I was in primary school in Standard Two when it was made obvious to me that I was not like all of the other children I had played with as a toddler. You see I grew up with my father's family in a village that was predominantly Indian but with some Chinese and African descended people: a regular mix of Hindu, Muslims and Christians. My aunt, in whose house I lived (along with my dad, other siblings, cousins etc) was married to a Chinese man - Sing Loy Apping. Yes I am of mixed parentage, but it is my upbringing more than anything else that gave me my outlook on life. Special occasions in that house always had a variety of dishes. I grew up thinking that Chinese food was normal part of everyone's celebrations, and should be on the table right next to the dhalpuri skins that my aunt and older cousins had spent half the day making. Mind you our household was Christian. But our food patterns were very cosmopolitan. My aunt's gallery was my travel channel. All the characters of the street walked by, and being the precocious child I was, I would engage all of them in conversation from the rocking chair I used to ride (trust me, the ferocity with which I rocked was riding). So Tantie Doux Doux Bhagwandeen and Uncle Pinky Sultan were, for me, really family members. It mattered little that they lived in different houses and had different practices. At Divali and pooja time Tanti Doux Doux let me help with whatever I wanted to help with. Uncle Pinky explained why he was so dressed up on Friday afternoons and told me that a mosque was his church. It made sense for him to have a different church since he lived in a different house. And my aunt made sawine as a matter of course, it wasn't attached to Eid. Tantie Doux Doux, Uncle Pinky and I ate much the same things regularly.
Now the point I am trying to make here is not one of ethnic harmony, because villagers had their disputes, quarrels and dramas some linked to racial tension, but most linked to personality differences; rather, I am trying to point out that there is no ethnic group living here that we are unfamiliar with and haven't interacted with and assessed. Yet at election time all of a sudden two ethnic groups become sinister strangers to each other and several other ethnic groups become invisible.
Race was again conjured into an issue in the 2010 elections and the irony is that, is really ethnic (as opposed to racial) groups we looking at. But I don't think the issue is race. I think the issues are fear and ignorance. From the 1800s the policy of colonial governments was divide and rule. The two Asian groups brought here were pitted against each other. When Chinese immigrants came they were at first described as being more heathen and insubordinate than the Indians. Chinese immigrants came under different conditions to Indians, who came under different conditions to the enslaved Africans. Chinese women weren't indentured, Indian women were. Eventually, when most Chinese converted to some form of Christianity in public (and maintain their shrines at home) they were considered to be obedient, clean, not heathen at all but upstanding citizens. Walton Look Lai's The Chinese in the West Indies gives a pretty comprehensive look at what they faced and how they interacted with the various groups when they got here using actual documents to support his claims. The book also shows the way in which barriers were developed by colonial authorities between the various groups. At all times Europeans were pitted as being superior to all others, the Portuguese were an in-between buffer group (not quite white because they from the swarthy Mediterranean and they were traders and labourers not from the landed gentry) and when the Syrians/Lebanese came they functioned as a commercial buffer group until they began to marry upwards into the European groups.
Two things have always been important for upward mobility in Trinidad and Tobago : colour and money. Being light skinned is its own form of capital here, having money allows you access into many spaces regardless of colour, but to have both can make you damn near invincible.
Most Afro-Trinbs don't have the wherewithal to become economically powerful, not because they don't have the head for business, but because they have not been made to understand themselves and realise their true potential. "Black and stupid" and "black and ugly" are still paired together here, like cake and ice cream and are heard more often than not being repeated by black people to themselves! They have been exposed to the same education system as all of the other groups, have lived alongside other groups just as poor as themselves and seen them move up while they remain in the same position. Why is that?
And ALL of the groups buy into stereotyping. So African descendeds are black, stupid, ignorant, aggressive, hard head, sexually promiscuous, smelly and does wuk obeah and worship the devil in their traditional religions. The Indian is corrupt, weak, two-tongued, not to be trusted, inherently nasty in terms of personal hygiene, clannish, insular, have a weakness for rum, fatalistic, heathen and secretly racist. There are fewer stereotypes bandied about on the other groups. Chinese are considered to be insular and clannish, bright like hell when it come to maths and sciences and computer, all of them own shop and business or running the banking sector and if they don't marry chinese they marry whites. the same thing with the Syrians/Lebanese, clannish, interfamily marriages and well don't talk for white people. All of them does live in the West, they own all the big business, does buy all the political parties when come election and does only mix with black people to look rootsy around Carnival time. Them not interested in the country, they interested in what they could get from the country and when it have no more to get they does migrate!
