Postcolonizing the Commonwealth: Studies in Literature and Culture

1. Postcolonial / Commonwealth Studies in the Caribbean: Points of Difference

1 Postcolonial/Commonwealth Studies in the Caribbean: Points of Difference Edward Baugh IIn this paper the Caribbean will be, for all practical purposes , the University of the West Indies. This is just a report, but a personal one, on the development and condition of Postcolonial/Commonwealth Studies in the University, and more particularly, given the limitations of my knowledge, at the Mona (Jamaica) campus where I work. The phrase ‘‘points of difference’’ was intended to indicate differences between Postcolonial/Commonwealth Studies in the Caribbean and in other postcolonial/Commonwealth locations and academies. Again, because of the limitations of my knowledge, conclusions or suggestions as to those differences will have to be left largely to the perception of readers from the vantage point of their familiarity with the situation in other postcolonial/Commonwealth locations. In addition, it occurred to me latterly that ‘‘differences ’’ may also usefully be taken to indicate differences within the Caribbean, since it could be misguided to think in terms of a homogeneous , undifferentiated Caribbean postcolonialism. I should explain, for those who do not know, that the University of the West Indies has three campuses—in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. Consequently, there are three English Departments , to use the convenient, traditional, shorthand label, but a label which is no longer used officially for any of them, although it used to 11 be the name of all three. The Department in Jamaica is officially the Department of Literatures in English. The others would also now have the same name, but for the fact that, apparently for cost-rationalization reasons, they have been repackaged with other disciplines such as Linguistics and Creative Arts. However, as subdisciplines within conglomerates , they do consider themselves to be about the business of ‘‘literatures in English,’’ rather than just the old, conventional ‘‘EngLit.’’ Although there are some similarities in their overall syllabus structure, and in individual courses, and although new program and course proposals by any one must be seen and commented on by the other two, the three departments do their own thing, and there are some appreciable variations in syllabus, which, to my mind, are all to the good and reflect variations in their circumstances. The name change, from Department of English to Department of Literatures in English, is perhaps the overarching and summary event in the story I am telling. It is itself the basic postcolonializing manoeuvre, indicating a displacement of the history of the literature of England from the centre of literary studies in one former outpost of the Empire. The idea was that West Indian (Caribbean) literature should be the new centre of the discipline. In quantitative terms that is no doubt the case. However, it is unclear in my mind whether that change has resulted, for the student especially, in a structured, centred, truly coherent body of knowledge, skills and approaches. If it has not, perhaps we might reassure ourselves that the new positive is the acquisition, however disorienting, of the ability to be suspicious of all ‘‘centres’’ and to live happily in a decentred world. In the story of the name change and the reality of which it is only a nominal expression, special mention must be made of Kenneth Ramchand . His pioneering work, The West Indian Novel and Its Background, appeared just about then. He quickly agitated for, and got West Indian literature introduced as a full course on the curriculum, initially as an alternative to one of the mandatory EngLit period courses. But what is more immediately to the point here is that, on the nameplate on his office door he identified himself as ‘‘Kenneth Ramchand, Literatures in English.’’ It was to take some twenty-five years for that designation to become official; but what it signified had become a reality long before that. Anyway, very recently I received an e-mail message from a colleague at the Cave Hill (Barbados) campus, Evelyn O’Callaghan. She also happens to be a candidate for the PhD degree, and I happen to be her 12 Postcolonizing the Commonwealth: Studies in Literature and Culture supervisor. She is working on women’s writing about the Caribbean from the beginnings up to the early part of the twentieth century. This project, like most of her recent work, has been determined very much by a feminist perspective. The main purpose of the e-mail message was to let me know that she had managed to finish a fourth...