Writing Rage: Unmasking Violence through Caribbean Discourse 9789766401894, 9766401896

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RAGE Unmasking Violence through Caribbean Discourse

Paula Morgan and Valerie Youssef

W r itin g R A G E

WrütiHsCj R A G E Unmasking Violence through Caribbean Discourse

Paula Morgan and Valerie Youssef

University of the West Indies Press Jamaica • Barbados • Trinidad and Tobago

University o f the West Indies Press 1A Aqueduct Flats Kingston 7

Mona

Jamaica

www.uwipress.com © 2006 by Paula Morgan and Valerie Youssef All rights reserved. Published 2006 10 09 08 07 06

5 4 3 2 1

CATALO GU ING IN PUBLICA TIO N DATA Morgan, Paula. Writing rage: unmasking violence through Caribbean discourse / Paula Morgan and Valerie Youssef. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 976-640-189-6 1. West Indian literature - History and criticism. 2. Family violence in literature. 3. Gender identity in literature. 4. Crime in literature. 5. Social problems in literature. I. Youssef, Valerie. II. Tide. PR9210.M 64 2006

810.9’9729

Book and cover design by Robert Kwak.

Printed in the United States o f America.

CONTENTS Preface Introduction

PART ONE Preamble Chapter I W h o Decides Guilt? Press Coverage of a Murder Trial Chapter 2 O n Judgement and Justice Chapter 3 Media Images of Love and Violence: Gendered Responses Chapter 4 Violence in a Police Officer’s Family Chapter 5 Bat Teneb: Haitian W om en’s Narratives of Resistance

PART TWO Preamble

129

Chapter 6 Gendered Inscriptions of Indo-Caribbean Family Violence

135

Chapter 7 Cross-Gendered Representations of Criminal Violence

152

Chapter 8 Rape and Sexual Violence in the Caribbean Imaginary

169

Chapter 9 Violence and Subjectivity in “In a Free State” and Guerillas

192

Chapter 10 Narrative as Palliative in Danticat's Fiction

208

Conclusion

224

Notes

238

References

245

Index

257

PREFACE

'

This text has been in the making for some time now, initially as an idea in our heads which recognized the linkages in some o f our research, and latterly as real text. Our recollection o f the first o f these commonalities goes back to a conference held at the University of the West Indies St Augustine in 2000, organized by the Depart­ ment o f Behavioural Sciences, and alluded to in chapter 1 o f the text. We both presented papers at that meeting, which sought workable interventions in relation to domestic violence in its myriad forms. That was when we recognized that the issues o f family violence and problematic gender constructions could be dealt with from both a linguistics and a literary perspective and, indeed, that the one approach complemented the other. We were both working in the newly formed Department o f Liberal Arts, which had been put together to combine literature and language and linguistics disciplines and was seeking to establish and cement its bonds and alliances. The department had a vision o f integrated development which coincided with the links we ourselves were perceiving. Since then, Paula has been working increasingly in Caribbean literature with a concern for gender and family relations, as well as broader-scale political violence, while Valerie has been doing an increasing amount o f work in discourse analysis,

ranging through studies o f political discourse to media texts and conversational inter­ actions. We began to see the possibilities o f a cross-disciplinary course, evolving from our common theme. In our capacity as associate staff members o f the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, we discussed the project with the head o f the Centre, Professor Rhoda Reddock, and through the centres intervention we received a grant from the Royal Netherlands Embassy. We are very grateful for the funding, which assisted us with the purchase of reference materials and transcription o f data. In May 2004, we were able to host a workshop at the University o f the West Indies, St Augustine, on the culture o f violence in Trinidad and Tobago, to which we invited distinguished scholars from the institution as well as practitioners in the field. We opened the meeting to the general public. By pooling our diverse intellectual resources, we were able to focus in new ways, and to formulate varied means o f com­ bating the problem at a societal level. This event may well prove to be the beginning o f new focused interventions, and may potentially yield a useful volume o f material in its own right. When we began this research project neither o f us was content to see violence simply in terms of a phenomenon to be studied for findings which would remain within the pages of a text. We came to the project out of a conviction that we all need to do something to stem the tide o f violence. We felt that we were observing, on our watch, a phenomenon which was spiralling out o f control and threatening to under­ mine the foundations of the small island societies in which we had invested our lives and work, and which we had a responsibility to hand over in a viable fashion to our children after us. We brought to the table what we have as academics, as concerned citizens, and as women: research skills, disciplinary approaches and divergent ways o f viewing the world. Our approach was to question everything, including the way in which we have known and understood violence in the past. Our journey was both heartening and discouraging. We began with a concern for family violence only to find ourselves confronted with an extremely unwieldy, complex and densely interrelated topic. We also had to deal with different disciplinary approaches which would privilege some perspectives and dimensions above others. We were caught between the specificity of the samples o f discourse and the extent to which the findings would be applicable on a broad scale. On the other hand, the literary analyses at times roamed so far and wide that the actual specificity o f the acts o f violence seemed lost in the mass. Moreover, we confronted the need to scan the primary material for that information

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that was overtly relevant, as well as for the latent forms of violence to which they pointed, but which would not necessarily draw a spotlight. We learned, too, that we were very different people with very different modes o f operating. We believe that we have resolved these many issues and have written a better text as a result. We were both grateful to the University o f the West Indies for giving us periods o f leave to work on the project - Paula in the second semester o f the academic year 2002-2003, and Valerie in her 2003-2004 sabbatical year. During the period, Paula benefited from a study period at Bowdoin College in the United States, for which she is grateful. Valerie appreciates the support given to her by the Centre for English Language Studies at the University o f Birmingham in the United Kingdom, which allowed her to work as a visiting scholar for a month-long period and to obtain much reference material. Our families and friends encouraged us throughout the project, and tolerated the irregular hours, days and weeks that we spent immersed in it, to the detriment o f the attention they might have received. Our colleagues, and especially those that contributed to the Culture o f Violence workshop, were very supportive, and for this we are grateful. A final word. Writing Rage: Unmasking Violence through Caribbean Discourse is truly a collaborative project. We have both left our imprint on every chapter and together produced a better volume than we could have individually. Co-authorship is genuine; our names are listed alphabetically purely in deference to convention. Paula Morgan and Valerie Youssef University of the West Indies, St Augustine

Preface

ix

INTRODUCTION The Holocaust, slavery or apartheid . . . can become a founding trauma. . . posing the problematic question o f identity, and calling for more critical ways o f coming to terms with both their legacy and problems such as absence and loss. -

Dominick La Capra,

Writing History, Writing Trauma

THE DILEMMA Violence in its myriad forms has always plagued human societies. A pivotal and ubiqui­ tous social problem, it undermines cherished notions o f social evolution and national and cultural superiority. Violence, both private and public, has escalated to the point of being endemic to contemporary civilized societies, both in its painful enactments and in bizarre, infinitely multiplied re-enactments within the twilight zone o f global media broadcasts. Here, news of violence with high entertainment value - “infotain­ ment” - is mainlined into millions of psyches daily. Violence is so intricately linked to a web o f social ills that nations seeking building blocks for the construction o f just

and equitable societies must inevitably confront the all-pervasive centrality and multigenerational impact o f violence. The dismal outworking o f societal and family violence demands that each society, each generation, each culture must, in its time, engage this spectre in order to make a difference, to undermine its foundations, and to disrupt its continuities. This text explores societal and family violence. Its sociogeographical focus is the complex, vulnerable, multi-ethnic “New World” societies o f the Carib­ bean archipelago. It speaks to academics and to practitioners simultaneously.1 Its central focus is family violence, although it inevitably moves beyond that, since different forms o f violence inevitably impinge on each other. Since the findings o f the West India Royal Commission (Moyne Commission) o f 1938-1939, the West Indian family, particularly that o f Afro-Caribbean ancestry, has been sub­ jected to a spate o f sociological studies which have emphasized deviance and dysfunctionality.2 In response, there has been a spate of counterdiscursive research which has sought out submerged positive elements in the predominant Carib­ bean family forms (Clarke 1997; Barrow 1996). Recently, theorists have been pointing to the need for other approaches. Arguing in favour o f a psychological component, Branche (2002, 92) indicates: Caribbean family studies remain dominated by a decided sociological and anthro­ pological bias. This bias has produced, without doubt, both knowledge advances as well as many useful guidelines for social policy. However, it is now clear that the sociological studies need to be complemented by more studies o f a formal psychological nature.

To further complement the sociological and psychological analyses, Writing Rage applies the insights of other disciplines, namely linguistics and literature, to this social problem.

OBJECTIVE A N D OUTCOMES The overall objective o f this study is to explore societal and family violence through critical examination o f a broad cross-section o f Caribbean real-life and fictional discourses, mediated specifically through lenses o f ethnicity and gender. The study yields • analyses o f discourses o f violence, both fictional and actual, which unmask the underlying states of mind entailed;

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• analyses o f the impact of transglobal flows of people and ideologies on specific acts of violence within Caribbean island societies; • exploration of the correlation between media and institutional portrayals of violence and the exacerbation of violence in the community; • exploration of correlations between supposed male marginalization and violence; and • exploration of correlations between male-female violence and a broader history o f violent encounter among races, nations, ideologies and ethnicities. In fulfilling the above, we expect to apply insights drawn from the research material to address the following questions: • What are the historical and contemporary conditions which pre­ dispose Caribbean families and societies to acts o f violence? • Is violence inherent in the process o f imposing hierarchies based on differences in gender and ethnicity? • Does violence escalate in conditions o f shifting cultural norms when traditional values may be under attack? • Who are the prevalent abusers? • What are the effects on the abused, whether men, women or children? • How can these effects be remediated?

APPROACH Through the analysis o f literary texts, media and legal representations, and personal testimonies and accounts, we can gain a rich range of insights. This is the reason for adopting an interdisciplinary approach, using both literary and critical linguistic analytical strategies to engage the issues. Given the complexity and volatile nature o f the subject matter and the subterranean nature of its causes and effects, both kinds o f perspective contribute to highlighting the roots o f the problem and the far-reaching consequences. In addition, they share the capacity to demonstrate that discourse con­ stitutes a very real social practice which is instrumental in constructing the subject, and further, that narrative is in and of itself an empowering act. The text is divided into two parts on the basis o f the fictional-actual divide, as well as on the broad frameworks of analysis applied. Each part complements the other in unmasking the nature o f violence, its causes and, potentially, its remediation. The linguistics and literary sections are each preceded by a preamble which introduces the chapters of that section. This introduction presents the subject o f investigation,

Introduction

3

the approaches to be taken to it, and the relevant and essential sociohistorical back­ ground. In the conclusion, we consider the way forward and practical implications o f the study. The linguistic analyses in the text are based within the theoretical frame o f dis­ course analysis approaches. Rooted as they are in the analysis o f real-world text as distinct from fiction, they entail the analysis o f speech and writing from the media and other public spheres, as well as interview material and personal testimonies. Dis­ course analysis draws from the speaking and writing o f real protagonists, but it goes beyond the vocabulary, which is examined in detail, to consider the structure and arrangement o f the discourse; the total message selected is scrutinized for implicit motivation and meaning. It shows us not only how speakers and writers perceive their topics, but also how they make sense of their experience and how they recon­ struct reality in the very act o f describing it. Hence, we gain insight into our problems at every level: the power structures self-reveal, but so too do the counter movements; the perpetrators o f violence, or those who implicitly support it, self-reveal, as do the victims o f the experience. Each act o f self-revelation and reconstruction provides a building block which can contribute to rebuilding a more whole society. Writers o f fiction also draw closely from experience, whether personal or second­ hand. In the case o f this text, the literary pieces analysed tend to be grounded in real-time events o f personal or sociological significance or both. The works afford glimpses into the attitudes, aspirations and inner workings o f the minds of victim and perpetrator alike. The aim o f literature is to draw readers into imaginative par­ ticipation in the fictional scenario and perchance to alter their attitudes and opinions by the bombardment o f their senses and sensibilities. The literary devices used to induce the willing suspension o f disbelief compound the impact o f fiction on readers. Readers are moved by more than the bare facts, and this moving can translate into a desire to motivate and contribute to change. Finally, literature also accommodates exploration o f comorbidity o f different forms o f abuse which may be perceived as vexing and even impenetrable for other disciplines (Le Franc 2002, 289). The first section of our text then takes critical discourse analysis as its primary theoretical base. Few among us appreciate as keenly as we might the ways in which our lives and circumstances are constrained, not just by the societies in which we live, but by the power structures which dominate those societies. “Implicit assumptions”, which are handed to us by the powers that be, constitute the “ideologies” by which we live, though we may think o f these ideologies merely as commonsense realities.

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As Fairclough (2001, 2-3) has put it, “Ideology is the prime means of manufac­ turing consent, and the means by which ‘social relations and power differences are legitimised.” We tell ourselves that we live in democracies and look to “Third World” dictatorships as entities where governmental control is coercively maintained, con­ vincing ourselves in so doing that we are not under constraint. In reality, however, as critical discourse analysis has shown us, each governing body “controls” us through the web of reality that it creates and recreates through language, and releases to us daily through the media. We are exposed to the decisions of governments and their representation of their relationship to us through their own speeches and press releases, as well as through the medias representation o f them. Hence, ideologies are enforced. Newspapers and radio and television stations are not known for their objectivity, but are identified by their particular political affiliations, and the extent to which they are operating independ­ ent of government or other political support is always questionable- They too put their own slant on reality or that o f the particular powers that be, whom they embrace. It behoves us to have a critical eye then, in interpreting what we hear and read, lest the reality we construct is an illusion of popular - or even unpopular —invention. In such circumstances, violence is more or less justified to us depending on who commits it and with what rationale. Inevitably, the disempowered are depicted as more criminal than those who are empowered, whose actions are exonerated, excused, even converted to a twisted rectitude. At the end of May 2004, we were debating the torture o f Iraqi prisoners by American troops in post-Saddam Iraq, and hearing on C N N that “torture” was acceptable for particular and specific ends. And that was to be considered “progress”. Before that time, such procedures went unquestioned as part o f the system. And we left them unquestioned. Critical discourse analysis (for example, Fairclough 2001) takes the bull by the horns and forces us to engage with the impact o f discourse upon our perceptions of reality at situational, societal and institutional levels. It argues that it is through recognition and analysis of the distortions inherent in discourse structure that we can unmask the lies perpetrated against the less empowered sectors of our communities. It becomes then a ready tool in the service o f a text which treats with family and societal violence and demands accurate reappraisals so that resistance and change become possible. In discussing societal change, both real and desired, however, we also have to con­ sider poststructuralist discourse analysis, for it is this field which deals with the multiple constructions of individuals as they position and reposition themselves in discourse.

Introduction

5

Baxter (2002, 829) explains it thus: “Individuals are not unitary subjects but are pro­ duced as a nexus o f contradictory subjectivities in relations of power which are constandy shifting, rendering them at times powerful and at other times powerless. Thus speakers may potentially adopt multiple positions or multiple voices.” Because post­ structuralist discourse analysis has an interest in the free play of multiple voices within a discursive context rather than any single voice, previously silenced groups - the victims of long-term power-mongering - can be re-examined and their redefinitions of their positioning reassessed through their own voices. The approach is particularly useful in circumstances in which individuals are working out their identities and ideological positionings to come back against oppressive circumstances. Discourse analysis is characterized by manifold methodological procedures and analytical techniques which stem from the necessities o f dealing with numerous kinds o f discourse. The discourse o f newspapers, for example, varies greatly within itself as it ranges through the quality, popular and tabloid press forms, with a broad range o f report and article types in each. But this medium in its entirety is quite distinct from the range of spoken discourse types, ranging as they do through political speeches to types o f institutional discourse - from educational to medical to legal to business. Then, there is the plethora o f personal conversational and nar­ rative types, which may be purely narrative or elicited in interview contexts. Given this range, the researcher has no choice but to select in terms o f both theoretical base and analytical approach. As an example, we face the contradiction o f taking on board the tools o f conversational analysis, studying turn-taking procedures, interruptions, hesitation phenomena, including hedges and fillers, questions, rep­ etitions and the like, while simultaneously rejecting its overall theoretical position that the text must be studied in isolation from any background information on the speakers and their relationships. The right tools are essential and must be taken up on occasion without reference to the toolbox they are stored in. As the readers proceed, they will find that the precise approach of each discourse analysis chapter varies then, but that it is always explicated in relation to the material to be analysed. Chapter 1 draws on a critical discourse analysis technique devel­ oped by van Dijk (1985, 1991) for analysing newspaper reports. Chapter 2 remains broadly within critical discourse analysis, but applies a forensic linguistics frame (see Gibbons 2003) to the analysis o f a judicial summing up. Chapter 3 works with con­ siderations o f intertextuality and its effects in media discourse specifically, as drawn out in critical discourse analysis by Fairclough (1995; 1998). Chapters 4 and 5 rely

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on critical linguistics, as well as critical discourse analysis, for their analytical tools, and chapter 4 draws on conversational analysis also, involving as it does personal interview data. Further explication o f the approaches may be found in the preamble to part 1 o f the text and within the chapters themselves. The literary analyses draw from the theoretical parameters o f feminism, postco­ lonialism, trauma and shame theory, and their convergence on issues o f representa­ tion. Postcolonial theory offers lenses for understanding colonialism as a system of domination based on terrorism and perpetuated by means o f denigrating ideologies. Fanon (1982) and Jan Mohammed (1995) have explored the impact o f the Manichaean ideologies which undergirded the colonial enterprise o f the Indies, and which encapsulated the epistemological and ontological violence which was pivotal to colo­ nialism and its aftermath. And colonialist fiction was a major plank o f this enterprise. The Manichaean ideology ascribed purity, nobility, order, mastery and beauty to all things white, and servitude, ugliness, disorder and contamination to all things other than white. Jan Mohammed (1995, 23), writing on the colonialist fiction as a pur­ veyor of ideology, shows how the ideology works through a process o f symbiosis: the fiction forms the ideology by “articulating and justifying the positions and aims of the colonialist”. It also seeks to mask the gap between “insistence on the moral inferi­ ority of the other” coupled with the need to rationalize its own barbarity, which leads to an “obsessive insistence o f othering” by constructing a profound moral distance between the self and the other: “Thus the ideological function o f all ‘imaginary’ and some ‘symbolic’ colonialist literature is to articulate and justify the moral authority of the colonizer and - by positing the inferiority of the native as metaphysical fact - to mask the pleasure the colonizer derives from that authority.” Caribbean writers in their bid to take up the master’s tools to dismande the mas­ ter’s house have invested much ink in deconstructing the Manichaean ideology; but, as will be explored subsequently, their own literary products have not been free o f its taint. In practice Manichaean ideologies, in so far as they impinge on contemporary hegemonic and counterhegemonic Caribbean masculinities, continue to shape social interactions today. Feminist perspectives will be deployed to explore the gendered, sexualized nature o f the encounter between worlds and also to explore the New World societies that have been erected subsequently. In the nightmarish sociocultural ethos created by the colonial enterprise, taboos on sexuality and violence were lifted to provide a sense o f infinite possibility and an entire race on which to experiment. Indeed,

Introduction

7

the eroticization o f conquest played itself out in a spate o f bizarre sexualized con­ nections in which racial and gendered hierarchies were asserted through violence. The legacy o f this is inherent in global First-World-to-Third-World leisure industry interchange and is reflected in the contemporary exoticized representations o f the islands, the female body and sex tourism. Caribbean and African American femi­ nists have analysed the overlay o f Western ideologies of gendered power relations and their interplay with transported ancestral norms and contemporary mediabased roles and aspirations. The literary analyses will draw from these insights into the determinants of the social construction o f gender. In terms o f specific frameworks for treating with violence and its aftermath, we draw from the works o f shame and trauma theorists in general and from those theorists and cultural critics who have focused on violence and trauma within disempowered races, classes and genders. The relationship between violence, nar­ ration and therapeutic intervention has been a major issue in trauma and shame theories, which in turn draw heavily from psychoanalysis. Violence can and does generate a range o f traumas. Trauma can be generated by “a threat to life and bodily integrity” or a “close personal encounter with violence and death” (Herman 1997, 33). In threatening scenarios, the body’s sympathetic nervous system gathers its resources for fight or flight. When neither o f these proves viable, the individual is left to deal with a range o f physiological symptoms in memory, cognition and emotions known as post-traumatic stress syndrome. Trauma causes physiological changes in the central and peripheral nervous systems that regulate the whole range o f physiological interactions and body function. According to trauma therapist Judith Herman, post-traumatic stress disorder manifests as three propensities: hyperarousal re-experiencing and numbing o f dissocia­ tion. Persons suffering from post'traumatic stress disorder are subject to hyperarousal o f the fear system, reliving of the stimulus in the form of nightmares, flashback and subtle forms of the system shutting down to avoid sensory overload. This often takes the forms o f partial or complete amnesia or a shutting down in terms of numbing, dissociation and disconnectedness. These responses shape the individual’s sense of identity, memory, thoughts, feelings and experiences. In her explanation o f re-experiencing, Herman indicates that the quality o f trauma disallows one from coming to grips with it in its entirety all at once; hence trauma carries the quality o f “belatedness”. The systems need to relive the trauma in the form o f nightmares and flashback in order to fully grasp what

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has happened. Toni Morrisons elaboration of the sustained trauma that has been the legacy of African Americans lends penetrating insight into collective manifestations o f this phenomenon. Morrisons Beloved (1987) (re)members the collective horror of slavery, which has been subject to amnesia - avoidance of thought and feelings in relation to the event, and hypemesia —intrusive memories of the event - a form o f haunting which intrudes and disrupts the functions o f daily life. Finally, theorists point to the potential o f trauma to give rise to the uncanny alterations o f conscious­ ness akin to living in nightmarish conditions or in a twilight, liminal state. In the case of institutional violence o f slavery, torture, war and sustained domestic violence, the perpetrators o f violence seek to intervene between the persons in order to unmake and remake the self through pain. Scarry (1985) argues that pain exerted in this manner is experienced as power, and its main aim is to unhinge the mind of the victim and to remake the victim in the image which enhances the sense o f the perpetrator s empowerment. The aim is to coerce the victim to comply with the world view o f the torturer, which is inevitably intended to affirm the torturers superiority and entrench a disempowered view o f the self within the victim. The applicability of this notion to other forms o f violence, as reflected within fiction, will be tested within the body of the work. Trauma theorists agree that myriad forces shape the value-processing capability o f any given human being. Persons are biosocial organisms who possess unique genes, personal values and self-structures that mediate the psychosocial reactions to environmental stressors and traumas. Kira (2001) argues that a comprehensive taxonomy o f traumas would yield an understanding o f specific traumatic expo­ sures and rheir impact on human functioning at different stages o f development. Cross-culturally, five factors trigger appraisal o f an event and the activation or inhibition o f cognitive processing. These are attachment, individuation, interde­ pendence, performance and flexibility/survival.3 Woundedness in one or several o f these domains can overlap to heighten the vulnerability and undermine the resilience of individuals and communities: Incest traumas can disturb both identity and autonomy subsystems. Genocide can disturb collective identity, interdependence and survival subsystems. . . . Traumatic or survival threatening experience can shatter the schema, the beliefs, the assumptions and judgements about the self and the world and about the efficacy o f the existing value processing appraisal mechanism that the individual possesses in one or all o f the five areas of functioning. (Kira 2001, 77)

Introduction

9

Predictably, in the wake of the 1980s emphasis on trauma theory and its clini­ cal application to treating war veterans, holocaust survivors, and victims of natural disasters and domestic abuse, there has been an answering interest in literary trauma. (SeeTal 1996 and Brooks Bouson 2000.) In WorUs o f Hurt, Tal presents a persuasive argument for incorporating salient insights proffered by postcolonial, feminist and African American theorists within trauma theory. O f particular relevance to this text will be Toni Morrisons exceptional fictional studies and essays on the impact o f cen­ turies o f oppression on an African American subjectivity which embraces shame and self-contempt like a mantle and erupts in a contemporary culture o f violence which will not be alleviated until its cause is diagnosed and excised from the root. The study recognizes that any attempt to grapple with societal and family vio­ lence must come to terms with interlocking concepts o f power and sexuality and the diverse ways in which these are expressed in the construction o f ethnic, gendered Caribbean identities. It must also grapple with the discursively manifested impact o f ancient norms, as well as contemporary transnational mediascapes and ideologies, on the Caribbean psyche. Below, we examine briefly the backdrop to the current situation o f endemic vio­ lence within Caribbean communities.

SOCIOHISTORICAL BACKGROUND Violence has been woven into the social fabric of modern Caribbean societies from their inception. Caribbean societies have emerged out o f what has been termed “the most violent and destructive forms of the colonizing process” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 1989, 26).4 The decimation of indigenous tribes, successive waves o f human migration, geographical displacement of populations, the institutionalized violence o f African slavery and the only minimally less disruptive and brutal East Indian indentureship, have, in the main, produced the contemporary population of the Caribbean. Caribbean social structure - and more specifically the ideological and social constructs o f gender - is rooted in epistemic and social abuses o f slavery and imperialism. It is within this framework that the current phenomenon o f violence must be under­ stood; for violence does reproduce itself, and there are significant continuities between violence enacted against a society or portion thereof and its reproduction among individuals so brutalized and damaged. As Bendad (1997, 202-3) argues: “Colonialism works through violence and violation.. . . In the colonial project, violence

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is not opposed to reason; rather, it completes colonist logic” by allowing the colonizer to justify dehumanizing practices as fundamental to the civilizing mission. The everyday violence o f slavery had a debilitating effect on the male psyche, for the male was stripped o f his family responsibility, separated from his family in many cases, and unable to provide any form o f support for them given the heinous circumstances o f his oppression (Patterson 1967). Moreover, a key dimension of master-slave power relations involved disempowering the black male through sexual exploitation of/violence against his woman. Mathurin indicates that “legislation or lack of it condoned the mastery o f the white man over the body o f the black women” (1977, 1). Procreation became mere seeding, a symbol o f virility but not o f fidelity, and irresponsibility towards family was enforced. Patterson, writing on the sociology of slavery in Jamaica, argues: Incapable o f asserting his authority either as husband or father, his sexual difference in no way recognised in his work situation by the powerful outgroup, the object o f whatever affection he may possess beaten, abused and often raped before his very eyes, and with his female partner often in close link with the very source o f power in society, it is no wonder that the male slave eventually came to lose all pretensions to masculine pride and to develop the irresponsible parental and sexual attitudes that are found even today. (1967, 167—68)

The African female, in contrast, was obliged to be strong and independent and to expect little in terms o f male support. Indeed, it is argued that a seed of hostility in Afro-Caribbean gender relations was planted during slavery based on the assump­ tions that the black woman was able to trade sexual favours for advantage in the slave plantation. One result was that, after slavery was abolished, she had become well accustomed to single parenting and to the notion o f a man who passed through her home rather than stayed; she expected little o f the male, and he, in turn, lived up to the womans expectations, which had become a self-fulfilling prophesy entailed in the habituated nature o f his existence. The circumstances involved in the making of the “reluctant matriarchs o f the Caribbean” remain hotly debated. Patterns o f female-headed household became entrenched during slavery given the fact that, in the British colonies, slave marriages were disallowed until the late eighteenth century. Until the present day, this scenario persists within lower-strata AfroCaribbean households and beyond, with the father maintaining a visiting relation­ ship with his family or families (Rodman 1971). Barrow, commenting on the failure of the post-emancipation civilizing mission to impose the male breadwinner/female

Introduction

homemaker model on the black post-emancipation family, cites the longevity o f “socio-gender ideologies and practices” and the inaccessibility o f required supporting “material and social resources” (1998a, 38). In the lower-strata urban barrack-yards environment which characterized the postcolonial period, violence was also endemic to the visiting unions which were the dominant pattern o f male-female relations. Literary representations o f this phe­ nomenon speak reams. In C.L.R. James’s barrack-yard narrative “Triumph” (1999), Mamitz lightly dismisses verbal and physical abuse directed by a former lover/keeper: “neither the accusation nor the beating had worried Mamitz. To her and her type these were minor incidents o f existence from their knowledge o f life and men, the kept womans inevitable fate” (p. 32). Moreover, the absolute right o f the male to dis­ cipline his woman was highly respected even by officers o f the law. These assumptions are frequently expressed in calypsoes, which simultaneously reflect and shape cultural ideologies. As Sparrow directs in “Treat Em Rough”, Every now and then cuff them down They’ll love you long and they’ll love you strong Black up their eye, bruise their knee Then they’ll love you eternally

The discourse on the dominant family patterns in Afro-Caribbean history yields a paradoxical interplay between matrifocality and male absenteeism and male domi­ nance. The very perception of the irresponsible, absent father works to potentially further his emasculation within the society. Note though that it has been argued that this perception is inaccurate, and that many Caribbean men are proud fathers who see themselves as providing discipline and financial support, even though they may sometimes fall short o f this ideal (Chevannes 1999). Much responsibility for the perpetuation o f male privilege is ascribed to mothers who - themselves habituated to male underachievement - are said to mould their sons accordingly. Attention is only now being given to this paradox o f male privileg­ ing and the varieties of “toxicities” which it produces (Miller 1991; Brown and Chev­ annes 1993; Figueroa and Handa 1996). In “Male Privileging and Male Academic Underperformance’ in Jamaica” (2004), Figueroa argues that the male supremacist perspective is the outcome o f historic male privilege. This historic male privilege has generated a range o f socializing practices which have ironically led to disadvantageous positions for men; for example, notions of machismo and male virility contribute to

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male exposure to sexually transmitted disease; or the construction o f some academic subjects as soft and ‘ girlish” and an overall devaluation o f education lead to male underachievement. A similar paradox is expressed by Branche, in “Boys in Conflict”, who argues that males expressed violence in relationship “because they were more powerful but also because they were frustrated by the insufficiency o f their power, frustrated by their relative powerlessness” (1998, 197). The Indo-Caribbean family is constituted rather differently, both in history and in present construction. It has been equally ridden by abuse, however, and equally affected by media and popular representation. The early indentured woman, who migrated as an indentee rather than as a wife, was drawn from a pool o f women on the margins o f nineteenth-century Indian society. She enjoyed relative autonomy from traditional patriarchal strictures when she first arrived in Trinidad in 1849; her wage-earning status under indentureship supported this. Indeed, many women who came to both Trinidad and Guyana were expressly seeking their freedom. Pivotal to the subsequent attempt at Indian cultural recon­ struction was the task o f harnessing these women in accordance with traditional patriarchal strictures. Violence was a major plank o f this process. Traditional stric­ tures combined with colonial dictates, the strong forces o f traditional Islam and Hinduism, and the work o f early Christian missionaries to bring women into subjugation (Reddock and Barclay 2000). An image o f the Indian woman as passive, dutiful and subservient was incul­ cated, notwithstanding the fierce resistance o f some, and the man, in contrast, was reinstated as both overlord and master. Endurance o f poverty and violence became a key feature o f the Indian womans existence, precipitated by the very high level o f alcoholism, which arose in the society generally and the male Hindu popula­ tion in particular (Parsad 1999). The womans acceptance o f her position, and the fact that she could find honour and purpose within the role assigned to her, has continued to reconcile her to a positioning that might otherwise have been unten­ able (Mohammed 1993). As Mohammed notes in relation to East Indian women in the twentieth century, “They took pride in carrying out what they saw as their responsibility . . . at times making a virtue o f necessity, at others determining their own goals” (p. 233). As time has elapsed, however, the reconciliation o f their subser­ vient circumstances to their gender rights in a modern world, which is struggling to get beyond specific ethnic boundaries, has created untenable conflict for the present generations (Sampath 1993, 242).

