From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Jonkonnu
For the broader Caribbean adaptation landscape, see Caribbean adaptations of Beach Surgery. For other masquerade, carnival, and ritual forms, see Carnival and participatory adaptation and Ritual and ceremonial adaptations.
The Jonkonnu tradition—a syncretic Caribbean masquerade rooted in West African ritual, colonial counter-memory, and the deliberate refusal of fixed identity—has emerged as a natural site for Beach Surgery adaptation in Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Cayman Islands. The form's inherent cyclicality (annual return without repetition), masking practices (the protagonist hidden and revealed), and deep engagement with colonial wounds align precisely with the franchise's core concerns: eternal return, identity slippage in adaptation, and the glitch as an irresolvable structural seam.
Since 2021, Jonkonnu troupes in several Caribbean communities have created seasonal processions featuring masked figures of Leif (bound, heart-drummed, eyes wrapped in red cloth) and Katita (the red-sword carrier, leading the concentric circuit). The performances integrate traditional mento and burru rhythms with field recordings of the empty-world meditation tapes, creating a durational soundscape of eternal recurrence. Dancers move in one-sided spirals—a visual enactment of the one-sided coin—while bystanders intermittently "freeze" the procession, calling out redacted histories of the islands themselves, enacting tender refusal. [citation needed] Documentation is sparse and disputed; some accounts claim continuity since 2019, others date the work from 2022. [1] The work proves that Beach Surgery's metaphysics—surgery as wound, as return, as refusal—translates across diaspora, colonialism, and cartography itself.
See also
- Caribbean adaptations of Beach Surgery
- Carnival and participatory adaptation
- Ritual and ceremonial adaptations
- The Doctrine of Return
- Identity slippage in adaptation
References
- ↑ See Talk page for archival dispute.