Now these comments are made amongst ourselves, because we don't dare say it to people's faces for fear of sounding racist - so we prefer to be closet racists and appear to openminded. And while we masquerade as "all o we is one" (and we good at masquerade here) our ignorance of each other digs us into deeper pits. And so every five years, those more cunning than the average grassroots "UNCPNM till ah dead" supporter pulls the racestrings on the marionnettes and makes them dance all the way to the voting booth and kill them dead when they vote tribe, they voting to save themselves. When in truth and infact all they would have done is to vote to maintain the status quo of oppression and ignorance.
I for one think it is time to discuss race, as opposed to hurling racist slurs and begin to understand what makes us tick, and why one minute we can be Trinidadians (because no Trini really claims Tobago in their national identity) at certain events and Indian, African, Chinese, White or whatever at specific intervals. "All o' we" will never be one, until we understand and embrace how and why we are different.
A lively discussion of Caribbean Culture
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Messiahs and Scape Goats
Trinbagonians have a messiah complex. It is a pretty obvious symbol throughout our society. We celebrate numerous Roman Catholic holidays here that all hark back to the birth, death and blood and body of Christ. Even when the holiday isn't Christian, but from another religious sect like Carnival, Holi or Divali there is still the presence of the scapegoat, that thing being sacrificed for the good of the larger whole.
Patrick Manning probably wasn't aware of it, but he offered himself up as this both year's political messianic scapegoat. The last two and a half years (if not all 7) of his political reign was filled with discontent: smelters, property taxes, inefficient ministers, escalating crime, expensive summits, useless and expensive buildings, corrupt businessmen running amok with the country's money, shrinking oil and gas reserves, an overburdened treasury. The list really can go on. The people were angry. Upset. The land needed to be purged.
But even with this dire need for purging, 2 1/2 years ago when given the opportunity to remove Manning, the people hesitated because the society is complex, complicated in its attitudes and still very much in the embryonic stages when it comes to political education and self-empowerment. The old Bogies of race, ethnicity and, most importantly, economic patrimony reared their heads and whispered into the minds of many of the PNM doubtfuls.
Most PNM supporters and many people who are non-Indian in Trinidad and Tobago find it difficult to vote for the UNC party. It is a party associated with an Indo-Trinbagonian ethnic base as its support. Indians, whether true or not, are associated with white collar crime and corruption. The Indo-TrinB is seen as greedy and grasping, capable of great cunning and underhanded deeds and not to be trusted around money. When the UNC came into power between 1995-2000, their actions, from the public's perspective seemed to confirm these stereotypes. By 2001 the majority of the country's electorate ensured that the UNC could not be in power. In 2007 the spectre of that 5-year feeding frenzy still lingered and during that election they lost part of their voter-base to the COP.
The COP emerged in 2007 as an alternative party. Alternative to what, the people asked? To tribal politics, they responded. It seemed then that what they offered was class-based politics instead of ethnic-based politics. They were a party of ideas, they said, embracing all groups. What the PNM and UNC voter bases saw was a party of middle class people who fraid to get their hands dirty in anything real and meaningful. Despite the many marches and protests that they organised, they were not totally embraced. The UNC supporters who went over to them were scoffed at: they were the knife-and-fork-indians, the ones too uppity to sanay with their hands and eat on sohari leaf. The brown/mulatto middle class was their main voter base. Them kind of people aint know bout John John and Beetham and Sea Lots. If they have to pass there they wind up their windows and pretend it don't exist. So in the 2007 elections, despite purporting itself as the party to save Trinbago from race politics, the COP's message fell on hard ground mostly, it only took root in the hearts of a few.
