On Tropical Grounds

Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián is Professor of Hispanic and Visual Culture Studies at Durham University.

• Figures ix Acknowledgments xiForeword – Richard Rosa xvIntroduction: On Tropical Grounds 1Part I. Atlantic, Hispanic, Avant-Garde: Archaic Places / Non-European Regressions1 Around the Atlantic Avant-Garde: Insular Dreamworlds / Archaic Islandscapes 212 Male Regressions: The Non-Europeans 56Part II. Caribbean, Colonial, Avant-Garde: From Poesía Negra to Carceral Romances3 Islands of Desire: A Poetics of Antillean Fragmentation 1014 Carceral, Island, Nation: Cuban Romances in Photography and Fiction 134Part III. Surrealism after France: Crime and Desire from the Canary Islands to the Americas5 Surrealism and the Islands: The Practice of Dislocation 1716 Difficult Dialogues: Surrealism in the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean 206Epilogue: Preface to the 1950s 246Notes 255Index 299

“On Tropical Grounds executes a cultural, intellectual, and literary history of striking depth and inimitable originality. Avant-garde canons of knowledge are constellated as they separate but hold together the idea of island, islandness, and insularity running through the Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean and the Canary Islands. This mosaic of resounding thoughts is literary and visual theory, not of a particular time, but it is a vital reference for our time. It is a must-read for all those who are thinking about the Caribbean and the Atlantic world vis-à-vis​ dynamic but often hard-to-articulate traces, disruptive spaces, conceptual grasps.”Claudia Milian, Duke University