Cultural Heritage in Transit: Intangible Rights as Human Rights

3. The Right to Remain Cultural: Is Culture a Right in the Neoliberal Caribbean?

C h a p t e r 3 The Right to Remain Cultural: Is Culture a Right in the Neoliberal Caribbean? Philip W. Scher Stamped on that image is the old colonial grimace of the laughing nigger, steelbandsman, carnival masker, calypsonian and limbo dancer . . . trapped in the State’s concept of the folk form . . . the symbol of a carefree, accommodating culture, an adjunct to tourism, since the state is impatient with anything it cannot trade. —Derek Walcott, “What the Twilight Says” No one shall have a cultural identity imposed or be assimilated into a cultural community against one’s will. —Fribourg Declaration This chapter attempts to forge a link between theories of the commodification of culture, national identity, neoliberal political economy, and Michel Foucault ’s concept of biopolitics, as a way of thinking through the idea of cultural rights as human rights. I am examining here state-sanctioned instances of national heritage, both tangible and intangible, in the Caribbean to suggest that culture in these small, postcolonial societies is increasingly seen as a valuable commodity. Furthermore, it is seen as a resource on which the state can draw not only to develop the economy but also to reinforce the state’s 88 Philip W. Scher claims to sovereignty. Through such strategies as nation branding and cultural and heritage tourism Caribbean governments encourage local populations to consider their actions and behaviors, both public and private (a distinction that is increasingly blurred), as self-consciously cultural. In addition such cultural behaviors, appropriately maintained and perpetuated, are seen as vital for the prosperity and strength of the nation as a whole. In this way culture ceases being simply a right for people and becomes an adjunct to the aspirations of the state as it promotes its cultural brand globally. There are of course, many sites of tension, resistance, and unpredictability where simple co-optation is just not possible. In other words, this is by no means a fait accompli on the part of the structures of governance. Indeed, as we shall see, because of the relatively diffuse nature of such mechanisms of power the ability to control actions and behaviors is somewhat limited. What concerns me here is not the complete efficacy of state cultural policies but their nature and design. These reveal a great deal about the position that small states find themselves in with regard to how to think about culture as a resource and how to manage it effectively. It is important, early on, to establish that what I mean by state-sanctioned public performances or instances of heritage includes a general definition of what the state means by “heritage” (and how such ideas circulate globally), the idea of the heritage itself enacted or on display in a space theoretically accessible to all, and the notion that what is being performed is of the public; created by them or their forebears and performed for them. I stress this early on, because I would like to distinguish my exploration of cultural policy here from that work that deals with culture that is not, in the first instance, conceived of as “folklore” or “heritage,” but perhaps considered part of the contemporary arts. This is an important distinction, even if only very roughly made at this point, not because it distinguishes kinds of art or culture in any important generic way, but because it distinguishes attitudes about such arts in ways that illuminate not only general conceptions of these kinds of art but, more important , state conceptions of government’s role in public life. That is, in many cases the role of the government in supporting, censoring, or critiquing art is decried when that art is thought to originate from private individuals acting in their capacity as free citizens. However, the notion of government support or intervention tends to be considered quite differently when the arts in question are understood to be part of a collective or national patrimony, created not by known individuals, but by the “people.”1 This distinction, like so many in the world of heritage and cultural rights, must be made with the under- The Right to Remain Cultural 89 standing that it is not a clear one. There are many examples, for instance, of indigenous artists using aspects of “intangible heritage” in their production of art forms that circulate in the contemporary art market. The status of the artists as indigenous, the content as partly “collective...