights and Caribbean Nationalism; and by the interaction of these forces with culture: the calypso craze, the rise of an internationally recognized West Indian literary tradition, Britain's need for a new literary aesthetic and a new vision of 'itself in the wake of Empire, and Hollywood's fascination with race, romance, and Cinemascope' (362). Rosenberg further argues that islands such as Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Barbados appealed to North American and European sensibilities by offering "country and beach tourism with the nobility associated with Britishness" (361). While Rosenberg dates the emergence of the popular image of the Caribbean as paradise to around 1950, Richard Grove, in "Green Imperialism", argues that the influx of tourists can be attributed to the search for Eden that flourished in the Middle Ages. Age and continued. well into the 20th century. At this time, Grove asserts that "the task of locating Eden and reassessing nature had already begun to be accomplished through the appropriation of the newly discovered and colonized tropical islands as paradises" (Grove 499). It is this image of the Caribbean (and Antigua in particular) as an Edenic utopia that Kincaid strives to undermine in A Small Place. Lesley Larkin, in her essay "Read and Be Read: Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place as Literary Agent," aptly describes Kincaid's slim collection of essays as an "anti-guide" in the sense that it shows the reader what that actually takes place on his native island of Antigua, as opposed to what advertising and neocolonial representations of the Caribbean would have us believe (Larkin 195). Indeed, Kincaid presents the reader with a portrait of Antigua that is decidedly different from the romanticized representation perpetuated by Western media. Antigua, in the Kincaid region, is a hotbed of political corruption and environmental exploitation; she laments the island's perpetually dry climate and the fact that it is now seen by tourists as a positive characteristic. Kincaid laments: “[T]he thought of what it might be like for someone who had to live day in and day out in a place that was constantly suffering from drought, and therefore had to carefully monitor every drop of fresh water used[. .], should never cross your [tourist’s] mind” (4). Kincaid continues to actively undermine popular tropes and images associated with the Caribbean: for example, while contemplating the image of tourists wading in the ocean, Kincaid sarcastically remarks: "You don't have to wonder what exactly happened to the content from your toilet when you flushed it [...] Oh, it could all end up in the water you plan to bathe in; the contents of your toilet might, of course, gently brush your ankle while you splash carefree in the water, because you see, in Antigua there is no real sewage disposal system” ( 13-14). Antigua is also politically corrupt. The island's government routinely sacrifices the cultural stability and well-being of its citizens to accommodate the hordes of tourists who frequent the island. Later in the book, Kincaid tells the reader about a series of deathssuspects who carry the unmistakable odor of politically motivated assassinations. The average tourist, of course, does not have the slightest thought or concern about this political unrest. Kincaid's seething hatred of the exploitative nature of tourism culminates when she scornfully declares that "[a] tourist is an ugly human being" (14)—a statement that, as Adele S. Newson-Hurst and Munashe point out Furusa, “amounts to sacrilege because the nation’s economy depends on tourism” (Newson-Hurst 148). Although Kincaid obviously does not think highly of tourists, Lesley Larkin argues that Kincaid's "primary target is not tourism itself but tourist reading and the subject matter it produces [emphasis in the 'original]' (Larkin 195). According to Rosemary V. Hathaway, tourist reading is "a form of selective reading" that "threatens to 'subscribe' cultural particularity into preconceived notions" (qtd. in Larkin 195). According to Larkin, Kincaid “shows how tourist reading is a productive discourse, which constructs not only the tourist site and its inhabitants but also the tourist himself” (196). Larkin also suggests that Kincaid's work "anticipates the tourist impulse of [her] readers"—many of whom, she asserts, are "privileged white New Yorker readers for whom Kincaid had originally intended her work (and who are likely to be experienced tourists) to American students who, regardless of their tourist impulses, are regularly invited to "visit" other cultures by the diversity requirements of university programs" (194). Larkin further argues that Kincaid's distinct use of the second person address "points the finger at his readers [...], critiquing contemporary reading practices for their affinity with global tourism and imperialism" ( 194). Thus, the reader is placed in the position of the imperialized local: his or her voice has been silenced and even appropriated by Kincaid when necessary. To compound this portrayal, Kincaid makes sweeping general statements that fail to account for the heterogeneity of his audience. For Kincaid, his audience coalesced into a formless white mass – they were effectively dehumanized in the same way that imperialist ideology dehumanized those who were directly marginalized by colonial discourse. It becomes increasingly clear that Kincaid holds the reader directly responsible for the injustices. The Antiguans faced the hands of European colonizers. “Have you ever wondered why people like me seem to have learned from you how to imprison and kill each other [...]? seethes Kincaid (Kincaid 34). She continues: “Have you ever wondered why all we seem to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants? (34). According to Kincaid, the unwitting reader "will have to accept that it is largely [their] fault" (34-35). She then launches into a deluge of accusations against which the reader is powerless to defend himself: “You murdered people,” she rants (35); “You imprisoned people. You stole from people. You opened [. . .] banks and place our money there. [. . . .] There must have been good people among you,” Kincaid admits, “but they stayed home. And that's the point. That's why they're good. They stayed at home. (35). Kincaid never gives the reader the opportunity to defend themselves against these accusations and give their version of the facts. By depriving the reader of his voice, Kincaid forces him to experience this subhuman status for himself. Works Cited Carrigan, Anthony. "Hotels squat on my metaphors: tourism, sustainability and sacred space in.