Introduction

13

ADDITIONAL CONTEMPORARY RISK FACTORS FOR VIOLENCE The history o f the region, its deleterious impact on male-female relations, and its present-day precarious position in a globalizing economy all contribute to generating forces which predispose its peoples and societies to violence. These forces include poverty, lack o f education, unemployment and underemployment, inade­ quate housing, homelessness, child abandonment, high levels o f social disorganiza­ tion and social isolation, conflict stress and, o f course, individual pathologies. All of these factors exist, and in some segments o f Caribbean society, they coexist and abound. Barrow (2002, 191), speaking on the impact of macrosocial processes of modernization, industrialism and urbanization, indicates: What evidence we have from the most heavily affected Caribean countries reveals: increasing isolation and homelessness especially among the elderly; the concentration o f women in informal sector income-generating where there is little employment security and virtually no protection by State social security benefits; the double burden o f incomc production and social reproduction, especially among mothers o f younger children; high levels o f unemployment among school leavers in particular; young male involvement in a sub-culture o f street gangs, drugs and violence; a cultural pattern o f early unprotected sex resulting in teenage pregnancy and the spread o f H IV/AIDS infection to youth and female populations; commercial sexual activity involving adolescent girls and the persistence or re-emergence o f child abuse and neglect, child labour and street children.

Poverty Poverty has been a persistent contributor to the problem o f violence, and has been most endemic in rural populations. Agricultural production has not been properly supported and the forces o f globalization and trade liberalization have systematically undermined local production. Poverty affects in particular female-headed households, since women have low levels o f education and a limited range o f marketable skills. Mass migration has been an additional stress on the family unit, with three hundred thousand migrating from Trinidad and Tobago, for example, in the 1980s. Many o f these migrants were women, due to their capacity for slotting readily into the myriad illegal occupations avail­ able in the United States. It is arguable that womens overriding concern in cir­ cumstances o f poverty is to feed their children, whatever it takes, whereas men

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have tended to be overwhelmed by a sense o f emasculation resulting from their incapacity to provide. Some then resort to violent crime to provide for their families and seek refuge in alcohol and drugs as their relationships deteriorate (Babb 1997, 103); this, in turn, exacerbates their violent tendencies within the domestic sphere.

Persistent Cultural Norms Another major contributor to the problem is the continued tacit acceptance o f family violence within Caribbean societies. Within the Indian family structure, rigid gender stereotypes continue to hold sway. Their violation can result in violent retribution, and the continued relative isolation o f the Indian community has contributed to their propensity to settle their problems in their own way. For women, as described above, their role was prescribed for them, and they reconciled themselves to it. Until the 1990s, the Indian woman was objectified in the press, with little representation or voice. Today, this situation is rapidly changing but the opportunities to work outside the home continue to be fewer for the Indian woman, and to be driven often by economic expedience rather than by emancipation. Like many Third World women, Indian female children are now given the right to tertiary education and frequently excel, but even as professionals, they are ultimately expected to make a marriage which is acceptable to their parents and to settle down to the role assigned them by their husbands. Their persistent disempowerment, even today, contributes to the fact that relatively few cases of family violence are reported by Indian women; the majority simply endure. The Rape Crisis Centre in North Trinidad has recently recorded a significandy higher rate of reports from Afro- over Indo-Trinidadians (2003,10), but the statistic may well be misleading, and influenced by geography. Among the results o f extreme violent subjugation are its capacity for rendering the victim not only isolated, but also numbed and incapable of action, locked into a sense of poor self-esteem and even self-blame. Notwithstanding lengthy discourse on ethnocentric applications o f the term dys­ functional to West Indian family forms, the grim reality is that serial polygamy, extra­ marital association and concubinage, which have haunted the Afro-Caribbean sector o f society, still produce their own brand of violence. Within this sector of the popula­ tion, there is the continuing assumption o f the male s absolute right to subjugate and discipline his woman.

Introduction

15

The cultural norms for child socialization continue to endorse severe punishment o f children, including shouting and beating. Parents, influenced by their perceptions o f Biblical injunctions, administer severe punishment for relatively minor infrac­ tions. McKenzie and McKenzie (1971) point to three probable causative factors. First, they suggest that children may be perceived as naturally prone to “extreme naughtiness” rather than goodness and, therefore, stand in need of “harsh restraint”; second, adults, in seeking emotional warmth and support from children, are prone to judge their childish misdemeanours harshly; and third, domestic and social cir­ cumstances can generate “parental tensions” and an “underlying ambivalence which expressed itself in great rage triggered by minor childish misbehaviour” (p. 17). In recent years, the Trinidad and Tobago activists Women Working for Social Progress have aggressively campaigned against corporal punishment in homes and schools, connecting harsh physical punishment meted out to children to the sustenance o f a culture committed to violence.5

Legislation In terms of legislative intervention, Trinidad and Tobago has made substantial progress. The Trinidad and Tobago Domestic Violence Act of 1991 was designed to curb the high levels of violence in the community at large, but it immediately met with varied forms of resistance, which included a severe spate of wife-killings. It was the first such legislation to be adopted in the Commonwealth Caribbean, and from the outset, male leaders were defensive. Basdeo Panday, then the leader of the opposition in Parliament, declared that the male psyche was such that the man would (understandably) “lose his cool” if forbidden to enter his own house - this in response to the possibility of restraining orders being properly instituted (quoted in Haniff 1999, 25). A male psychiatrist was quoted in the press as saying: “Women are not behaving in the best interest o f their families” but rather “provoking violent responses from men” (Yawching 1992, quoted in Haniff 1999, 25; our emphasis). Although the impact o f this legislation has yet to be studied systematically, the common perception is it may not have alleviated the situation very much. In a recent discussion of the effects o f the act with a police officer, we were told that the act had really exacerbated the problem in some ways, particularly when men were constrained to leave their homes and were unable to reconcile themselves to this state o f affairs. Protection orders sometimes require the male to surrender his

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home to his wife and children, a circumstance for which he has not been prepared psychologically or culturally. Female commentary on this period o f time, following from the act being passed in 1991 (Haniff 1999, 26), records a general absence o f male support for the female situation, and a male disapproval expressed through “violence and silence”. Overall, there has been a very high rate of abuse since that time, with eighty domestic killings recorded in a period o f nine years (1990-1999) and ten thousand applications for protection orders. In addition, the clause that allowed a woman to bring a charge against her husband for rape was subsequently revoked after much heated debate, and the rate o f dismissal o f cases has remained very high: it was 75 per cent between 1991 and 1993. It is arguable that it is not enough to change laws when the minds o f men do not change, and chapter 2 in this volume reveals an interesting test case o f this mindset dilemma. Clarke (1997, 60) has recently made the point that “inter­ vention by the justice system should be empowering to women rather than acting to perpetuate their oppression” and names judges, magistrates and lawyers among those professionals in need o f training.

Changing Gender Constructs The problem has been further exacerbated since the early 1990s by much discussion o f male marginalization (for discussion articles, see Barriteau 2000; Lindsay 2002). At a time when women are increasingly highly profiled due to their level of edu­ cational success and their venturing into a number o f previously male-dominated occupational preserves, complex arguments have been put forward to explain male “underachievement” (for example, Miller 1991) particularly from an Afro-Caribbean perspective. In some ways, the labels are themselves misnomers, for men continue to hold the top positions in the working sphere, women continue to be less well paid and more underemployed, and numbers in tertiary-level education continue to be guided by gender perceptions of “male” and “female” subjects (Chevannes 1999), and by a male penchant for career types that do not fall within the academic sphere (Figueroa 2000). Figueroa notes: “the evidence shows that it is the readiness o f girls and women to be flexible and adjust their identities that has enabled them to benefit from new opportunities” (2000, 9). But the effect in terms o f hostility towards women has been severe, since women are perceived to be stealing jobs from men and further undermining them. A letter to

Introduction

17

the editor o f the Trinidad Guardian (10 November 1996, quoted in Lindsay 2002, 66) typifies the popular concern: I am 22 years old, unemployed . . . on Tuesday October 21 there is [a] headline which says: Women get 5500 morejobs than men. Sir, are men now going to stay at home and take care o f the children, cook, wash and clean? Are men not qualified for the jobs given to women? What is the reason for this new trend?. . . Would someone say by the year 2000 what would be the position with employment for men?

This letter shows the insidious effect o f newspaper headlines on the popular mind; the headline takes no account whatever o f the types o f jobs in which women are employed, but merely escalates the insecurity o f the male under the threat o f a sup­ posed female ascendancy. All in all, the “job threat” and the “education threat” are added to womans increased legal status and right o f redress for abuse, as evidence o f a feminist-driven move for women to take control. Indeed, many o f the measures intended to enhance the position o f women are being interpreted as generating male marginalization in themselves, as a result o f which this factor has been added to the list o f causes of spiralling patterns o f domestic violence (Morgan and Gopaul 1998). Violence is an inevitable result o f extreme male insecurity. In a study of male views carried out by the Rape Crisis Society o f Trinidad and Tobago in 1993, men readily expressed their concern that the education and working sectors were hostile to their interests, and that it was “only through the sex act that they are able to display power over women” (Babb 1997, 107). What our discussion so far indicates is that until recently, there was an accepted male ascendancy both within the family and within society at large. The closing o f the gender gap has produced male defensiveness and a very real concern for male marginalization. One hundred years ago, women had no rights in law, no vote and little access to education, except at a rudimentary level, learning little beyond “domestic” subjects. They were their husbands’ properties, and they themselves had no right to own property, they had no legal rights to guardianship and custody o f their children, no protection from domestic violence, and they had very little access to work outside the domestic sphere - which, however varied, was consid­ ered nonwork. It has been the closing o f the gap quite rapidly that has given rise to talk o f female ascendancy and a “wicked” and “overaggressive” feminism. The male has perceived himself as severely threatened as Caribbean women are accom­ plishing more at every level and have taken over in numerical ascendancy in every faculty o f the University of the West Indies, save for engineering. Men have always

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had more access to education and may therefore take it for granted. In addition, the machismo male image does not dovetail with rigorous academic study. Women, on the other hand, have adapted well to new levels o f access to education, new subject areas and additional responsibilities both within and outside the home. This very drive towards education and careers on the part o f the female is viewed negatively by a male population steeped in traditional ideologies. While men recognize the need for an additional income in the home, they feel ambivalent about the overall effects: “When my wife started to work, she got arrogant and independent. She had her own money now and she could buy what she wanted and pay to go where she wanted. I didn’t feel too good. As a matter o f fact, I felt threatened as a man” (quoted in Barrow 1998a, 43). St Bernard has drawn attention to the disparity between male and female perspec­ tives on the aspirations and social roles of women. Male adherence to more traditional expectations holds much potential for familial conflict. He notes: “Contemporane­ ously, a new social order is emerging and prescribing new rules including the need to promote and ultimately adopt more egalitarian relations as a key facet determining the survival o f the family as a social institution” (1998, 183).

CO N CLU SIO N I he contemporary scenario is marked by what appears to be spiralling patterns of violence against women notwithstanding their move towards liberating themselves. In summary, causative factors as discussed above include • a history of violence woven into the very fabric o f society at all levels; • the persistence o f entrenched traditional views o f gender roles; although these gender prescriptions vary in different pockets o f society, there is a common propensity for males in every social sector to resort to violence to maintain the status quo; • persistent poverty and economic pressure; • female shift into the public workplace and into the educational sphere; • government, legal and private initiatives to come against the oppres­ sion o f women; and • media and popular cultural expression which largely support the culture o f violence. It is in response to these issues that we write this text.

Introduction

19

Writing Rage contextualizes family violence in the Caribbean within its broader sociohistorical and geopolitical frame. It proceeds on the assumption that the root o f the problem to be dealt with lies at once in the colonial past and in the postcolonial, globalizing present; at once in the forces o f historical circumstance and in present-day social problems; at once in the society at large and in individuals working out their life issues without any broader awareness; at once in the institutions of the time and in the discourse which supports them. Ultimately, as the text will proceed to illustrate, the density o f the violence explored, the intricate cause-and-effect linkages and the inexorability with which international, ideological and global forces continue to churn out catalysts of vio­ lence combine to make the problem seem larger than life. In the chapters which follow, we engage the specificities o f each issue, grapple with its broader connections, tease out potential for change and celebrate the power o f an aesthetic sensibility to order chaos, illuminate connections, tame violent eruptions and, perchance, even anaesthetize traumatic pain.

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Preamble

Discourses of institutions and of media are our means of societal expression; narrative discourses o f personal import are our means o f self-actualization and represen­ tation. To understand humanity, we must understand discourse. It helps us to “answer questions about social relations such as dominance and oppression and solidarity . . . [and] is useful in the study of personal identity and social identification” (Johnstone 2002, 7). Very often it is the case that the “proofs” o f abuse are hard to come by, but they emerge in discourse if we examine it closely; very often too there is a healing in the discursive telling o f an event which cannot be accessed by any other available route. At the same time, the complex representation o f events and circumstances by different media and government agencies can often shroud events and motivations in the perspectives of their agents, complicating and distorting an already complex picture. Part 1 of our text starts with a chapter on the press depiction of a murder trial and the subsequent appeals against the murder conviction imposed on a battered wife. It shows the way in which the press shifted its perspective in time in their depiction o f the woman and her actions, and considers the effects o f these shifting depictions on society at large. The specific approach taken to analysis o f the article is informed by an approach taken by van Dijk (1985, 1991, 1992) to media discourse, in which

he drew attention to the extent to which our world knowledge is determined by the news reports which we take in daily. While the reporter has an individual perspective, it is influenced by societal and institutional views to which he is exposed. The audi­ ence in turn receives its world view from its own social-psychological perspective, this too determined by the body o f knowledge, attitude and feeling it brings to interpreta­ tion o f the message. In the case in question, we are left to consider how the slanted representation o f a murder trial is received by a male audience already grappling with immediate threats to its entrenched traditional masculine roles. The next chapter treats with the same case at an institutional level, considering the judiciary’s summing up in the appeal trial o f the case and bringing out falla­ cious elements within it. Lazarus-Black (2002) has drawn attention to the ways in which the Caribbean domestic violence courts enforce what she calls “rites o f domination” on those passing through them. As forensic linguistics has developed as a field, more and more attention has come to focus on inequities o f law which are perpetuated through language used in the law courts (Gibbons 2003). We cannot ignore the argumentation put across by those who are set above us as upholders o f right and justice. We do not apportion blame, for judges are scapegoats o f the very institutions they serve too, but when they exhibit bias, it is worth our noting, because o f the trust we have in them to maintain justice through their purview. Chapter 3 examines two newspaper feature articles, one written by a male jour­ nalist, the other by a female psychologist, and each purportedly endeavours to bring reconciliation to the gender issues surrounding domestic violence. The discourse o f the two writers is analysed for the complexity o f its ideological positioning, and this is considered again for its impact on society at large. In this paper, we focus particularly on the discursive device known as intertextuality, as it is manipulated more or less ethically by the two writers in question. Intertextuality exploits the linkages between current events and past ones by building on them through more or less overt means. The society may share both past and present events but may be affected now by the reconstruction of those events by the writer in question. Complex linkages are built up by association. Current considerations o f intertextuality owe much to the work and views o f Fairclough (1995). Chapters 4 and 5 treat with a personal interview and a series o f oral narratives, delivered in interviews and subsequendy committed to written form. They have a dif­ ferent focus from the earlier chapters, aiming to explicate their storytellers situations, and their means of overcoming them through reconstruction of circumstances and self.

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These two chapters call on the combined theoretical frames of both critical and poststructuralist discourse analysis. Chapter 4 analyses the personal narrative o f a police officers wife, as she relates her experience as an abused wife o f seventeen years and endeavours to make not only the telling but also the experience coherent to both her interviewer and also, perhaps, herself. Her account is analysed to focus on the potential problems o f the families o f law enforcement agents, forcing us to engage with issues with which we have previously not treated. Since the narrative is an oral one, related to an interviewer, it draws on both conversational analysis and critical linguistics. The former analyses spontaneous features o f spoken interaction which indicate the sys­ tematic way in which speakers regulate the relational dynamic. The latter applies our understanding o f grammatical relations to the arrangement o f thinking which they display, for example, the nonagency of a passive structure as it establishes an act accomplished without apportioning responsibility to an individual. These tools enable us to derive much more meaning from a stream o f speech than the words alone provide; their arrangement and the conversational supports with which they are embellished manifest the positioning of the speaker. Finally, a series o f personal narratives of Haitian women, captured by Beverly Bell in her text Walking on Fire (2001), ends the section with a critical analysis which brings out the close interplay of domestic with societal violence, and with the ulti­ mate power o f overcoming inherent in the women and in the human spirit. It is a chapter which confronts the ideological clash, central to critical discourse analysis, between the empowered and the disempowered, for the women at once exhibit a keen sense of their own “nothingness” before men and Haitian society, but simulta­ neously redefine themselves as the life force in that society creating multiple means o f resistance and overcoming. Poststructuralist discourse analysis comes into its own in this chapter since we see the women reconstructing their situation in the course of the narratives and ultimately emerging as victors despite their continued oppres­ sion. The power o f the disempowered to come back against their situation is more the focus and concern o f poststructuralist discourse analysis than o f critical discourse analysis, which sees relations as more fixed. It is fitting to end the section on such a note o f hope.

Part One

23

CHAPTER I ... ________ W ho Decides Guilt? Press Coverage of a Murder Trial

I pause To ease the load Take a rest A quiet inbreathe Love a little Nurture myself Battered All these years Struggling Struggling physically Struggling mentally Struggling emotionally Its not apathy I just want to ease the load And take a rest Close my eyes for a minute - Lillian Allen, “Its Not Apathy”

INTRODUCTION Mhis chapter discusses the press depiction of the trial o f three persons accused o f the 1992 murder o f an abusive husband in Trinidad and Tobago. The murder trial had been represented in the press, specifically in a series o f news reports in Newsdayy the Trinidad Express and the Trinidad Guardian, at two distinct points in time. The first was at the time of the death penalty being imposed on the wife o f the deceased in 1995; and the second at the time o f that sentence being commuted to one o f five years’ further imprisonment in 1999. In the four years between the trials, the press as a whole seemed to shift its opinion on the basis of global opinion, turning from implicit condemnation o f the wife to measured sympathy with her. There was an apparent shift too in the attitude o f the power elite, including the judici­ ary, although chapter 2 following indicates the perpetuation o f certain entrenched attitudes even at that level. We know that the influence o f the media in shaping the opinion o f their readers/ listeners is considerable, but we need to consider further also the potential effects o f what van Dijk (1992, 4) isolates as, “Rejection, disbelief, criticism or other forms o f resistance or challengen (our emphasis) which “may be involved” and may “signal modes o f counterpower”. It is arguable that even apparently enlightened journalism can be problematic when it is out o f step with the opinion o f its readership. For a so-called Third World country in an era o f globalization, there may be a process in which a divided country becomes more divided, as parts, but not all, o f its population conform more or less to First World opinion. The precise role o f media discourse in shaping opinion and counteropinion is discussed in some detail below. A major aim o f this discussion is to advocate that the press should act more responsibly in its role as a major shaper o f the ideological systems o f its readers.

BACKGROUND Violence and gender violence in particular are now perceived as “particularly endemic” in the most southerly Caribbean twin-island state o f Trinidad and Tobago (UN Report January 2000). Some 84 per cent of women recently sur­ veyed (CAFRA 1998) perceived that violence against women was prevalent in the country. On 9 March 1999, the Trinidad Guardian reported: “ Domestic Violence:

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80 killed in nine years” and quoted the minister o f social development as reporting this figure alongside more than ten thousand applications for protection orders in the same period. All this in a country with a total population o f 1.4 million. The situation has been legislated since 1991, when the Domestic Violence Act was passed and supports including a telephone hodine, drop-in centres and outreach were instituted. The passing o f this act followed a period o f tremendous activism on the part o f womens groups throughout the Caribbean region. It legally instituted a system whereby spouses and their children could apply to the magistrates court for support (Reddock and Barclay 2000, 66). When separate periods o f application for protection are examined, the figures are found to be higher than those quoted in the press: 8,297 applications for protection orders in 1991-1996; 5,042 applications for the period September 1998-July 1999 alone. Alongside this intense appeal for support, however, comes the recognition that “implementation is fettered by the over-burdened court system and the inability o f the courts to deal with complaints in as speedy a manner as contemplated by the framers o f the legislation” (p. 74). Cases may be adjourned indefinitely, and often, untrained personnel dissuade women from filing applications. The general tolerance o f domestic violence in Caribbean societies continues to the extent that the vast majority o f cases remain unreported despite major legislative change. In addition, while the new legislation makes provision for counselling and even mediation, the actual services available are very limited. The victims o f domestic violence have been assessed overall as coming primarily from the lower-income group and both the majority ethnic groups, namely Indoand Afro-Trinidadian. Those who are unemployed or have no income are reportedly at higher risk, as well as those in households in which alcoholism exists (p. 45). While the majority o f repons are cases of domestic violence, the period 19941997 witnessed an increase in stranger rape from 24 per cent to 41 per cent, so that the figure was almost equal to acquaintance rape in 1997, suggesting that the “public sphere had become more hostile to women” (p. 32). This is worth mentioning because o f a concern that the increased violence is arguably reactive to media repre­ sentation of the increasing autonomy o f women, their incursion into male enclaves, and their improved performance in education. The visibility o f womens groups and womens issues generally is greater and, correspondingly, there is a renewed concern for what has generally been dubbed “male underachievement” or, alternatively, “male marginalization” (Miller 1991, most particularly). Though Millers thesis is not gen­ erally supported (for full discussion see Barriteau 2000) his work is often referred to

W h o Decides Guilt?

27

and accepted as fact in the media. The profiling o f female encroachment on male spheres is slanted in several ways; in particular, it accepts a natural male ascendancy in most spheres as normative, and it fails to recognize that women remain underpaid in almost every sector, despite often having higher educational qualifications than men (UN Report 2000, 16). The kinds o f discussion article produced on these matters may often exacerbate the problem by misrepresenting female positioning in the situ­ ation (for example, Bukka Rennies article o f 11 October 1999, which is discussed in chapter 3 o f this volume). In the midst o f the crisis of representation depicted above, the murder case in question erupted. It involved a young woman who had left home at age seventeen to be with a man who had apparendy threatened to destroy the parental family and their home if she did not agree to live with him. Between 1980 and 1991, she bore this man five children, and was perpetually beaten and restricted in movement. She finally left with her two youngest children in 1991, despite reported concern and guilt for having left the three older ones behind. The murder o f her common-law husband was perpetrated by her new male friend and his accomplice in her presence, after the husband had forced her to return to their home, and imprisoned and brutal­ ized her repeatedly for a week. During this time, she had purportedly appealed to the new friend to take her away from the situation. Ultimately, the case was remitted on the basis o f her being diagnosed as suffering from battered wife syndrome. Before discussing the way in which the press handled the case in question, it is necessary to consider in more detail the analytical approach to be taken to it.

METHODOLOGY The discussion which follows rests broadly within the framework o f critical dis­ course analysis, considering on this occasion how power and agency are not only depicted, but also worked out for readers through reportage o f events presented to them in the newspapers. The study assumes that discourse may reproduce and even construct social inequalities and distorted perspectives and goes further to show how this process is worked out in the immediate context o f news-reporting o f a particular incident. In the case in question, the issue is that o f one womans culpability before the law, an issue on which the press shifted its position in time, creating a tension between itself and a male chauvinistic public. The study considers how specific discourses represent reality and in so doing contribute to

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the relative persistence o f particular ideologies which may support the views o f the powers that be. What is ultimately understood of a textualized event is derived from the writer’s model of it (van Dijk 1991, 117). The writer chooses to describe an event with more or less assumed knowledge as to what the audience already knows o f it, and the writers model is based on social cognitions, which are characteristics o f group understandings and may well be based on prejudiced ideology. These social cogni­ tions allow us “to relate discourse and speakers with social structure and culture” (p. 119). Ultimately van Dijk shows that “models and social cognitions are, so to speak, the interface between text and context” (p. 119). It is worth noting that Wodak (1996) has elaborated an approach to the relation­ ship between text and context, which she calls discourse sociolinguistics. Through this approach, she has been able to assess further what the reader/listener in turn derives from a text. Following from the work o f van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) she notes, with regard to text comprehension, that The predisposition o f each reader/listener is defined in the light o f their individual schema-oriented prior knowledge, with regard to contextual, cognitive associations, knowledge o f the formal structure o f the text genre news and emotional attitude towards

the information transmitted through the news and its significance to the individual's own lifestyle. . . the more marked a precise contextual, cognitive schema in a reader/listener, the more precisely and explicitly can further processing be controlled. (Wodak 1996, 114; our emphasis)

On examining listener responsiveness to a news text she found that class was the most salient factor affecting comprehension, with the middle class ahead of the lower class in comprehension. Newspaper readers have been shown to be able to give an idea o f a “topic” that they have read or heard about. Generally though, in reporting, there is a tendency to take from a text what is “relevant or important for us” (van Dijk 1985, 75). However, Wodak notes that even middle-class listeners’ impressions are vague and confused, and they come away, ultimately, with an impression rather than a clear understanding. The tendency towards emotional responses is stronger among working-class informants, who do not hesitate to give their own opinion. They are described as 'waitingfor thosepieces ofinformation that conform to their own prejudices” (1996, 128; our emphasis). In dealing with the specifics o f text itself, we keep in mind that much of the infor­ mation within it is more implicitly than explicitly represented. Style selected is the

W ho Decides Guilt?

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reflection o f a choice among alternative ways o f expressing the same facts, within which the choice o f vocabulary and syntax may be subconsciously selected but emotionally loaded. On the one hand, vocabulary is selected for its particular connotations, for example, “husband killer”, while on the other, syntax allows individuals to be more or less responsible for their actions, as, for example, in the selection o f the passive rather than active mood. The very selection o f facts also slants our perspective on an event. Consider, for example, the following, which is further explicated in the analysis: “The daughter o f a woman accused o f murdering her husband was asked by her mother to soak up the blood in the bedroom and not tell anyone” ( Trinidad Express, 11 May 1995). In the selec­ tion o f this detail o f the daughters “task” and its presentation in the passive voice, we get a keen representation o f the wicked mother involving her child as accomplice in the deception that was being perpetrated, even in relation to her own father. We are told about the agency o f the mother but are focused first on the daughters being inveigled into the action. The clear implication o f the statement is: “What manner o f woman is this, who would engage her daughter in such a heinous endeavour?” The focus o f newspaper articles in Trinidad and Tobago shifts over time. During 1999, Trinidad and Tobago experienced an intense spate o f newspaper coverage o f domestic violence. Over a three-month period during which we fol­ lowed coverage emphases, there was a report o f domestic violence daily in at least one of the three main newspapers in the country. These articles were sometimes found on the front page, even in the so-called quality press, since there had been an overall shift in the press at that time to a tabloid style, apparently determined by a desire to capture a falling market. Characteristic features o f the presentation of these incidents were pictures, most usually of the female victims of the abuse, direct quotations from the family or from involved neighbours, and lurid detail o f the crimes committed. In addition, increas­ ing reference was made to the male perpetrators as being frustrated in love by their female partners. It seems to have been that domestic violence was the topic o f the time, with a particular focus on the familial relations involved and the love triangles exposed. By 2003, the daily focus had become a much wider sweep o f crime and violence, with kidnapping being our particular daily concern. It would be interesting indeed to compare the crime rate with other countries and to assess whether Trinidad and Tobagos rate is indeed higher.

