Hearing from all and sundry

Jul 15, 2015 Editorial

Despite the fact that there has been positive and meaningful change in Guyana in the past few weeks, there still appears to be a general feeling of dissatisfaction – a feeling that things are just not right. Much of the dissatisfaction centres on the political, social, economic and cultural structures around us that are no longer seen as delivering the goods.
These feelings are still being suppressed. This must change.
This newspaper has in the past stated its commitment to the widening and deepening of what has been termed “the public sphere”. This is the space of free and open debate, in which arguments must be made (and unmade) about any and all issues that affect the citizens of a polity, without respect to rank or privilege.
A newspaper, while it is only one element in the mosaic of a vibrant public sphere by its very nature plays a dual role. There is first its reporting of the news, ensuring that the public has access to the information that is necessary for them to make informed arguments and decisions.
But in the oft cited standard of news coverage – “printing all the news that’s fit to print” – we recognise that there is the implicit possibility of bias in the decision of what news is “fit” and what is not. And this is where the second role, one that we believe even transcends the first, of a newspaper kicks in – providing a forum where the public discourse can take place.
We accomplish this in several ways: by insisting that our reporters solicit the widest possible set of views of persons affected by the news item under consideration; by offering space to a wide assortment of columnists from across ideological and party lines and finally by an uninhibited willingness to publish the viewpoints of our readers in our “letters column”.
If we are to develop as a viable and prosperous nation, we believe that every citizen has to overcome the reflexive diffidence to authority inculcated from our colonial and authoritarian heritage and begin to speak out. We must see ourselves as “public intellectuals” with an obligation to comment on any and every matter within the public sphere.
An intellectual is someone who can deal with ideas and abstractions with some facility and by this criterion, we take the view of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who declared that all men and women can be public intellectuals – he called them organic intellectuals.
All who can use their skills, intelligence, memories, hands, eyes, touch, senses, feelings, experiences, histories, oral traditions, craft, learning, unlearning — they are all intellectuals. The cane cutter, businessman, trader, carpenter, plumber, farmer, those who till the soil, understand its soul, the seasons, the craftsmen, the woman who cooks and preserves, the man who digs your grave: they too are intellectuals. They can manipulate ideas generated from their experiences and we are encouraging all of them to transmit those ideas to our newspaper.
This of course does not mean that we are devaluing the opinions of the more traditionally defined intellectuals: in addition to our columnists, they too can impact the letter pages. These individuals poke, provoke, and evoke — the holy trinity of merits in “intellectual” history and criticism and we will continue to facilitate them.
We expect these persons to expand on the reality exposed by the organic intellectuals. They must be willing to speak out, engage and uncover new ways of seeing. In doing this, they must display rigour, knowledge, accuracy, and ideological consistency.
On the other hand, we do not expect public intellectuals – of whatever stripe – to use the public sphere offered by our medium to settle personal scores or fight private battles. Similarly, we do not expect that every utterance should be condemnatory with daily outpourings of vitriol: surely there will be instances where laudatory words of commendation may further the public good.

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