Emancipation and freedom

Aug 11, 2013 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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During this Emancipation month, the dominant narrative has been of the heroic efforts of the slaves that actively rebelled against their oppressors so that slavery became no longer viable. There are many other narratives, such as of the humanitarian impulses of the British who were willing to commit “econocide”, to let freedom ring.
And each of these narratives would have elements of “truth”. They illustrate the truism that the problem-space in which they were deployed, like all problem-spaces, is a context of dispute, a contested space. Ultimately problem-spaces are discursive contexts grounded in the problematic of knowledge and power. The way we narrativise our past tells us something about how we see our present and our hopes for (and possible realisation of) the future. The question I attempted to pose some time ago, concerns the relevance of certain narrations of historical incidents in our present problem-space and I do so once again, as the narrative of emancipation is invoked.
Since 1838, Emancipation has generally been framed as an inaugural event in the generally vindicationist telling of the overcoming, against the greatest of odds, to deliver the African slaves out of (in) human bondage. Like all propositions, it was a response to questions generated within the problem-space of that time, with a look firmly towards to a future horizon that encapsulated the hopes of the ex-slaves and their descendants at that time. But problem-spaces are fundamentally temporally bound to the particular historico-socio-cultural conjuncture in which the Q&A is generated. Problem-spaces are always in flux, and it is therefore vital to always intensely interrogate our present and its horizon of expectations, and consider whether the old telling moves us closer to our currently defined goals or not.
It is not that the answers proposed by the old telling are necessarily wrong or mistaken. A vindicationist approach (the answer) was necessary for the longest while, because the old historiography denied Africans any agency, much less heroism and leadership, in the struggle against New World slavery (the question). But the point I am raising is whether here in 2013, the old question has the same relevance in reference to our present problem-space and horizon of expectations?
In answering, “Maybe not,” I suggest that maybe it is time that, in invoking Emancipation, we look to it for answers to the new, more relevant questions posed by our present conjuncture. This exercise imposes on us, of course, the stricture that we become much more aware of what we are looking to the past for. Our historical interventions, then, must be much more self-consciously, strategic.
Another reason for proposing that we move beyond the old questions and answers is, as I had elaborated on at length in discussing more generally our historical narrativisations, Emancipation is one facet in the larger project of revolutionary romance that had teleologically guaranteed the ex-slaves the Promised Land. “Emancipation” was touted as “freedom” and we know to our cost (or we should know to our cost) that the latter is as elusive today as it was on August 1st 1838.
I am suggesting that, interestingly enough, another question posed in 1838, and of greater salience in today’s problem-space, was the pronouncement that the freed slaves would not be able to utilise the freedom conferred (or won) on account of their purported inability to create a new viable society on their own. Just as interesting, however, is the fact that just after emancipation, the ex-slaves husbanded the resources (financial, conceptual and organisational) to launch a village movement that had few rivals in the new world. After all, which other group had ever emerged from the very anti-thesis of freedom to challenge its most fundamental premise so quickly?
That the expectations and hopes, immanent in that inaugural move to found a new society, have not been realised to the present, should give us pause to consider the impact of contingency, fortuity, happenstance,  luck and our own frailties – not to mention, enemy action – on the best laid of plans. We cannot ignore also the possible diversionary effect precipitated by the continued deployment of the romantic revolutionary/vindicationary emancipation narrative with its teleological promise of redemption and salvation, when it had lost much of its traction.
The distinction between emancipation and freedom may today appear trite, but that does not make it less real and true and relevant.  In making that distinction, Hannah Arendt noted: “…liberation may be the condition of freedom but by no means leads automatically to it.”
I would like to suggest that a course that may have greater salience to our present problem-space would be to once again reemphasise the project to establish freedom. We need to create the political-institutional conditions that will give meaning to the positive import of freedom. And this is why the initiative launched by the newly-freed slaves after emancipation – the Village Movement – that directly addressed issues of self-governance and economic independence – has to take centre stage in our present Emancipation narrative.
However, I caution, as I have done before, on the dangers of focusing only on the benefits of the intended horizon of expectations rather than on the obstacles preventing its realisation.

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