Acknowledging contradiction and subverting the narrative of the super-structure

Editor: In the wake (pun intended) of the Royal Visit, I crave your indulgence in having published excerpts of an address I made at the 2018 UWI Open Campus Recognition of Graduates ceremony.

I have never donned academic wear, I regard it as a vestige of colonialism in which I prefer not to be clothed. Just like the legal/judicial and parliamentary collars and robes which are donned on official and ceremonial occasions, I find this wear impractical and uncomfortable in our climate. Similarly the interpretation of the requirements of “sober cut and sober colours” that is written into our civil service regulations, also falls into this category of what I regard as oppressive, unnecessary garb. The colours of our environment are not the greys and blacks of the European, specifically English, landscape (which are incidentally considered ‘distinguished ‘). Our environmental tapestry is bright and vibrant, but our civil service regulations forbid the donning of these colours in official contexts where they have been referred to as “ the garish colours of the poor”.

However, you are reading this and you are asking yourselves, “but aren’t you being contradictory? You reject the colonial heritage of the academic robes and some of the civil service dictates, yet you embrace a Eurocentric academic philosophy? You travel to Europe to acquire ‘their’ education, most fundamentally you speak their language, and language transports culture.” And I say yes, the language we speak tells us who we are…and very often the definitions and idioms of English vocabulary do not tell us flattering things about ourselves. Nevertheless, it is this very contradiction — donning or not donning the vestiges of our colonial heritage through word and deed — which provides me with a segue to the topic ‘Acknowledging contradiction and subverting the narrative of the super-structure.’

Writing in 1982, Trinidadian literary icon Earl Lovelace, has the mother-figure and Spiritual Baptist mother of his novel THE WINE OF ASTONISHMENT utter the following words:

I look at the boy. And I feel sorry for all of us.

We push these children to this education.

We stuff them with it. And we don’t know what this education doing to the heart inside of them. But what else to do?

Lovelace’s mother character Eva was here speaking of Trinidad, and by extension, the West Indies of the 1950s. Yet, we all accept that 69 years later, Eva’s consternation and question are still relevant: “…we don’t know what this education doing to the heart inside of them. But what else to do?”

Clearly, we must embrace and pursue “this education”. We all know and recognize the tangible benefits of this pursuit–a means out of poverty–the socio-economic mobility–the utilitarian aspects of the benefits of education/schooling are obvious and real. More importantly however, like Eva, I am concerned about “what this education doing to the heart inside of “ us. Remember, this education travels on a language which could and does easily negate us. Yet still I feel that education, academic education, ought to provide us with a path towards the construction or deconstruction of a self which results in one’s possession of an identity which one understands, respects and loves. My belief that education allows and/or offers this construction is not a romantic or hollow belief, because I regard myself as a realization of this belief and therein lies my recognition that as a black West Indian/Caribbean woman, an acknowledgement of the contradictions of which I am composed, is germane to my ability to look in and look out and to be able to say, “this is who I am, I know me.”

We are here as a result of Columbus’s mistake; our label ‘West Indians’ is a misnomer, but does this mean that the selves that we have forged over the years constitute fractured identities? I prefer to think that we have a choice. The very academic education allows us to choose more than subject content. We pursue various disciplines in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Medicine, Single Sciences, Law et cetera and these disciplines present us with specific content and bodies of information. Thus we are trained in the analysis of material; we know how to progress from the literal to the abstract. We know how to construct and deconstruct data. But this ability is not limited to the manipulation of the specific content of our disciplines. Our education has provided us with intellectual skills that guide us as to HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

WHAT we do with this training is our choice and we can choose to subvert an historical narrative which tells us that our identity is restricted to the mimicry of a European model. As a Caribbean people, we have at least dual-consciousness where we are thoroughly sensitized to the awareness of a European heritage, an African heritage and a creole West Indian heritage. This consciousness is uniquely ours. If we look closely enough we would recognize that the work of William Shakespeare is as much a part of our literary heritage as is George Thomas’s RULER IN HAIROUNA. Yes, our colonial moorings are often contradictory; yes these moorings are fraught with mixed messages which often mock the heart inside of us. Victorian concepts of aesthetics, manhood and womanhood challenge the strides we seek to make on a daily basis. An English woman who was the headmistress of the Girls’ High School when I was a first former, did not like us wearing “all those little plaits” as she termed it when we parted our hair in more than two plaits. Today, there are educators in our country who prohibit the wearing of braids to school. I do not agree with such a prohibition because there is a practicality to the wearing of braids which could be managed at the school level. While I was the headmistress of the GHS I defended the relevance of Needlework on the school’s curriculum even though this subject was officially attacked as being ‘colonial ‘ and a waste of time. So you see, I pick my battles with our heritage, and choose practicality, creativity and comfort as opposed to an adherence to unquestioned norms and patterns. Thus I will end with the triumphant last stanza of Martin Carter’s 1950s poem I COME FROM THE NIGGER YARD:

I come from the nigger yard of yesterday leaping from the oppressors’ hate and the scorn of myself.

I come to the world with scars upon my soul wounds on my body, fury in my hands

I turn to the histories of men and the lives of the peoples.

I examine the shower of sparks the wealth of dreams.

I am pleased with the glories and sad with the sorrows rich with the riches, poor with the loss.

From the nigger yard of yesterday I come with my burden

To the world of tomorrow I turn with my strength.

The nigger yard is the matrix which spawned the majority of Vincentians, and the very dynamic of the socio-political and cultural construct of the colonial society implicates all Vincentians in the convulsions of the nigger yard; the nigger yard is what undergirds our entire society. Therefore, when Carter’s persona screams, “I come FROM the nigger yard”, not only does he speak for us all, but he beckons us all to deshakle, free ourselves, rise and soar and not allow ourselves to be chained to the heritage of the nigger yard and scorn of ourselves. He asks that we revision with brave, informed eyes which acknowledge the vast potential for creativity, native self-actualization and self-appreciation in our hybridity. Let us allow what we regard as our contradictions to teach us how to love ourselves fully for our own benefit.

Andrea Bowman