Si­mon Lee

Tucked among the Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val's many ac­tiv­i­ties was a short pan­el dis­cus­sion on CLR James' clas­sic Be­yond a Bound­ary, which cel­e­brates its 50th an­niver­sary of pub­li­ca­tion this year. This text which "pos­es the ques­tion what do they know of crick­et who on­ly crick­et know?" has been on my re­volv­ing read­ing list for the past 20 years. I bought my first copy dur­ing the Windies' tri­umphant 1984 Eng­lish tour and it has been a faith­ful friend ever since.

So it's with both grat­i­tude and re­spect for the au­thor (who I once had the priv­i­lege of con­duct­ing an af­ter­noon-long in­ter­view with in his Brix­ton bed­room), that I ded­i­cate this col­umn to cel­e­brat­ing Be­yond a Bound­ary. Be­sides the read­ing and ru­mi­nat­ing plea­sure it has af­ford­ed me, it has, along with the Black Ja­cobins and James' yard lit­er­a­ture (the short sto­ry Tri­umph and nov­el Minty Al­ley) fig­ured promi­nent­ly in my own in­tel­lec­tu­al de­vel­op­ment and hope­ful­ly that of all my past and present Costaatt stu­dents.

James un­doubt­ed­ly opened the gates of Caribbean his­to­ri­og­ra­phy for me with his bril­liant re-eval­u­a­tion of the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, which as he re­it­er­ates in Bound­ary "is the most out­stand­ing event in the his­to­ry of the West In­dies."

If as Ja­maican crit­ic Sylvia Wyn­ter ob­serves James' "de­con­struc­tive ef­forts ...ex­plode the es­thet­ic and metaphor­ic foun­da­tions which sus­tained West­ern im­pe­ri­al­ism" then his counter dis­course to the West's dom­i­nant nar­ra­tive is de­vel­oped in Bound­ary, where the pref­ace cryp­ti­cal­ly con­cludes: "To es­tab­lish his own iden­ti­ty, Cal­iban, af­ter three cen­turies must him­self pi­o­neer in­to re­gions Cae­sar nev­er knew."

Both the struc­ture and mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach of Bound­ary ("nei­ther crick­et rem­i­nis­cences nor au­to­bi­og­ra­phy") are man­i­fes­ta­tions of James' Cre­ole (in the sense of Caribbean) mode of analy­sis. As Wyn­ter notes, his "pluri-con­cep­tu­al frame­work" in its non-dog­mat­ic in­te­gra­tion of "the dy­nam­ics of mul­ti­ple modes of dom­i­na­tion aris­ing from gen­der, colour, race, class and ed­u­ca­tion...chal­lenges not on­ly the ba­sic cat­e­gories of colo­nial lib­er­al­ism, but al­so the labour-cen­tric cat­e­gories of or­tho­dox Marx­ism."

James stub­born­ly re­fused and, posthu­mous­ly through his writ­ing, con­tin­ues to refuse to be cat­e­gorised, ei­ther as a mil­i­tant an­ti-colo­nial­ist, Pan African­ist, Trot­skyite or pow­er bro­ker. Af­ter all, he was pi­o­neer­ing "in­to re­gions Cae­sar nev­er knew" and he like Wal­cott at a lat­er date, was acute­ly aware of the con­tra­dic­tions he em­bod­ied: a self-con­fessed "British in­tel­lec­tu­al be­fore I was ten, al­ready an alien in my own en­vi­ron­ment."

In one sense Bound­ary charts both James' and the col­lec­tive ef­fort to em­brace the com­plex­i­ties of Cre­ole iden­ti­ty: "my life up to ten had laid the pow­der for war...be­tween Eng­lish Pu­ri­tanism, Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture and crick­et and the re­al­ism of West In­di­an life."

It was through the dis­course of crick­et, or rather his Cre­ole de­con­struc­tion of crick­et, that James re­alised the lim­i­ta­tions and de­bil­i­tat­ing con­tra­dic­tions im­posed by im­pe­r­i­al codes: "In those years (pre 1930s) so­cial and po­lit­i­cal pas­sions, de­nied their nor­mal out­lets, ex­pressed them­selves so fierce­ly in crick­et...The British tra­di­tion soaked in­to me was that when you en­tered the sports are­na you left be­hind the sor­did com­pro­mis­es of every­day ex­is­tence.

Yet to do that we would have had to di­vest our­selves of our skins." (my ital­ics)For James the crick­et pitch, like the yard of his ear­li­er work, is a lo­cus of Cre­ole iden­ti­ty, as much a part of Caribbean moder­ni­ty as the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion." Thus the crick­et field was a stage on which in­di­vid­u­als played rep­re­sen­ta­tive roles which were charged with sig­nif­i­cance...I pro­pose to place on record some of those char­ac­ters...Their's is the his­to­ry of colo­nial­ism–a his­to­ry so far un­record­ed."

James con­nects the same pride and sense of agency that the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion im­bued the ex-slaves with to his crick­et counter dis­course and the forg­ing of Cre­ole space and iden­ti­ty. He writes about leg­endary Trinida­di­an bats­man St Hill in sim­i­lar terms as he did of Tou­s­saint l'Ou­ver­ture: "I know that to tens of thou­sands of coloured Trinida­di­ans the un­ques­tioned glo­ry of St Hill's bat­ting con­veyed the sen­sa­tion that here was one of us, per­form­ing in ex­cel­sis in a sphere where com­pe­ti­tion was open.

It was a demon­stra­tion that atoned for per­vad­ing hu­mil­i­a­tion and nour­ished pride and hope." If this sounds rem­i­nis­cent of Fanon, why, in­deed not.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly much of what James wrote both in Bound­ary and else­where has been drowned in the Ba­bel and bab­ble fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Fed­er­a­tion and the delu­sions of in­de­pen­dence.

What James de­con­struct­ed for us all is just as time­ly now as in 1963: "It was on­ly long years af­ter I un­der­stood the lim­i­ta­tion on spir­it, vi­sion and self-re­spect which was im­posed on us by the fact that our mas­ters, our cur­ricu­lum... every­thing be­gan from the ba­sis that Britain was the source of all light and learn­ing and our busi­ness was to ad­mire, won­der, im­i­tate, learn." Have we re­al­ly over­come the lim­i­ta­tions on spir­it, vi­sion and self-re­spect, or sim­ply giv­en up?

To be con­tin­ued...