Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

From last week: Tri­ni mul­ti-cul­ti is/was pro­posed as a so­lu­tion to a cul­tur­al prob­lem it was po­lit­i­cal­ly pre­car­i­ous to name: metas­ta­sised black na­tion­al­ism, aka Afro­cen­trism. As its pro­po­nents demon­strate (cf vi­o­lent com­ments from Ms Pearl Ein­tou Springer to Sug­ar Aloes' singing She's so Roy­al to the PM; the hos­til­i­ty in the Di­manche Gras ca­lyp­soes; the Can­boulay ri­ots pro­mot­ed as "na­tion­al cul­ture"; the PNM par­lia­men­tary speak­ers' com­ments dur­ing the SOE de­bate) Afro­cen­trism as na­tion­al cul­ture is re­sis­tant to the "mul­ti" in "mul­ti-cul­ti."

Ob­vi­ous­ly the PP hoped the no­tion of mult-cul­ti would cre­ate en­claves in Trinidad where the an­i­mus could be con­tained. This is a fool­ish hope. Be­cause in T&T cul­ture, po­lit­i­cal pow­er, and eth­nic en­ti­tle­ment are fused to con­sti­tute a po­lit­i­cal dis­pen­sa­tion. The fu­sion (es­pe­cial­ly the en­ti­tle­ment bit) is the main rea­son anger seems to un­der­lie much of Car­ni­val/na­tion­al cul­ture and which erupts in­to vi­o­lence so read­i­ly, which au­thor­i­ties al­ways has­ten to down­play and ex­plain away.

This propen­si­ty to anger as a part of the mul­ti-cul­ti ex­pe­ri­ence was not­ed by Bis­soon­dath in de­scrib­ing re­spons­es to his work. Some Tri­ni and West In­di­an writ­ers based in the US, Cana­da and the UK ap­par­ent­ly thrive on the op­por­tu­ni­ty to flail at es­tab­lish­ments. Bis­soon­dath men­tions two writ­ers, Nourbese Philip and Dionne Brand, who have dubbed him a trai­tor and what­not. Met­ro­pol­i­tan so­ci­eties are un­af­fect­ed by this species of an­i­mus (or eth­nic mi­nori­tar­i­an type)–cathar­sis and all that.

The prob­lem is, it's brought back in suit­cas­es and va­ca­tion pack­ages, and spread among the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion here, where it's not so much cathar­tic as de­struc­tive.

Two is­sues arise: first, that cor­ro­sive anger is fine where it can do no harm. It's a very dif­fer­ent is­sue in so­ci­eties where space is tight, law and or­der non-func­tion­ing, and rage can be read­i­ly ma­te­ri­alised. The oth­er is­sue is that the au­to­mat­ic eth­nic sol­i­dar­i­ty Tri­ni na­tion­al cul­ture de­mands (and the sense of be­tray­al when de­mands are not met), which as­sumes uni­ver­sal ori­gins in transat­lantic slav­ery and its af­ter­math, are large­ly in­ap­plic­a­ble to the In­do­Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence.

This (In­do­Caribbean/Tri­ni per­spec­tive) could gen­er­ate a new and in­ter­est­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of West In­di­an­ness, but Cre­ole so­ci­ety (re­gion­al­ly) ap­par­ent­ly has no pa­tience with the re­spect for al­ter­i­ty in oth­ers that it de­mand­ed of the colonis­er. And there is far less pa­tience with a cri­tique of Afro/Cre­ole West In­di­an cul­ture com­ing from some­one not eth­ni­cal­ly au­tho­rised.

Var­i­ous com­men­ta­tors, from JJ Thomas to Er­ic Williams and UWI so­ci­ol­o­gist Lloyd Brath­waite, have analysed the West In­di­an cul­tur­al con­di­tion post-slav­ery and in­de­pen­dence, mak­ing sim­i­lar, dis­parag­ing ob­ser­va­tions. How­ev­er, like Bisoon­dath, much an­i­mus has been turned to VS Naipaul for his dis­sec­tions in his nov­els The Mim­ic Men, Guer­ril­las, and es­says in The Mid­dle Pas­sage, The Re­turn of Eva Per­on and The Over­crowd­ed Bar­ra­coon. (In the col­lec­tion of es­says Cre­at­ed in the West In­dies, Eve­lyn O'Callaghan and Ed­ward Baugh both ob­serve this.)

