Percy Hintzen’s misuses the work of a great philosopher

Oct 11, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – In my last Sunday column, I heaped praise on Professor Percy Hintzen who once lectured in sociology when I was a UG student. In that column, I pontificated on two weaknesses in a newspaper article Dr. Hintzen wrote entitled: “National Tragedy and the Politics of Race.”

My criticism was mild and I think there was a Freudian reason – I carry an unexpressed mental admiration for his work, especially on the Creole Middle class in early 20^th century British Guiana. I should have been harsh in my critique because his arguments initially appeared unacceptable but I let it slide.

Sunday evening, I was rereading an excellent book titled: “The Reckless Mind” about great philosophers who dabbled in politics. I went back to the book because of Hintzen’s article in which he mentioned Michel Foucault.

It is after reading the chapter on Foucault, I went back and reread Hintzen’s piece. I am convinced on my second reading that Hintzen’s article had a hidden purpose and in that purpose, he used Foucault to justify his political choices in Guyana.

In that Sunday column of mine, I characterized Hintzen’s polemic as full of ironies. Looking back now, the largest irony was that he misuses a philosopher who explains how knowledge is applied to sustain repression. What Hintzen has done is to cite Foucault to support the repression of elected democracy in Guyana. Could there be a prodigious irony?

Foucault is one of the great philosophers of the past 200 years. His work is about the intimate connection between knowledge and power and how knowledge is employed to shape people’s thought and those very thoughts are inimical to sexual and social liberation.

After quoting Foucault, Hintzen then applies Foucault to Guyana by observing: “In Guyana, this is (he is referring to Foucault’s methodology) accomplished by tactics employed by a multi-racial, multi-cultural political class comprising political executives, legislators, politicians, government administrators, professionals, scholars, and commentators who are local beneficiaries of the global system of human and resource exploitation.”

As you read on, Hintzen gets bizarre and of course ironic because he conveniently takes some groups out of his school of “local beneficiaries of the global system of human and resource exploitation” and turns them into people with an agenda of anti-imperialist liberation of the Guyanese nation.

So who are these angels of liberation? After describing at length how the system in Guyana puts Indians against Africans, Hintzen sees hope on the horizon. But in his identification of the source of his hope, Hintzen’s exposes himself to the accusation of class and race bias.

Let’s quote Hintzen again: “Challenges, replicated in Guyana by groups such as Red Thread, are being mounted against transnational neoliberal capitalism by the global women’s movement. A global environmental movement is posing similar challenges with similar resonances in Guyana. Collectively, these might become the deus ex machina that ends the tragedy of Guyana. They may be able to stimulate the requisite popular support for transition to participatory democracy.”

This is a poor understanding of Guyana’s political dynamics. If I didn’t like Percy, I would have referred to him as a crass propagandist. First, the very source of his solution to Guyana perennial tragedy of race and politics are themselves beneficiaries of transnational, neoliberal capitalism.

Hintzen names Red Thread, a women group founded by the WPA leadership in the 1980s as one of the actors pivotal to dissolving Guyana’s national tragedy. Red Thread is generally seen as a twin of the WPA, is strongly supportive of the WPA. It would be a denial of fact to say that there is not a symbiotic relation between Red Thread and the WPA.

Secondly, Dr. Hintzen wrote his column as the request of Dr. Alissa Trotz who edits the, “In The Diaspora” column. As far as my knowledge goes, Dr. Trotz is a huge figure in the group named Overseas Friends of the WPA.

What is the political reality between Red Thread, Dr. Trotz and the WPA? The WPA has been part of a major part of the government between 2015 and 2020 in which some of the WPA’s top names held substantial power. The list includes: Tacuma Ogunsye, Desmond Trotman and Drs. Clive Thomas, Rupert Roopnaraine, Maurice Odle and David Hinds.

The government that the WPA was part of was an adherent to neoliberal economics. Under that government, 42,000 sugar workers, their families and dependent relatives were placed in economic jeopardy.

Dr. Hintzen needs to understand the women groups he places so much faith in are not messengers of transformation. Many of these groups are in fact part of the race-driven bandwagon of Guyana and are part of the national tragedy. Space has run out.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)