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We need to consider the discourse structure o f news reports in the press, and this need takes us back to van Dijk (1985), who sought to establish a schematic structure for news discourse in a similar way to that in which Labov and Waletsky (1967) and Labov (1972) had done earlier for oral narratives. He recognized the need for the establishment o f formal schemata governing news discourse, into which the semantic content is inserted in very particular ways. There is a telling fit between the semantic element o f the text and its formal structure: the category o f Headline in a news discourse has a fixed form and position in news items in the press. At the same time, this Headline has a very specific thematic function: it usually expresses the most important topic o f the news item. We see that themes and schemes . . . are closely related, (van Dijk 1985, 69)

News clearly also has a “relevance structure” with the heaMines expressing neces­ sarily the most important segment of the news item (van Dijk 1985, 70). Not only does the headline give a topic, but it does so in a subjective way. Many different headlines for the same event are possible. Yet, it is what the reader sees immediately. It gives one a particular perspective, and it is on this basis and through this filter that one reads further or does not. The lead[ in turn, is critical for providing an encapsulated interpretation which further constrains the processing of the topic. Readers abstract a topic on the basis o f an initial reading, which may amount to just headline and lead (van Dijk 1991, 114-15). They crystallize the perspective o f the writer but this perspective will be received differently dependent on the perspective of the reader. The headline and lead may be appropriate and accurate or biased, but they constitute the essential information fed to the public. They are “used as expedient signals to make effective guesses about the most important information o f the text. Note however that they express the macrostructure o f the writer. . . : the reader may infer a different thematic structure, depending on his/her own beliefs and attitudes” (van Dijk 1985, 77). This subset stands apart from the actual news story and is quite often the only part o f the article which a busy consumer actually reads. We must be aware that, beyond this initialization o f the text, there is customarily a main event which is presented to the audience first in the body o f the text; in some cases there may be several of these main events, particularly where one is consequen­ tial on another- There is also background, which may be provided to explicate the main event, whether that background be historical, focused on previous events or

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other contextual circumstances; it places the main event(s) in a particular context. Finally, there may be some level of comment by the writer on the events depicted (van Dijk 1985, 86-87). The following discussion is focused mainly on headlines and leads in the press depic­ tion of the murder trial in question, with some attention given to the selection o f detail for coverage in the reports themselves. We must be aware that beyond the main event, detail is optionally chosen by the writer to draw attention to those related aspects o f the story which is being told, and both the selection process and the style adopted for its representation are key to the impression o f “reality” with which the reader walks away

THE STUDY The N e w s R eports The portions of text analysed are all taken from the Trinidad Express newspaper as it reported on the murder trial o f Indravani Ramjattan (sometimes referred to as Aisha or Pamela), who was accused, along with her new partner and his friend, o f the murder of her husband. As noted earlier, the reports are taken from two time periods: May 1995, the time of the initial trial and sentence, and October 1999, the time o f the appeal. In early 1995, there were actually four cases of females killing their abusive partners passing through the courts. Domestic violence had escalated to a crisis level, but, as will become evident from our discussion, there were double standards at work, such that a “husband killer” - a term used often in the press o f the time - was somehow depicted as far more culpable than a “wife killer” (in fact, this equivalent terminology was never recorded). Additionally, the causal link raised by the media between encroaching female autonomy and male violence seems to have been more a feature of press coverage than a reality in itself, since the majority o f abused victims were unemployed outside the home and quite disempowered by eco­ nomic dependency. After the analysis of the texts themselves, their potential effects in the lethal public atmosphere identified are discussed. Text Is 11 May 1995 D EFEN CE BIDS TO STOP DAUGHTER'S EVIDENCE The daughter o f a woman accused o f murdering her husband was asked by her mother to soak up the blood in the bedroom and not to tell anyone.

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The example above represents the headline and first paragraph in the text, whose main content details the prosecutions representation (hearsay) o f what the daughter o f the accused will reveal, and ends with a statement to the effect that the defence o f the accused had moved to disallow the girls testimony. As noted earlier, both the selection of facts for foregrounding and their representation are noteworthy. For the headline, the attempt to withhold evidence, which, within the body o f the report constitutes only the very last paragraph in the description o f the proceedings, is selected for main focus. It is apparently selected for use with the expectation that the readers' understanding o f legal practice will be such as to cause them to believe that the daughters testimony will be extremely damaging to her mother, to the extent o f her counsels taking steps to have it prevented. It is thus that newspapers may build up solidarity between themselves and their audiences (Fairclough 1995, 71); the more everyday vocabulary o f the newspaper representation brings the legal frame into clearer focus for the readers and thereby into a mesh o f shared understandings with the newspaper. These become a tool in the manipulative process. The headline in question is immediately followed in the first paragraph by a summary statement of what it is claimed the mother compounded her crime by —asking her daughter to mop up the bloody mess with the additional burden on her o f “not telling anyone”. In the single-sentence paragraph, the passive structure focuses on the daughter as acted upon by the mother, highlighting her as the passive victim of her mothers demand. The mother is mentioned as the actor, not very usual in a passive structure, which more readily leaves the agent/actor unspecified, and this feature, by its very markedness, highlights her involvement. The function o f the passive voice as a thematic device for particular focusing effect is spelt out in most English grammars (for example, Huddleston 1991). Furthermore, we may note that the entire incident is presented as fact: the mother is only “accused” o f the “murder” but yet we are told the daughter “was asked” definitively to clean up the blood. We have not yet heard the daughter s evidence, much less tested it. Text 2: 25 May 1995 “HOSTAGE” WIFE TAKES STAND “I loved both o f them - the wife beater and the gentleman” While her husband was being beaten to death and his body wrapped in a sheet, murder accused, Indravani Ramjattan, said she just looked on, shocked and scared.

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The headline in the second report is fringed by a photograph o f the accused in the courtroom and by the repetition o f the detail previously focused on, that she asked her daughter to clean up the blood because she was scared. The photograph shows her neat, calm and in control. When it was taken and whether it was a current accurate representation of the woman are left in question. The visual image presented is undoubtedly damaging in itself for the reader is left to assume that in the midst o f this intensely traumatic experience, the wife remains calm and comfortable. We may refer to Caldas-Coulthard (2003, 279), when she considers the representations carried by visual media: “Photographs, they say, do not lie, but how the photographer edits reality through his or her own point o f view is another matter.” The next print item to draw our attention is the quotation marks framing “hostage”, which suggest for the reader immediately that the wife may not have been a hostage at all. It is always pert labels that we so frame; anything that is established and accepted fact would not be so marked. As soon as an individual chooses to challenge a label, he or she frames it in this way and thus call it into question for the reader. Then we are given a quotation, apparently attributed to the wife, that she loved the two men concerned. If we stop to consider carefully, no woman would refer to her abusive husband impersonally as “the wife beater” but direct speech, as signaled by quotation marks again, attributes the statement to her. Similarly the use o f the term “gentleman” for her lover may subtly bias the reader against her in its irony. Does a gentleman kill his lovers husband? we are being asked. How can this woman call her husband s killer a gentleman? This kind o f voice manipulation is a key feature of media discourse (Fairclough 1995, 79). There is a further appeal to the reading audi­ ence here, for our credulity is being stretched to imagine first, how one woman could truly love two men at the same time, and second, should she indeed love them both, how she could be involved in killing one o f them. It is arguable too, that the label “husband” is deliberately used here to condemn the woman. It sounds wicked to “look on” while one s “husband” is killed; he might as readily have been labelled “abuser” but with very different effect. It stretches the bounds o f possibility further to suggest that a person can “look on” while someone they “love” is being murdered. This inaction in itself makes her responsible for the victims death. Structurally, the passive voice is used in the lead to focus on the husband as victim: “while her husband was being beaten to death and his body wrapped in a sheet”. In contrast: “ [the] murder accused . . . said she just looked on, shocked and scared” . Though semantically there is a focus on the inaction o f

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the wife, the structure used is active, signifying that the very inaction is damnable action. The use o f the word “said”, however, suggests an untruth in itself: it is not that “she looked on, shocked and scared” but that she “said” she did. Could anyone really just look on in such circumstances, and if one did, what did that really indicate? Again here we see complex manipulation in the wording o f the report. The writer appeals to the readers understanding o f what is credible by a deceptive mixing o f assumed factuality with questionable testimony. There can be little doubt that the writers in these two articles are highlighting material which explicitly and implicitly is likely to bring judgement against the accused in a public which knows nothing of the numbing effects o f battered wife syndrome. A further detail o f interest is that in the listing o f the three accused in the article, Ramjattan is consistently listed first, although she clearly played the least active part in the killing. Some time passed during which Indravani Ramjattan remained on death row at the Port of Spain Jail. Her case attracted considerable international focus in a global atmosphere which increasingly questions capital punishment; specifically, perhaps ironically, it has been questioned more for women than for men. When the case finally came back to court there was new evidence and a different term had been brought into play to describe her condition. Texts 3, 4 and 5: October 1999 INDRAVANI RAMJATTAN M URDER APPEAL Court to consider “battered wife syndrome” Thus reads the new headline at the start o f October 1999. Once again here we have the trial scene in focus, but now new evidence is introduced in quotation marks once more, clearly questioning the validity o f the syndrome being mentioned, on the publics behalf. Here, the journalistic middle position intercedes between the reader and the medical system. On the one hand, the medical jargon is presented but, on the other, the quotation marks question it. In October 1999, there had been an appeal to the Privy Council, which was turned down, but we are told as we read on that fresh evidence has been brought in through the assessment o f an “England-based” psychiatrist that Ramjattan “suffered from ‘battered wife syndrome’ ” and “might not have been responsible for any part she played in Jordans death”. The article also tells us that “ Ramjattan s plight has

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attracted a lot of attention abroad from womens and human rights organizations.” Now we have more neutrality, no boldfaced first paragraph, just a question as to whether the accused was suffering from the syndrome in question. It is as if the writer himself has not decided at this stage which way to go. On 8 October, a new tone is set by the appeal courts having reduced the convic­ tion to manslaughter and the sentence to five years. The headline now reads simply: TO RTURED FOR 11 YEARS For the first time the victimization is not questioned by quotation marks: “Tortured” stands for itself. The inset is a different photograph from the one used in 1995, showing the accused wide-eyed and sad, not composed and calm, hardly recognizable as the same person on camera in text two. The news item now focuses on the reaction o f the chief justice in court to her real situation: C h ief Justice Michael de la Bastide expressed concern yesterday over violence against women. He acknowledged that Indravani Ram jattan was tortured by her common-law husband Alexander Jordan. . . . It is a phenomenon we are very conscious about. It has become endemic in our society and is a blot on the men in society.

His name and statement give the necessary authority to the change in position, reflected in the remitted sentence. In paragraph four we are told that the sen­ tence has been remitted to five years. Immediately following, however, we are told that she was pregnant with her new male friends child and following this again, we are provided with a statement from the chief justice to say that the course o f action which she had taken could not be condoned. Finally, we are reminded o f her involving her eleven-vear-old daughter in the affair. The sobriety o f the chief justices dealing with the matter is made manifest, but we might question why both he and the writer chose to mention the womans pregnant condition imme­ diately following from the statement o f remittal o f sentence. The arrangement o f the report gives us a sense that the reader is deliberately being focused on the wife’s misdemeanours and ultimate culpability. A feature article follows underneath this news report, however, detailing, for the first time, the history o f Ramjattans relationship with her dead partner in chrono­ logical sequence. The detail o f her conditions of living, as presented at the start o f this chapter, are drawn from this article; they had not previously been included as

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relevant background material in any o f the previous trial discussion, however. For the first time in the press, we hear Ramjattans own voice: He said he will kill me if I left, because he did not want me to live with anyone else and I could not leave the children. The last time 1 had to have a lot o f courage to leave. . . . I cried all the time because I missed my oldest children. . . . I felt guilty for them.

We are then provided with some detail o f the abuse perpetrated against her, includ­ ing choking, isolation, beating and death threats. None of this has been brought to our attention before. We are then told what the consultant psychiatrist had elicited from Ramjattan concerning how she felt. For the first time the description o f her own oppression is given credence in its ascription to the consultant psychiatrist in his report and diagnosis: “The abuse made her feel like a child being beaten by her father. She felt she was not worth anything and hated herself. . . . She had not told anyone about her abuse, had not sought medical help and hid her injuries. All she could think about was day-to-day survival.” Suddenly, then, Ramjattan is given a voice, as well as an appealing visual image, and we are told how she felt through the credible other voice o f the consultant psychiatrist as presented for us in more popular language by the news report voice. And the voice o f overall authority and reason, that o f the chief justice, presides. A complex intertextual chain then marks some shift in positioning across the power structures entailed. Another report, also on 8 October, has the following headline: INDRAVANI WILL N O T HANG CJ Condemns Animal Behaviour in Men The “murderess” has become “ Indravani” ; we are suddenly on first name terms with her. Why this sudden familiarity? She is being reconstructed as our friend. What we notice about the subheadline also, however, is that the chief justice is reported as having condemned men in general so that there has been a shift from “ Indravani” being culpable to the broad group o f animalistic “men” . The law o f the land, personified in the “chief justice”, is quoted as condemning men for abuse while the previously labelled “husband killer” seems to have been exonerated. One wonders how this shift in determination o f culpability will be received by the reading public. Could it be deliberately constructed to provoke indignation in our men?

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The article itself details the history o f the murder and the events leading up to it, beginning with the main news story, the remittal o f the sentence. When we read the small print we find that the chief justice has maintained a strong condemnatory statement, for he is quoted as follows: “While we condemn the animal behaviour of men, we cannot condone retaliation in the taking o f a life even o f someone whom a right thinking person will have no sympathy for” (our emphasis). Syntactically here, the main clause strongly condemns the act o f murder but the headline o f the article has chosen to focus on the generalization in the subordinate clause, which it quotes out o f context. If we examine the whole article, following van Dijks major content categories (1985, 86-87; 1991, 114-15), we find that the crime is very briefly detailed, as in the previous discussed article, with Indravani Ramjattan presented in the role of helper to the male perpetrators - main event. Then battered wife syndrome is cited in rendering her not responsible as the reason for the appeal - context. The article cites the defence lawyers documentation o f Ramjattan s having been “a prisoner in her home”, “beaten unconscious in front of her children” and losing a premature baby in prison - history, the article ends with the chief justices statement and a reference to international human rights concerns - verbal reactions and comments. Now the detail provided wins the readers sympathy for the abused wife rather than focusing on the murder and her role within it. It seems that the position represented is more in line with the opinions o f the international powers that be, these being supported through the legal and medical discourses represented to us briefly in the discussion. However, given the continuing escalation of gender violence in Trinidad and Tobago at that time, as well as the reac­ tive atmosphere among males, which is suggested to have caused it, we may question how the headline condemnation of men in an apparent blanket statement by the chief justice may have been received. On the one hand, we may consider that “controlling attitudes may be a matter of controlling the discourses . . . by the journalists or by those whom they accept as credible sources” (van Dijk 1992, 7), and may feel that shifting world opinion in this case has brought a measure of enlightenment. On the other hand, though, we must remember that “special access to the minds o f the public does not imply its control. . . it may very well not change its mind’ along the lines desired by the more powerful. Rejection, disbelief, criticism or other forms o f resistance . . . may be involved” (p. 4). It may be well to suggest that the expression of a decontextualized con­ demnation of the male in a headline is likely to be counterproductive, as it falls on the eyes of a male population which already considers itself marginalized and victimized.

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DISCUSSION The proponents o f critical discourse analysis have made an incontrovertible case for the effects o f media on their reading and viewing public. Today, we do not question media discourse playing a significant role in interfacing between the power hierarchy in society and the public. What has not been clearly established is how far it merely represents ideologies and how far it actually constructs them: “the dominant institu­ tions in society work through values, conceptions o f the world, and symbol systems, to legitimize the current order . . . these ideas . . . orient peoples thinking in such a way that they accept the current way o f doing things . . . and the current understand­ ing o f their roles in society” (Lye 1997, 1). Van Dijk (1992) has drawn our attention to the undermining effects o f such impositions on the opponents to hegemonic control. A large number o f our news reports in the Caribbean, as well as feature articles, come to us unedited from C N N , BBC and Reuters, and very often these reports encompass biased perspectives on race, class, spirituality, gender and many more. Clearly, some meaningful change does stem from the “ First World”, however. We are, for example, generally behind in our own medical awareness, as in the case in question, as well as in other significant areas, like, for example, the treatment o f AIDS victims and legislation to support their human rights. In those cases, a potentially positive result is to be derived from our access to First World ideological positionings. Medical recognition that the physical and mental effects o f domestic violence on victims can produce a very real case of diminished responsibility for ones actions is significant. It is appropriate that it be given some consideration by the Caribbean judiciary and also be supported by the press. The newspapers have superficially responded positively in follow­ ing the judiciary’s lead and have meshed a complex blend o f medical, legal and popular textual subtypes to display a shift in positioning, but an element of ambivalence remains. When First World and Third World ideologies clash, we should recognize that a potentially destructive dynamic is set in motion. In this connection, it appears that the press does not seek to arbitrate between the judiciary and the public but rather to exacerbate their differences by its focusing techniques. The public, in turn, does not simply “produce the preferred models of the elites” but processes them, as both van Dijk (1992, 4) and Wodak (1996, 114) have shown, according to its

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own social-psychological sets, attitudes and awareness. This subjective processing is problematic in so far as it may engender reactive response. What has gone on in the case under discussion is a shift in time from outrage at a “wife's” involvement in a “husband s” murder, to measured acceptance of it because of the extenuating circumstances o f extreme brutalization out of which it arose and their consequent effects on the wife. In 1995, there had been a reaction in the press against the verdict against Ramjattan in editorials and letters to the press, but these were almost exclusively female. In 1999, it appeared as if there was a shift in the press position, sealed off by the remission o f the sentence. However, we should consider that, even at this stage, the male sector o f the public remained hostile to the verdict and may have been addi­ tionally incensed by the way in which a headline zoomed in on the “animal behaviour of men”. The chronological crime scale of the time (see pp. 30-31) showed an increasingly escalating rate o f reactive male violence towards women in the society; in the months fol­ lowing the remittal there was hardly a day when the press did not present a fresh case of domestic violence for public reading. This continued down to February 2000 when the findings in this paper were first presented at a two-day conference, Gender and Domestic Violence: Understanding the Problems and Searching for Solutions, held by the Depart­ ment of Behavioural Sciences at the University of the West Indies, which attracted a large audience. While the whole purpose of the conference was to publicize gender violence and to show the way to empowerment for its victims, there was also a concern to allow the audience to express their opinion. On day one o f that programme, only one male spoke in support of women in situations of domestic violence while the rest claimed misrepresentation, distortion and manipulation of the facts in a feminist world. All this suggests that it is possible that, as a society transitions in its attitude to women oppressed by violence, there is a reaction that manifests when many essential issues o f male-female relationships remain unresolved in the society at large. Press coverage o f the events surrounding such violence need to be very carefully handled when a society is crippled by its own unresolved conflicts. Such crises demand responsible news reporting which is concerned for accuracy o f representation in its selection of detail, word choice, and grammar. It may have a valuable and positive role to play in arenas of opinion such as that o f family violence, but distortion, in contrast, may be inflammatory and may exacerbate the problem rather than solve it. The print media in our society, particularly in their current tabloid format and approach, are guilty of irresponsible and selective representation of the facts which does much to add to the confusedness o f the society at large. They need to take stock of their role in the light of this indictment.

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CHAPTER 2 =

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On Judgement and Justice

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescap­ able network o f mutuality, tied in a single garment o f destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. -

Martin Luther King, Jr,

“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

INTRODUCTION This chapter concerns the way in which power structures in society are at once both reflected and reinforced in the context o f the operation o f legal systems and their jurisdiction. By use of a Caribbean case study, the chapter demonstrates how detail may be selected for highlighting, and judgement may be meted out, based on the power structures perceptions of what is right, thus drawing on potentially biased “moral” standards with little necessary relationship to real justice. The case under consideration is that concerning Indravani (Pamela) Ramjattan, who was sentenced to death in Trinidad and Tobago in 1995 for murdering her

abusive common-law husband. This case, which is dealt with in chapter 1 from the perspective o f media representation, is explored here with a focus specifically on the judges verdict and summing up in the appeal against her murder conviction, which was granted by the Privy Council in 1999. At that time, fresh evidence was admit­ ted which argued that she was suffering from battered wife syndrome at the time o f the killing ( West Indian Reports 2000). The case has continued to be of tremendous im p o rt to m em bers o f the legal profession in the C aribbean concerned w ith gender

bias in the law courts. Much of the information for this chapter was gleaned from the workshop Issues of Gender Inequalities in Law and the Justice Systems in the Caribbean (Port o f Spain, Trinidad, 29 October-1 November 2003) and from sub­ sequent correspondence with participants, as well as the legal documentation which they supplied. The chapter examines the representation o f secondary reality, that is, the events surrounding the common-law husbands death, as they can be pieced together from witness accounts, most particularly, that o f the couples eldest daughter, and as they are presented in the summing up, with concern for the questionable interpretation of those events as depicted within the primary reality of the law court. It will demonstrate that the conviction o f the accused, although remitted from murder to manslaughter, was constrained by attitudes and opinions clearly separate from the known facts o f the case. Additionally, it will be shown that battered wife syndrome was not fully consid­ ered in the judgement, although a superficial acknowledgement was given to it.

POWER A N D SELF-PERPETUATING CONTROL As mentioned earlier in this volume, each societal and institutional order controls us through the reality that it creates and releases to us daily through the media. We are exposed to the decisions o f the power hierarchies and their representation o f their relationship to us and to the rest o f the world via television, radio and print. In addition, we accept that they have enshrined, for our own good, a complex web o f laws and statutes, within which we are constrained to live, and which assure us safety from criminal elements in our midst. Since some human beings choose to practise evil, these laws control evil-mongers who threaten the safety o f law-abiding citizens. The forces o f law, namely the police force and the judicial system, step in speedily to arrest, try and sentence criminals so that they can no longer threaten civil order.

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The reality is that the empowered have the greatest access to having their safety assured, and this is so whether or not they move within the laws o f the land. The rich, who can afford the most protection and the best defence lawyers, can, by and large, assure their freedom from constraint. The educated can usually work with the system, which, after all, purports to be fair. Their education has gained them respect and a command o f language which might take on the legalese of the law courts without too much difficulty. Inasmuch as they have an articulate voice, they will come through provided there are no vested interests who seek to condemn them. But what about the poor, the less educated? They too have the same rights according to the constitution, but in reality they are disenfranchised and disempowered at every turn. They cannot afford a good lawyer when they need one, any more than they can afford a good doctor. The state system claims to provide but falls short. If they are brutalized within their communities, they are often unable to speak out for fear of further brutalization and the indifference o f those to whom they speak, because o f the likelihood o f those confidantes taking the side of the brutalizer (chapter 5 on Haiti in this volume supplies an extreme example o f this kind of societal control). The oppressed are hemmed into their circumstances to work out their survival as best they may, and should they ever dare to take the law into their own hands, the system, which has proven so impervious to their plight, moves in swiftly to condemn and sentence them. Officially, o f course, the oppressed receive a “fair” trial, and sometimes they do even receive sound legal support, but the state apparatus, encompassing the prosecu­ tion and the judiciary, may hardly give them a chance. It will ensnare them with language they ill understand; it will work on a jury which has its own understandings and prejudices to bring to the table; and even if the ultimate authority o f the judici­ ary itself is called upon to bring a verdict, it too, in the very process of believing in its own objectivity, may speak from a subjective base. And this kind of “objectivity” is the worst kind, because we believe in it; it holds up truth and freedom from injustice, and we accept that this is so. The judiciary has always remained sacrosanct and above reproach in the public mind; we take for granted their impartiality, since it is this quality, along with their level o f legal expertise, that has won them their positions. They themselves, however, have long recognized that they are, like all of us, partial: “The ordinary human mind is a mass of prepossessions inherited and acquired, often none the less dangerous because unrecognized by their possessor. . . every legal mind is apt to have an innate

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susceptibility to particular classes o f argument” (Lord Macmillan, quoted in Winters 1975, 62). They are the product o f their particular societal positioning, whatever that may be, and gender bias is today generally acknowledged in the “judicial treatment of sexual assault and wife abuse” (Mahoney 1997, 35). When we encounter cases o f man against woman, the latter is often demonstrably weaker from the outset. She is often unable to bring charges against her partner lest her children be rendered destitute, since he is often her only means o f support. She may not even perceive her right to do so, since wife-beating is endemic to the Carib­ bean society as it is to many others. When she does protest, the police are quite likely to ignore or abuse her verbally and send her home. If she does succeed in getting a protection order against her husband, it may not be upheld; her case may never come to court. If it comes to court, she may well not get an unbiased hearing from a society which hardly accepts the notion of rape within marriage, and which sympathizes with the wife-beater if he even hints at his wife’s possible infidelity. Though a full systematic investigation has not yet been completed, there are numerous cases in the Trinidad law courts o f men getting light sentences for killing their partners. A male university lecturer received a seven-year sentence for man­ slaughter in 1981, having brutally stabbed his wife to death while their children were in the house. He was later released to psychiatric care and subsequently freed in less than seven years. A police officer received a ten-year sentence for killing his fiancée, another man five years for strangling his pregnant wife. Against these, we can measure the case we will consider within this chapter, that o f Indravani Ramjattan, who received a death sentence for opening the door to the men who killed her husband. If stabbing an individual repeatedly with a kitchen knife when she goes to visit her children can be reduced to manslaughter, on grounds o f imbalance o f mind, and opening the door to someone who subsequently kills your husband can be classed as murder, then where is the justice? We are truly playing with words —but lives too, unfortunately. The admissibility o f “battered wife syndrome” as a category o f temporary mental imbalance, which would allow for a killing to be classed as manslaughter rather than murder, goes some way to redressing the balance, but even with this, there can be bias, affecting both summing up and sentence. While accepting the syndrome in principle, in line with world trends to embrace this development in understanding of the effects o f long-term brutalization, the judge in this case clearly does not regard the symptoms o f the syndrome as truly exonerating the woman concerned.

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This is the point at which discourse analysis comes in, because it can unmask the distortion, demonstrate the subjectivity o f positioning and the obfuscating complex­ ity o f the language used (see Gibbons 2003, for an extended discussion o f the way in which the language o f the empowered controls the law courts). It can examine ideology and perspective and show how clashes in these arenas can bring about prob­ lematic results. Unfortunately in this case, it can move in only after the fact, however, and is thereby restrained from changing sentences.

T H E B A C K G R O U N D CASE

The case in question was worked out in the legal system o f Trinidad and Tobago over a period o f eight years, from 1991 to 1999. This period begins from the actual killing o f Alexander Jordan and extends to the time at which his common-law wife s sentence was commuted to a further five years imprisonment in 1999. When the sentence was commuted, she had already served eight years imprisonment, four on death row.

T h e Facts of the Secondary Reality: Issues o f Self-Defence

The secondary reality o f the events leading up to the murder will first be oudined. Note that these facts were not even brought in the accused’s defence at the trial, although they were alluded to by the prosecution as providing a motivation by which to convict her. While they could be used to give weight to a charge o f murder by providing a motivation for it then, they could not count as allowing her to plead selfdefence in law, since there was a gap in time between the brutalization she received at the hands of her husband and the alleged act o f murder. It was confirmed by her daughter, in testimony to the psychiatrist who assessed her mother for battered wife syndrome, that the wife was repeatedly brutalized and raped by her husband over several years, and that, in addition, the children were beaten and starved and prevented from going to school, as additional emo­ tional pressure on their mother. The psychiatrist built up the history o f her life with the deceased man on the basis o f the several hours o f interviews with her, an interview with her daughter, and what she had previously told to counsel, as well as the transcripts o f the court case proceedings. At the time o f the case being initially tried, these facts were known to the legal personnel involved in the case but were made little of.

