Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks by way of the Correspondence of Andrew Salkey
It is a visitor publish by Natalie Lucy, a PhD scholar at College School London, who just lately undertook a British Library placement to work on a undertaking Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks by way of the correspondence of Andrew Salkey.
Venture Goals
The undertaking, supervised by curators Eleanor Casson and Stella Knowledge, focussed on the in depth correspondence contained inside Andrew Salkey’s archive. One of many preliminary aims was to digitally depict the motion of key Caribbean writers and artists, as it’s evidenced inside the correspondence, a lot of whom travelled between Britain and the Caribbean in addition to the USA, Central and South America and Africa. Though Salkey corresponded with a various vary of individuals, we subsequently targeted on the letters in his archive which had been from Caribbean writers and lecturers and which illustrated patterns of motion of the Caribbean diaspora. A lot of the correspondence stems from Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, a time when Andrew Salkey was significantly lively each within the Caribbean Artists Motion and, as a author and broadcaster, on the BBC.
Andrew Salkey was uncommon not just for the panoply of writers, artists and politicians with whom he was linked, however that he sustained these relationships, fastidiously preserving the correspondence which resulted from these networks. My private curiosity on this undertaking stemmed from the truth that my PhD seeks to contemplate the ways in which the Caribbean trickster character, Anancy, has traditionally been reinvented to say one thing about heritage and id. Important to that query was the way in which that the Caribbean Artists Motion, a dynamic group of artists and writers fashioned in London within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, and of which Andrew Salkey was a founder, appropriated Anancy, reasserting him and the folktales to convey one thing of a literary ‘voice’ for the Caribbean. For that reason, I used to be additionally within the writing networks which had been evidenced inside the correspondence, along with their impression.
What’s Gephi?
Previous to beginning the undertaking, Eleanor, who had catalogued the Andrew Salkey archive and Digital Curator, Stella, had recognized Gephi as a potential software program utility by way of which to visualise this information. Gephi has been utilized in quite a lot of tasks, together with a number of at Harvard College, examples of the breadth and variety of these initiatives may be discovered right here. A number of of those tasks have social networks or historic buying and selling routes as their focus, with apparent parallels to this undertaking. Others notably use correspondence as their essential information.
Gathering the Knowledge
Andrew Salkey was referred to as one thing of a chronicler. He was fascinated by letters and journey and was additionally a critical collector of stamps. As such, he had not solely retained the vast majority of the letters he acquired however categorised them. Eleanor had initially recognized potential correspondents who is perhaps helpful to the undertaking, deciding on writers who travelled broadly, whose correspondence had been individually saved by Salkey, partly due to its quantity, and who is perhaps of wider curiosity to the general public. These included the acclaimed Caribbean writers, Samuel Selvon, George Lamming, Jan Carew and Edward Kamau Brathwaite and publishers and political activists, Jessica and Eric Huntley.
Our preliminary intention was to restrict the info to easy information which may simply be gleaned from the letters. Gephi required that we did so on a spreadsheet ,which needed to conform to a specific format. Within the first phases of the undertaking, the info was confined to the dates and site of the correspondence, data which may counsel the patterns of motion inside the diaspora. Nevertheless, the letters had been so wealthy intimately, that we finally recorded different data. This included any further journey taken by any of the correspondents, and which was clearly evidenced within the letters, along with any passages from the correspondence which demonstrated both one thing of the character and high quality of the friendships or, alternatively, the mutual good thing about these relationships to the careers of so most of the writers.
Creating a visible community
Dr Duncan Hay was invited to collaborate with me on this undertaking, as he has appreciable experience on this area, his analysis pursuits embody internet mapping for tradition and heritage and information visualisation for literary criticism. After the preliminary information was collated, we mentioned with Duncan what visualisations may very well be created. It turned obvious early on that making a visualisation of the social networks, versus the patterns of motion, is perhaps comparatively simple by way of Gephi, an utility which was significantly helpful for this kind of graph. I had ready a spreadsheet however, Gephi requires the info to be offered in a strictly constant means which meant that any anomalies needed to be eradicated and the info successfully ‘cleaned up’ utilizing Open Refine. Gephi additionally requires that data is offered by means of a system of ‘nodes’; ‘edges’ and ‘attributes’ with corresponding spreadsheet columns. In our undertaking, the ‘nodes’ referred to Andrew Salkey and every of the correspondents and different people of curiosity who had been particularly referred to inside the correspondence. The sides referred to the way in which that these individuals had been linked which, on this case, was by way of correspondence. Nevertheless, what added to the potential of the undertaking was that these nodes and edges may very well be additional described by reference to ‘attributes.’ The opportunity of assigning a variety of ‘attributes’ to every of the correspondents allowed a wealth of further data to be offered in regards to the networks. As a consequence, and as a way to make any visualisation as informative as potential, I additionally added temporary biographical data for every of the writers and artists to be inputted as ‘attributes’ along with some rationalization of the character of the networks that had been being illustrated.
The visible illustration under reveals not solely the amount of letters from the pattern of correspondents to Andrew Salkey (the pink traces), but in addition reveals which different correspondents fashioned a part of these networks and had been referenced as buddies or contacts inside particular gadgets of correspondence. For instance, George Lamming references tutorial, Rex Nettleford and author and activist, Claudia Jones, the founding father of the Notting Hill Carnival, in his correspondence, connections that are depicted in gray.
The purpose was, nonetheless, for the visualisation to even be interactive. This required appreciable additional manipulation of the format and instruments. On this illustration you possibly can see the knowledge that’s revealed in regards to the distinguished Barbadian author, George Lamming which, in an interactive format, may be accessed by way of the ‘i’ symbols beside most of the nodes colored in inexperienced.
While Gephi was a useful gizmo with which for instance the networks, it was much less useful as a method to display the patterns of motion, one of many major aims of the undertaking. A problem was, subsequently, to create a map which may very well be each interactive and illustrative of the precise areas of the correspondents in addition to their motion over time. With Duncan’s enter and experience, we opted for a hybrid strategy, utilising two principal methods for instance the info: we used Gephi to create a visualisation of the ‘networks’ (above) and one other software program software, Kepler.gl, to indicate the diasporic motion.
A static model of what finally will likely be a ‘transferring’ map (illustrating correspondence close to individual, date and site) is proven under. In addition to demonstrating patterns of motion, it also needs to be potential to entry details about particular letters in addition to their shelf numbers by way of this map, hopefully making the archive extra accessible.
While we’re nonetheless exploring the potential of this undertaking and the way it may intersect with different areas of analysis and archives, it has already revealed one thing of the advantages of this kind of information visualisation. For instance, a undertaking of this sort may very well be used as an academic software, offering one thing of a easy, however dynamic, introduction to the Caribbean Artists Motion. Having the ability to visualise the undertaking has additionally allowed us to enter data which confirms the place particular letters of curiosity is perhaps discovered inside the archive. Finally, it’s hoped that the undertaking will provide methods to make a wealthy, but arguably undervalued, archive extra accessible to a wider viewers with the potential to copy one thing of an introductory mannequin, or ‘pilot’ for additional archives sooner or later.
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