Being Guyanese

Oct 30, 2011 Ravi Dev

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One of the unfortunate characteristics of electioneering politics is while striving to prove they are each “better”, politicians stress only their differences. Over the years, we too have stressed our differences – cultural ones – in reacting against the cultural hegemony imposed over our society by the state. But we have also always insisted on unity: unity in diversity. Our politicians on the hustings must not miss the forest for the trees.
NATIONAL IDENTITY
As citizens of a society, we must see the state as a “common venture” even as we reject conceptions of “nation” that are oppressive to existing diversities. In a word, “nation” and “state” have to be disarticulated. We cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater: Europe is discovering that the state is not so easily transcended. At independence we inherited a state but not a nation. The reality of our coming together ensured that we had no common culture “looming out of some immemorable past”, as some other countries had. But people do not identify with a state just like that – and that’s partially why we clung to our ethnicities. The challenge, then for us is to construct a “unity” of our peoples within our state that does not seek to obliterate our diversities.
We propose that we demarcate our cultural sphere as a private one, with minimal state intervention in terms of definition and to build the overarching unity we need in the public sphere. What we are suggesting is that we move from the idea of a “national culture” as a site for identification to the shared practice of a political ideology as the basis for engendering such identification within the state. Rather than those, such as Rex Nettleford, who demand that all ethnic groups assimilate into Creole culture to become “one nation”, we propose that a feeling of “we the people” – of “Guyanese-ness” – can be engendered in the process of our conscious construction of a democratic state.
We situate this construction of a national outlook within what we labelled “Project Democracy” – the creation of conditions where we are all treated as one, equally, by the state. Equality of opportunity; human rights, encouragement of diversities, due process; justice and fair play and rule of law may seem dry compared to the warmth of the blood ties of “nation”, but they can engender the unity of public purpose and the recognition of individual worth where we can be proud of our common citizenship. Citizenship of Guyana has to become something that has concrete meaning to all of us. Institutions have to be organised around values that are consonant with the goals of our unique society.
It was the United States, made up of immigrants with diverse cultural backgrounds like us in Guyana, that first attempted to institutionalise this ideological definition of “national identity” when they announced ringingly in their Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
All Americans see these shared ideological values as defining themselves – their “Americaness” – their national identity. When they established as their motto E Pluribus Unum-   out of many, one – they meant “one” based on ideological criteria. The ideological foundations were intended to become supra-cultural values that would transcend the specific cultural inheritances of the immigrant. While they unfortunately subverted this premise by universalising British culture, its foundational existence allowed the latter to be successfully challenged by multiculturalist conceptions such as Afro-centricity.
Universalism is never power neutral – its defenders always have a certain interest in it. Contra to the proponents of the universalism of Creole Culture to the Caribbean and Guyana, we should not repeat the American mistake here and privilege any one group. Similarly, since the state itself had justified its legitimacy through the goal of all its citizens living by the principles and values of its ideology, if this is seen not to be the reality for some, the status quo will be challenged by the excluded. The movement towards allowing citizens to constantly authenticate themselves ideologically is always enabled: multiculturalism becomes part and parcel of the “nation by design”.
GUYANESE
For Guyana then, our ethnicities would be defined outside our “Guyaneseness” and to be African-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese would not be contradictory in any sense. The first part of our identity would be specific while the latter universalistic. The “national” will now be a space where ethnically imagined communities can live and share. To be Guyanese would be to share moral precepts – norms, values and attitudes – rather than shared cultural experience and practice. A good Guyanese would be one who is loyal to this country and strives to practice the secular universalistic ideological values it extols.
During these elections all politicians must commit to state power being equitably distributed amongst the several ethnic groups in our society. “Multiculturalism” is not just about cultural practices: it is also a signifier of the power relations of the society. It is only when power is distributed equitably that the ideological values mean anything to the culturally embedded individual. This is the content of a national identity.

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