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Ramjattan had been given to her husband by her mother and stepfather at age seventeen, when the suitor in question had threatened to burn down the parental home, were he not to have his way. She had at that time been beaten regularly by her mother over household duties but she nonetheless appeared to want to remain in relationship with the parental home. After three years with the deceased, she started to visit that home again. At this point, the beatings by the husband began. She was repeatedly choked, cut, bruised and raped, and her life was regularly threatened. The six children, whom she bore during the union, became weapons also, since they were also brutalized to place additional pressure upon her. When she ultimately took a lover, who had been a childhood friend, and she became pregnant with his child, she left her “home” and went to live with him. But her abusive husband discovered where she was and came to take her back. In the week leading up to the “murder” , the wife was beaten senseless with a piece o f wood, repeatedly raped, given no medical support for her exten­ sive injuries, and a gun was held to her head while the father asked each o f their children if he should kill her. In this account, we have deliberately dealt in the facts o f the case, and not ascribed internal motivation at any stage to any party, since this can clearly not be proven. In the final report o f the reasons for remitting the sentence, for example, Chief Justice Warner (West Indian Reports 2000) referred to the husband as having been “insanely jealous”. However, we cannot ask him his motivation at this stage and therefore should not ascribe a motivation to him. We have given the ascertained facts as they were released at the appeal, not earlier in her defence. The nonadmission o f the evidence o f her long-term brutalization as support in her defence must lead us to conclude that there is a gender bias in the definition of self-defence before the law. As small and slight a woman as she was, she could hardly have defended herself against her much larger armed assailant face-to-face, and any defence made would have to have been made after the incident in question. At the workshop on gender inequalities in Caribbean law and justice systems, those present mooted that the self-defence laws actually have a built-in gender bias in failing to take this kind o f physical imbalance into account. If self-defence entails only those events that take place contemporaneous with the attack, it can apply only to the case o f parties to the struggle who are physically equal, and therefore excludes most women, in intergender conflict.

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The Facts of the Secondary Reality: Access to Community/Police Support Sccond, we should consider the testimony of her daughter that the woman had no source of redress in the community at large, and that the police were collaborators in the actions being perpetrated against her. According to the daughters testimony, My father was good friends with the police. He went shooting for wild animals with them near our house, on average once or twice a m on th.. . . They would come back to our house before or after going shooting, and there they would see my mothers injuries. She so often had black eyes, bruises and swelling over her face. . . . The police would never have done anything to help my mother.. . . I know that what my mother wanted was an end to all the beatings. She did not want my father dead. She just wanted him to stop beating her and us. (Candace Ramjattan to Dr Eastman, quoted in Abolish

Archives>January 1999)

We note that this information was gathered only after the womans conviction for murder. While the state of affairs described cannot be taken as giving full justifica­ tion to the woman should she take matters into her own hands, it does indicate the dilemma of the impoverished female victim, living in circumstances o f sustained assault and brutalization. A consistent line running through our collected first-hand accounts by women of their seeking help from the police, and even the testimony o f a police officer himself, confirm, the reality that, for complex reasons, the police generally treat females who lodge complaints as noncredible.

The Facts of the Secondary Reality: Selection of Detail At the time o f the trial in 1995, both the media (as described in the previous chapter) and the law court condemned the woman. The prior events depicted above were not highlighted, but certain other events were. These events focused necessarily on the immediate circumstances o f the killing, including the fact that the woman opened the door for the assailants of her husband, that she had had a conversation with one o f the assailants detailing her situation a week prior to the event, and that she made the assailants tea after the event and asked her daughter to clean up a pool of blood. Although she was accused of sending a letter to her lover, it was never produced and we have only the lovers word that it was written. Indeed, he remains an unreliable witness, having been proven to have lied during the course of the trial. In the revised

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skeletal argument for the appeal against the sentence which was brought against her in the first instance, these selected details are summarized thus: At its highest, the case against the Appellant consisted o f the reference in her written statement to a conversation with Hillaire more than a week before the murder (and before Jordan abducted her) to the effect that Hillaire intended to beat Jordan, from the Appellant herself that she sent a message to Hillaire and Baptiste to come rescue her, the evidence from Candace that she peeped through the hole in the door and then went outside leaving the door open, and that afterwards she made tea for Hillaire and Baptiste and caused Candace to clean up the blood. It is on the basis o f this evidence that the jury found that the Appellant was party to a plan to murder Jordan. (Revised skeletal arguments on behalf o f the appellant, Court o f Appeal o f Trinidad and Tobago, Douglas Mendes, 1 Ocrober 1999, 5-6)

The single prior event which received most attention was that she was pregnant with her lovers child. However, the events enumerated immediately above are arguably no more consequential than the ones that were de-emphasized. Their selection, however, would bring condemnation from a society which is highly tolerant o f male infidelity but remains condemnatory of such behaviour in females, and a society which would condemn involvement of a child in the crime, as the “pool of blood” incident appar­ ently did. To include some facts o f the secondary reality and omit others is always problematic, but is particularly so when the facts selected are prejudicial. Quite apart from these kinds o f prejudice, we have the knowledge that Trinidad is a multicultural society which has been demonstrated to show bias in juror judge­ ment, based on race. In an experimental case study in Trinidad recently (Chadee 2003) it was found that “levels o f evidential ambiguity interact with the composition o f the jury to influence jurors decision making. The race background o f the accused may be an added liability or asset depending on the level of evidential ambiguity and the race composition o f the jury” (p. 102). In the case in question, Indravani Ramjattan is o f Indian descent as was her deceased partner; the lover who killed the partner and was the father o f her unborn child was o f African descent. This fact could have caused Indravani to have appeared guilty before a Trinidad jury, dependant on its racial composition. It was certainly adjudged to have been a factor by the legal personnel who discussed the case after the fact at the 2003 workshop that was earlier alluded to. As we weigh the history o f the case as it passed through the law courts, the weighting o f evidence against the woman becomes clear. However, it is a weighting not o f real evidence, but of legal

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and societal bias causing misrepresentation o f the events in the minds o f those who must pass judgement.

The Facts of the Secondary RealityrThe Accused’s Testimony One further detail which weighed heavily against Indravani Ramjattan was the fact that she “made three conflicting written statements to the police, which were admitted as evidence in the trial” ( West Indian Reports 2000, 506). When contra­ dictory evidence is given, it always has a detrimental effect on the giver because it is considered to indicate that the individual has lied. However, we need to examine this carefully in relation to the power dynamic in interactions in which arrestees give statements to the police: the total disempowerment o f some arrestees in these scenarios, and their demonstrable lack of acquaintance with the discourse mode entailed, may be sufficient in some cases to make them give contradictory evidence in their intimidated state. In this case, there would be the extreme intimidation o f a small woman hauled into the police station by adversarial men, to account for the death o f her husband, another man. We already know as fact that she was so badly treated in police custody that she was left to give birth to a premature child with no medical support o f any kind. A Creole speaker like Indravani Ramjattan would be unfamiliar with many lexical items in the Standard English code, its abstract terms and sentence complexity. Any formal situation constrains language use and makes the situation more demand­ ing on persons unfamiliar with such situation types and their norms. Fairclough (2001, 52) refers to the “myth of free speech” which assumes and presumes that in a so-called democracy anyone can say what they like. Further, institutional encoun­ ters between empowered and disempowered parties have been called “gate-keeping encounters” (Fairclough 2001, 40), where the gatekeepers are the socially empowered who constrain the discourse type, which they assume the socially disempowered will be familiar with. In reality, answers which are deemed unacceptable by the powers that be are often forced out of the constraints o f the encounter on the interviewee. More particularly, in interviews o f the kind Ramjattan would have undergone, the interviewer would be in total control, asking the questions, giving a certain space for response, cutting short in some cases, demanding explication in others. Questions would have been more numerous than in an everyday encounter and more leading. In a significant work on testimony (Loftus 1979, 90-99), it has been shown that the

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form o f a question exerts a strong influence on the quality o f the answer given. As Gibbons (2003, 97) puts it, When counsel and police, rather than gathering information, are attempting to have someone assent to a particular version o f events, this involves both a construction o f a particular version o f the events, in other words control o f the information; and obtain­ ing the compliance o f the person being questioned, perhaps in part by not allowing the questioners version to be denied.

It is instructive to review the full conditions o f the contradiction Ramjattan is said to have been guilty of: In the first statement she narrated a conversation with Hillaire, who, after hearing o f her problems with the deceased, said to her, WI know plenty people who I could get to pass out Jordan before he pass you out.” He asked her for a description o f Jordan, adding that “in case he [that is, Hillaire] came looking for him he would recognise him”. According to the appellant, when Hillaire told her that he would arrange something, she thought that they were coming to beat the deceased, but she did not know when this would happen. She confirmed that, on the night o f the murder, she had gone to the toilet leaving the back door open. At the trial the appellants defence was that she was not a party to the plan to kill or inflict serious bodily harm on the deceased and she has never abandoned that position. ( West Indian Reports

2000, 506) What is apparent here is that the defendant knew from Hillaire that he might come, at an unspecified point in time, and “beat” her husband. He expressed an arguably hypothetical intention to kill him, but she did not acquiesce. What she denied was having knowledge o f a definite and established plan to inflict serious bodily harm on him or kill him. After twelve years of receiving systematic and extreme beating from her husband, which had been ignored consistently by the police, her understanding o f where a regular beating ended and a beating which inflicted “serious bodily harm” began may indeed have become muddled in her mind. No real contradiction here; confused perplexity perhaps.

THE RESPONSETOTHEAPPEAL Now we come to our consideration o f the appeal, which was the culmination o f a series of appeals, but the first to take into account the long-term brutalization o f Ramjattan as causing her to have been suffering from battered wife syndrome at the

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time o f the slaying. The judge in the case took a decision to substitute the verdict o f manslaughter for murder in the case, but decreed that she should serve five more years in jail. There were two statements which constituted steps in the process: the first statement, reprinted in full below in the subsection Text, gave a decision and summing up in the case (October 1999), officially reserving reasons; the second, some nine months later (July 2000), gave the reasons. While there was a change of sentence, it is arguable that the judicial system paid only lip service to the accept­ ance o f battered wife syndrome, the real symptoms o f which were stated explicitly, as if for weighing, only in the second phase o f the rationalization. The full text o f the summing up is produced below prior to an analysis o f it: We have come to our decision which we will give now; the reasons will be given at a later date. Firsdy, we give leave for the admission into evidence o f the affidavits o f Dr Eastman, o f the appellant, o f her daughter (Candace Patricia Jordan), o f Mr Dass, o f Ms Janice Cross, and Ms Pargass. Those affidavits are admitted into evidence. We allow the issue o f diminished responsibility to be raised and we have decided that the conviction for murder should be replaced by a conviction for manslaughter by virtue o f diminished responsibility. We are grateful to Ms Wilson for referring us to s 4A(6) o f the Offences Against the Person Act. Under that provision when a verdict o f manslaughter by reason o f dimin­ ished responsibility is brought in by a jury, the jury is required to say expressly that the verdict has been brought in on that basis. We have in substituting the verdict o f “Guilty o f Manslaughter” for that o f “Guilty o f Murder” already made it clear that it is by virtue o f the appellants diminished responsibility. The section also gives the court power to make an order for the detention o f the person at the States pleasure, in circumstances in which the mental condition o f the convicted person justifies that course. That is not applicable in the instant case, the appellant in this case was not suffering from any inherent or congenital mental problem, but her problem was created by the brutal treatment which she received at the hands o f her common-law husband, whom she was convicted o f killing. There is no reason to believe that at this point in time, which is approaching nine years since the husband was killed, she is suffering from any mental abnormality or in need o f treatment. There is no suggestion o f this in Dr Eastmans report. In fact, it would be inconsistent with his report if the removal o f the cause o f her problem did not bring the problem to an end. So we are not going to invoke the power under that section. Mr Mendes, in his plea in mitigation, has referred to the long time that the appel­ lant has spent in prison, which is since February 1991. That is certainly a factor to be taken into account. Moreover, since her conviction in May 1995 she has been under sentence o f death and, therefore, she has had the constant threat o f execution hanging

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over her head. We have also been told o f the traumatic experience she had when she gave birth prematurely to the child she was carrying at the time o f her arrest. Appar­ ently, she received no medical assistance at the time o f the birth and it was not until some considerable time after that she and the baby were taken to the hospital and not surprisingly, the baby died, being premature and having had a difficult birth, and there being no facilities in the prison for the special attention which babies o f that kind require. The other factor, o f course (really the most important factor) is the seriousness o f the crime o f which she now stands convicted: the taking o f a life, the life o f her commonlaw husband by whom she had six children and with whom she had lived for some ten or eleven years. Now the treatment which she had received at the hands o f this man was (as I have described it) brutal. There are other words that might be used to describe it, but she was subjected to what has been described as a reign o f terror by this man. This is a phenomenon which wc arc very conscious has bccomc cndcmic in this country and which is a blot on the men in our society. Be that as it may, the remedy to which she resorted is a totally unacceptable one. But for the effects o f the treatment which she received, her conviction for murder would have stood and the sentence o f death would have remained unaltered. But the medical evidence has persuaded us, for reasons which we are going to give on another occasion, to reduce the conviction to one o f manslaughter. There are, however, certain circumstances in her case which suggest that her motives may not have been purely defensive. It is, o f course, no pan o f our duty to attribute or apportion moral blame, particularly to a woman who was subjected to that type o f treatment. But we must not lose sight o f the fact that at the time o f the murder she was carrying the child o f another man with whom she obviously, from her evidence, hoped to make a new life. There is nothing wrong with that, albeit that the other man appears to have been married himself. But what cannot be condoned is the avenue they took in order to extricate her from the situation she was in and to make it possible for her to be with her lover and the father o f her unborn baby. The avenue which they took was to plan the murder o f her common-law husband. It is clear from the evidence, and from the verdict o f the jury, that she was a participant in that plan, and facilitated the attack on the husband by leaving the back door open when her lover and his friend arrived that night, in all probability by arrangement with her, for the purpose o f getting rid o f the husband. It is clear that the intention was not just to beat but to kill him, and that is what they proceeded to do. The two men then put his body in the husbands van and pushed it down by a river and set fire to the van and the body. The two men then came back and the evidence was, although she denied it, that she then gave the men their tea while she instructed her daughter to wipe the blood from the floor. O f course,

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all o f this must be seen against the background o f the mitigating circumstance o f the brutality to which she was subjected on an ongoing basis. The last bout o f that brutality, which was by far the worst, occurred within the last week o f her husband s life and was the result o f her having left the husband and gone to live with her lover. The husband found out where she was, broke down the door o f the house in which she was staying and beat her mercilessly with a piece o f wood; took her back and kept her a prisoner in his house, denying her medical atten­ tion for the injuries which he had inflicted. As I have said, we are not apportioning moral blame, that is not our function, but we have to make some assessment o f the culpability o f the appellant. It is in that context that I have referred to the aspects o f the crime, or her role in it, both those which would mitigate her offence as well as those which might tell perhaps in the opposite direction. Had the murder been committed in what I would describe as purely defensive circum­ stances, we would have been able to take a more lenient view even than the one which we are taking. But it was clear that the occasion, if not the reason, for her deciding to leave her husband and all that followed thereafter was the striking up o f this relationship with her childhood sweetheart which turned into a sexual relationship that resulted in her preg­ nancy, and her quite natural desire to be with him rather than with her brutal husband, although amazingly she maintained at her trial that she loved both men equally. But this, I suppose, is why we need psychiatrists. We do not feel able to accede to Mr Mendes’s suggestion that she be released on the basis o f time already served. We have considered the matter carefully and in the circum­ stances, we have concluded that the minimum sentence we can impose is one o f five years' imprisonment. That will run from today. And with time off for good behaviour, what she will serve will be appreciably less than that. While we condemn this animal-type behaviour by men against women, we cannot even appear to condone retaliation by the taking o f a life, even o f someone for whom any right-thinking person would have little or no sympathy. (Chief Justice de la Bastide, 7 October 1999)

Judicial Positioning Before analysing this text in detail, we need to consider the perspective o f any judicial system and the ideology entailed in its positioning. In a summing up of this nature, the judge would be constrained in terms o f “the discourse type which is being drawn upon” with respect to subject, relationships and content (see Fairclough 2001, 39). In the case o f content, he would be constrained by the law and its perspective, even

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where that law may in itself, on examination, be shown to be biased, or where logic is lacking. For example, if the self-defence laws are biased, he would still be bound by them. Further, if the jury’s verdict had been biased, he would still apparently be bound by it, for he actually claims in his discourse that the verdict proved the guilt. In terms of subject and relations, we must note that the judge has absolute power and authority, for his verdict determines incontrovertibly the fate o f the disempowered, convicted woman. His statements have absolute weight and authority and are deemed by the society within which he is functioning to speak justice into criminality and to impose order, fair judgement and punishment. Ultimately, it is his view o f the events which prevails as the official reality. Literally, heads may roll on his determina­ tion o f the events, and there is the implicit assumption that he, in his knowledge and experiential base, is absolutely right. With this in mind, we proceed to a consideration of the summing up in question. Here, an argument is to be put before us, which represents the highest authority in the land. Argument may be defined as “a connected series o f statements intended to establish a position . . . usually presenting itself as a chain o f reasoning” (Andrews 1993, 16). Argumentative legal discourse is, o f course, concerned primarily with legitimization, in this case, o f a verdict passed, and this legitimization rests on the authority o f law and tradition, and may be conveyed through a specific narrative order, which, in turn, rests on specific value systems (see Lisotelli 1997, 4). Once again, as the events of the secondary reality move towards the explanation o f the immediate action, namely the killing, we see a selection o f detail for highlighting which we may wish to consider further, as well as a moral positioning which is high­ lighted by the judges very denial o f it.

The Summing Up On 7 October 1999, Chief Justice de la Bastide accepted a change o f conviction from murder to manslaughter, but adjudged that Ramjattan should serve another five years. On that occasion, he stated that Ramjattans counsel had asked for clemency on account o f the fact that she had already been in prison for eight years; that since May 1995 she had been under sentence o f death; and that she had suffered the trauma o f losing her child in prison custody, with no medical attention. In other words, the state had incarcerated her, condemned her to death and possibly brought about the death o f her child through neglect. Against this,

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he weighed her crime. In analysing this, we will take each paragraph separately. Questionable elements are italicized: The other factor, o f course (really the most important factor) is the seriousness o f the crime o f which she now stands convicted: the taking o f a life, the life o f her common-

law husband by whom she had six children and with whom she had lived fo r some ten or eleven years. ( West Indian Reports 2000, 203; our emphasis, as are all italics in this extended section)

As indicated above, the judge himself determined that the womans supposed crime is “the most importantfactor” as opposed to the punishment that she has already under­ gone, and the circumstance surrounding the crime. He told the court that this was the most important factor as if it was an objectively determined fact, but indeed, this is questionable and very open to further consideration, for she was actually convicted for having opened a door to let men into a house who, themselves, ultimately killed her common-law husband. It was never proven incontrovertibly that she intended that killing to take place. One could question too why he referred to their shared children and life. It seemed to be weighed as evidence against her: not only did she take a life, but that o f her husband and the father o f her children. What is omitted is the detail o f her brutalization which rendered her an abused prisoner, sexual and reproductive slave, for the period in question, rather than a cherished wife. The judge continued: Now the treatment which she had received at the hands o f this man was (as I have described it) brutal. There are other words that might be used to describe it, but she was subjected to what has been described as a reign o f terror by this man. This is a phenomenon which we are very conscious has become endemic in this country and which is a blot on the men in our society. Be that as it may, the remedy to which

she resorted is a totally unacceptable one. But fo r the effects o f the treatment which she received\ her conviction fo r murder would have stood and the sentence o f death would have remained unaltered. But the medical evidence has persuaded us, for reasons which we are going to give on another occasion, to reduce the conviction to one o f manslaughter, (p. 503)

We notice that he referred to the brutal treatment without giving any o f the hor­ rendous detail. Nevertheless, we can concede that to describe it as “a reign o f terror” and further “a blot on the men o f our society” is judicially correct. However, he then stated: “Be that as it may; the remedy to which she resorted is a totally unac­ ceptable one”, such that, without battered wife syndrome, the murder conviction

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“would have stood”. Again we note that what is highly questionable is stated as fact. First o f all, there is questionably inadequate evidence to prove that she did resort to killing her husband. Second, by admitting battered wife syndrome, the court presumably is allowing that there are mental grounds to explain why she might have allowed the killing to happen, thereby making it understandable in these circumstances. Why would the syndrome be admissible in her defence if the information it brought to the issue did not render her potential responsibility in the crime questionable? Indeed, when Judge de la Bastide gave the decision o f the court in October 1999, he gave no explicit consideration to battered wife syndrome in his summing up. The symptoms described by the psychiatrist and revisited at stage two in the judicial process, in July 2000, might surely have exonerated the woman. They are listed as follows: Learned helplessness; intense ambivalent attachment; precipitation o f episodes (getting it over as soon as possible); decreased capacity to manipulate her circumstances con­ structively; depressive symptoms; anxiety; reluctance to admit the abuse to friends or medical carers; diminishing attempts to leave; reduced motivation to protect herself; preoccupation with day-to-day survival; a latitude o f acceptance.

These symptoms substantially worsened when the deceased brought her back home, and her description o f biological and psychological symptoms o f depression during the final week were entirely confirmatory o f the diagnosis o f a severe depressive illness, albeit falling short o f being psychotic. She described features o f helplessness and maintained an ambivalent emotional attachment to her abuser and experienced a decreased capacity to manipulate her circumstances constructively (pp. 509-10). But, in the actual sentencing, they were given no meaningful credence and the judge continued to insist throughout that there was no excuse for the crime which he persistently laid at her door. He early expressed amazement that she could “love the two men” and conceded that “this is why we need psychiatrists” (p. 504), implicitly acknowledging his own failure to understand her expressed feeling. His constant allusion to her planned move to be with her lover gave no acknowledgement to the symptoms described above, which would have her rooted in a nightmare present without the active capacity to remove herself from it or plan to do so, given her “decreased capacity to manipulate her cir­ cumstances constructively” .

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He focused, rather, on the notion that the woman planned her future: There are, however, certain circumstances in her case which suggest that her motives may not have been purely defensive. It is, o f course, no part ofour duty to attribute or apportion

moral blame, particularly to a woman who was subjected to that type o f treatment. But we must not lose sight o f thefact that at the time o f the murder she was carrying the child o f another man with whom she obviously from her evidence, hoped to make a new life. There is nothing wrong with that, albeit that the other man appears to have been married himself. But what cannot be condoned is the avenue they took in order to extricate her from the situation she was in and to make it possible for her to be with her lover and the father o f her unborn baby. The avenue which they took was to plan the murder o f her commonlaw husband. It is clearfrom the evidence, andfrom the verdict o f thejury that she was a participant in that plan, and facilitated the attack on the husband by leaving the back door open when her lover and his friend arrived that night, in all probability by arrange­ ment with her, for the purpose o f getting rid o f the husband, (p. 503)

Here the judge saw fit to argue that the attack was “not defensive” but part o f a con­ trivance to build a new life. This is highly arguable. Surely, had she remained with Jordan, she is likely to have been dead long ago? The systematic beatings sustained over twelve years were hardly likely to stop but to increase in intensity when she bore another mans child; she had been shown, by her daughters testimony, to have no likelihood of police support in this circumstance. In addition, her children were also suffering severe abuse, and her desire for escape was not just on her own account, but on their behalf, else why would she have contrived to take those she could with her when she first “escaped”? The reader should note here the contradiction in the judges wording. He declared on the one hand: “It is, o f course, no part o f our duty to attribute or appor­ tion moral blame” (p. 503), presumably meaning that he is not going to appor­ tion blame on that level; however, on the other hand, from an opening “but” he proceeded to do just that: “But we must not lose sight o f the fact that at the time o f the murder she was carrying the child o f another man with whom she obviously, from her evidence, hoped to make a new life” (p. 503). He has proceeded to deem it fit to draw attention to her pregnancy by another man, her infidelity, and her pos­ sible plans. Surely, it is moral reprehensibility that is being invoked here as well as a motive for killing? If not, why not just draw attention to her plan to leave the home? Why invoke the full sexual/moral scenario? The selection o f detail is critical to the interpretation.

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He follows this with another self-contradiction: “There is nothing wrong with that, albeit that the other man appears to have been married himself. ”He has already said there is something wrong with it. And here by his “albeit” clause he is actually advancing another moral argument against her by drawing our attention to the fact that she is seeking a liaison with not just another lover, but one who is a married man. H e can mean only not that there is nothing wrong with it but that there certainly is. Such discourse strategies are a very common part o f many arguments which appeal to prejudice: in the very act o f saying one is not guilty o f prejudice, one exhibits it, for example, via statements such as, “I’m not a racist but Ive noticed that African Americans are violent.” The detail following the first part o f the statement, which exonerates the speaker of prejudice, makes some generalization or offers some detail which smacks o f what is denied. As the judge continued, he again referred to Ramjattans moral reprehensibility: But what cannot be condoned is the avenue they took in order to extricate her from the situation she was in and to make it possible for her to be with her lover and thefather o f her unborn baby. The avenue which they took was to plan the murder o f her common-law husband It is clearfrom the evidence, and from the verdict o f the jury that she was a par­ ticipant in that plan, and facilitated the attack on the husband by leaving the back door open when her lover and his friend arrived that night, in all probability by arrangement with her, for the purpose of getting rid of the husband, (p. 503) He could have left his statement at “to extricate her from the situation” without further explication, but he chooses rather to allude again to her being “with her lover and the father o f her unborn child”. He is using sustained re-emphasis o f fact here to draw attention to this part o f the scenario. As he continues, he is guilty o f begging the question, as he tells us that “It is clear” when the evidence is at best circumstantial. Moreover, as noted earlier, it seems circular to claim a person is guilty on the verdict o f a jury when any verdict arrived at on the basis o f circum­ stantial evidence is an opinion rather than a proof. The same phrase, “It is clear” is repeated in the following paragraph, and the same questionability o f this clarity seems justified if it is to include Ramjattan: It is clear that the intention was not just to beat but to kill him, and that is what they proceeded to do. 7he two men then put his body in the husbands van and pushed it down by a river and set fire to the van and the body. The two men then came back and the evidence was, although she denied it, that she then gave the men their tea while she instructed her daughter to wipe the blood from the floor. O f course, all o f this must be seen

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against the background of the mitigating circumstance of the brutality to which she was

subjected on an ongoing basis, (p. 503) Even if the intention to kill were “clear” we note that the reference to “they” is ambigu­ ous if we are to take it to include the woman as a perpetrator of the killing. There is manipulation of coherence relationships between pronouns and referents in the first two sentences (in italics) above. The judge made reference to her denying giving the men tea, as if to build up the case against her, and finally mentioned another damning detail, her instruction to her daughter. Finally, then, the judge came back to a statement which told us that the foregoing account had to be measured against the defendants systematic brutalization, but he had already told us that her complicity in the killing was more important than that. He then reiterated his former arguments and state­ ments, again denouncing any moral judgement in the very act of making one: As I have said, we are not apportioning moral blame, that is not our function, but we have to make some assessment o f the culpability o f the appellant. It is in that context that I have

referred to the aspects of the crime, or her role in it, both those which would mitigate her offence as well as those which might tell perhaps in the opposite direction. Had the murder been committed in what I would describe as purely defensive circumstances, we would have been able to take a more lenient view even than the one which we are taking. But it was clear that the occasion, i f not the reason, for her deciding to leave her husband and all that followed thereafter was the striking up o f this relationship with her childhood sweetheart which turned into a sexual relationship that resulted in her pregnancy, and her quite natural desire to be with him rather than with her brutal husband, although,

amazingly, she maintained at her trial that she loved both men equally. But this, I suppose, is why we need psychiatrists, (p. 504) He argued again, then, that he was “not apportioning moral blame” but assessing “culpability” according to surrounding events and circumstances. Why then, one wonders, was it necessary to give us so much extraneous and affective detail: "child­ hood sweetheart”, “sexual relationship”, “quite natural desired With this last assessment we see another contradiction, for, on the one hand, there is a stance o f understanding for her desire as “quite natural”, but, on the other hand, physical condemnation, for this very desire is what he has told us accounts for her having to serve another five years. The internal coherence of his argument and, indeed, its overall cohesion, are severely undermined by these inconsistencies throughout. In all o f this, there is a subtext, a set o f perceived and ill-hidden consid­ erations, which drew attention to the fact that this woman was behaving in a

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morally reprehensible way despite the consistent protestation that this was not the case. Her own circumstances o f living for the past twelve years were de-emphasized, and her new relationship was emphasized as a proof o f guilt. What the layman might truly perceive as familial and self-defence becomes “retaliation* and planning “the murder o f her common-law husband”. But how much fallacious argument has gone into this summation as presented by a learned upholder o f the judicial system? How much has what is known o f the secondary reality been distorted in its repre­ sentation by the manipulation o f detail to suit a particular end, that o f the ultimate culpability o f the appellant, despite the invoking o f battered wife syndrome?