They didn't win a seat, but they certainly unseated Panday who lost his cool at Rienzi complext 2 1/2 years ago and blasted his support base. It was the beginning of yet another end to Panday. The party was properly well fed up of him. Jack Warner was already in the party and an elected MP. Jack had made a promise. He was going to rid the party of all of the filth. He had a very public To-Do list. Between 2007 and 2010 Warner waged an internal war within the upper ranks of the UNC that got rid of the old guard that many felt was stifling growth in the party. Ironically enough Warner's corrupt dealings as a FIFA official were largely ignored by his supporters and Warner himself seemed to become a sort of deliverer. The Simon Bolivar of the UNC as it were. Canny as ever, Warner knew that it would be hard for the core UNC support-base to see an African face as its leader, so he openly supported Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Warner ran for party chairman and Bissessar for political leader. The campaign was strategic, fashioned only slightly after Obama's campaign. No smearing, no bad talking on her part, while Panday ranted and raved like a lunatic, calling names and casting aspersions. On January 24th 2010, the UNC support base vomited all over their former Hindu Messiah, made him their scapegoat and elected a Hindu Messiahess (Judaism doesn't really allow for a female version of this word forgive me). Kamla became the Deliverer. She promised to deliver the country out from under Manning's rule (Let her people goooooooo). Warner, strategically positioned with the cue cards in the wings assured people that he would help Kamla to realise her true potential as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, thinking it would be another 2 1/2 years for her to prepare. Within 8 weeks Kamla's UNC would have to quilt together an Alliance between several interest groups.
On the night of January 24th I said to many, now let's see if the PNM will get rid of its albatross aka the PM, the Project Manager, Patos, Patrick Manning. Despite knowing that at least half of the country was baying for his blood, or at least his removal from office, Manning remained as leader. After announcing elections in April, Manning again fashioned himself as political deliverer. He raised many valid concerns on his hustings, and then shaped those concerns into fears and jumbies. So between the announcement of the election date and the election itself many of Manning's former supporters went from hating Manning to seeing Manning as their only form of deliverance from the thieving Alliance. Manning ensured that while he never used the word Indian on his platform "them" and "they" were used often enough to distinguish his support base from another support base and since his support base is largely (but not wholly) African-descended, the differencing was very much implied. They will take all the money, they will take away your programs. Where all yuh will find (CEPEP) work to do and (HYPE, MUST) programmes for all yuh children? Doh forget GATE, we give all yuh GATE, they will close the GATE to all yuh and open the GATE for them children alone.
Manning played on the economic insecurities of his support base. It is a well-known fact that economic power does not reside in the hands of the Afro-TrinBs. The businessmen in this country tend to be descendants of Syrian/Lebanese, Chinese, European and East Indian peoples. Afro-Trinbagonians have tended to get work in the public service and various government ministries. Their salaries come from the state. Manning knows fully well that the programes he named (with the exception of GATE) caters to a largely Afro-Trinbagonian audience. Afro-Trinbagonians have developed a welfare attitude under the PNM government (from Williams' time come down). They are always interested in what the government can give them, as opposed to how they can do for themselves, or how they can use what the government gives them to do better for themselves. There are whole generations of families within the Afro-Trinbagonian community who survive off CEPEP and MUST and HYPE programmes and don't think it necessary to get up and do better or more for themselves. Manning knows this only too well and spent four weeks playing on those old fears of "the Indian go take away all yuh money!" Which really is laughable, because the money made through CEPEP and other programmes is negligible and not worth stealing. But Afro-Trinbagonians don't make an effort to educate themselves (despite all the free education the PNM has given them). They don't make an effort either to utilise the patrimony given to them by the government to start businesses and become sustainable.
The hue and cry heard this week after the PNM lost power to the UNCOP Alliance was one I heard in 1995. Fear from the Africans, triumph from the Indians. The power the Indo-TrinBs are celebrating is not economic power, they had that long before they got into government. It is political and cultural hegemony - a sense now of being able to assert themselves in a society where they feel marginalised. And they have valid reasons for feeling this way. The moan of pain still coming from the PNM support base is simple to understand: (seeming) political and cultural dominance is all that Afro-TrinBs had going for them. Now, in this era of change, where their political scapegoat/messiah has failed them and been rightly crucified with no hope of resurrection, it remains to be seen if PNMites will take this opportunity and use it properly.
There needs to be a change in the party's structure. Maximum leaders make immovable tyrants, as Manning proved and not even the party stalwarts could get him to step down, so instead they had to organise an underground movement during the elections to vote against him. No party should be held to ransom by its leader in this way....then it is not a party, is a damned one man show! The PNM has to begin to educate its followers about things like economic power, cultural power, social power. This is a pipe dream. They will never do it, because they need their supporters to be as culturally ignorant as possible and as economically dependent in order to be a legitimate choice for them. The minute the majority of the PNM voter base has economic power and cultural knowledge, then all elections will truly be about issues and not race. The same way as soon as Indo-Trinbagonians feel that they are accepted and not ignored and marginalised they too will start looking at the issues as opposed to protecting their identity and (for some) ethnic purity.