Derek Wal­cott has tak­en to slash­ing at Naipaul, but Wal­cott's cri­tiques of Afro­cen­trism in his es­say What the Twi­light Says, and in An­oth­er Life, are much more vit­ri­olic. He was acer­bic, wit­ness­ing first hand the ad­vent of Afro­cen­tric cul­tur­al pol­i­tics in Trinidad post-1970 vis-a-vis the PNM's at­tempt to counter Black Pow­er with the "folk." Much of what he saw emerg­ing is now a part of our lives.

In an in­ter­view in the Guardian in 1971, Wal­cott said: "The new ro­mance (of Afro­cen­trism and the folk) be­ing prop­a­gat­ed, am­bigu­ous­ly enough both by the State and the rad­i­cal move­ment is a typ­i­cal fear of re­al­i­ty–a re­fusal to be­lieve the ab­sur­di­ty or the truth of the West In­di­an iden­ti­ty can­not be anatomised in pure­ly racial terms." He al­so said: "If the State us­es its pow­er to en­force its con­cept of cul­ture it be­comes fas­cist." (I strong­ly rec­om­mend any­one in­ter­est­ed in Tri­ni cul­ture find and read this in­ter­view.)

What strikes me is how pre­scient Wal­cott was in his recog­ni­tion of the State's pos­ture. Once it stopped fight­ing the rad­i­cal Afro­cen­trism and coopt­ed the move­ment, the PNM fused all forms of black cul­ture in­to Car­ni­val­ism. Folk cul­ture, eth­nic his­to­ry, ide­ol­o­gy are com­bined, and, as demon­strat­ed in the quotes last week from Claire Broad­bridge and An­nette Dop­well, the in­ter­locu­tors are quite ra­bid in its en­force­ment. This was be­cause of the ever-present po­lit­i­cal threat from the in­vis­i­ble half of the pop­u­la­tion.

The best state­ment of this ideo-cul­tur­al po­si­tion was of­fered by Ja­maican aca­d­e­m­ic Prof Car­olyn Coop­er in a NY Times op-ed, ti­tled "Who is Ja­maica?" in 2012. She pro­posed that Ja­maicans "re­ject the ho­mogenis­ing myth of mul­ti­cul­tur­al as­sim­i­la­tion," since "the roots of our dis­tinc­tive mu­sic, re­li­gion, pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, lit­er­a­ture and lan­guage are African." Prof Coop­er is speak­ing os­ten­si­bly about Ja­maica, but this is UWI or­tho­doxy, and is ma­te­ri­alised in Trinidad. And when this cul­tur­al es­tab­lish­ment is pushed to de­fend or jus­ti­fy it­self, its im­pa­tience with any "oth­er" is clear.

Thus (to re­peat) the present Tri­ni mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism as­pi­ra­tions were clear­ly pro­posed as a so­lu­tion to that la­tent, but al­ways present, threat. From the 1970s, In­doTri­nis were aware of what was go­ing on in Guyana and Ugan­da. Many left. Those who stayed saw those threats be­come re­al in Trinidad be­tween 1997 and 2007. I am as­ton­ished that so many peo­ple choose to for­get this. That, for ex­am­ple an In­di­an vil­lage in Ch­agua­nas (Fe­lic­i­ty) was at­tacked by an "African vil­lage" on pure­ly racial grounds; or that the sit­ting At­tor­ney Gen­er­al pub­lished the sto­ries of kid­nap vic­tims in this news­pa­per, which promi­nent­ly in­clud­ed race as an el­e­ment in the trans­ac­tions.

The con­se­quences of this sup­pressed anx­i­ety on in­di­vid­u­als and groups are gen­er­a­tional, and de­struc­tive in ways not im­me­di­ate­ly ap­par­ent. The na­ture of this anx­i­ety is em­bed­ded in three of Bis­soon­dath's works of fic­tion, Dig­ging up the Moun­tains, A Ca­su­al Bru­tal­i­ty, and The Worlds With­in Her. (To be con­tin­ued)