DISCUSSION In assessing the judicial decision-making which the case of Indravani Ramjattan dis­ plays, we have encountered a confrontation between the empowered elements in society with the disempowered. In theory, this has also been a confrontation between right and wrong, between a high court judge for right and a convicted killer for wrong; in practice, the rights and wrongs have shown themselves worthy o f serious reassessment. The law court is essentially adversarial in its very nature as it claims to take on this kind o f righteous confrontation, but its maintenance o f the dominant ideologies within a society brings it down to being just another domain o f power struggle within the society. Not only are the empowered in control o f all stages o f the discourse encounters which constitute the total process of the law as it moves from arresting individuals to charging, trying and condemning them in purely linguistic and interactional terms, but the ideological stances o f the empowered supersede those of the disempowered in determining what is right. The confrontation is threefold for it operates at situational, institutional and societal levels simultaneously: a legal/judicial system is drawn up for an entire society, and its power is enacted through the legal and judicial institu­ tions o f that society as they manifest in particular situations o f cases which come to trial. The right o f judgement rests with a jury who are a part o f the society, and who are intended to represent every individual, but they are directed by the counsels and judiciary in any given case, and their existing prejudices are moulded by these empowered individuals* delivery o f their version o f any entailed encounter on which judgement must be given. In the case o f an appeal, there is no jury, and it is for the judiciary alone to determine right. The operation o f legal systems has been referred

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co as embracing “rites o f domination”, specifically in the context o f domestic violence related cases in the Caribbean, and these rites defined as “events and processes that occur regularly in and around legal arenas” where “everyday activities at the court­ house reproduce rather than eliminate hegemony” (Lazarus-Black 2002, 3). “Courts reproduce the power relations o f the wider society, quite simply, because they are designed, organized and run by persons for whom order references the existing class and gender hierarchies” (p. 27). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case in question through which a severely abused woman was submitted to a sentence of thirteen years in total for a crime in which her complicity was ultimately questionable, and in which, even if it were proven, her condition and circumstance could have been expected to exonerate her. It appears that she was condemned by a sexist system, which judges a woman for taking a lover in circumstances o f the most extreme provocation, but ignores a man who is beating and terrorizing his family over a period o f many years. This is a real-life reflection o f Shani Mootoos literary evocation which will be explored in chapter 6: a society looks on in mild approval at a long-term incestuous relation­ ship but turns into a bloodthirsty mob when they discover the mentally unhinged victim has taken revenge on the incestuous father. In the fiction, the Janus-faced legal system shows its kind visage. The Ramjattan case demonstrates that, against such a fully entrenched sexist system, the Domestic Violence Act (1991, 1999) in Trinidad and Tobago is insufficient, because - as long as it does not change societal attitudes - it cannot prevail. An educative, as well as legal, process is urgently needed which would assess man and woman on equal terms in cases of violence o f all kinds and, indeed, in terms o f sexuality and sexual practices. Meanwhile, argumentative procedures at the highest judicial level entail moral argumentation which may be skewed at its core, and the legal and justice system itself contributes to the perpetu­ ation o f a culture o f violence.

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CHAPTER 3 - - ---- - — Media Images of Love and Violence: Gendered Responses

The power o f the media to shape gov­ ernments and parties, to transform the sufferings o f the South . . . to the enter­ tainment o f the North . . . the power to influence knowledge, beliefs, values, social relations, social identities . . . - Norman Fairclough, Media Discourse

IN T R O D U C T IO N This chapter deals with feature articles in the Trinidad and Tobago press, examining the way in which the links between love and violence were dealt with by two com­ mentators, one male and one female, at a time when such links were being persist­ ently made in the local press at large. Each commentator actually processes a variety of local “voices” on the issue and also makes individual commentary on the situation, so the reader gets a sense o f the issues as the public was processing them. The media representations reflect the continuing attempts of a relatively small society to come to terms with changing positions on gender issues and domestic violence.

The Trinidad and Tobago minister for gender affairs o f the time in question, Daphne Phillips, is recorded as saying, Men have not been conditioned to change. There is the belief, taught by the church and various other religious organizations, that he is supposed to be head o f the home. But the reality is that it is not so and men are becoming more tense with this conflict. (“A re T a n d T Men Pressure Cookers?” , Trinidad Guardian, 25 November 1999)

There can be no doubt that the past twenty years have seen mighty change at both formal and informal levels in the positioning o f women; escalating domestic violence rates are one aspect o f the complex reaction to the change. Though the term “head o f the home” is nebulous and even ambiguous, the statement above does encapsulate the problem as many men o f the time see it and also as it is often represented to us. The metaphorical image in the headline too may be an accurate one for the time. We should note, in a broader context, and as explicated also in the first chapter in relation to news reports, the role o f the media as change works itself out in any given society. Fairclough argues: The media are shaped by the wider society, but they also play a vital role in the diffusion o f . . . social and cultural changes . . . obvious issues for attention here include chang­ ing constructions o f gender relations. . . . Media texts constitute a sensitive barometer o f socio-cultural change, and they should be seen as valuable material for researching change. Changes in society and culture manifest themselves in all their tentativeness, incompleteness and contradictory nature in the heterogeneous and shifting discursive practices o f the media. (1995, 51-52)

As we examine the articles in question, we consider them as “barometers of socio­ cultural change” and use them as evidence from which to assess the stage o f thinking of the society under study with respect to gender relations. Since the articles are written as responses in themselves to the gender relations conflict and to the increasing conflation o f images of love with images of physical abuse in the media, we examine the ways in which they deal with that conflation in particular. It is argued again that the representa­ tion o f domestic violence may be extremely damaging to the psyche o f readers when unthinkingly magnified in the press, and that informed and reasoned commentary is essential to propelling any society forward beyond such representations. It is partly through their very different uses of intertextuality (see Fairclough 1995, 1998; Talbot 1997) that the two writers make separate connections to the reading public, and this complex device in particular is examined here as it is used by them both.

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BACKGROUND As explicated in detail in our introduction, a long history o f domestic violence is woven into the social fabric o f Trinidad and Tobagos past. Emanating from a historical past, rooted in colonialism and indentureship, there is a tradition not only o f violence at a societal level, but o f familial violence, as male on female violence was encouraged within slavery, and exacerbated by the circum­ stances o f indentureship. Brereton (2004) has recently commented on the way in which violence imploded on itself in Trinidad and Tobago when persons who were the victims o f sustained violence had no means o f dealing with their anger other than through the violent expression o f it against those closest to them. So common is familial violence that there is a readiness to accept and ignore it, or blame it increasingly on a womanhood seeking to emancipate itself fully at mans expense. Chapter 1 mentioned the spate o f newspaper coverage o f domestic violence which occurred in 1999, at the time at which battered wife syndrome was being introduced to the society. It was also mentioned that there was a report o f domes­ tic violence daily in at least one o f the three main newspapers in the country, the Guardian, the Express and the Newsday, over the three-month period in which we followed the newspapers daily. The reports were often found on the front page, even in the so-called quality press, since there had been an overall shift in the press at that time to a tabloid style, apparently determined by a desire to capture a falling market. Characteristic features o f the presentation o f these incidents were pictures, most usually o f the female victims o f the abuse, direct quotations from the family or from involved neighbours, and lurid detail o f the crimes commit­ ted. In addition, there was increasing reference to the male perpetrators as being frustrated in love by their female partners. This was the customary justification given for the abuse. In a number o f the cases, the perpetrators attempt to commit suicide following the event was recorded. A single example o f a typical headline ( Trinidad Gtcardiany 5 January 2000) is given as follows: I LOVE MY WIFE Mom escapes but children 14 and 11 die in fire set by dad Neighbours say licks was constant. Man talks from hospital after suicide attempt.

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A photograph o f distressed neighbours, a sixteen-year-old friend o f the dead children and an Indo-Trinidadian male who tried to rescue them, is set alongside the article. Later on, the husband is described as “naked on hospital bed . . . chained to bed post”. Specific and typical features of the report here include • the use o f direct quotations by the male expressing love; • decontextualized headlining expressing love; • detail added which wins sympathy for the male killer; • graphic visual representations o f neighbourhood characters within the dramatic scenario; • the use of informal and popular language (for example, mom, dad, licks, “licks was constant”; the reader will remember also the familiar reference to “Indravani”, the young woman convicted o f her husband s murder in the previous chapters); • reference to male suicide or attempted suicide; and • overall focus on the perpetrator of the violence rather than the victims. The press apparently uses these kinds of device to appeal to the man in the street, to bring immediacy to the textual voice of the man who could be anybody’s neighbour. But we have to ask what the effect must be on young people reading these headlines, and viewing these pictures. It is notable in this case that children “die” while “Mom escapes”; the children as victims in the midst remain an unresolved tragedy, hapless victims of a “love” union gone wrong and in which the emotions o f the father appar­ ently exonerate his behaviour. It is against such a backdrop that the feature articles in question, among others, seek to encapsulate the voices of the people and to construct some sense out o f them.

TH E ANALYTICAL FRAME: INTERTEXTUALITY Fairclough has argued that it is through discourse that social identities are con­ structed, as well as social relationships among people and broader “systems o f knowl­ edge and belieP (1998, 64). Intertextuality is not a consciously worked out device on the part of the writer but rather an implicit structuring and embedding of the current scenario in his or her perception of past happenings as they occurred in earlier text or in reality. These past events are shared by the society within which they are reconstructed, but, as the writer refers back to them, social reality is constructed anew by the way in which it is recorded. The writers reality then collides with that of the

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reader and may result in causing the latter to view the events differently from the way in which he or she had earlier perceived them. To take a familiar example - the events o f 11 September 2 001- we can see how these have been persistently presented to us by a skilled US press which has claimed to determine for the world who may be labelled “terrorist” and what may and may not be labelled “terrorism”. The images and impressions that support their view o f terrorism are presented differently according to the precise ideologies o f those who construct them, and the broad US perspective is accepted to differ­ ing extents by the different countries worldwide which are variously deluged by the US media. But overall, the US construction o f events was sufficiently domi­ nant initially as to have a powerful effect in determining a world perspective which supported their position. Different discourse types represent prior reference according to a different range of norms. There is a different means of alignment between the represented discourse and the current piece according with whether it is, for example, a conversation, a political speech or a newspaper article. Sometimes, we will have direct quotation from a prior happening, but at other times, quotations will be indirect and may take on the style of the current piece; this is a common device in newspaper writing, par­ ticularly the tabloid press. Events are most often processed through a set of assumed shared values. Sometimes, a causal link, resulting in a shared interpretation, depends on assumed shared knowledge between speaker/writer and addressee. At other times the two events, current and prior, are intertwined in representation such that they cannot be separated (Fairclough 1998, 119). As the text meets the reader it has to mesh with that readers own orientation to the subject; the reader constructs an understanding on the basis of his or her own knowledge and expectations as these mesh with the textual cues provided by the writer (Talbot 1997). Voices are variously selected from within and outside the text by the writer, and these voices act as triggers in the construction o f an interpretation by the reader: In reading a text [readers] are not encountering a single seamless object. A text is never a unified thing; it always contains external elements. . . . Reading a stretch o f language as coherent requires the construction o f intertextual [that is, between different texts] connections as well as the establishment o f linear intratextual coherence [that is, within the same text]. These intertextual connections draw in an indeterminate collection o f “voices” from outside. (Talbot 1997, 176)

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We can now move on to examine how various local “voices” express themselves in the two articles in question and how intertextual reference works out within them. What emerges is a sense o f how the public has absorbed the issues thus far and how each writer processes these views and seeks to solve the problems raised by establishing relative coherence in his or her texts in particular ways that support their perspectives. As they recontextualize the opinions given, the writers do, o f course, reconstruct the views to some extent, and they do this in terms of their own philosophies and understandings.

THE ARTICLES “Cuffs and Slaps No Gift of Love” The first article to be discussed was written by a female Trinidadian psychologist and its very headline is premised on an assumption o f shared background knowledge by both writer and reader that violence has been associated wrongly with love: the head­ line/title reads “Cuffs and Slaps No Gift o f Love”, and alludes directly to the kind of incident depicted in the headline represented above, in which a husband claims to love his wife in the very act o f trying to kill her. The article is based substantially on shared knowledge with the reader of the following kinds: • the long-term history o f domestic violence within Trinidad and Tobago, to which there is a single reference in the text; • the immediate history o f specific incidents o f domestic violence as reported in the press in 1999, to which there are a total o f five separate references; • broader historical/psychological understandings o f the effects o f domes­ tic violence within the society which have rendered it inevitable, to which there are two references; and • First World contextualization, to which there are two references, one general and one specific. A s these incidents are linked together in the article, it blends the voice of the psychol­ ogist with that o f the man in the street and that o f the tabloid sensationalist writer to achieve its overall purpose. A “legal” voice is also evidenced. Jillian Ballantyne ( Trinidad Express, 2 August 1999) begins her article with a reference to a prior case, several years earlier, when a “local therapist” described as an “act o f love” the horrendous suicide-murder o f a failed Valsayn businessman.

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She comments on the statement as a regrettable appeal to authority, as “an unacceptably misguided comment” , coming as it did “from one practising in the field o f human psychology”. She cites the representation as “bizarre” and “regrettable” since it “resonates” even at the time o f writing as “deeply entrenched within the Trinbagonian psyche”. What happened through this reporting was the linking o f medical/psychological expertise to a view o f love/violence which has existed histori­ cally in the society from at least the middle o f the nineteenth century (Mohammed 1999). Ballantyne takes the opportunity to contrast this with a broader world view, which, though sharing an awareness o f the links being made, rejects it: “Around the world people are finally waking up to the reality and unacceptability o f relation­ ship violence. And yet locally, the combination o f love and violence seems to be becoming more and more accepted.” The implication that the more worldly and informed o f us will reject this unacceptable alliance is a focal point o f the piece: let us move beyond local backwardness to global awareness and understanding. This is a frame o f reference which the reader is encouraged to share with the writer, she in turn writing from an informed social-psychological positioning, with her medical expertise known and established within the community. By drawing in this view from “around the world” she seeks to debunk the limited local perspective. We must note, in passing, that laudable as this attempt may appear, it reflects a construction o f “Third World” mentalities from within, whereby they are consist­ ently compared unfavourably with the stage of development o f the so-called First World. The reality is that, despite greater resources and mediation o f domestic vio­ lence, this problem is a worldwide phenomenon, currently unresponsive to the varied measures implemented to deal with it. The American Medical Association estimates that four million women are battered by their husbands annually in the United States and that one out of four women is battered by a boyfriend or partner in the course of her life (Glazer 1993). In the same article, Ballantyne s own reference to a specific “American” case, shows the way in which a warped notion o f love comes into play in that case also. The “voice” of the other in this case may not be so far ahead o f our own as we are led to believe; it does recognize battered wife syndrome but it has no means to deal with the battery. The writers language is restrained but strong, and is supported by a light word­ play, characteristic also of the tabloid press: “Love and violence seem to be surpris­ ingly comfortable bed partners in Trinidad and Tobago”. She builds up her argument through a tightly linked series o f specific references, o f which the reader is likely to

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be aware, since they are ail taken from recent local newspaper coverage and are also cited with specificity. An inset picture o f a woman and summary o f her case balance a photograph o f the writer herself The woman is named, her age is given, and we are told that her son died in a fire when her boyfriend was supposedly “watching him”. Hence, our memory o f this, and another incident in which a teenage mother was attacked by “her rejected lover”, is direcdy stimulated. Later, she names this victim: “ 17-year-old Nyasha Bobb ” to bring further stark reality to the event by reference to her young age. On another occasion, she quotes directly, in the case of a personal reference in the piece apparently known only to herself: “I know o f a man who would lovingly tend to his wife’s wounds after he had planassed her with a cutlass all over her body. Throughout his tender ministrations he would whisper: ‘See what you make me do? Why you make me do all these things to you, eh?’ ” The grim humour and irony here are used to highlight, in the Creole language variety to which all Trinidadians can relate, the oft-cited and acknowledged “blame” which is ascribed to the victim by her partner, as well as by herself in many cases. The use o f “prior text intertextuality”, entailing the use o f reports and even specific quotations, is a characteristic feature o f both news genres and legal discourse (Talbot 1997, 178). Indeed, these two seem to blend with the personal medical knowledge o f the writer as we get a clear sense of these criminal cases having been reported in the news as they came before the law courts o f the time. References like “charged with murder” and “his defence”, as they permeate the series of descriptions, directly support this legal voice. In every case discussed, the writer includes some measure of analysis/interpretation o f the situation and puts it into a broader frame of reference. In discussing the initial case where the son died in a fire and the mother “gave up on men” she tells us: That someone so young could be so jaded, so completely fed up, is a sad indictment o f the local world o f relationships . . . her reactions seemed to reflect not only the horror o f losing her son but also a depression inspired by a longer standing series o f abusive relationships.. . . At least, that was my impression.

Her mode o f representation encourages readers to make her “impression” their own also; for example, there is a shift from the formal “jaded” to the popular “fed up”, whereby the psychologist’s formal language has a more popular equivalent juxtaposed with it, to draw readers, at their own level, into the conclusion being made.

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The examples given are all quite lurid, however: “A man gouges out his wife’s eyes with his bare hands and then tells her that from then on he would take care o f her.” The writer seems to be direcdy adopting the popular tabloid style to replay the cases. The descriptions do not fit with the balance expected o f the psychologist’s voice. It is as if she has decided to make a popular representation draw the attention o f the man in the street in the way in which the tabloids do, and then, having drawn it, to impose some order by her analysis. Hence, it is not just by referring to known examples that she draws on a shared knowledge of examples between herself and the reader, but also by her shifting to the tabloid reporting voice. Stark contrasts are consistendy made between the violent act and the words spoken. These contrasts are also made in comparing the acts committed with some o f the female partners’ reactions: “A child dies and his stepfather is charged with murder and the child’s mother remains openly supportive o f her man, beaming widely to the cameras.” The writer is taking up the love/violence paradox and extending it consistently into the prose representations o f the incidents which she depicts, as if to emphasize to her readers the uncomfortable fit between the two. The case above is compared to an American one in which a wife whose husband had “tried to shoot her in the head” pleaded for him on grounds o f “depression”. The link is significant in highlighting the pervasiveness o f the phenomenon under discus­ sion. We are asked to form our own judgement through a series o f rhetorical ques­ tions, which become the more effective by our apparendy being compelled to assess for ourselves: “What happens to these women? Where does their pain go?” While we recognize that the writer is apparendy trying to snap the public out o f its lethargic, perhaps desensitized, responses, and she includes abused women in her target group, one does wonder why, at a time when the effects o f battered wife syndrome are being discussed in the public forum in the context o f the Indravani Ramjattan case, she does not take the opportunity, as a clinical psychologist, to reinforce understandings o f this condition, rather than berate the women concerned. It is as if a frustrated militant voice has taken over, and her professional voice has become submerged within it. There is a subtle appeal to the male reader through the case cited o f the young woman who has “given up on men”, since she has concluded that “violence and love are inextricably linked”: “And so with terrible sweeping strokes she concluded essentially that all men were no good.” This is thrown out almost as a challenge. The reference to “terrible sweeping strokes” suggests strongly that the generalization is in fact overdrawn and demands redress. She couples this with a repeated reference

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to the fact that women are on occasion violent and that this is blameworthy too: “ Many women believe that it is their prerogative to hit and scratch at a lover during a moment o f emotional insecurity.” While this provides balance in the levelling of male and female violence, one notes again “the hit and scratch” language and wonders whether it is appropriate to the psychologist-writer role, or whether it undermines and reduces in the very act o f speaking with a pseudo-tabloid voice. The feline imagery is not useful at a time when the aim is to lift the discussion above the animalistic and to find rational solutions. In the commentary leading up to the end o f the article, and beyond the specific cases cited, the writer reflects on the cyclical nature o f the violence: the fact that the capacity for violent reaction is internalized by exposure to it in the home, and despite a conscious rejection o f it. She also reflects on jealousy - indeed, this is where she brings in the “hit and scratch” of women - informing the reader that this, in itself, is not a feature o f “love”, but rather o f “emotional insecurity”. Her conclusion embraces the Trinbagonian and, indeed, wider Caribbean knowl­ edge o f the historical and present reality of womens situation, which, by implication, must change: “Part o f the problem must lie in what it means to be a woman in Trini­ dad and Tobago.” In this final statement, she refers to the implicit shared knowledge o f local women that their men are unfaithful and almost pathologically so, and that there is an acceptance of this as there is of the violence o f the male partner. In sepa­ rating “love” from “jealousy” the writer is apparently attempting to redress violent reactions, even when she sees it as impossible to curb the flood o f infidelity. As a whole, the piece reviews sensationalized incidents o f violence, largely within the local community, to impress her readers with the horror and unacceptability of the current crisis within which violence is being excused as a “love” reaction. The writer draws consistently on local knowledge and understandings o f such situations, both explicitly and implicitly, and speaks to us in a “people s” voice as well as from her professional perspective. Very often the two voices mesh in a single sentence: And while many boys tell themselves th a t. . . they would never hit someone in the way that Daddy hit Mammy or the way that M ammy hit them, the truth is that they are more likely to turn out to be internalised representations o f their own negative parenting experiences.

A third voice alluded to is that o f the tabloid journalistic style which mediates also between her own professional voice and the reader, and a fourth, the law

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court representation o f events as they come before it. Thus, in addition to using a shared knowledge base to identify with her readers, she actually embraces four different discourse genres to put across her piece and to effect change in her audience. Thus, she combines what Fairclough refers to as “a familiar example” o f intertextuality in blending M a mixture o f genres o f information, persuasion and entertainment” (1995, 61).

“Violence: A Gender Perspective” The second piece is put together by Bukka Rennie, an Afro-Trinidadian who writes a regular column in the Trinuiad Guardian, in which he examines current issues from his own, as well as what he perceives to be a generalized, male perspective. At the time o f his writing this article, he had already written two on the gender-violence situation in the country and specifically on the conflation o f love with violence, and in the current article under discussion, he set out to summarize the perspectives he had received from male and female correspondents. In highlighting the “peoples voice”, albeit diverse, the article is important, although the question arises o f how far we hear from the people directly and how far they are recontextualized by the writer himself. It is as if the writer deliberately confuses the two, thereby giving his writing a lack o f overall coherence. As the article begins, we are introduced to a summary o f the male perspective from prior correspondence: “The men have stated clearly that the new level o f assertive­ ness o f women has brought with it, quite understandably, an inordinate degree o f arrogance and insensitivity that, at times, is tantamount to extreme psychological violence.” Rennie comments that the class o f women which displays the characteris­ tics mentioned in the quotation is not the class which is largely subjected to physical violence by men: “We have been keen to point out that there is a class basis to this phenomenon.” He persists in a list o f more and less loaded descriptors for the cul­ pable group and their attitudes, which clearly have a set o f shared connotations for himself, and, we have to assume, his audience. He speaks o f this female subgroup variously and as listed below: • • • •

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“the middle-class professional type” “female intelligentsia” “militants” “militant feminists who project the view that man is the enemy”

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• “they seize the moral high ground” • “anything a man does is o f no significance” In so doing he sets up a series o f referents in which the latter four are represented as a troublesome subset of the first two categories of women. Even the broader initial labels appear questionable - Is there a middle-class professional “type”? the critical reader may ask. What are the characteristics of “female intelligentsia”? In an oblique reference to “this social grouping” he claims further that “they develop an insensitiv­ ity to a mans investment o f time, energy and often finance in their development and well-being. Anything a man does is o f no significance and o f little worth, yet what­ ever they do is considered morally invaluable.” The writer claims to be summarizing the views o f males who have written to him, but once he gets into his discourse on “middle-class women” it is unclear whose voice we are hearing, his or those who wrote to him. It appears to be his own, but in the next paragraph he begins: “Reference is made to the case of the Santa Cruz woman And we are given to believe that this reference must refer to correspondence he has received. This confusion o f voices persists throughout the piece, but the generalized discussion appears to come from the writer himself. Women, wives generally have resorted to cute ways o f abandoning their marriages: they find excuses for going to North America to live and work a while leaving the man, the husband, behind to take care o f the necessities . . . the marriage has virtually been annulled but the man is not aware that this is in fact so.

We hear the writers voice very strongly here. There is a specific event type, which w e recognize within Caribbean society, o f migration, particularly to the United States. Originally, it was males more than females who migrated but the need for competent and inexpensive (also illegal) nurses and home-helps has caused the balance to shift in favour o f women. In general, both male and female migrants hope for employment to support their children at home. A few from his subclass o f “middle class” might go, as the writer specifies, “to settle children in univer­ sity abroad”, but this is not the general case. The migration type alluded to is so common that throughout the Caribbean we have developed a new referent term, “ barrel children”, to denote those children who wait on their mothers’ sending o f barrels of goodies from abroad. It is a very real problem to the society, but real responsibility can as much be laid on the nonproviding husband as the “abandon­ in g” mother, as much on the exploitative society which receives the needy mothers

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as the society which cannot provide sufficient employment for them. One is forced to wonder why the problem is so narrowly defined in this case. Having early separated the middle-class women for attack, as distinct from the more oppressed lower-class women, the reference has shifted in the course o f the article. We have already noted that “wives generally” have this specified “cute way of abandoning their marriages” but now we are told that “such militant women keep fighting-up with non-issues and loudly project such an approach to the masses o f less fortunate. More and more in todays society, the approach o f such women is becoming the approach o f the female mass.” Just as the source o f commentary is confused between male correspondents and Rennie himself, so also the group o f women guilty o f the behaviours presented to us constantly shifts and blends throughout the discourse. As the voice shifts, the accusations do not. The references to militancy and aggression, to abandonment and abuse, to “the psychological, emotional and moral stratagems o f women” are consistent. This column is written specifically for a male audience who may only too readily seize upon the account as an excuse for perpetrating violence against their own women, whether or not they truly fit the description in the article. In the society at large we recognize that the male is being called to account for violent behaviour that has, historically, been tol­ erated. Necessarily he will look for a scapegoat in the midst and our writer appears to be creating one. It is worth considering the specific references made to real incidents under the section dealing with the male view. The first takes a “reductio ad absurdum” approach in citing reference to an individual: “the feminists, such as our Canadian senator friend”; the person alluded to is well known in the local Trinbagonian com­ munity and is said to have held the view that “men dominated women because women had to stoop to urinate, and therefore she sought to . . . stand like men” . How truly ridiculous is womankind as represented by our writer in this decontextualized anecdote. The second reference is the only specific case of male violence cited, and it is cited not in its own terms, left to speak for itself, but rather as the direct result o f “cold disregard” for the man: Reference is made to the case o f the Santa Cruz woman who was hugged tightly by her man in the midst o f the flames that he set to burn everything that they had bui l t . . . . He had dropped her off at the airport. . . . On her return . . . she had met someone in Barbados and she wanted to terminate the relationship forthwith.

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Not only is the woman depicted as the guilty party as she was reportedly seeking to break her relationship with her husband, but he is presented as her ultimate protector, “hugging her tightly” in the midst o f the flames. What is being represented to us here is the same image we are seeking to unmask, that o f the conflation o f love with vio­ lence, in which the husbands love justifies his action against the unfaithful woman. It is necessary to depict incidents o f domestic violence fairly, so the mention of cause is not in itself problematic. But we would not want to present an unbalanced view with woman always and only in the wrong. This would exacerbate a tragic condition that we are surely seeking to resolve and eliminate. The final reference occurs in the very brief section of the article which deals with correspondence the writer has received from females. He cites them as complaining that men are unable to “talk things through” without resorting to violence. The issue o f male silence is one that has provoked considerable attention as a serious problem to be grappled with not only locally but worldwide; men themselves speak o f their inability to express emotions appropriately verbally* either to one another or to their female partners, and cite this as a causal factor in their unresolved anger. The writer reduces it to the absurd, however, by his own recontextualization and exaggeration of the womens suggestion: “Women in their responses have made consistent allusion to the inability o f men to engage differences . . . without ‘killing’ everybody and every­ thing in the immediate circle.” It is unlikely that the exaggeration is the women’s but it is made to appear so and thus undermines them even further than they have already been undermined throughout the article. It is in this context that the writer makes an emotional appeal for the restoration o f the male “lime”, a get-together of friends, which is depicted as a means of talking out and therefore resolving problems: T he lime dealt with you brutally and honestly and forced you to face your own insecurities. T h at ability to laugh at ourselves served to minimize the violent reso­ lution o f conflict and made us to understand that either party can terminate a relationship at any moment and that the world did not have to end . . . the lime socially conditioned young men as well as provided a sort o f support mechanism for them.

I f the lime, by no means dead, has this function, then it may be important to draw attention to it. However, the reference may jar on the readers’ own reality in so far as it is known, even for men, as a less elevated “night out with the boys”, and for some

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women as a night to be dreaded, since their husbands come home drunk and beat them at the end o f the night. It has a long history, as this diary record from 1922 indicates: “if your husband drinking rum in a shop you cant go, you just have to stop home till he come and if he come he quarrel or he eh quarrel, he beat you or he eh beat you, or he go and sleep . . . . Women make their own happiness” (Mohammed 1999, 93). The article ends then by citing this lost “lime” and conflict resolution pro­ grammes in schools as the only safeguards against what is depicted as a duel between “the brute physical strength o f men and the psychological, emotional, moralistic strategems o f women”. This may superficially appear as an enlightened perspective, giving the male, known for suppressing his emotions, an outlet for dealing with them. However, it conflicts with the sexist tone and tenor o f the larger article. Overall, this article lacks coherence; the fact that it may deliberately do so does not make the problematic less. First o f all, we have the confusion o f voices expressed, which allows the writer to express his own construction o f events as that o f his male readers. Then, we have an imbalance in proportional representation and discussion o f male versus female views, with three-quarters of the article devoted to the male view. Then we have the problematic of an intertextuality whereby slanted reconstructions o f prior incidents are put forward. Finally, we have the highly subjective depictions of womanhood, and the blurred referencing between all and some o f this subset throughout the piece.

