The Coastal Figuration of the Caribbean Pirate in the Late Seventeenth Century
In: Navigating Cultural Spaces: Maritime Places
Author:
Alexandra Ganser
Alexandra Ganser
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This essay examines late seventeenth-century narratives about Caribbean piracy, asking in what ways the pirate was constructed as a liminal figure between legitimate and illegitimate orders, between Europe and America, wilderness and civilisation, ethnic and national allegiances. It argues that the pirate emerges as a coastal figuration, a meta-phorically hybrid and fluid figure of contact that, because of its liminal and paradoxical qualities, carried the potential of both questioning and affirming a fledgling yet highly precarious colonial order.