A SUBTLE, yet unrelenting, identity battle is being fought in Barbados. A debate is raging over the essential question of what should be the “official story” of the nation.
Coming in the 50th year of Independence, this debate is very healthy, since it indicates the unwillingness of the historically subjugated majority population to uncritically accept ruling ideas without question, inquiry or independent thought.
This debate is proving quite unsettling for the ruling class, since the “official version” of who we are is always the purview of those who wield economic, political and cultural power. As Marx put it, “all ideas are class ideas”. Thus, notions of Barbados as being “Little England” have never been offensive, and have been accepted as “given” and “natural” since this is the officially accepted version of “who we are”.
Such notions had developed in a different historical moment when the political, cultural and economic power of British colonials and their descendants had been accepted as given, and when the ability of the dominated groups to assert an alternative viewpoint was stymied by lack of economic and political power, and the absence of education, all of which can be summed up as “an underdeveloped political consciousness”.
Today, a shift is taking place. Fifty years after Independence, Barbados (and indeed the wider Caribbean at various phases of the same process) can be described as existing in a moment when prevailing identity definitions are being openly contested. This pursuit of alternatives to ruling class self-definitions has always been an ongoing effort, and has been described by Rex Nettleford as a “battle for space”.
This battle for space is essentially fought at the level of identity and can be seen in music, religion, economic values and practices, and in the undergirding, deeply rooted cultural bases of the majority population. No amount of historical conditioning or ideological wishful denial can erase this. As Bob Marley appropriately puts it, “we refuse to be what they wanted us to be/we are what we are/that’s the way it’s going to be”.
Indeed, as Barbados celebrates its 50th year, there appears to be a level of desperation among those who have a vested interest in opposing the move towards more African-centred definitions of self, with one writer masking her opposition as an attack on “history”, which she reduces to “storytelling”, while ignoring the past 350 years of European storytelling.
The storytelling, however, is merely a reflection of existing power relations. We may well be living in the final phase of European domination of Caribbean cultural life.
Sadly though, Caribbean identity is still too rooted in the region’s existence as economically dependent peripheral countries. Tourism marketing slogans like “nature isle of the Caribbean” and “Little England” still substitute for deeper identity philosophies.
However, the ongoing debate in itself is a welcome sign of progress.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email [email protected].