DISCUSSION The two articles analysed in this chapter were written against a backdrop of the con­ tinued struggle within Trinidad and Tobago society in 1999 to engage and deal with domestic violence issues. Rooted in a history o f inurement to domestic violence, the proportional level it reached in the 1990s was causing the society to look to itself for explanations and solutions. As a result, the link being made in the press between love and violence may be seen not only as a reflection o f a long-term way o f looking at the problem, but as an attempt to justify the male position in the face o f a growing societal concern over the situation. This justification needed to be dealt with and itself rejected as a solution. The two articles demonstrate contrasting applications o f intertextuality and contrasting levels of responsible journalism. The first writer calls on several voices, as well as several incidents prior to the writing o f this text, to make common cause with her readers. The second confuses the

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voices o f male correspondents with his own, undermines the voice o f female writers, and consistently undermines womanhood by his personal and sexist representations o f the issues in question. He draws on only two real incidents to which his audience may respond, and the first o f these is decontextualized to undermine the woman con­ cerned, the second distorted to win sympathy for a man killing his wife and himself. The third point o f shared understanding with his reader, the “lime”, is also distorted and sentimentalized in its reconstruction. The first article supports its argument by several specific references. It sets up a common reference frame with both male and female audiences and speaks strongly to the situation, demanding change. It uses intertextuality to unite several discourse genres: the popular, the tabloid, the legal and the medical. It can be said to mesh these to make a collective appeal at different levels and, thereby, to effect change in the reading public. Ultimately, it is only a certain tendency to let tabloid-type repre­ sentations dominate, at the expense o f more objective ones, that may lead the reader to question its overall balance. The second article, however, rests on distortion and innuendoes; it exacerbates loose anti-feminist feeling, it is highly slanted, it minimizes specific references and distorts their representation. It appeals directly to its male audience, a subsection of which is under fire for its practices, and gives that subsection the weaponry it needs to fight back and to continue to justify its heinous practices. There is a clear sense in which journalistic objectivity, if it exists at all today, is being undermined in this article and the device o f intertextuality manipulated in different ways to support a biased perspective.

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CHAPTER 4 ... .....

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Violence in a Police Officer’s Family

Violence or its threat shapes the contours of every womans life; it confines where she goes and what she does, limiting her freedom of movement, speech and assembly and undermining her sense of personhood, her human dignity and her rights in the world.

Roberta Clarke “Combatting Violence Against Women in the Caribbean”

IN TRO D U CTIO N The Caribbean region has not yet given much serious consideration to the roles which officers of the law may play in family violence. It is at the stage of informing its police officers on the problem of domestic violence as a crime and training them in awareness and intervention strategies, but has not fully acknowledged the perpetra­ tors in the midst. For police officers, the skills of intimidation acquired on their jobs readily translate themselves into real family violence if they cannot abandon them on

re-entering their own homes. This problem is now being faced in the United States in the context of a recognition that the regular support routes built up for the victims of domestic violence are almost entirely cut off for the families o f police officers: If your batterer is a police officer, most o f the progress that has been made in developing resources and assistance for battered women is o f little benefit to you. Victims o f police officers are still as isolated and invisible as all the victims o f this crime were thirty years ago. Work now needs to be done to raise the publics awareness o f domestic violence in the police home. Society must hold police officers accountable to not only enforce the law, but to live by it. (Wetendorf 2000, 1)

This chapter examines the testimony o f a single Caribbean police officers wife. She is o f Indo-Caribbean descent; for reasons o f confidentiality we take the identification process no further. She has been systematically abused, both physically and emotion­ ally, over the period of the seventeen years in which she has been married, ihe abuse has culminated in her leaving the family home, but the only son o f the marriage, also a victim, and latterly made an accomplice, remains with his father because o f fear of reprisal. The abuse predates the husband s entry into the police force, such that we do n ot seek to make a cause-effect connection between his profession and the abuse, but rather to highlight that the problem does exist within this respected profession, may be exacerbated by it, and is more difficult to deal with in that context. Specifically, we would raise awareness o f the issue so that mechanisms for familial protection could be put in place within this subset o f society also. The relationship between father and son is a particular concern o f the paper, separate and apart from that between husband and wife, as the complex issue o f how masculinity is constructed through such paternal relationships is still not fully understood (see Barker and Galasinski 2001). As we learn o f the family relationships through the wife’s testimony, we must also consider how she herself has reconstructed the situation as she tries to make sense and meaning o f the events which have led to her leaving the marital home.

EXPLA N A TIO N S FOR MALE VIO LENCE According to Richard Davis (2001), three major contemporary theories attempt to explain the causes o f domestic violence, and each may be related specifically to the Caribbean sociopolitical construct as a whole, and to the law-enforcing professions in particular.

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The feminist or cognitive-behavioural model argues that domestic violence reflects the patriarchal organization o f society and that its fundamental norms simply allow this form o f abuse to continue. Further, there is evidence that documents the fact that when one person is physically stronger, or has more resources than another person, they will use whatever power, control and resources they have to retain their posi­ tion, regardless of gender. The reality is that the male is physically stronger than the woman, as well as being more aggressive through higher testosterone levels; in addi­ tion, he has traditionally played the more aggressive role in the home unit. American Robert Bly, well known for his work with men to combat their violence, explains it in mens early history as hunters: The roots o f male violence obviously go back to maybe four hundred thousand years o f killing animals. And so, in the beginning, men were asked to be violent. And after t hat . . . then people went into agriculture and the cities began to form. Then there was a surplus o f grain and then neighbouring people came to steal their grain. And they think there was no real warfare in the hunter-gatherer groups. But once the cities were formed, there was violence. So we have that in our bodies. (1998, 1)

Whether or not we accept this argument, we are well aware that the incitement to vio­ lence was part of the very evolution of Afro-Caribbean development through slavery. Men were deprived o f their family rights and encouraged in irresponsible sexual behav­ iour without family ties. In such circumstances, they were encouraged to objectify women as sexual objects rather than to develop love relationships with them and their children. Additionally, their extreme oppression by the European powers encouraged them to retaliate with violence against those whom they could subjugate. In the circumstances of Indian indentureship in Trinidad and Guyana, violence also emerged, as men came against women who were seeking their freedom in the very act of moving to the Caribbean (Reddock 1985). Men, thus threatened, called on their varied religious persuasions to reinforce male dominance in the home unit, as well as enlisting Christian missionaries and the colonial powers in the process of resubjugating their women. Violence was an accepted means o f bringing the rebellious woman into conformity, notwithstanding her status as wife and mother. Despite very different marital and employment patterns from Afro-Caribbean women (Trotz 2002) then, Indo-Caribbean women too were constantly brutalized to keep them in subjugation. In all groups we see that domestic violence was not discouraged by the coloni­ alist oppressors, who saw it as another means of inducing subjugation among the oppressed. Brereton (2004, 6) provides us with some hard facts:

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Between 1872 and 1880,22 Indians were murdered by Indians, and all the victims were women; between 1901 and 1910, 62 Indians were murdered by Indians, with 20 o f the victims women. Between 1872 and 1900, there were 87 murders o f Indian women, o f which 65 were “wife-murders”. The tragic “Coolie wife-murders” reflected the skewed sex ratio on the plantations during the period o f indentured immigration, the abnormal living conditions in the estate barracks, the disruption o f traditional gender relations and patterns o f marriage, and the concentration o f young single males competing for the small number o f Indian girls and women o f marriageable age.

As we engage with the history, we may note also the relevance o f both the second and third models. The psychotherapeutic model argues that traumatic life experiences predispose people to use violence in family relationships. How well we know the adage that “violence breeds violence”. The evidence accumulates daily o f persons who have themselves been the victims o f family violence as children growing up to inflict the same kind o f violence on their own families. In the Caribbean today, male violence, including rape and incest, verbal and physical abuse, is commonplace in both Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean family units. The third model o f the three - the family conflict model - perceives violence as the outgrowth o f the stresses created within dysfunctional families. In this model, any family member may precipitate violence. Lower levels o f family conflict are often warning signs for families that are at risk of greater abuse. Such levels of conflict can quickly escalate into more violent forms o f behaviour for all members o f the family. It is arguable that this particular model may be the most relevant to police officers and their families. While these officers often live in a functional world themselves, in their work they encounter familial dysfunctionality as well as all forms of violence, and their own working schedules and tasks are challenging and sometimes traumatizing. The kinds of stress they encounter can exacerbate the potential for family violence in their own homes. Police officers are not immune from low-level family conflict nor are they imper­ vious to more serious forms of domestic violence. However, as noted earlier, police officers as either abusers or victims o f family conflict have been ignored, misrepre­ sented and inadequately studied. Few studies have considered the serious psychologi­ cal effects police officers face because o f their attempt to live in one (functional) world while working in another (dysfunctional) world of crime, criminals and an imperfect crime prevention system. In the Trinidad context, an interview with a police officer

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who himself works with other police officers in need o f violence counselling co n ­ firmed that the problem is severe. In a recent 2004 case, a police officer obtained a firearm on his job and used it to shoot his wife and himself. In a letter to the editor o f the Trinidad Guardian (20 May 2004), local psychologist Karen Moore has cited this scenario as evidence of the failure o f the society and the police force specifically to come to terms with the problem. Her comments are telling: Our police officers live their lives under constant threat and tremendous stress. They need to be in top physical condition, physically, spiritually and mentally . . . yet atten­ tion is paid only to their physical fitness. Part o f the difficulty is also our attitude to domestic violence. It is still seen today as “family business”. Someone elses getting involved is seen as “interference” rather than help. At best, well-meaning friends will “talk” to the parties involved. In other words, everyone minimizes the issue.

Domestic violence is readily conceptualized in extreme terms: “the batterer sys­ tematically uses physical violence, economic subordination, threats, isolation, and a variety o f other behavioural controlling tactics to ensure she does what he wants her to do” (Richard Davis 2001, 1). However, there is a more common type o f family violence that more regularly occurs. This type is stress-related and results from spontaneous arguments that lead to threats or actual physical assaults which have no specific pattern, and do not necessarily escalate to more serious physi­ cal assaults. Most associated physical assaults are relatively minor and consist o f pushing or slapping. The fact that the male is not encouraged to express himself by verbal means can lead to anger building up within him, and this anger is often released through vio­ lence. For this reason, many male counsellors today are engaged in helping men to express their emotions verbally in order that they vent them through talk rather than violence. In addition, men often carry unreconciled shame, which may be exacer­ bated by something their female partner says or does, and this, in turn, results in violence. As Bly (1998, 1) describes it, Another reason . . . as to the roots o f male violence is the amount o f shame that men take in. Women take in a tremendous amount o f shame too, but women have talked about that for a long time. They discuss it, even in high school, that they went out on a date and they felt ashamed o f this and the men simply . . . lie. So it takes a long time for men to learn to be able to talk about their shame. And sometimes what happens in the family is that a woman will say a criticism to a man, perfectly ordinary criticism, and it goes into some shame place in the heart, and he cant get it back out.

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At the workshop The Culture of Violence in Trinidad and Tobago (University of the West Indies, St Augustine, 6 May 2004), behavioural consultant Frank Dolly cited this incapacity to express negative experience and emotion as a major con­ tributor to Trinidadian male violence. Dealing as he does with male clients who are themselves abusers, his testimony o f men who blame their wives for making them “feel bad” is a telling one. What we find in the hour-long interview which provides the data for this study is a wife’s documentation o f both physical and verbal abuse which she describes and attempts to explain. She partially understands and identifies its causes in her partner, having done some reading in the area as well as much thinking through, but yet she has been unable to redress the problem and feels constrained to leave the marital home and also to leave her son behind. What the interview provides is her own perspective on the abuse, with a focus on how she and her son were made to feel because o f it. The nature o f the violence appears to lie somewhere between that described above for the systematically battered woman and that stress-related family conflict which is spontaneously induced. The husbands behaviour to his wife has been characterized by long-term physical and verbal abuse. Although the physical mistreatment has not been severe, the negative emotional impact o f the experience on the wife is very clear. The most severe physical abuse has been meted out to the son, who has also been inveigled into participating in the verbal/emotional abuse, thus facilitating his likely perpetuation of this form of abuse into his own adult life: The power o f the father is the authority o f patriarchy with all its suggestions o f mastery and masculine control. He is the one with whom boys identify and wish to emulate . . . sons internalise their fathers voice as the representation o f true “manhood” even as he may also be the hand that wields the stick beating them for their alleged failings. (Barker and Galasinski 2001, 94-95)

The case may superficially appear unremarkable in that the physical abuse entailed is not extreme, but for this very reason it is significant. There is a level o f abuse which continues to be tolerated in society because o f its “normality”, when in fact there is an urgent need to come against it since it affects and determines the whole lives and development of the abused. In a case like this, the way in which the relationships and the abuse are described and evaluated and the language that is actually used to do this provide clues to the

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nature of the relationships and the effects of the abuse. We would not generalize from a single interview, but would note ways in which the individual rationalizes the situ­ ation and add this to the growing body o f information in the field.

M ET H O D O L O G Y The study o f gender relations through discourse has become a major field o f enquiry, since it has been recognized that gender is a social construct, realized differently within different societies and even within subsets of a single society. These gender constructions are not neutral but are themselves “implicated in the institutional­ ized power relations of societies” . Further, “Language does not merely reflect a pre-existing sexist world; instead, it actively constructs gender asymmetries within specific socio-historical contexts” (West, Lazar and Kramarae 1997, 120). There has been very little investigation o f gender construction as it is worked out through language interaction in the Caribbean generally, although work in the field is now emerging (for example, Youssef 2001; Shields-Brodber 2002). In UK and U S contexts, however, there has been considerable interest in the conversational analysis of talk that goes on between married couples, with a concern to discover whether pat­ terns of dominance observed in wider and more public contexts are carried over into marital relations. Whether these patterns develop wholly through male dominance (Zimmerman and West 1975) or partially through the fact that men and women grow up in different subcultures with different conversational norms (Maltz and Borker 1982; Tannen 1991), the reality o f female cooperative tendencies and male competition has been confirmed in some studies o f couples (for example, Fishman 1978) as well as within single-sex talk (for example, Coates 1996). While we rec­ ognize today that these are stereotyped norms, with a broad range o f behaviours around them for each gender, the different styles remain sufficiently real in both work and home settings for a broad part of the function o f current poststructuralist discourse analysis (for example, Baxter 2002) to be to examine the nature o f different discourse types and the ways in which they can be used to renegotiate power in both public and private arenas. Within the theoretical positioning o f the poststructuralist discourse analysis approach, it is perceived that social conditions can be established and maintained on the one hand, but also transformed on the other. As we order our lives linguistically, we simultaneously find ways o f dealing with social realities and overcoming negatives in our history and circumstance.

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In this connection, it may be noted that there has been little investigation o f per­ sonal narratives o f violence within a discourse analysis framework, although Barker and Galasinski (2001) deal with associated issues. There has been little analysis either o f the interactions reported for fathers and their children and none at all for i-

the Caribbean. In this context, what men and women say about one another, what children report or even reportedly say, become significant for our understanding of abusive behaviour and our militating against it. In incidents of excess and violence, the descriptions of violence, as well as the victims’ and perpetrators’ evaluations o f the incidents, contribute to greater awareness and mediation o f the problem. With this in mind, and as noted in the previous subsection, the following dis­ course analysis focuses on the womans description o f her husband’s physical and verbal abuse to her and their son, and his engagement o f their son in the enterprise. We consider also how she reports that it made her feel, and how her son also feels, and the way in which she explains the behaviour in her husband. We remember that “The act o f retelling a narrative involves the speaker’s control o f what is being retold and how that retelling is structured and organized” (Barker and Galasinski 2001, 77). Personal narratives at the same time reconstruct self and, for this reason, merit careful interrogation. In this case, with no supportive interventions, there appears to have been no alter­ native for the wife, seventeen years into this abusive relationship, but separation. We believe that the kind of analysis undertaken in this study can be o f considerable utility in enabling concerned parties to come to terms with their differences with family members, and ultimately help in setting their relationships straight. We are engaged then not in mere academic activity but in socially relevant linguistics which can be utilized to mediate and reform relationships.

T H E ANALYSIS Topics Examined Since space does not allow for full transcription o f the interview, we have isolated extracts which deal with specific subtopics o f our concern, namely, • description o f the circumstances in which the marriage took place; • the nature of the violence perpetrated (1) against the wife and (2) against the son;

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• the effects of the violence on the abused; and • explanations/rationalizations/evaluations proffered for it. As the analysis worked itself out, it was possible to discern different elements o f dis­ course being significant at different stages in the course o f the interview.

Features Examined A series o f extracts from the interviewees narrative are transcribed below and each, in turn, discussed, using the tools of critical linguistics and conversation analysis. Far from being unsystematic, conversational discourse markers such as hedges and fillers, and hesitation and disfluency markers including repetition, have proven invaluable in terms o f revealing both relational development and interplay between speaker and interlocutor, as well as the trend o f the speakers thought (see, for example, Holmes 1984, 1986). Critical linguistics, as one of several sub-branches o f critical discourse analysis, takes the same theoretical stance but operates more at an utterance than at a discourse level. In the course o f the discussion, we examine features of • repetition and elaboration; • lexical choice; • recalled dialogue; • selection o f content detail and imagery; • other focusing devices; • implicature and shared understanding; and • conversational discourse markers, such as hedging devices, and their specific functions.

Circumstances in Which the Marriage Took Place A brief note first on how the relationship came into being. The couple were married when the wife was only seventeen. It was selected for scrutiny here partially because it is very typical o f a kind o f union which still occurs, which is to large extent controlled by the bride’s parents. In terms o f the nature of the discourse itself, we see, from the outset o f the inter­ view, that the wife uses repetition and amplification as she cumulatively builds up her points o f emphasis, sometimes by direct replication, sometimes by explicating a point further through specific examples of general phenomena. Length of pauses in

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seconds is indicated in brackets in the transcription, with a single dot representing a minimal pause. The instances o f recalled dialogue emerge early as a very significant element in helping the reader understand the positionings and feelings of the persons involved as the wife recontextualizes them. Within this section, we find instances o f shared cultural understanding between the young bride-to-be and her friend as to the ramifications o f arranged marriages and their diverse implications. These are italicized in the extract below. As the wife describes how the marriage began, she explains that there really was no “romance”, “love at first sight” or “courtship”: 1. Is not like a courtship, or, you know, you get to know the am (5) you get to know his family or you get to know his background. He hid information, like (.) especially pertaining to his former relationship. . . . My father is like, “So what is your inten­ tion? You would marry the girl?” . . . O ne day my friend came home and they were putting up the shed for (.) for the wedding, and she said am she said, “You sure? How com e you doing this?” I say, “Girl, I don’t know what to do because I mean they putting up the shed. I can’t tell them!” - when you young, you naïve, you listening to your parents - then daddy wasn’t working so I tell myself well look, he have a house, maybe is better for me (.) I will be less o f a burden on them. So that is how I ended up getting married . . . .

I f we examine the details which the wife selects and presents concerning the event, we are able to build up a clear picture o f her perception o f the circumstances o f con­ straint in which the marriage took place: • The couple did not really know one another well: she did not “get to know” “his family” or “his background”. • Male parental pressure was responsible for the union: “My father is like, ‘You would marry the girl?’ ” • The young bride and her friend are sheltered, subject to parental con­ straint, and know little o f life: “You naïve, you listening to your parents.” • The young bride did not feel herself in a position to reject the plan: “They putting up the shed. I cant tell them!” • The implicature is that the bride and her friend knew the marriage was not right for her, for example, “How come you doing this?” • There is a shared cultural script between the friends o f the dilemma in which the bride finds herself. In this context, the “putting up” of “the shed” refers to their shared understandings of the construction of a wedding “shed” before an Indian marriage, and of this signifying a “fait accompli”: “I don’t know what to do because (.) I mean (.) they putting up the shed.”

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• There were material constraints which convinced the young bride o f the marriage: “He have a house. . . . I will be less of a burden on them.”

The Nature of the Violence When we come to examine the nature o f the abuse perpetrated, we find a number o f elements o f conversational style which cue us in to the wife’s state o f mind in responding to the abuse. In this section some lengthy extracts will be included in order to exemplify the kinds o f features which pattern in a regular manner through­ out the discourse. Other language devices will also be commented upon. The wife begins with a description o f the physical abuse: 2. O k am (2) all right lets take physical (1) physical am (1.5) physical abuse in the sense o f am (.) hitting (.5) and stuff like that. I mean nobody (.5) nobody not not even

a child (.) or an anim al likes somebody to hit him (.) or anything like that. And when (3) when somebody hit you its like, you know, “what did I do?” because a couple times I simply ask a question about like if I was cleaning something (.) and I saw a (.) a document and his name was there and the childrens mothers name was there I say, “so am she’s your wife?” you know and like he would come inside (3) just just that you know (.) he would come in “what you tell me?!” baw! slap hit hit hit you up an I (.) it took me by surprise you know, so that it made you, it made you a little more shy, you know, you tend to go into a (.) a shell because I mean, next time (.) you wouldn’t be free (.) to ask a question anymore right. So am he kind o f cut off (3) a communication line. As the saying once bitten twice shy and you wouldn’t go to ask him anything like that (again).

First o f all, here we notice the analogy (italicized) by which emphasis is drawn to the denigrating nature o f physical abuse. She compares her lot as an abused wife to that of an animal or child, intimating that they have less understanding than an adult but still “don’t like” it. The analogy also draws our attention, by its nature, to her defence­ lessness and vulnerability, even her self-image. Her agitation is evident in two major aspects o f the discourse above. First, we sense it from the number of single word or phrase repetitions she employs in this part o f the discourse, and second, from her use o f the unmarked Creole forms “ask” and “say”. These unmarked forms, when used in a past context, have been identified as a foregrounding device in narrative (Youssef and James 1999) and are used with this function later in the discourse. Here, though, at an early stage in the interview, the speaker is remaining within Standard English (SE) for the discourse

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m ode o f an interview with a stranger, and the shift into Creole appears as evidence o f her agitation, since emotionality is commonly expressed by use o f this variety among Caribbean speakers. Finally, we notice a fairly extreme use of hedging devices “am”, “you know” and “ I mean”. Although these were early associated with female insecurity (Lakoff 1975), latterly their functions have been identified as covering a more complex range o f functions (Holmes 1986) such that they need always to be examined in context. In this case “you know” appears to cover a confirmatory, shared understanding connec­ tion to the female interviewer, suggesting that she will literally “know” because she is a woman too. Tag questions are also noted in the discourse, particularly “right?” and here too we recognize them not merely as uncertainty markers as Lakoff had defined them but also as facilitative and confirmatory (Holmes 1984). “Am” and “I mean” seem more uncertain, as if the speaker is simply striving for the right words for the situation at hand; the repeated hesitation may indeed indicate insecurity in her capacity to express her experience accurately. In addition, the duplicating markers “and stuff like that” and “or anything like that” draw our attention to the fact that there must have been other physical abuse than hitting which she chooses to leave unspecified; these kinds of markers have also been identified as covering a range o f shared understandings between speaker and hearer in the context of medical inter­ views in the Caribbean (Youssef 1993). The wife’s main focus, from the outset, is more on the verbal and emotional abuse she has suffered than the physical: 3. But am (.5) the physical abuse it (.) is devastating but, I think the psychological abuse, verbal abuse (3) am it has (3) well what I normally say right and I I did a lot o f thought and thinking about this whole thing. Ah I’m not the person who will am (.) who will go through it and go through it again because (.) I thought a lot about it but am (.) what I normally say is that am (.) the little lash, that could heal, you know and it goes away and after a while you forget that it was ever there. You would have the memory o f it, but you would forget that it was ever there. But the words the words is like

a tape recorder (.5) that keeps playing in your head - i f somebody mentions teeth, right? ok let me give you a few examples o f things. When he was in the barracks and am my son was small we would go and I would sacri—I sacrifice a lot. I wasn’t working for much but anything he wanted 1 would give it to him you know. And we would g o , . . . When you reach there it was like am (.) the escort would be talking and with the little child and whatever and you going smiling. By the time you reach am “watch at you (.) you skinning you brown rotten teeth for the people to see!” I mean that was the greeting (.)

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that was a greeting. . . . I feel so shame you know 1 feel oh my God you know my mouth looking so bad and I realize that you know its not really bad, but it took me years, . . . until recently, well I read a lot o f books and stuff an until recently (.) I wasn t able to accept a compliment. If somebody say, “you know you nice?” “Hah, yeah right, is me you talking about? Not me.”

In this section, we notice that the repeated units constitute approximately 40 per cent o f the discourse, although they have taken on a different nature from the initial section o f the interview where single words were repeated, entailing often the expan­ sion o f an idea in different words. Hence we find: “thought or thinking”, but later “ I would sacrifice a lo t.. . . I wasn’t working for much but anything he wanted I would give to him you know” giving a specific example o f the “sacrifice” and again: “I feel so shame you know I feel (.) oh my God you know my mouth looking so bad.” It appears that the speaker is very intent on putting her meaning across fully, and to achieve this she expands an idea or builds on it in such a way that the hearer will be able to identify with the detail of the account and its effect upon her. A keen intent is present to share her experience. It may be that the very repetition is also a sym­ bolic indicator o f the replaying o f the incidents in her head, like the “tape recorder” to which she refers. It is impossible to document each incident o f abuse that is related because o f space constraints. Another type of abuse, however, occurs when her son is brought in as an accomplice by the father. Indeed, she cites this as a major cause o f her ultimately leaving: 4. H es fourteen (.5) and (3) he too (3) was starting to contribute to (.5) the am (.) abuse because he was encouraged (.) by his father so thats am, basically that led (3) to me having no other alternative but to leave. 5. The child cannot come by me, cannot hug me up, cannot be close to me when the father is there. The child has to hurt me, has to pull my hair, he has to do things and the father will sit down and laugh at it. Because it makes him happy. So (.) am, hes teaching the child then (.5) that that is the way to treat women.

In the example immediately above, again we notice the three-item repetition sequence, first in the negative, listing what the child “cannot” do, and then in the positive, listing what he does. In example 5 above, we see the mother using a passive construction to explain the sons abuse: “because he was encouraged by his father” . Here we recognize that she does not blame her son for the abuse but rather emphasizes that the source remains in the husband. She is aware that this will have long-term

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repercussions in that the example becomes a lesson: “hes teaching the child then (.5) that that is the way to treat women.” She subsequently relates that she has tried to explain how she feels through writing poetry but that her husband merely ridicules this. In the same way, he mocks her working ambitions: 6. I remember when, when we first, when we really got married and, I told him that 1 had to stop school, because o f the psychological abuse and I couldn’t study, you know.

When you studying he would say "Watch at you, is man you studying or is this you doing?” And am, I remember when I said (.) I say, “You know (.5) I want to go back to school.” H e say am, he had a nail clipper (.) and swoosh! Straight (.) hejust pelt it at me withforce. That was supposed to stop me. Eh I wanted something more for my life. I remember before we got married I told him (.) I say, “I want to be an accountant.” He laugh at

me but you see then I couldn’t understand because I didn’t really have that am (.) that experience to know the difference.

Here for the first time we note the foregrounding of direct speech in the shift from Standard to Creole: “I said (.) I say” and “I told him (.) I say”. It has been noted in the written narratives of high-school students that they frequently shift from Standard past marking SE -ed to Creole zero (0) marking at high points in narratives which are most immediate in their consciousness. They maintain an alternation between Creole and Standard then, not because of any ignorance o f the Standard form, but because the Creole form gives a sense o f immediacy which is lacking in the Standard (Youssef and James 1999). If we examine the alternation o f forms throughout this extract we find that specific actions are marked by zero, for example, “say”, “pelt”, “laugh”, and generalizations/conditions by SE -ed, for example: “was supposed to”, “I didn’t have that experience”, “I wanted something more”. In terms of the range o f abuse types, we learn that the husband capitalizes on “sore points”: 7. He uses, he uses, am (.) every opportunity to, whatever sore point you have, to put salt on your wound, he uses that to his advantage. He knows that this will bother you (.) he will constantly tell you about that. Those are the things that he does. If he knows that you have that sore point that is the point that he will use to his advantage. I f he knows that something doesn’t bother you, he wouldn’t do it. But if he know it will upset you. 8. If you tell him don’t do something, he will come and he will do it [hitting the table] and do it and do it and do it because it will upset you. He will provoke you (.) into getting angry, you know, he does those things.

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In these examples, the same point is repeatedly reinforced in respect o f the verbal/ emotional abuse perpetrated. The idea o f a sensitive area being constantly attacked is not only repeated via rephrasing, but also expressed in both positive and negative, as if to hammer it home more effectively by the multiple expression o f it. Twice in her rephrasing in example 7, the wife speaks o f the husband using this tactic “to his advantage”. The phrase speaks metaphorically o f a contest or war rather than a marriage relationship. We are told that the husband also withholds finance such that his wife has to clean the car to get spending money; this description brings out again the ineq­ uity in the relationship, for one can imagine a child earning spending money by cleaning the car, but within a marital relationship, having to earn a petty sum by doing extra duties beyond those o f the home seems bizarre. Moreover, she clearly feels she has to justify her need: “I had my son and I needed some money” adding evidence o f her belittling herself and her rights in the relationship. Tags “right” and “you know” appear confirmatory again, seeking a common understanding with the young female interviewer: 9 . 1 devise a thing I say, “ Well, look (.) if you let me wash your car, you would give me a five dollars every day when I wash?” He had a taxi that time, you know so I would get a five dollars. So I didn’t have any money otherwise, and then am, I had to do an operation. So am, he’s not the person to give you any money right, other than what (.) you, other than for food but am so and at that time I had my son, and I needed some money.

