The Ravi Dev Column – Marginalisation of identity

Jun 29, 2008 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Over the last month, we have been discussing the charges of marginalisation emanating from the African Guyanese community.

We posited that the discourse and institutionalisation of “race and racism” was an integral part and parcel of the fact of African slavery and that while “marginalisation” is a phenomenon that could be experienced and practiced on any group, when it comes to African Guyanese, such a discussion is almost meaningless if it is disjunctured from the racist effects of slavery and its aftermath on that community and the institutions within which they are embedded.

Up to now we have been focusing on possible residual effects on African Guyanese as a group and pointed to possible discriminatory practices that could have survived or be created or recreated, since racism is not some viral infection that can survive on its own, but is reproduced in particular social arrangements under law, state and institutional power, etc.

For the actions of the state, we have long advocated the formulation of an “Ethnic Impact Statement” to accompany any governmental or state initiative.

While there may be very good economic or administrative reasons for a policy that may reward or penalise a particular group inordinately, it would save a lot of agitation if the “adverse impact” is broached up front.

To address economic marginalisation, we suggested that there might be the need for Affirmative Action programs in certain valued areas, if proof of historical discrimination could be identified.

For political marginalisation, we have repeatedly advocated a government of national unity for a limited period during which a federalist constitution could be drafted that would address political and other issues of justice for marginalized groups.

But the sources of racism and marginalisation that impact on the African Guyanese are not only external: some have been interjected into the psyches of the populace so that even if the external constraints are removed these internal shackles will deliver their invidious effects.

These shackles go to the issue of identity that eventually translate into group worth.
We have already mentioned the denudation of the culture of the African slaves during slavery and the forcible imposition of practices designed to convince them that they were sub-human.

There is no question that Africans opposed these pressures but the logic of the power differential in the master-slave relationship determined that the early Euro-African “Creole” culture was never going to be positive for the slave. The docile, happy-go-lucky Quashie was the ideal end product that the ruling class wanted to perpetuate.

With the abolition of slavery in 1834, the colonists were not prepared to leave the construction of a docile work force to chance.

By coincidence, within five years of their conquest of India in 1818, the British began crafting an alternative method of dominating.

They eventually harkened to the advice proffered by Rousseau: “The strongest man is never so strong enough to be master all the time, unless he transforms force into right and obedience into duty.”

What the British did was to exchange the metal chains holding the colonized people with mental chains for which the people clamoured: they introduced what Antonio Gramsci was later to define as a “hegemony” over the Indians.

While the technique was not exactly new – Aristotle, after all, had suggested that enslaved barbarians might be “educated” to accept their condition – the British refined the approach into an art. They would utilise the techniques honed in India into Guyana and other parts of the empire.

The centrepiece would be through “Education” – with a capital “E”. In the words of Lord Macaulay, the chief architect of the scheme such that the graduates of the schools to be established would be “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”

The stated objective would be to create a class of clerks, who would serve the British commercial and governmental interests that were expanding exponentially but the effect would be to create mental chains for the new elite for which they and the rest of colonized people would clamour.

The segment that aspired to become the elite was taken into newly established schools and bombarded with “Knowledge”.

This classificatory power to define what was “knowledge” was crucial in the construction of the hegemony since the rulers could establish a scale of value on all knowledge. This process operated at several levels.

Firstly, knowledge would only be transmitted in the language of the hegemon – ensuring that all other concepts from other paradigms had to fit within the Procrustean bed of his paradigm. (E.g. to understand what a “Procrustean bed” was, one had to have an acquaintance with the English-appropriated Greek Classics.)

Secondly, knowledge is to be only transmitted within the approved schools. Even those on the outside, whose learning is given no credence by the hegemon, devalue knowledge obtained outside of the official schools – all accept that only “schools” impart knowledge. The fisherman, farmer, yogi, medicine man or village elder is by definition not knowledgeable and thus inferior.

Thirdly, the particular, historical experiences of the hegemon are untethered from their parochial origins and universalized as applicable for all places and all times. For the transmission of knowledge, the hegemon’s curriculum is deemed complete i.e. it is universalized as “Education”.

The “graduated” colonial is taught that he is “Educated”, period, not that he is educated to keep records. The Bible is “Scripture”; “Literature” is English literature. In fact, one of the ironies of the new dispensation was that “English Literature” as a subject was taught for the first time in India – in England, there were only Latin and Greek.

The successfully imparted or imbibed paradigm creates an identity system for all those within it – including both the ruler and the ruled. Within this system, the identity of the dominated is the negative mirror image of the dominator, of which the latter is akin to perfection, if not perfection itself.

The identity-set of the hegemon is the ideal while that of the hegemonised is deficient in all respects. In accepting this inferior identity, the hegemonised individual automatically assumes a low self-conception – and self esteem – and of his group vis-à-vis the hegemony.

The precursor, of course, to this identity set – was the slave-master relationship created during African slavery.

(To be continued)

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