The most positive thing that came out of this election for me, was not necessarily the Alliance's win, but the realisation across the board that a new era of politics has come to the country and people are going to have to catch up with it or be left behind. There is also a realisation that the people need to be more actively involved in their goevernance, because it is our passivity that gave us the Manning era.
The COP for all the middle class stigma attached to it has proven to be the one platform that addressed issues from the ground up. Neither the UNC or PNM platforms said much that was concrete and in the last 7 days of campaigning they both resorted to making wild and empty promises to the voting public. There were candid shots of Warner offerering money for votes. Kamla's claims of pension and laptops for all was done to pander to the hand-out mentality of the poorer sections of society and she got their votes, and will no doubt earn their scorn and derision when those promises cannot be fulfilled.
The PNM, possibly under Keith Rowley's leadership, will have to find ways to become a viable option, not to their voter base, but to swing voters and COP supporters who are likely to still be assessing the UNC's credibility even after voting for them.
The time of the lone messiah cum political scapegoat is fast drawing to a close. Partnering is where it is at. We can't let the government dictate to us, we have to dictate to them. And if we screw up, we become our own political scapegoats.
Patrick Manning probably wasn't aware of it, but he offered himself up as this both year's political messianic scapegoat. The last two and a half years (if not all 7) of his political reign was filled with discontent: smelters, property taxes, inefficient ministers, escalating crime, expensive summits, useless and expensive buildings, corrupt businessmen running amok with the country's money, shrinking oil and gas reserves, an overburdened treasury. The list really can go on. The people were angry. Upset. The land needed to be purged.
But even with this dire need for purging, 2 1/2 years ago when given the opportunity to remove Manning, the people hesitated because the society is complex, complicated in its attitudes and still very much in the embryonic stages when it comes to political education and self-empowerment. The old Bogies of race, ethnicity and, most importantly, economic patrimony reared their heads and whispered into the minds of many of the PNM doubtfuls.
Most PNM supporters and many people who are non-Indian in Trinidad and Tobago find it difficult to vote for the UNC party. It is a party associated with an Indo-Trinbagonian ethnic base as its support. Indians, whether true or not, are associated with white collar crime and corruption. The Indo-TrinB is seen as greedy and grasping, capable of great cunning and underhanded deeds and not to be trusted around money. When the UNC came into power between 1995-2000, their actions, from the public's perspective seemed to confirm these stereotypes. By 2001 the majority of the country's electorate ensured that the UNC could not be in power. In 2007 the spectre of that 5-year feeding frenzy still lingered and during that election they lost part of their voter-base to the COP.
The COP emerged in 2007 as an alternative party. Alternative to what, the people asked? To tribal politics, they responded. It seemed then that what they offered was class-based politics instead of ethnic-based politics. They were a party of ideas, they said, embracing all groups. What the PNM and UNC voter bases saw was a party of middle class people who fraid to get their hands dirty in anything real and meaningful. Despite the many marches and protests that they organised, they were not totally embraced. The UNC supporters who went over to them were scoffed at: they were the knife-and-fork-indians, the ones too uppity to sanay with their hands and eat on sohari leaf. The brown/mulatto middle class was their main voter base. Them kind of people aint know bout John John and Beetham and Sea Lots. If they have to pass there they wind up their windows and pretend it don't exist. So in the 2007 elections, despite purporting itself as the party to save Trinbago from race politics, the COP's message fell on hard ground mostly, it only took root in the hearts of a few.