And then there is the depiction o f the change in mode of abuse when he gains wisdom from his own training in the police force and recognizes that he cannot leave visible signs on her: 10. He did, am, the police service now, has a lot o f am, domestic violence training, and

now he isfully aware. But now he knows that he cant come and hit you, and stufflike that, so, he cannot leave any identifying marks on your body. But am, so what he would do he would take am cushions, arid stuffand throw it with force and do things like that but hes fully aware. 11. Well he ah as I say because uh o f the knowledge that he has now he would not put any marks. But he would take a pillow and hit it on your head (.) he would take thing and throw it on you. He would pull your hair, you know, things that I cant come and say (really) because I don’t have any evidence. You know he will come and he will say, “Well no (.) she fast and she lying!” alright.

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Twice in example 10 our attention is drawn to the husbands new awareness and three times there are the tags which generalize his abuse without specific detail, for example, “and stuff like that”. In the two extracts we are told o f four types o f continuing physi­ cal abuse with some overlap among them and three generalizing tags. The cumulative nature o f the description is in line with such listings elsewhere in the text. Separately, we must consider the abuse o f the son, which is depicted as more physically violent than that against the wife herself: 12. So when he went home he ask the child to tell him to tell him so so whatever that happen and you know, he started to beat the child and he started to “You lie! You lie! You lying to me!” He started to beat him up really bad He even tell me well, when I went home, the child tell me he say, “Mummy a lady was passing and (she call) and when I get up” he kick him in his belly He say, “Mummy I couldn’t breathe.” 13. am am that was the Tuesday (.) the Wednesday when the child came home, some­ thing that he did, some boy put liquid paper all over his clothes and over his pants and his shirt and everything. So he made up some excuse that am you know it just splash. . . . So when the father did find . . . he started to get on . .. 14. The next morning the child tell me, “Well mummy I could do quick and go to work with you? Travel down with you?” I say “yeah” (.) The time I ready the child wasn’t ready and he am, he say, “Daddy say don’t bathe yet.” 15. I came back home in the afternoon and I saw the child, he had a mark on his face there and when I talking to him an I touch him I touch him like that he say, “Mum it hurting” and when I do so blue black blue black an he tell me he say, “Mummy I get like twenty-three belt today” because his back was like x like that. Here we see the wife alternating between reporting the incidents and using extracts o f direct speech and, in so doing, she continues to alternate between the Creole unmarked form and the SE simple past tense, though there is no absolute corre­ spondence between the uses o f the different forms and the discourse mode, reported or direct. On careful examination, we find that the background, scene-setting infor­ mation is delivered in the SE mode once again and the specifics in Creole. In 12, for example, there is “when he went hom e ”, in 13, “ when the child came home”, “an d so when the fath er d id f i n d . . . he started to get o n ; in 15 it is “/ came back home an d I saw the child\ he h a d . . . " It is when we come to the talk and specific action that

the unmarked form comes into play. Hence, without any necessary consciousness of doing so, the mother alternates her tense-aspect forms to mark different phases o f the narrative sequence.

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The use of dialogue apparently heightens the vivid reality o f these scenes to the mother and her involvement in them. It also exemplifies a complicity at this stage between mother and son to come against the fathers abuse, as in the plan for the child to go to school with his mother rather than remain alone with his father. The occasion of her going to lodge a complaint with the police is seen as a turning point because the occasion is documented as making the husband furious, and the wife relates that the abuse became greater against her and lessened against her son at that time, resulting ultimately in her having to make plans to leave altogether. The wife makes reference to her husband s jealousy and belief that she has relationships with other men.

The Effect of the Violence on the Abused In connection with the effects o f the abuse as elaborated in the narrative, the most explicit references are to fear in her own case and in that of her son: 1 6 .1wrote a poem, a nice poem. 1 wrote a poem explaining that maybe one day when you come up I will. . . you know it (.) it talks about fear And (.) it tells you that (.5) things that

Im afraid to do, right, it explains everything that Im trying to explain to you now, and (3) thefear is a lot o f things. You know Im afraid to talk, because of frar being ridiculed. Im afraid to ah . . . have opinions, you know. I am afraid to stand up, because then you might not look so tall. You know, different things that Im afraid to do (.) because I have handed you control (.) on a silver platter. 17. And am and am well both o f us are afraid o f him constantly (.) because, he would always turn everything around on me, on the child right. . . . 18. So I mean the child started (.) heju st started to reactyou know in school\vt used to do things, to to behave am, to gain attention and things like that. 19. So, within that time I mean just grew colder and colder because o f all the harsh words that he would say. Even though I would try (.) try to be open about it, sometimes it does just take a little thing to to start him off. 20. The child is very artistic, he cannot am, he wont display this in front o f the father

because o f lack o f appreciation or you know (.) a lot o f things that he does, for instance once he told me he say am I say, “How come as your father leave to go to work you does be (happy)” he said (.) “Mummy you know what is a otter?” I say “Yes.” He say, “Mummy you see when the zookeeper leave, and the otter (gone up) mummy you see how happy (.) the otter does be to play with the children and thing?” The other day he said am he say, “Mummy, if anybody tell me their father worse than mines, that man

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has to be a devil.” So he am, in front of him he treats his father very very nice, because offear you know he can’t be rude to him or anything like that. But he treats me (.) and my mother, he treats the women who love him, with a lot ofanger and hostility. Because a time I ask him I say, “But how come you treat your father so nice and how come you does treat us like that” (.) he say, “Mummy mummy you cant see I afraid the man mummy you can’t see.” There is physical fear, but also fear of “having opinions”, “being ridiculed” and of doing things “because I have handed you control on a silver platter”. The fact that the nature o f the fear is complex and difficult to explicate is evident from the wife’s actually writing her husband a poem which “explains everything I’m trying to explain to you”. In a single example, “fear” and “afraid” are used see times. Ultimately, the wife admits to a growing coldness and to a lack of openness exacerbated by fear and ridicule. For the son, there is apparent suppression of one facet of his talent: “The child is very artistic, he cannot am, he wont display this in front of the father because of lack of appreciation or you know (.) a lot of things that he does.” The son also misbehaves at school, on one occasion being suspended, and is hostile and angry with his female relatives, “the women who love him”; he himself explains this by relating it to the fear he feels of his father: “Mummy (.) mummy you cant see I afraid the man mummy you cant see.” The analogy which the son makes between his own behaviour and that of the otter in relation to the zookeeper is a telling one, for it is unusual, and must have been the product of some thought on his own situation while observing a television show displaying animals in the zoo. The nature o f animals’ lives when kept in the zoo is characterized by extreme restriction, cagedness, control; the zookeeper has no emo­ tional tie to the animals he controls. The next image, of a man worse than his father as a devil, is also telling. Through these images, we can construct a picture o f the boy’s father as he sees him: controlling and suppressing, wicked and unloving. How far the recollection of the mother is accurate and how far reconstructed by her own percep­ tions must, of course, remain open to speculation.

Explanations and Rationalizations Finally, we come to the wife’s rationalizations of her husband’s behaviour, about which she has obviously thought long. These rationalizations bring out her seventeen years o f seeking for explanation, and form a useful backdrop to any assessments we ourselves might make:

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21. But am they (men) only do that (3) is a sort o f game men play (5) just to conquer (.) you know or to hide shame (.) in their face. Its a sort o f game they play (3) with women but its not really am (5) its (2) not a healthy am (5) game to play cause it could be, its very devastating on the woman . . . what I have seen right is your educational back­ ground (5) has nothing to do with those things. Because it still affects the woman in the same way. Here the wife refers to the “games” that men play with women, focusing themati­ cally on the game-playing through bringing it to the beginning o f the utterance: it is M a sort o f game [that] men play”. She repeats this utterance immediately following the explanation which she offers: “just to conquer . . . or to hide shame”. The choice o f lexical item “conquer” might seem incongruent, for whereas we may win a game, we conquer in a war. As if to re-emphasize the ambivalent nature o f the game, she repeats mention of it again, maintaining the focusing structure but describing the game on this occasion as “not healthy”; sickness is entailed. The images which she creates are a complex blend involving a toying with the woman, thus objectifying and demeaning her, but on the other hand overcoming her as the enemy in battle. The negativity of this depiction is clear even without her making it explicit as some­ thing which is both sickening and “devastating”. Later in the interview, she recalls an incident when her husband used the same “playing games” explanation as an excuse for his behaviour (this time in collusion with their son), a trivialization o f it, a demonstration that it was harmless: 22. And we recently had a discussion. . . . I call it a meeting because my son got sus­ pended and stuff like that. . . and he told them, “ We does only be playin with her” right? But I mean . . . you have no respect for (.) for my feelings . . . he doesnt have respect. I believe he doesnt have respectfor women on the whole.

She shows that she perceives this demeaning treatment as demonstrating a lack o f respect, not just to herself but to all womanhood. Again, her focus on this lack o f respect is reiterated as she externalizes it progressively through informal “you” to impersonal “he” and intransitive verb, to “he” again, but in relation to “women on the whole” . After all, we are forced to ask ourselves, is it not “women” but “toys” that are constantly played with - inanimate objects that lack feeling by their very nature? Thus, women are objectified and trivialized and their abuse made more acceptable to the abuser: 23. This thing is a whole issue of control with them. They need to control in order to be empowered (3) they need to control in order to feel (3) like a man because if they not in control (3) it shows weakness on their part.

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In the extract above, the word “control” is used and repeated four times in three suc­ cessive utterances. The wife uses parallelism effectively to focus on the purpose o f the control for the man: in order to be empowered, in order to feel like a man. Finally, she produces an instance o f negative conditionality in her last repetition to demonstrate that men feel weakness is evidenced if there is a lack o f control. She reiterates her reference to control when discussing her husband s relationship with their son: 24. He thinks that he gets along good . . . he thinks that way because he am . . . there . . . the issue o f control is there as well. 25. H es very manipulative he (3) I don’t know. I guess going back to his childhood, because they didn’t have a lot o f things, he doesn’t want his child to have it. 26. Well as I said my husband has a lot o f (.) I would call it false pride. He has a lot a shame you know.

Once again the front focusing o f “the issue o f control” highlights for the listener how important this element is within the relationships being described. Further, she describes her husband as “manipulative” , although the following utterance, intended apparently as explanatory, and rooting the manipulation in his childhood experience, does not actually explain it. In the next extract, she makes a personal assessment: “I would call it false pride”, and then reverts to describing and explaining his condition o f “shame” . The juxtaposition of negative characteristics forces the reader to consider the shame as having produced the false pride, although there is an inherent deter­ mination to be fair in her assessment such that she does not say that he is proud but only that this is how she sees it. Repeatedly throughout the interview the wife explains her husband s behaviour in his own childhood experience of neglect and abuse. She is cumulative in building up this image, which is supported by detail like that where, in example 28, she refers to “about eleven children” of whom “a few” died, which seems slightly incongruous, for even in large families we are usually specific about the number o f children we have. It seems as if the mother-in-law did not know how many children she had and how many had died and this detail reinforces the image o f neglect: 27. It started from the beginning (.) I guess it's something that is embedded in them because

o f their childhood (.) their family background, what they saw the father do to the mother (.) you know the kind o f relationship. So they never really had (1) they never had that love (.) that compassion then. They don’t know how to treat (.) people or women (.) in any different manner, than what it is they saw growing up.

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28. The mother had am (1) she had about (1) eleven children she said and a few died but they were not the sort that had time (3) for the children or to love their children because

they always quarrelling and cursing each other, the father and the mother.

She actually makes an analogy between the acquisition o f language and the acqui­ sition o f abusive behaviour: 29. If you grow up in a Chinese home, you will learn to speak Chinese, a H indu home you will learn Hindi, right so if you grow up in a home with domestic vio­ lence and you see how people being treated a certain way that is the way that you will know.

She concludes, however, that he should have learned better in the police force. Instead, he has learned only to hurt without leaving marks.

DISCUSSION Through this personal narrative of an abused wife, we have learned a great deal o f the way in which the breakdown of her marriage worked itself out. We have been exposed to her explication o f the facts and also her rationalization o f everything that has happened in relation to both her son and herself. We see that the abuse, as so often documented, seems to be generational, having passed from the husband s family to himself and now, in turn, it is likely being passed from him to his son. The wife seems to seek to be fair-minded in giving reasons for her husbands perpetrating the abuse, including, most saliently, referring to the shame coming out of his own background family situation, and further, through other statements she makes elsewhere (not included above) in which she declares that in many ways he is a 4good man”. This justification o f the male perpetrators abuse is a common feature of the abused partners rationalization o f events, a coming to terms with it in ways that allow her to reconcile herself to the situation and overcome embitterment that might otherwise result. Though always present, the abuse has become more subtle since the husband has reason to fear loss o f his job as a police officer; and he has turned increasingly against his wife and less against his son. One wonders if he sees the one: spouse abuse, as inherently more acceptable than the other: child abuse. He attends also to inflicting pain which does not leave marks. For the mother, the drawing o f her son into the web o f the abuse has been “the last straw”.

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Overall, the repetitive, cumulative development o f points throughout the entire narrative seems to evidence a care for accuracy of depiction as well as reflecting the “tape recorder” quality o f her reflections on the verbal abuse. This notion of tape recorder repetition fits in with the trauma therapists notion o f belatedness. Trauma is such that the full reality cannot be absorbed by the mind all at once. The constant replay - often intrusive rather than controlled - is evidence o f a mind trying to grasp a reality which proves ultimately to be ungraspable. This, together with the high rate o f use o f hedges and fillers, points to a striving to explicate the situation for the young female interviewer, and to seek confirmation in her o f her responsiveness and understanding. The choice o f lexical items and the use o f focusing devices are key elements in our reconstructing the events and relationships as she sees them and as her son, at least through her eyes, sees them. The wife and son are depicted as victims, without agency, through the grammatical structuring o f events, and, even when the son becomes an accomplice, he is not given agency in the process. The continuous reconstruction of reality is something which we must take into account, however. Clearly, on the one hand, the wife has processed her experiences differentially in the course o f time, starting as a naïve, scared and at least half-reluctant teenage bride who “listened to her parents”, and evolving, through her life experience and her reading, into a mature woman who assesses her husband s activities as moti­ vated by “shame” and past experience and a lack o f “respect” for women. Overall, he needed to establish “control” at all cost. His lack of responsiveness to her letters appears tragic but typical: “ Control and distance . . . are central metaphors o f con­ temporary masculinity . . . the male imperative to control emotion, allied to mens lack o f experience with the language o f emotion, their inability to name emotion . . . can ironically lead to confrontational incidents” (Barker and Galasinski 2001, 120). At this mature stage, she has negotiated with her family in order for them to accede to supporting her in her leaving the marital home. The images she constructs o f her husband “playing games” with her and “conquering”, belittling and undermining her through his speaking, build upon the words, which relate a lack of respect and love. To some extent, however, she must be seeking to order disorder in her mind and emo­ tions, to come to terms with the loss, not so much of an abusive husband, but o f a son she loves and has abandoned through pressure on herself. There must be elements of self-justification in her account, and we must reckon with the fact that her reflexivity has not entailed any blame on herself for this last action o f leaving. We never learn

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from her either, whether there has ever been cause for jealousy in her husband; rather we are left to assume that there has not. The accounts o f the sons processing by the father and his reactions to this are significant in so far as they match so closely what is expected as the outcome o f an abusive parental relationship (see Barker and Galasinski 2001, 90-91). He becomes uncontrollable at school and “hostile” to the “women who love him” and suppresses aspects o f his intelligence which do not conform to the fathers image o f what is acceptable. Although he appears hostile to his father in his construction o f him as “zookeeper” and near “devil”, he follows his lead in the humiliation o f the mother. This is construed by the mother as being caused by “fear” , but elsewhere she does perceive that the exemplification of abuse by the father will predispose the son to violence. The ambivalence in the sons behaviour is a clear result of the dysfunctional parental relationship. Considering the detail of this account carefully brings insight into the causes and effects of the abuse, as well as into possible steps which might have been taken to avoid the breakdown of the marriage. Given the circumstances o f the marriage as it developed, it might have helped to bring the couple into a counselling situation which would have enabled the husband to come to terms better with the causes o f the problem in himself. Though his power base as a police officer became a negative feature of the situation, it could also have been rendered positive if sufficient pressure had been brought to bear upon him to make him seek help; there is much space for development of effective controls within the police service. Perhaps the most insidious long-term effects on the son o f the marriage have still to be worked out. If his situation and development are left untouched, the cycle is likely to be reinitiated in his relationships. We recognize that his circumstance seems worsened and unresolved at the time o f this interview, at a critical adoles­ cent stage in his life when he is most vulnerable to long-term effects. It may well be worth our considering that stronger intervention strategies might be taken in schools when dysfunctional behaviour is identified; it is time for us to have trained and equipped counsellors operating throughout the school system. In that context, interviews with parents, like the one discussed in this chapter, can be useful tools in the rehabilitation process.

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CHAPTER 5

-

Bat Teneb: Haitian Wom en’s Narratives of Resistance

Desolation, Intimidation, Exploitation The battle is for the strong We must can find solutions And do what we can . . . Determination, Self-examination, Organization, Mek wi te ka firm stan An’ mek some decision Fi remove death from Hanging over our heads with bitter gloom Hanging over our heads As cold and lonely as an empty tomb. - Pauline Crawford, “ Bitter Gloom”

IN T R O D U C T IO N This chapter pays tribute to the women o f Haiti in the two hundredth anniversary year o f that country’s independence and documents their continued struggle for full emancipation in circumstances which have oppressed them at every level. It aims to

encapsulate the particular nature o f their expressed experience and o f their resist­ ance as they continue to cope with horrendous violence, which is at once public and private, societal and personal. The womens story, by their own account, begins with the resistance of the Amer­ indian woman Anacouna to the incursion o f the Spanish at the end o f the fifteenth century, and moves through time, far beyond the 1804 independence o f Haiti, to the circumstances o f their present-day resistance at every level. Haiti has been set apart within the Caribbean region not only by its status as the first independent Caribbean nation, but also by its continued history o f violent oppression by dictatorial and foreign powers, by its resultant economic impoverish­ ment, and - not least - by its vibrant, resilient and talented people. There can be no greater testimony both to the cumulative nature o f violence and to the human capac­ ity to overcome than is found in the continuing embattlement depicted. The chapter draws on testimonies from Beverly Bells text Walking on Fire, in which she has presented oral narratives from thirty-eight Haitian women whose stories she recorded throughout Haiti as they travelled to meet her in difficult cir­ cumstances (2001, xiv). By encapsulating the essence of their narratives through a discourse analysis approach, we hope that their voice, a source of empowerment in itself, will be strengthened to reverberate among more listeners. Bell recounts how she would ask them simply: “Tell me anything you want about your life, about what its like to be a Haitian woman” (p. xv). They willingly told her their istwa, stories which are at once personal and historical, social and political, including their direct experiences of personal and sociopolitical violence, and their means o f resistance to it. The text, as Bell herself tells us, is a bat teneb,1 an articulate voice o f protest. It is worth quoting her own description of the recorded narratives to better comprehend the nature o f the discourse type entailed: None of the terms that normally characterize narratives of this sort . . . accurately reflect the nature of what is told here. Beyond their own experiences and analy­ ses, almost all of the women weave in their interpretation of Haitian life, moving back and forth between personal anecdotes and macropolitical discussion. The best description of these narratives is the Creole word istwa, meaning both story and history, (p. xv) This chapter displays the overcoming resistance o f the informants as women, despite their ranking as some o f the most oppressed in the world, positioned last in a United Nations Development Program Gender Development Index o f the

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Western Hemisphere taken in 1998.2Through analysis o f the narratives they provide, we can gain insight into the way in which they identify and position themselves in relation to their oppressive situations.

THE NATURE OF THE RESISTANCE From the outset, Bell tells us that the womens forms o f overcoming demand a broad­ ening o f our conventional view o f resistance: “the definition o f resistance is expanded to include any act that keeps the margins o f power from being further encroached upon . . . simply to kenbe la: to hold the line, is a victory.. . . Survival can be a power­ ful act o f defiance” (2001, 5). Further, we are told that “resistance is often subtle or imperceptible”. It “incorpo­ rates a wide range o f forms where domination is rejected in implied, covert or daily ways”; “the women appear to be quiescent” but in reality “they might be engaged in multilayered negotiations o f power . . . acts o f the poor are generally not recorded when they oppose the interests o f the rich” (p. 6). The nature o f this resistance is well summed up by one of the narrators: By resistance I mean the ingenuity we use that allows us to live. Resistance is inside how we do the thing that lets us hold on and gives us a better way. Its in the very manner in which we organize ourselves to resist our situation. Women resist with what means they have. (p. 131)

The struggle is both “material” and “ideological” (p. 7). Their resistance is daily rein­ forced, yet hidden from the undiscerning eye; it has been unrecorded, yet it has found complex means of resisting the power structures in manifold ways. As light is shed on the identities that the women work out for themselves, on their ideologies, and on the precise nature o f their resistance, their formulae for everyday overcoming emerge. There will be a focused analysis on the reality the women depict, and a concern to highlight significant common themes among them as they chart their progress. Their sources o f strength and resistance are important to the analysis. What is critical at this time is to give an oppressed group, to whom the “powers that be” have allowed no voice, a right to be heard and to have an impact in changing their circumstances. Indeed, the very act o f narrating experience provides a means o f ordering and coming to terms with reality (Fleischmann 1985). Thus, telling the istwa becomes a complex act o f liberation in itself.

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BACKGROUND First o f all, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the historical backdrop o f the country’s development and o f Haitian womens situation in relation to it. No syn­ chronic analysis can be complete without some contextual grounding in the past. It is indeed ironic that Haiti was the first independent Caribbean nation and the only one to witness a successful slave revolution, yet its struggles have continued largely to be struggles o f colour down to the present day, despite the colour levelling expressed in the 1804 Haitian Constitution (Premdas 2003, 189). Its succession from Spanish to French control seems close in overall pattern to the history o f Trinidad: from the time of invasion by Christopher Columbus in 1492 there were few slaves under the Spanish, but under the French from 1697, a vast sugar economy was built up with thirty-seven thousand African slaves. Just as the legendary Taino woman Anacouna was critical to resistance against the Spanish, so women are said to have played key roles in the slave rebellions which developed in the 1790s. When the country won its independence in 1804, it set in place a law that any escaped slave from another territory who arrived in Haiti could, on setting foot in the territory, become a Haitian and hence a free man; it thus served as a haven for slaves fleeing Jamaica and other relatively close enslaving territories. The Caribbeans own current rejection o f Haitians fleeing their circumstances today is further reason for the region to examine its position vis-à-vis this society. Haiti’s first post-independence act was to create a law freeing all those who fell within its jurisdiction; more recent Caribbean political history has ostracized and rejected Haiti at every level, although its recent admittance to the Caribbean Community shows some overdue attempt to redress the imbalance. Almost immediately after it became independent, the country became devas­ tated by oppressive, self-interested leaders who fought to control the country for their own advantage and who systematically oppressed the vast majority. Foreign influence, in particular from the United States, has characterized the twentieth century, and has been heinous in its oppressive, self-serving force. The reign o f the Duvalier family from 1957 until 1986 was the most oppressive o f all the regimes, first, under François Duvalier, better known as “ Papa Doc”, and second, under his son, Jean-Claude. Papa D o cs Tonton Macoutes, a personal security force with unlimited power, assassinated, tortured and imprisoned whom they pleased. The dictator subverted voodoo spirituality to his cause and further ensured the

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entrenchedness o f a power base that was supported by the United States. The economy was similarly subverted to both Duvalier’s and US interests, such that underpaid factory labour became the mainstay o f a large portion o f the masses; peasant agricultural production was systematically undermined by state seizure o f lands and enforced labour for less than minimal wages. In every countermove­ ment, women played a key role and, unsurprisingly, they were always the main victims o f the oppressive countermeasures that were enacted. When Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first popular democratically elected president, came to power at the very end of 1990, women were key to the campaign which led to his election and immediate support. Consequently, when there was a repressive military coup some seven and a half months later, they suffered extreme brutality in the three-year period o f suppression which followed, which was financed by Haiti’s then dispossessed rich. Many of the istwa recount the horrors of rape and brutal­ ity meted out by the FRAPH - the Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress o f Haiti3- during that period. When Aristide finally came back three years later, with American support, his capacity to change circumstances for the better for the masses was never actual­ ized. Women have continued to be in the forefront o f the grassroots support for that change, however, but a 2002 United Nations Development Program report admits that the progress in health and education is not sustainable since there has been no concomitant sustainable economic growth but a continued reliance on outside support. Even in this area o f economic development, women have been in the forefront, suggesting revolutionary and creative ways of transforming the economy but having to fight hard to make their voices heard. Women manage not only every aspect o f the home, but work outside daily to support their fami­ lies. The majority are engaged in small-scale commercial projects or marketing, and they also contribute considerably in working on the land and in raising and tending animals. They are also the prime labour source in the sweatshop factories that produce commodities for the US market. None o f these income sources is stable, and many women are forced back on prostitution when all else fails. At the conference Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and Its Cultural After­ shocks, 1804-2004 (University o f the West Indies, St Augustine, 15-18 June 2004), women were shown to be the “backbone” o f the economy, with a plethora o f key roles in the informal economy and in Haitian society as a whole. De Bourg (2004, 10) specifies

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• participating in agricultural work, except for field preparation; • engaging in retail trade outside of official stores in the cities; • purchasing goods for use; • acting as intermediaries: revendtuscs, Madam Sara; • providing sources of credit, for example, supplying goods on credit; moneylending; • developing the trucking industry (transportation); • storing goods in bulk; • packaging goods; • gathering information about demand and supply and prices in different markets; • nursing children; and • running the household. As she describes the female contribution, De Bourg’s analysis highlights the informal relationships among women that cause them to be able to work through the system and maintain a living for their families: Within the market setting, women learn to trust each other and develop a relationship known as “p r a t ik It is this trust or “pratik” that usually acts as collateral for informal loans, together with part proceeds o f a future crop. They, along with notaries and pawn­ brokers, provide credit but at interest rates ranging from 10 to 240 percent. Another source o f credit for market women has been to form groups called “cengU” to provide loans to members on a rotating basis. (2004, 10)

In an oppressed society, it is almost inevitably the case that the females are more oppressed than the males. As mentioned at the outset, societal burdens impact per­ sonal relations mightily. Poverty, unemployment and political oppression under­ mine and emasculate the male, who is constrained to work out his struggle for power at the personal level if he is powerless in the wider society. Women are physi­ cally weaker when it comes to combat, and patriarchal societal organization has already deprived them o f rights. Within the family unit, violence against women is an accepted part o f social behaviour. In addition, rape and violence, exacted by the forces o f government power, have been very high. The incidence o f descrip­ tion o f horrific brutality is a primary feature o f the narratives we are examining. An International Tribunal for Violence Against Women in Haiti was held in 2000 and the Ministry o f Justice committed itself to moving towards implementation o f its objectives; progress is coming, but slowly, and largely through the efforts of the women themselves.

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Within Haiti, as in the rest o f the Caribbean, matrifocality is the norm. Apart from the high rate o f common-law unions and the fact that men are most usually tied to a number o f households, the search for work which has taken male Hai­ tians, in particular, abroad, primarily to the United States, has resulted in women becoming even more isolated in the quest for means o f survival for themselves and their children. If this has eased some violence by its removal, it has not eased the economic burden greatly. Women hardly have property rights through their conjugal unions since, within common-law units, property passes to the male partners children and to his family. Married women were considered as minors legally until 1979, and the narratives testify to the lack of rights within legal unions also. Nevertheless, they batde through. Their conditions affect their offspring in some ways though. Personal oppres­ sion is easier to bear than the oppression o f ones children, and women universally will do anything to protect their children and to secure their future. This concern, above all others, compels their resistance strategies. At the same time, however, we must reckon with the reality that their experience o f violence can cause the women themselves to become violent. It has been found repeatedly that women who have been the targets o f domestic violence actually beat their own children more. A recent enquiry within Haiti, quoted in Merveille (2002), revealed that women who approve child-beating the most are those living in the regions o f Grand Anse and Artibonite, the very areas which are characterized by the highest rates o f domestic violence. In addition, it has been found that witnessing domestic violence has a profound impact on children in itself. There is also a system in place in Haiti by which children may be sold into domestic service as rcstavik, as servants o f relatives but with adoption rights o f edu­ cation and normal upbringing. The number currendy may approximate as many as 200,000 to 250,000, o f whom 85 per cent are girls (US Department o f State 2000); these children are victims o f the worst forms o f abuse, as one o f the narra­ tives in our subset reveals. Often a family’s circumstances are such that these kinds o f sales are seen as potentially beneficial, but the result appears most usually to be the reverse. It may be that a buyer agrees with a mother’s desire that her child be allowed to go to school, for example, but the reality is that the child is given no time to study because o f the intense burden o f domestic tasks which must be com­ pleted. The survivors o f this system, mainly women, move into adulthood with an impaired sense o f selfhood.

