Post-colonial talk

by Oscar Allen 13.JUL.07

Post-colonial talk is the beginning of a new language, using it to name over ourselves and our world. One of our poets, Nicolas Guillen used this language well. He wrote, “I was John without nothing yesterday, but today, I am John who is over everything.” In the same view, Martin Carter exults “I come from the nehga yard of yesterday. Leaping, I come…”{{more}} That is what post-colonial talk is about – opening a new conversation with our futures, leaping over yesterday’s obstacles, not just as individual persons, but as communities and forces and dreams and carnivals.

Sometimes post-colonial talk begins with questions that threaten the ugly face of our limitation, our bondage. These questions launch out: Who says so? Why not? What if we move? This kind of insurgent talk does not end in words; it may begin with words, but it follows through in consultation and reaching out and in hand in disciplined hand, and in world shaping. And all of us can talk this kind of post-colonial talk. All of us whose yesterday was the nehga yard can have faith and together move a mountain.

I believe that when Prime Minister Gonsalves speaks about building a post-colonial economy and society that is modern and competitive and has “first world” standard, he is asking us “Why not?” We have the right to reach out and ask him back; “What kind of 1st world?” and “What about my share of the dream? Can I put that in the pot too?”

Nothin t’all John, nehga yard Martin and me and you are the real builders of the post-colonial economy, society and culture. So let us talk the talk, raise the questions and take back the carnival costumes, fast forwarding them into Caribbean futures. When I ask Blondie Bird: what is the future of banana, arrowroot and agriculture? And I put to Dragons to leap into the future of our beaches? What will DJ Taurus answer when I ask him to gimme the lyrics for a liberated and redeemed “Right in the Slum?” Lennox Becks, Can Transatlantic Reparations make Ruth tell John win Band of the Year, every year? And what about you SVGTV, what future do you have for our minds?

Post-colonial talk ain’t really start to talk yet; it waiting for more voices, more leaping hurts, more insurgent questions, more defections from party politics, more breaking down of church walls so faith people can dance and sing and share light and chase demonic evil in the streets, like Jesus.

Yes, colonialism, kalinago massacre, slavery and globalism crush us, then pick us out one by one, two by two, three by three and call us by name ‘nice boy’, lovely girl, sexy lady. That is who they show us that we are, digging out our eyes. Is that who we are; eh?

Post-colonial talk has an old, but ever new, task: to pluck up and to pull down to destroy and to overthrow to build and to plant (Jeremiah 1:10)

This time, this 21st century is the beginning of a new Present Time, post-colonial time, a time of being plucking, coming, leaping, building.