They didn't win a seat, but they certainly unseated Panday who lost his cool at Rienzi complext 2 1/2 years ago and blasted his support base. It was the beginning of yet another end to Panday. The party was properly well fed up of him. Jack Warner was already in the party and an elected MP. Jack had made a promise. He was going to rid the party of all of the filth. He had a very public To-Do list. Between 2007 and 2010 Warner waged an internal war within the upper ranks of the UNC that got rid of the old guard that many felt was stifling growth in the party. Ironically enough Warner's corrupt dealings as a FIFA official were largely ignored by his supporters and Warner himself seemed to become a sort of deliverer. The Simon Bolivar of the UNC as it were. Canny as ever, Warner knew that it would be hard for the core UNC support-base to see an African face as its leader, so he openly supported Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Warner ran for party chairman and Bissessar for political leader. The campaign was strategic, fashioned only slightly after Obama's campaign. No smearing, no bad talking on her part, while Panday ranted and raved like a lunatic, calling names and casting aspersions. On January 24th 2010, the UNC support base vomited all over their former Hindu Messiah, made him their scapegoat and elected a Hindu Messiahess (Judaism doesn't really allow for a female version of this word forgive me). Kamla became the Deliverer. She promised to deliver the country out from under Manning's rule (Let her people goooooooo). Warner, strategically positioned with the cue cards in the wings assured people that he would help Kamla to realise her true potential as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, thinking it would be another 2 1/2 years for her to prepare. Within 8 weeks Kamla's UNC would have to quilt together an Alliance between several interest groups.
On the night of January 24th I said to many, now let's see if the PNM will get rid of its albatross aka the PM, the Project Manager, Patos, Patrick Manning. Despite knowing that at least half of the country was baying for his blood, or at least his removal from office, Manning remained as leader. After announcing elections in April, Manning again fashioned himself as political deliverer. He raised many valid concerns on his hustings, and then shaped those concerns into fears and jumbies. So between the announcement of the election date and the election itself many of Manning's former supporters went from hating Manning to seeing Manning as their only form of deliverance from the thieving Alliance. Manning ensured that while he never used the word Indian on his platform "them" and "they" were used often enough to distinguish his support base from another support base and since his support base is largely (but not wholly) African-descended, the differencing was very much implied. They will take all the money, they will take away your programs. Where all yuh will find (CEPEP) work to do and (HYPE, MUST) programmes for all yuh children? Doh forget GATE, we give all yuh GATE, they will close the GATE to all yuh and open the GATE for them children alone.
Manning played on the economic insecurities of his support base. It is a well-known fact that economic power does not reside in the hands of the Afro-TrinBs. The businessmen in this country tend to be descendants of Syrian/Lebanese, Chinese, European and East Indian peoples. Afro-Trinbagonians have tended to get work in the public service and various government ministries. Their salaries come from the state. Manning knows fully well that the programes he named (with the exception of GATE) caters to a largely Afro-Trinbagonian audience. Afro-Trinbagonians have developed a welfare attitude under the PNM government (from Williams' time come down). They are always interested in what the government can give them, as opposed to how they can do for themselves, or how they can use what the government gives them to do better for themselves. There are whole generations of families within the Afro-Trinbagonian community who survive off CEPEP and MUST and HYPE programmes and don't think it necessary to get up and do better or more for themselves. Manning knows this only too well and spent four weeks playing on those old fears of "the Indian go take away all yuh money!" Which really is laughable, because the money made through CEPEP and other programmes is negligible and not worth stealing. But Afro-Trinbagonians don't make an effort to educate themselves (despite all the free education the PNM has given them). They don't make an effort either to utilise the patrimony given to them by the government to start businesses and become sustainable.
The hue and cry heard this week after the PNM lost power to the UNCOP Alliance was one I heard in 1995. Fear from the Africans, triumph from the Indians. The power the Indo-TrinBs are celebrating is not economic power, they had that long before they got into government. It is political and cultural hegemony - a sense now of being able to assert themselves in a society where they feel marginalised. And they have valid reasons for feeling this way. The moan of pain still coming from the PNM support base is simple to understand: (seeming) political and cultural dominance is all that Afro-TrinBs had going for them. Now, in this era of change, where their political scapegoat/messiah has failed them and been rightly crucified with no hope of resurrection, it remains to be seen if PNMites will take this opportunity and use it properly.
There needs to be a change in the party's structure. Maximum leaders make immovable tyrants, as Manning proved and not even the party stalwarts could get him to step down, so instead they had to organise an underground movement during the elections to vote against him. No party should be held to ransom by its leader in this way....then it is not a party, is a damned one man show! The PNM has to begin to educate its followers about things like economic power, cultural power, social power. This is a pipe dream. They will never do it, because they need their supporters to be as culturally ignorant as possible and as economically dependent in order to be a legitimate choice for them. The minute the majority of the PNM voter base has economic power and cultural knowledge, then all elections will truly be about issues and not race. The same way as soon as Indo-Trinbagonians feel that they are accepted and not ignored and marginalised they too will start looking at the issues as opposed to protecting their identity and (for some) ethnic purity.
