Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean. By Colin A. Palmer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 354. Illustration. Tables. Map. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95 cloth.
One recurring problem is that the author's voice (and narrative) tends to blend in with that of his sources. Historical contemporaries' own paraphrased or cited understandings often become authoritative explanations rather than a subject for probing and interrogation. Other problems include overgeneralizations displaced to an undifferentiated "Cuban" subject, and the almost complete absence of some important discursive contexts such as the legal and medical ones related to "modernity" and the state. Finally, the conflation of perhaps too many forms of dying into "suicide" without clearly distinguishing the boundaries of legitimate and illegitimate forms of self-induced death among historical subjects themselves, or the clashes between such constructions may also constitute a problem. Yet it can also present some provocative challenges.