Postcolonial Tourism, Island Specificity, and Literary Representation: Observations on Derek Walcott’s Omeros

Abstract

This article addresses the question of how postcolonial islands retain specificity while engaging with the often homogenizing processes of globalized mass tourism development. Assessing the contributions literary portrayals can make to such debates, it examines examples from Derek Walcott’s epic poem, Omeros, which takes the poet’s Caribbean island birthplace, St. Lucia, as its subject. It shows how, even as Walcott projects a critique of mass tourism’s exploitative excesses, his incorporation of tourism into aesthetic practice suggests that future development need not be inimical to cultural expression. It also argues that the poem’s epic form helps reinforce St. Lucian particularity in the face of destructive tourism development practices.