Scholars Dismiss The Idea.
FOR many people in the Caribbean, Emancipation Day conjures up various emotions – either regarding the milestone as a place when shackles were broken or a moment in time that continues to be a struggle for true liberation.
Ever since the Slavery Abolition Act (1833) ended slavery in the British Empire on August 28, 1834, many Caribbean scholars have scoffed at the idea of an Emancipation – let alone post-Emancipation – period even existing.
The debate continued last Monday evening when the Cultural Development Foundation (CDF), National Television Network (NTN) and Folk Research Centre (FRC) hosted a panel discussion ahead of next Monday’s Emancipation Day celebrations.
The discussion was moderated by newsman Shelton Daniel and featured four panelists: economist and artist Adrian Augier, lecturer Winston Phulgence, veteran educator and women’s activist Virgina Albert-Poyotte and educator and poet Vladimir Lucien.
The theme of the discussion, “Post-Emancipation: The Saint Lucian Psyche – Resistance, Relevance or Resolution” and from the beginning, it was met with resistance by the panelists who felt that there were inaccuracies in the terminologies used.
Phulgence’s concern was that ‘Emancipation’ spelled with a capital ‘e’ was off-target and that ‘post’ suggests that once-enslaved African people have moved on from that debilitating system.
“Post-Emancipation is a period of time; it’s not where we are psychologically,” Phulgence argued. “I think there’s constant resistance because if you look around you, people are still grappling and trying to make something of that freedom they got.”
Phulgence believes that Emancipation is an incomplete process, especially when one observes the realities that face people who have since been told that they have further been granted Independence from colonial powers.
“I live in the society and see what’s going on. So the big ‘E’ (in Emancipation) is something that somebody celebrates that they did for us. But we are still doing emancipation, freeing ourselves from the fetters that we’ve had for a few centuries,” Phulgence explained.
In addressing the question of resistance on Saint Lucians’ part, Phulgence was anecdotal, relating his experience having worked within the general elections framework recently. He said he was stunned that many people actually stood in line for hours only to deliberately spoil votes by writing derisive remarks aimed at politicians on the ballots.
“They knew that the ballots were going to be spoiled and what they were going to do would spoil such ballots,” Phulgence lamented. “But they stood in line and did it, anyway. These people, to me, were saying ‘You gave me the right to vote, nothing has changed for me and the only way I can make a point is to insult you on a ballot.’”
Lucien said the term ‘Post-Emancipation’ suggested that the economic, social and political conditions of people had entered a new realm, which actually did not materialize. The unending search, he said, is a tough pill to swallow, especially for the former colonial masters.
“When we talk about Post-Emancipation, we are inferring there was a change for the mass of people, when there really wasn’t,” Lucien remarked.
Emancipation Day, like many public holidays in Saint Lucia, has over the years become lesser in importance, especially with little or no value added being attached to the day itself. While many Caribbean territories plan elaborate ceremonies to observe the day, Saint Lucians usually get a cool day at the beach, perhaps to really emancipate themselves from the workplace, sentiments echoed by Albert-Poyotte.
“I see Emancipation as a continuous process,” Albert-Poyotte opined. “There’s nothing like Post-Emancipation because I see it as a mental state where you try to liberate yourself from a certain mindset. So people are really looking at Emancipation in the context of freedom and how do we define ‘freedom’, which is relative as you move from society to society and person to person.”
Albert-Poyotte added that over the years Saint Lucians’ struggle to get the kind of freedom they really want has been thwarted because “we find ourselves surrounded by all kinds of external influences.”
“Therefore, we ask ourselves at what point will we be emancipated and what we do define as emancipation for us,” she said.
Albert-Poyotte said women have been able to make many strides in the post-emancipation era, including attaining higher education. However, they are still saddled with the baggage of being the victims of domestic violence, male domination and having to be the main breadwinners for many single-parent homes.
Augier argued that Emancipation is simply a date and nothing else, something “that other people did to us after they did other things to us.” He said Saint Lucians need not feel at the “wonder of Emancipation” which treat as “a gift from God”.
“It’s the same way we feel about our Independence – that somebody has given us this things that was, of course, stolen from us,” Augier lamented.
Augier believes that Saint Lucians need to be more involved and passionate about carving out their economic, social and political future and not resign themselves to being victims of circumstance.
He said the inherently subversive quality about the Saint Lucian psyche when it comes to resistance is that while the have learned the necessity of survival despite the odds, the trait of peaceful coexistence is equally as strong. Nevertheless, pinning down a definition for that Saint Lucian psyche remains a task.
“The search for the Saint Lucian psyche is still an important quest that we ought to be pursuing to find out whether, even if there’s not a single narrative that defines us, that there’s perhaps a dominant narrative or something that binds us together as Saint Lucians.”
Undoubtedly, Caribbean people would have made several positive strides over the past 182 years since the abolition of slavery. However, the common thread running through the panelists arguments suggests that colonialism has not really ended in the region but has, instead, taken on a new face with a broader agenda.
This is why Augier seems adamant that for the region to truly assert itself as independent it must first recognize that regarding its people as first-class citizens, something the colonial masters failed to do.
“The Caribbean has forsaken its people in so many respects by simply being awash in the tide of effluent from North America, Europe and the rest of the world,” Augier said. “We have not come to grips with what we need and who we need to be. It is for that reason that we continue to accept the economic dreads of our own development.”