The most positive thing that came out of this election for me, was not necessarily the Alliance's win, but the realisation across the board that a new era of politics has come to the country and people are going to have to catch up with it or be left behind. There is also a realisation that the people need to be more actively involved in their goevernance, because it is our passivity that gave us the Manning era.
The COP for all the middle class stigma attached to it has proven to be the one platform that addressed issues from the ground up. Neither the UNC or PNM platforms said much that was concrete and in the last 7 days of campaigning they both resorted to making wild and empty promises to the voting public. There were candid shots of Warner offerering money for votes. Kamla's claims of pension and laptops for all was done to pander to the hand-out mentality of the poorer sections of society and she got their votes, and will no doubt earn their scorn and derision when those promises cannot be fulfilled.
The PNM, possibly under Keith Rowley's leadership, will have to find ways to become a viable option, not to their voter base, but to swing voters and COP supporters who are likely to still be assessing the UNC's credibility even after voting for them.
The time of the lone messiah cum political scapegoat is fast drawing to a close. Partnering is where it is at. We can't let the government dictate to us, we have to dictate to them. And if we screw up, we become our own political scapegoats.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Whips and Ships
There was a panel discussion the other day entitled "Archaeologies of Black Memory". It featured Dr Paula Morgan, Dr Pat Saunders and writer NourbeSe Philip.
What the panel quickly established was that its real purpose was to examine and interrogate NourbeSe Philip's latest collection of poems entitled Zong. The book's inspiration comes from a one-page legal document that gives details of the massacre of the cargo of the Zong, a slave ship. the story is an extremely tragic one and its details inspire outrage and anger whenever it is recounted.
To synopsise, the Zong massacre took place in 1781 on the Zong, a British slave ship co-owned by James Gregson and other colleagues in a Liverpool slave trading company. The ship was enroute to Jamaica, the captain had lost much of his human cargo as well as several crew members. Facing a possible loss in profit if he delivered ailing slaves he dumped the cargo over board and returned to England. The owners then attempted to seek compensation from the insurers on the cargo. The issue at the time of the act was not its inhumanity, because there was nothing illegal about dumping slaves, the claims being made by the owners of the ship.
NourbeSe's collection of poems attempts to articulate the perspective of the human cargo on board the ship and to articulate their story, as well as to mourn their loss. Morgan's contribution to the evening was an artfully inarticulate discussion on trauma, loss, a sublime painting of the Zong Massacre that inspired a poem written by David Dabydeen, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and some more loss and trauma, just in case we missed it in her first few slides.
Perhaps the most rewarding piece of discussion at this entire event came from Saunders, who discussed her understanding of NourbeSe's work against a Derridian framework and began introducing the idea of a hauntology (playing on the word ontology).
There were a number of issues distressing about this panel discussion. Firstly, there was no member on the panel to give an African interpretation of the issues; and, since it was apparent that they were dealing with issues pertinent to the African diaspora, having that sort of input would only have been helpful. The title of the dicussion and its subsequent content seemed to be at variances with each other from time to time. With so much focus on mourning past loss and trauma, it was easy to wonder why on earth the term Archaeology was part of the panel's title at all. One of the questions that flew into my mind as well was, why in this day and age are academics still referring to Africans, and African-descended people as Black? A term that was clearly ascribed to Africans by Europeans.
As the evening progressed it became obvious that no new thoughts or ideas were being offered up by any of the panel members. In 2010, according to this distinguished panel the issues facing Afro-Caribbean people are still the fact that we came to the Caribbean on ships and were beaten by whips, have had a traumatic past and must mourn and wallow in it.
There is no mention of the other aspects of African experience in the Caribbean and the fact that there was a lot of resistance here that didn't involve open rebellion. Resistance that took its shape in various cultural forms such as cuisine, dress, dance, music, theatre, masquerade, religion, language and other social mores and practices. There is no mention that this retention of material culture was one form of mourning loss and healing and moving on.
But what sense is there in moving on from this loss, when it still allows for a sympthetic audience and a panel willing to wave the banner of "Oh Woe is Us!" See how we have suffered? Embrace that suffering! Cloak your self in it!
