Carnival in Trinidad

What is it about?

The article examines the Carnival characters called the pierrot and the pisse-en-lit in nineteenth-century Trinidad, taking into consideration the ways in which either figure makes claims over spaces in the city. The pierrot is a princely figure which carries a whip, who argues with other similar figures and, at times, enters into brawls with them over territory. The pisse-en-lit are female characters portrayed by either men or women who showcase bloodied cloths in representations of menstrual blood. The character not only takes over colonial space through treading the city come Carnival, but by also reclaiming the colonial subject in his or her seizure of the body as the most intimate of human spaces.

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