Dr Win­ford James

I have had the good for­tune to be men­tored by in­tel­lec­tu­als of the first or­der, some of whom have not been aware that I saw/see them as men­tors. An in­ex­haus­tive list–pace those who have been left out–would be, in no or­der of mer­it, Lawrence Car­ring­ton, Car­ol Keller, Lloyd Best, CLR James, Er­ic Williams, Den­nis Craig, Noam Chom­sky, and Gor­don Rohlehr. If they didn’t teach me in the class­room, they did in their writ­ings.

From the list, on­ly two–Car­ring­ton and Chom­sky–are still breath­ing and, while I am not aware that the for­mer is still writ­ing (he’s re­tired some time now), the lat­ter, now over 90, is still high­ly pro­duc­tive, writ­ing books on the pol­i­tics of most­ly the ‘first world’, if not on lin­guis­tics.

The thing that unites them is a spe­cial big­ness of brain, whether phys­i­cal­ly or cog­ni­tive­ly. They could/can talk in philo­soph­i­cal terms about any top­ic–well, al­most any–and their knowl­edge was/is en­cy­clo­pe­dic, their grasp of the in­tri­ca­cies stun­ning, and their analy­sis supreme. They al­so dis­play(ed) an in­de­pen­dence of mind and an un­ruf­fled de­meanour that made their com­pa­ny eas­i­ly at­trac­tive. And when they leave for the nether world, as we all must, it feels so in­ex­press­ibly sad that you won­der about eter­ni­ty and whether there’s a point to ac­tive­ly in­hab­it­ing it for a smat­ter­ing of years.

I feel this sad­ness on Gor­don Rohlehr’s pass­ing. He was just 80, and a longer re­tire­ment seemed sug­gest­ed.

I first met him on the top floor of what was then the Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Gen­er­al Stud­ies. He was in his ear­ly 30s and I in my ear­ly 20s. He was teach­ing Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, and I was study­ing Lin­guis­tics, Span­ish (Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture), and French (Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture), so he didn’t for­mal­ly teach me. We would stop every so of­ten on the cor­ri­dor for in­tel­lec­tu­al chats that of­ten on­ly end­ed when the time for class­es came. Pick any top­ic, say Aimé Cé­saire’s Cahi­er d’un re­tour au pays na­tal, or Léon Damas’ Pig­ments, or Ale­jo Car­pen­tier’s El reino de este mun­do, and he would reel off da­ta and per­spec­tives–just like that. Pick ca­lyp­so, and he was in his el­e­ment. Pick Williams’ From Colum­bus to Cas­tro (FCC), and he couldn’t fin­ish talk­ing. And he brought such re­mark­able in­sights to bear on his per­spec­tives!

With his per­mis­sion, I au­dit­ed some of his class­es; I just felt com­pelled to do so.

I was a fan of Williams’ his­to­ry books, His­to­ry of the Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go (HPTT) and FCC. I liked Williams’ beau­ty and clar­i­ty of lan­guage, apart from his metic­u­lous gath­er­ing and analy­sis of his da­ta. To a boy at the be­gin­ning of his third decade, here was a man whose vo­cab­u­lary was lim­it­less and whose com­mand of his­tor­i­cal de­tail was peer­less. And he was prime min­is­ter to boot. And then Rohlehr comes along and shreds his work. A lit­er­a­ture schol­ar smash­ing to pieces (for­give the hy­per­bole!) the work of a his­to­ry schol­ar! I was im­pressed.

Rohlehr’s damn­ing es­say was pub­lished in Tapia Nos 11 and 12 on No­vem­ber 29, 1970, but go find it in his book My stran­gled city and oth­er es­says. It is ti­tled His­to­ry as Ab­sur­di­ty. Now Williams was both a politi­cian and a his­to­ri­an, but he let his pol­i­tics un­du­ly in­flu­ence his his­to­ry. Cit­ing pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ri­ans (like K O Lau­rence and El­sa Gov­eia) and ad­duc­ing his own cri­tiques of FCC (and to a less­er ex­tent, HPTT), Rohlehr shows that Williams (con­ve­nient­ly) omit­ted his­tor­i­cal facts that would have mod­er­at­ed his the­sis and, al­so, he el­e­vat­ed the im­por­tance of da­ta and sta­tis­tics to the point of ab­sur­di­ty (hence the ti­tle of his es­say).

Rohlehr com­plains that Williams ig­nores the view that his­to­ry should be about self-knowl­edge.

Here are four telling ex­cerpts from the es­say:

‘He…con­ceives of his­to­ry-writ­ing as the gath­er­ing to­geth­er of a stock­pile of facts to be hurled like bricks against dead and liv­ing im­pe­ri­al­ists.’

‘In FCC, as in HPTT, one has the sense of a care­ful com­pi­la­tion and or­gan­i­sa­tion of fact to suit the ex­i­gen­cies of a cen­tral pur­pose.’

‘This ac­cu­mu­la­tion of de­tail which at times threat­ens to break down in­to ab­sur­di­ty is, no doubt, meant to con­vey the im­pres­sion of the enor­mi­ty of the [slave] trade… .’

‘In the case of Dr Williams, there is at times an al­most de­lib­er­ate ab­di­ca­tion of the right to self; an al­most per­verse re­duc­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence to a rub­bish-heap of sta­tis­tics about sug­ar.’

Rohlehr’s cri­tique had the ef­fect of mak­ing me far more crit­i­cal in my lit­er­ary analy­ses than thereto­fore.

Rohlehr has been quite pro­duc­tive as an aca­d­e­m­ic. He has writ­ten the fol­low­ing books of es­says (ex­cept for the first): Ca­lyp­so and so­ci­ety in pre-in­de­pen­dence Trinidad; My stran­gled city and oth­er es­says; The shape of that hurt; A scuf­fling of is­lands; Trans­gres­sion, tran­si­tion, trans­for­ma­tion.

Mi bre­dren Vanus thinks that ca­lyp­so and so­ci­ety…is his best work. He says that Rohlehr suc­ceed­ed in that work in rep­re­sent­ing in clear lan­guage how the evo­lu­tion of ca­lyp­so as mu­sic, po­et­ry, protest, and pol­i­tics con­sti­tut­ed the fun­da­men­tal con­tri­bu­tion of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans to the de­vel­op­ment of the core el­e­ments of an evolv­ing Caribbean so­ci­ety. He be­lieves that ‘the ge­nius of Rohlehr was that he recog­nised in the evo­lu­tion­ary path of ca­lyp­so the three fun­da­men­tal pil­lars of suc­cess­ful so­cial evo­lu­tion well be­fore most oth­ers: in­sti­tu­tion­al progress, eco­nom­ic re­struc­tur­ing, and growth of the ca­pac­i­ty to in­no­vate.’

On this sad oc­ca­sion of his pass­ing, I salute this ti­tan­ic Caribbean schol­ar.