A basic psychology text will tell you that eventually you have to come to terms with your grief, and while you don't forget the tragedy, you have to move on from the incident a wiser person. Any practitioner of traditional African religions will tell you that they have ways of mourning that are distinctly different from Judaeo-Christian ways. Practices that don't necessarily need a grave and a tombstone (one of the losses that NourbeSe was lamenting during the session). Rather there are rituals to send the soul of the ancestor onto the next world. The ancestor's names lives on in orikis and stories. NorubeSe named her victims. She chose random African names to give to people who would have had names and would have died knowing their names, even if she didn't. And it beomes important to ask ourselves who is all of this mourning for? And if we have survived and are the progeny of those that have passed on, is weeping, wailing and gnashing our teeth on distinguished panels the only way we can remember the past? Aren' there other far more productive ways to discuss our African heritage and our African culture without whittling it down to whips and ships?
What the panel quickly established was that its real purpose was to examine and interrogate NourbeSe Philip's latest collection of poems entitled Zong. The book's inspiration comes from a one-page legal document that gives details of the massacre of the cargo of the Zong, a slave ship. the story is an extremely tragic one and its details inspire outrage and anger whenever it is recounted.
To synopsise, the Zong massacre took place in 1781 on the Zong, a British slave ship co-owned by James Gregson and other colleagues in a Liverpool slave trading company. The ship was enroute to Jamaica, the captain had lost much of his human cargo as well as several crew members. Facing a possible loss in profit if he delivered ailing slaves he dumped the cargo over board and returned to England. The owners then attempted to seek compensation from the insurers on the cargo. The issue at the time of the act was not its inhumanity, because there was nothing illegal about dumping slaves, the claims being made by the owners of the ship.
NourbeSe's collection of poems attempts to articulate the perspective of the human cargo on board the ship and to articulate their story, as well as to mourn their loss. Morgan's contribution to the evening was an artfully inarticulate discussion on trauma, loss, a sublime painting of the Zong Massacre that inspired a poem written by David Dabydeen, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and some more loss and trauma, just in case we missed it in her first few slides.
Perhaps the most rewarding piece of discussion at this entire event came from Saunders, who discussed her understanding of NourbeSe's work against a Derridian framework and began introducing the idea of a hauntology (playing on the word ontology).
There were a number of issues distressing about this panel discussion. Firstly, there was no member on the panel to give an African interpretation of the issues; and, since it was apparent that they were dealing with issues pertinent to the African diaspora, having that sort of input would only have been helpful. The title of the dicussion and its subsequent content seemed to be at variances with each other from time to time. With so much focus on mourning past loss and trauma, it was easy to wonder why on earth the term Archaeology was part of the panel's title at all. One of the questions that flew into my mind as well was, why in this day and age are academics still referring to Africans, and African-descended people as Black? A term that was clearly ascribed to Africans by Europeans.
As the evening progressed it became obvious that no new thoughts or ideas were being offered up by any of the panel members. In 2010, according to this distinguished panel the issues facing Afro-Caribbean people are still the fact that we came to the Caribbean on ships and were beaten by whips, have had a traumatic past and must mourn and wallow in it.
There is no mention of the other aspects of African experience in the Caribbean and the fact that there was a lot of resistance here that didn't involve open rebellion. Resistance that took its shape in various cultural forms such as cuisine, dress, dance, music, theatre, masquerade, religion, language and other social mores and practices. There is no mention that this retention of material culture was one form of mourning loss and healing and moving on.
But what sense is there in moving on from this loss, when it still allows for a sympthetic audience and a panel willing to wave the banner of "Oh Woe is Us!" See how we have suffered? Embrace that suffering! Cloak your self in it!
A basic psychology text will tell you that eventually you have to come to terms with your grief, and while you don't forget the tragedy, you have to move on from the incident a wiser person. Any practitioner of traditional African religions will tell you that they have ways of mourning that are distinctly different from Judaeo-Christian ways. Practices that don't necessarily need a grave and a tombstone (one of the losses that NourbeSe was lamenting during the session). Rather there are rituals to send the soul of the ancestor onto the next world. The ancestor's names lives on in orikis and stories. NorubeSe named her victims. She chose random African names to give to people who would have had names and would have died knowing their names, even if she didn't. And it beomes important to ask ourselves who is all of this mourning for? And if we have survived and are the progeny of those that have passed on, is weeping, wailing and gnashing our teeth on distinguished panels the only way we can remember the past? Aren' there other far more productive ways to discuss our African heritage and our African culture without whittling it down to whips and ships?
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