‘I suffered, therefore, I am’: Is that the Issue?

May 21, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Please permit me to comment on the insistence by some that indentureship was similar to slavery. I refer in particular to K. Misir’s letter – “Indentureship was a clever euphemism for slavery” (Kaieteur News May 19).
Here is the essence of K. Misir’s argument – “For all intents and purposes indentureship was a clever euphemism for slavery since labour became a commodity to be bought and sold.”
I tried in vain to connect this statement with Misir’s general thesis of similarity between slavery and indentureship. The key element here is that “labour became a commodity.” The question is this – what was it before?

Mr. Misir has answered the question for himself, although the answer may not have been the one intended. One of the crucial differences between slavery and indentureship was that the slave did not earn a wage.
The slave himself/herself was private property, that is, a commodity. The indentured servant earned wages based on a contract.
I fail to see what is so difficult to understand here, and why some folks insist that they must press on with the epistemology of suffering framework. Is the project “I suffered, therefore, I am”?
K. Misir, like most other writers in the epistemology of suffering tradition, pins his entire argument on quotations from various writers, many of whom are credible scholars on Guyanese history. Close examination of those texts, however, reveal something quite interesting.

Almost always the language of comparison between slavery and indentureship is one of approximation. Thus, indentureship is a new form of slavery; indentureship is like slavery; indentureship is close to slavery. Ok, but it was not slavery.
I suggest that the difference matters. Indentureship may have been like slavery in some sense, but Mr. Misir must understand that the language of slavery viz a vis indentureship was a clever euphemism used by anti-indenture progressives in Britain.

Slavery was not only a torturous institution; it was also a total and, therefore, for the slave, a timeless machinery of oppression. There was no way out. No credible historian of indentureship can claim otherwise.
Finally let me note that the purpose behind the epistemology of suffering must be broached. Why is it that every year around May 5, we get these articles about suffering?
Does suffering make the descendents of indentured servants more moral, more worthy, more qualified to make claims? Why this obsession with how much we suffered?
Dr. Randy Persaud