Keynote lecture: drs. Raymond Jesserun

Our Stories Are Not Footnotes: Culture, Memory, and the Right to Shape Caribbean Research

This keynote starts from the conviction that, in the Caribbean, culture is not something that surrounds research from the outside; it is one of the places where knowledge begins. Literature, language, music, storytelling, and the arts carry memory across generations, give shape to belonging, and preserve truths that official records have too often ignored. Focusing on St. Martin / Sint Maarten and the wider Dutch Caribbean, the presentation reflects on how identity, multilingual life, archives, and the memory of slavery continue to shape both everyday experience and the ways the region is studied and understood. It argues that research has too often arrived with concepts formed elsewhere, while the islands themselves hold rich ways of knowing in their voices, histories, and cultural practices. Drawing on local reflections on identity, archival recovery, and reparative memory, the keynote calls for research that listens more closely to island realities, strengthens local institutions, and returns knowledge to the communities from which it comes. In this sense, culture is not a backdrop to inquiry, but a living guide for justice, memory, and Caribbean futures.