Scholarly Strains on Shaky Ground: Caribbeanness and the Campus in Marking Time and Grounds for Tenure

Campus narratives, either written by Caribbean writers or whose setting is the Caribbean, explore issues that go beyond the affairs of the institution. This paper focuses on two particular works of Campus fiction, E.A. Markham’s Marking Time (1999) and Barbara Lalla’s Grounds for Tenure (2017), which – despite being published almost two decades apart – interrogate aspects of the university on their way to raising questions about Caribbean identity in the region and its overseas diaspora. These questions revolve around the frail interpersonal relationships between academics; the rivalries that ensue out of the quest for power; the politics that undermine the duty of the university; and the psychological ruptures that result from pursuing tenureship in an academic rat race. The primary argument made in this paper is that each novel reflects ideological statements about the Caribbean and its diaspora that are both internally as much as externally produced. By incorporating the wider world into the affairs of the campus, the novels demystify the esteemed position of Caribbean institutions when faced with larger, neo-liberal systems at work. Apart from the internal missteps of the university being explored by each novel, there is also the larger exploration of the effects on the institution brought on by the commercialization of higher education. By using satire, both writers dramatise controversy in extreme cases and thereby allow serious consideration of the function of the contemporary Caribbean university. Both novels help us to understand not only educational institutions in crisis, but also different stages of crises that stem from being Caribbean.