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M ET H O D O LO G Y It is necessary to say a word about our approach to the texts under study. Critical discourse analysis is a useful discipline to bring into service in an endeavour like this one, since it is designed “not as dispassionate and objective social science, but as engaged and committed. It is a form of intervention in social practice and social relationships” and “it intervenes on the side of dominated and oppressed groups and against dominating groups” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 258-59). As noted in earlier chapters, discourse is today recognized as a form o f social practice which both constitutes and is constituted by sociopolitical realities. Public discourse is most usually in the hands of the power elites who control societies in a variety of ways. This has already been demonstrated in connection with law and the judiciary in chapter 2. In the case in question, however, we are working from within a society in which both coercive and discursive control has been normative and within which the path to real democracy is slowly being forged. Three broad domains o f life which Fairclough and Wodak (1997, 273) identify as being “discursively constituted” are “representations o f the world”, “social relations between people” and “peoples social and personal identities”. Behind all o f these are the ideologies of those represented, for “ideologies are developed by dominant groups in order to reproduce and legitimate their domination. . . . Discourse serves as the medium by which ideologies are persuasively communicated in society” (van Dijk 1997, 25). Ideology constitutes the belief and value systems out o f which individuals and groups operate and leads to persons adopting particular identities and experienc­ ing the world in particular ways. While critical discourse analysis illuminates the ideologies to which the women in question are subjected, we must note that the text which is our focus powerfully depicts the womens own counterideologies, the means by which they come back against their oppression. As the women tell their stories and these find their way into print, they are, for the first time in their history, articulating their resistance in their very expression. Given this, we note also the theoretical insights o f poststructuralist discourse analysis, for the latter is concerned specifically with the fact that Individuals are not unitary subjects but are produced as a nexus o f contradictory subjectivities in relations o f power which are constantly shifting, rendering them at times powerful and at other times powerless. T h u s speakers may potentially adopt multiple positions or multiple voices . . . social realities are discursively produced

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. . . identities are being continuously reconstructed . . . the agency o f individuals or oppressed groups to contest and resist their positions o f powerlessness within prevailing or dom inant discourses is the means by which spaces can be opened up for alternative voices and diverse points o f view. (Baxter 2002, 8 2 9 -3 1 )

This is the precise object of Bells text, although her aim is an emancipatory one. It is through the provision o f a voice that counterpower is created, for to be able to express ones feeling and experience is, in itself, liberating and restorative. However, the fact that the voice is not singular, but speaks at once to the oppression and to the overcoming capacity, positions the women in a multidimensional space. Within the womens space there are two distinct perspectives also, one emanating from the majority o f women rooted consistently in Haiti who see their struggle as a grassroots one, singular to Haiti, and a second emanating from women who have travelled extensively and have identified with a commonality o f womanhood at large. Only two women see the struggle as common with men. Several ideological perspectives then come through in the discourse and compete, notwithstanding an overarching expression o f womanhood. It is important for us to bear in mind that we are examining a subset o f H aitian womens oral narratives which have been translated into Standard English from the original kreyol language in which they were delivered. The writer herself has told us, however, that, as far as possible, the narratives were maintained in the words o f their raconteurs, and that she tried hard not to alter them save where they themselves felt a need to do this (Bell, personal com­ m unication). Any event or social practice is recontextualized in the telling o f it (Caldas-Coulthard 2003, 276), and further recontextualized when written down by a third party; but in this case, the writers synonymity o f intent with the narrators makes the measure o f recontextualization relatively low. The selec­ tion o f Standard English as the medium for transmission contributes to its breadth o f readership and does not, in this case, represent a choice based on a sense o f superiority o f that language variety as is often the case (for further discussion, see Mühleisen 2002). We feel most confident, given the translation dynamic, in identifying language units such as nomináis, verb forms, metaphors and other figurative language, as well as phrases presented in kreyol with translation, since these are fairly readily carried through from the original, and are most regularly examined as tools o f the critical linguistics approach to discourse analysis. These particular units o f analysis, when

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examined in the stream o f discourse, enable us to shed light on the subject. It is not just from the broad meanings that speakers express that we build up our knowledge but also through the precise terminology and grammatical signals which they select to represent those meanings. In the spirit o f critical and poststructuralist discourse analysis, it is important not just to describe the language used but also to go beyond this to interpret and to explain what the language selected and the contradictory stances taken signify. We bear in mind continuously that Haitian society is the larger sociopolitical organizational unit within which the women are operating and within which they negotiate their struggle for change. Their positioning is critical for illuminating our understanding o f both gender and power relations within that society.

W H A T THE ISTWA REVEAL In order for the reader to achieve maximal comprehension o f vital aspects of the womens postionings in their struggle, these are examined in the following sequence: • • • • •

overall perspective and narrative structure identity (the women and their oppressors) ideology (source of subjection) counterideology (source o f resistance) means o f resistance and sources o f strength

Inevitably, there is some small measure o f overlap among the categories since they are imposed for clarity on a seamless whole.

Overall Perspective and Narrative Structure Initially, it is important to note that the isttva really emanate from two related but dif­ ferent realities. On the one hand, there are accounts from women, some o f whom are the writers long-term friends, who are an active part o f the international struggle for sociopolitical and socioeconomic liberation o f women. For the most part, these are Haitian women who have travelled and lived outside Haiti, and who are highly edu­ cated. On the other hand, there are a majority who are part of the grassroots struggle of Haitian womanhood, whose only life experience has been Haiti and who, gener­ ally, have had far less formal education. Inevitably, the two groups view the struggle

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somewhat differently. For the latter, their total intertextual frame is one which repre­ sents the straggle as a Haitian one, bounded by their life experience; for the former, there is a global context within which to define the specific struggle. Despite this difference, however, the overall structuring o f the narratives is not dis­ similar for the two groups. Generally, there are personal accounts of the womens life histories or incidents within their life stories, punctuated by evaluations o f those inci­ dents and their significance, positioning them in the wider context o f either Haiti as a whole or the global struggle, and including statements o f the means o f resistance they have found and their means of support. The most common pattern is to begin with their means o f support and/or resistance and strength, and then go into their personal accounts, generalize, and then return to the resistance/support, for example: 1. Well what gives me the strength to live, 1 can say that it is G od. Absolutely! [means o f support] I have seven children . . . I can’t give them food . . . [general situation]. The day was June 10, 1994, close to midnight. . . . Five men appeared at my house . . . . They beat me on my head and then they broke both my arm . . . three raped me. [specific situation] . . . They kick us around in H aiti worse than dogs, [generalization/evaluation] . . . Iv e plunged myself into a womens organiza­ tion . . . we have a strength . . . we have a hope after G od, its the women [means o f resistance] . . . Ive also been able to resist because I’m strong with people [means o f resistance] . . . I remember one time during the embargo . . . [another personal recollection]. I never cease fasting and praying . . . [means o f support/resistance], (pp. 37 -3 8 )

Alternatively, the story may come first, or overall reflection and evaluation, to be followed by or interspersed with generalization o f imposed circumstances of oppression and means of resistance. Though all the elements mentioned are present in each, the weighting and ordering of elements tend to differ among the narrators, a testimony to their spontaneity and the writer/translators concern to stay - as far as possible - with the narrators’ streams of consciousness. There may be more or less generalization, more or less personal accounting, but the elements depicted remain consistent among the group. There is no narrative which does not focus at some point on a means of resisting the imposed oppression and overcoming it. Ong (1982, 12) has noted: Reality never occurs in narrative form. . . . The totality o f what happened to, in and around me, since I got up this morning is not organized as narrative. To make narrative I have to isolate certain elements out o f the unbroken seamless web o f history with a view to fining them into a particular construct.

Bat Tenéb

III

We organize reality via narrative (Fleischmann 1985) and, in the service o f this exercise, it has been found normal for narrators to foreground certain ele­ ments in their stories and to background others; partly, this is achieved by th eir arrangement in relation to one another. Those elements which are perceived as the immediate focus o f the speaker are foregrounded, as well as the main s t o ­ ryline, since the narrator is ordering reality according to her consciousness o f it, and highlighting what is contextually unexpected or unknown. The backdrop to the story and relevant explanatory material is backgrounded. Internal evaluation, which occurs at the time o f discourse production, is particularly associated w ith the oral narrative process. In the texts in question, it is the crux o f the matter. The events, as they are retold, are fitted into the particular construct out o f which the women order their experience, the ideological embattlements against which they fight and rise and overcome.

Identity The W om en

The istwa are consistently revealing for what they tell us o f the womens view o f themselves as a gender group distinguished clearly from their dominators. Profound intertextual understandings are shared among them. Their group reference appears often generic to fan m , which we understand to refer to all women, but careful exami­ nation, as noted above, reveals that the generic reference is most usually to Haitian women and a solidarity o f poor women to whom they refer in the broader context o f their oppression and their long-term survival. As they speak, they reconstruct their reality as one of persistent abuse at every level. They find hope in their gendered solidarity, however, and it is usual for the women to juxtapose a statement o f hope for the future in their resistance as they are in the very act of defining their oppression: 2. I don’t understand Haiti. . . . Women are fighting back, but still they don’t have any respect. Men abuse them anyway they please. Men beat women, kick them, pull their hair. . . (p. 54). 3. There is a saying: Yopa bay libertt. Sepran pou ou pran: Liberty is not given to you. Take, you must take it. The life o f the Haitian woman is misery. Betrayal. Rage . . . then the man. From the moment were born, were in preparation to go and be responsible for a man. . . . What bothers us even more is the violence. There is not a woman who

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hasn’t been struck. . . . I have hope that Haiti wont perish. It just has too many strong women, (pp. 142-43 ) 4. All this devastates us women . . . we have suffered too much. . . . We are always present in the struggle, too, always there: We sing a song that goes like this:

Women, women, We are tired o f suffering misery, o! I f you see us uniting A solution we’ll find. (pp. 115-16)

Ultimately, this speaker distances herself from other classes o f women, as mentioned above, by her experience and rejects the proverb she has known: 5. They say: Mise yon famn se mize toutfanm. The misery o f one woman is the misery o f all women, But it is not. There are women who when they pass you in their cars would rather give you dust than anything else. (p. 116)

A similar distancing in understanding from rich and educated women occurs in the following, where we find the grassroots woman contrasted with the upper-class woman, and highlighted as the locus of real power: 6. When I look at the courage o f women in the grassroots, the struggles they go through, and compare them with women o f other classes, its night and day. Upper-class women cant do it without them. But the grassroots women can win the struggle alone because they are the majority, (p. 191)

Though they speak of women in an apparently general sense then, the references are specifically to the poor grassroots women, bonded by their suffering. Another Haitian proverb cements this: “ Tout fanm se fanm f men tout fanm pa kreye egalego —All women are women but not all women are created equal” (p. 171). The narrator is very specific: 7. When we are talking about Haitian women we need to refer to the cultural and socio­ economic environment to which they belong. Haitian womens lives are distinguished by their economic condition, their origin and their social position, rather than just their identity as women, (pp. 171-72)

Another asks: 8. W hat did the big women’s meeting in Beijing do for us Haitian women? We haven’t seen any effects, (p. 142)

Bat Tenib

The Oppressors

In referring to their oppressors, sometimes the class o f “men” is called upon in this role, and sometimes the total state apparatus; general references are most usually to “they”, perhaps for reasons o f security concern. The very dominance o f this general­ ized reference form, however, also testifies to a shared understanding between speaker and hearer which takes as given to whom reference is made, as elucidated further by context. An interesting and typical example in which societal and personal violence are conflated by using “they” follows: 9. They kick us around in Haiti worse than dogs. . . . Ih ey would beat us with sticks, give us tear gas. . . . We women must stand up, so we can get justice in the country o f Haiti, (p. 36)

Less frequendy, there are references to “the police”; on one occasion there is symbolic reference to “the destroyers”. Specific references are to the FRAPH, to the zenglendo, and, back at the personal level, “a man”, “the man”. Actually, a minority of women among the narrators see their struggle as shared with men, and only two, who have both spent considerable time outside Haiti, relate their struggle to the struggle o f other women outside Haiti; only one o f these (example 11) goes beyond her own class. In both the latter cases, it is notable that there is a projection into the future, unfulfilled time, conditional time, in relation to the expectation of unity in solidarity with these other groups. Moreover, the reader should note the modal usage of “could” in example 10 and “must” in 11, both indi­ cating hoped for but not accomplished reality. 10. If women could get together they could change this. Haitian women could communicate with other poor women in Haiti and in other poor countries, as well as those in developed countries who believe that women arc human beings and must live as whole people, (p. 123) 11. I send this call especially to women, because were all sisters, regardless o f whether we’re black or red. We must open our eyes to torture, because they’re torturing women all over the world . . . women o f Haiti and o f the whole world . . . let’s enter into strong solidarity with each other . . . let’s get our voices out. (p. 234)

ID E O L O G Y

The ideology which suppresses the women as a group is described both explic­ itly and implicitly. Women speak o f a world in which they have no rights, n o

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advocacy, and an overall oppression in which they themselves collude since it is the only reality they have ever known. We are reminded o f the earlier reference to the societal acceptance o f domestic violence as normative, to the effect of this on children, and to the self-perpetuating cycle o f violence which is bred in circumstances where human life appears to have no value and victims come to perceive themselves as subhuman. The parallel structuring (italicized) used in these examples emphasizes, through its linguistic repetition, the accumulation o f abuse: 1 2 . / was raised in a society where people beat each other for no reason and no-one says anything. I was raised in a society where men mistreat women in the house, in the

street, on the job, in their small commerce and other professions; society says nothing about that. (p. 183) 13. I don’t understand Haiti. Women are fighting back, but still . . . men abuse them anyway they please. Men beat women, kick them, pull their hair, shake their

heads. . . . Their husbands knock them to the ground, walk all over them and break their bones, (p. 54) 14. In a sense women are muzzled, their words have no voice. Their work doesnt

count. The percentage o f women who get beaten is high. . . . But women aren’t on ly oppressed by men; their oppression has been instilled within them. It’s not unusual to knock at a door and hear a response from a female voice, “There’s no-one here.” It’s not uncommon to hear a woman say “ I don’t work,” while she’s really wanting to say W I don’t have a job that I’m getting paid for but I work sixteen hours a day . . .

(p. 172)

O n the one hand, the narrator tells us explicitly that women have been allowed no rights and that this has affected them to the extent o f determining their own speak­ ing, which often diminishes them to nothing. They are answering, they are in the house, but they are “no-one”, for “no-one” is home. No one, then, is tantamount to no man. In the second case used as illustration, they “don’t work” although they are enslaved to work. Their reality is that they themselves and what they do have no value because o f the subjection of their very lives and enterprises to a patriarchal reality that diminishes them. On the other hand, however, the narrator speaks of a voluntary enslavement for the sake of the family: 15. . . . a woman enchains herself because she knows it’s up to her to find food for the household and take care o f her children.. . . She’s the last person that anyone would see as having the right to go out. Men prevent women from having access to even a little

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drop of information or contact. But still these women take on their backs the weight of society, of tradition, and of men. (p. 123) Note the reflexive verb “enchains herself” as well as the agency expressed in women “taking on their backs”; this is juxtaposed with “She’s the last person that anyone would see as having the right to go out”, restated in the following sentence. There is a dual weight placed on the women because their enslavement is self-imposed as well as societally imposed. They take on the burden because no one else will; they accept it because the order of things demands it; although they have no rights, they assume great responsibility. Our attention is drawn to the threefold burden they assume, presented in parallel structuring, and anchored in history and the state as well as in the opposite sex: “women take on their backs the weight of society, o f tradition and o f men”. The capacity for restatement is replete throughout the text, but there are subtle shifts o f agency which portray the women becoming active forces themselves rather than mere objects o f victimization.

C O U N T ER ID EO LO G Y Despite the evidenced burden of oppression above, the narratives are characterized by multiple instances of the women’s counterstance, their redefinition o f who they are and o f their significance to the process in which they are engaged. The speaker in example 12 above concludes with a statement of retaliation which indicates the way she can reconstruct her reality within herself: 16. So society has no right to say anything to a woman who decides her own life. In my own head, I deal society that defeat, (p. 183) This spatial imagery places resistance and retaliation within the female psyche, in a separate space, and gives her an internal control which cannot be eroded. Several times the women refer to themselves as thepoto mitan, the centre pole (p. 171): 17. The women are the central pillar. They’re the ones taking care of the kids.. . . They have a strong spirit of sacrifice----I tell you, they drain their blood so their children can have a better tomorrow. They don’t want their children to find themselves in the same situation they’ve been in. (p. 114) This graphic metaphor translates them at once from nothingness, from their subhu­ man status, as defined and enshrined in tradition and brutalization, to being the focal point o f the structure, supporting the more peripheral elements around them.

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Another significant metaphor is that o f “a grain o f sand”. In speaking of the need to translate the laws into kreydl so that the less educated people can understand their rights, Yannick Etienne says: 18. I’m only a grain o f sand who has certain advantages that society hasn’t given the workers. I have a responsibility to help them continue the battle. Because the workers are the future. They’re the hope. (p. 112)

This is a significant metaphor, speaking not o f powerlessness but o f humility in her incapacity to achieve anything alone without the people she would empower. Here is one woman who is more advantaged and yet makes her cause one with her sistren. It is possible to be both the centre pole and a grain of sand, for collectively the grains of sand become the centre pole. Many o f the women refer directly to their inherent strength and capacity to come back. Here, the juxtaposition o f ideas shows us that women perceive themselves as crafters o f Haiti’s redemption, that, by implication, it does not rest on the men. Further, the powerful image of women as the life-givers (italicized below), the carriers o f life, both literal and metaphoric, affirms womans capacity for transcending present circumstance by her procreating ability. This extends itself to all walks o f life, so that, in turn, the cause brings life to the life-giver. 1 9 . . . . where there are women there is life. Not only do we carry life in our wombs, but we create life each day that we live, in all the work we do in the society.. . . Even i f I live in hiding and suffer because o f my work —my country and its struggle hold lifefor me. (p. 141)

A s in example 19, there are several other cases o f conditionality o f expression which hammer home the womens capacity to press beyond life in their fighting back, thereby transcending the forces which would extinguish their lives: 20. Even if God doesn’t send something straight away, we hope that in what were doing, we’ll find benefits so we little peasants can stand, (p. 119)

N ote here the juxtaposition o f the diminutive adjective “little” with the verb “stand”, a telling example o f the narrators recognition o f the existing power structure, which diminishes the individual, and simultaneously, the female capacity to action, to over­ coming, expressed in the verb “stand” to come against it. In the following example, journalist Lellenne Gilles uses powerful parallelism in three sets o f conditionality (italicized) which speak of her recognition of the power o f the oppressed making themselves heard. This is one o f several instances where the

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conditionality expressed is unto death but would never be abandoned. And once again, verbs are used figuratively to express the powerlessness o f those who are not allowed to speak for themselves: 21. I f I didn’t have a radio to speak in, Id stand under the tree. I f I didnt have a m icro­ phone to speak into, I’d stand up in the middle o f the street. . . . I f I didnt have a microphone . . . I would stand in front o f a chicken and talk. 77/ die with the words on

my lips. Those who can’t speak are those who cant eat. They cant live, they cant drink, they can t breathe, (p. 71)

Here, the power to verbalize suffering and resistance is related to life itself. Moreover, the power in speaking, and that which is peculiar to humankind, is a powerful weapon against objectification and depersonalization. The power to speak without a microphone is related to alternative spatial positions which are, in themselves, symbolic. On the one hand, “under a tree” and “in the m iddle o f the street” represent places where people gather or pass by; on the other, “ in front o f a chicken” tells us that just to be able to speak, even without a hum an audience, is critical in itself. This leads us to infer that the resistance o f H aitian women through narrative goes beyond their ability to use social activism to alter their life conditions. To be deprived o f the capacity o f speech is to be deprived o f life. In a more personal statement by another narrator locked in a personal gender battle, the struggle is also unto death: 22. I'll always fight. I’ll divorce him to remove him from my spirit. Even i f he kills me at

least I'll have left an examplefor myfriends. They’ll talk about a woman named Roselie who struggled and fought back. (p. 54)

The spatial dichotomy between the woman and the aggressor husband is one whereby she excludes him from a sacred space within her. By “removing him from my spirit” she makes it possible to continue her struggle intact. T he fundamental intactness achieved is reminiscent o f that expressed earlier in example 16. At both personal and societal levels o f engagement in battle, there is an ideology which transcends what can be accomplished in a single natural life. The capacity to die for a just cause is one which First World societies today hardly understand, settled as they are in a secure materialism and prosperity. Once the battle transcends life,

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it becomes ennobled by the ultimate sacrifice entailed and, in the very ennobling, overcomes the subjugation o f the oppressor.

M EANS OF RESISTANCE A N D SOURCES OF STRENGTH Female Solidarity and Organization In general terms, first of all, the dominant pronoun o f resistance is “we”. The women as individuals tell their personal stories as “I”, but in discussing resistance there is always the change to “we”. This pronoun is sometimes ambiguous, as it may apply to all Haiti’s oppressed forces, but most often it is applied to poor Haitian women in their struggle: 23. We have a strength, we have a hope. If it hadn’t been for the women in the organiza­ tion, I’d still be struggling to survive that experience, (p. 38) 24. We women, we have resources! We can do things! We get up early in the morning, we don’t get discouraged. Us in the Artibonite Valley, there is nothing we won’t do . . . . Whatever it takes, to give our children some education, we'll do i t . . . . We women have capacity! (p. 116)

All the women recognize the power o f solidarity with one another, whether it be for­ mally or informally constituted. There are countless references to these critical links as bringing variously humanity, freedom from degradation, hope, awareness, voice, strength, knowledge, empowerment: 25. The women’s group helped me and my knowledge . . . it was the women who made m e understand that you don’t beat children. . . . The women looked at me as a human being, the same as themselves . . . They made me feel like I exist in society. I became a person, (p. 44) 26. What gives me a little strength now, what allows me to stand up and speak, is that someone from a woman’s organization came around, (p. 55)

The narrator o f 25 had seen herself as less than human, as having no rights, because o f the extreme brutalization to which she had been subjected; this is a very common condition in the women’s experience, as we have noted before, and in the midst o f it, the womens organizations change the women’s sense o f selfhood by bringing them self-awareness, mutual support and sharing o f experience, knowledge and consciousness o f their human rights:

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27. When you get into an organization you change completely. What makes you change? I come to see you, know you, share ideas. That allows a change in both o f us . . . I started working with poor women for them to understand, in life, you can’t just let go o f your head. . . . If they don’t understand and I have a little more light than they do, I inform them. . . . We’re always sharing what we know so that tomorrow, if G od wills, we can advance further. . . . We never get discouraged. . . . We’re always walking . . . (p. 117)

For many, this personal exchange o f mutual support, even outside any formal struc­ tured organization, becomes the focal point o f resistance. Powerful parallelism, again particularly used in conditional phrases, supports the statements and reinforces the points being made (see italicized items below): 28. I do like everyone. The misery o f one woman is the misery o f all women. I f you are

sensitive to me, I am sensitive to you. I f I see a man abusing a woman, I might go to him and say “Don’t beat her.” I f he beats her I get angry. . . . I f I see two women fighting, I always enter into the middle . . . (p. 49) 29. . . . But women work together, on the farm , with the laundry\ in solidarity with

one another . . . The small-scale resistance involves know-how that lets us survive. . . . It’s our resistance and sharing with one another, that will allow me to continue with the wom ens struggle. . . . W ithout women there are things that just won’t work. (pp. 131, 134)

Just as the narrator above distinguishes a peculiar quality in women that is essential to the whole struggle, so Lise-Marie Dejean, who was instrumental in setting up the Ministry for the Status and Rights o f Women, distinguishes a distinct female role in a concern for equality: 3 0 . . . . the men’s power was always exercised through coercion; it was a power o f dom i­ nation. We wanted a more egalitarian power. When women truly join the decision­ making table, it begins to change [she qualifies this by excluding women in power under the Duvalier regime] . . . the exercise o f power we used in the ministry was based on a perception o f power that would set women on the road to change so future generations could harvest transformation, (p. 216)

Another of the educated women who has returned from abroad cements this d is­ tinctness in the female view o f power, which does not have to be rooted in power over the other: 31. Conventionally, power has been thought o f in terms o f one’s power over som e­ thing else. . . . I look at things through the eyes o f women, very conscious o f their

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roles, limitations and stereotypes imposed on us. . . . So I want to get to a different concept and application o f power than the one that keeps women from attaining their potential. The basis o f my work with women is to open them up to other things, give them new tools . . . . In a new society, individuals should have the opportunity to be complete human beings . . . (p. 219)

This view may be more abstractly expressed than that of the grassroots narrators before her, but both speak to a female perception of power-giving in knowledge and power-sharing, which, in turn, speaks to the significant complementary role that women have to play beside men in bringing about a better social order. Power does not have to mean power over another.

The Life-Giving Capacity Womans position as child bearer, child-rearer and life-giver, her capacity for pro­ creation, is often juxtaposed with statements o f continuing hope and resistance. Already alluded to as a source o f counterstrength, it merits special mention as a means o f resistance. 32. Well, my life has not been sweet for me at all. . . . But good or not good, my child and I lived. I struggled. I suffered to earn her tuition . . . I did it. Today she’s a pre-school teacher, (p. 59) 33. When I was a child I had hope. . . . Now from time to time life is hard. But I know that I’ll live again the same way I did when I was a child. I never get discouraged . . . I have children; one day, even if I die, the president will do something for my children. I always live that hope. (p. 49)

The potential for overcoming through their children is very meaningful for the women. Death has no sting as long as the children can survive. Again we see the resistance unto death expressed in the conditionality o f “even if”, but this time it is linked to procreation. To the end o f achieving ones childrens support, many means are justified and truly ennobled by the end result. Just as there is implicit redefinition o f the significance of a single life, so is there redefinition o f what is morally permissible: 34. Women resist with what means they have. . . . But the land doesn’t give you much any more. But what little I find, no matter how small, let me hold on. . . . Even if a woman is forced to prostitute herself, to sell her courage, that’s her resistance. See? . . . That’s how she’ll survive, (p. 131)

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Each of these extracts mentions explicitly either living or survival. Rammed up against statements of deprivation expressed through verbs such as “struggled” and “suffered”, we have these other verbs which emphasize overcoming. The skilful use of the passive voice in example 34 indicates that women do not merely “prostitute” themselves but that the condition is forced upon them; the passive voice contrasts starkly with the many reflexive positionings expressed throughout the isttva. Again, we are reminded that we cannot impose First World value systems, born out o f ease and plenty, on all peoples.

Language, Literacy and Artistic Expression The process of empowering any oppressed group must include providing them a public medium whereby to express their concerns. The women of Walking on Fire are fully aware of this and, indeed, a section of the text is devoted to these significant means of expres­ sion. While the kreybl language and literacy within it are forcefully projected as a means to power for all, the more personal artistic gifts are described as empowering the individuals whose talent they are and providing them with a means of dignifying their existence. First, we encounter language as a tool o f resistance, and the symbolic value o f the kreybl as the language of the people is emphasized. By being denied them the right to speak in their own language, they were deprived o f a form o f public expression so that language policy in itself became a tool of suppression and oppression. Kreybl was a voice, a counterforce against French oppression. 35. When they cold us not to speak Creole, it was like saying to the people: do not speak. French was only spoken by a small elite. And the whole school system perpetuated the power o f that elite---- It was an act o f resistance to say you weren’t going to speak French in school . . . Haitiennite was a search for identity within a system dedicated to controlling how we could express ourselves . . . reporting the news in Creole was a big step because it helped the people to get conscientized. (p. 82)

Very much a part of this is the drive for literacy: 36. Knowing how to read and write is a great power . . . in the countryside a person who knows how to read and write is a king . . . So in the literacy work we do with the peasants, I always insist on the power o f knowing how to read and write. For democracy, this is the whole struggle. The people can’t leave that power to the elite any more . . . as soon as the peasants know they have the right to learn . . . they won’t have to bow down before the rich anymore, (p. 84)

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Once more, metaphor is brought in as an illustrative device o f the power in command o f literacy. Not only is the literate person a “king” but she will not have to be subservient any longer with this capacity. The language struggle in Haiti is often overlooked, although it is the single most important factor in Haiti’s under­ development. By depriving the people o f education in their own language, the hegemonic powers deprive them o f the right to effective literacy and thereby also of contact with a wider world o f understanding outside the boundaries o f their own lives and circumstances. The language of song is also presented to us as an overcoming force, rendering the invisible visible in the specific case of womanhood. In this extract, the speaker has recognized and defines the power o f having a voice that has been denied in the written histories o f the land: 37. A womans misery made me a sanba, bard, a person who writes songs and teaches people the songs. . . . All that made me become an artist so that I could talk about the lives o f all Haitian women who are struggling to get out from under this bad system o f exploitation---- I sit down and make a song that tells the story, that gives the history o f something that happened. I notice especially that none o f the things that women have done in Haiti appear in history, (p. 73)

At a more personal level, there are accounts of the gifts o f dance, painting, poetry writing. Dance is personified and each individual medium is symbolized as bringing life and as providing a means of overcoming the oppression meted out in the larger society: 38. Painting was a way to try to limit the effects o f the destroyers on my individual life, on my capacity to reflect, on my capacity to react. My painting allowed me to live.. . . It let me preserve and expand the space o f expression, (p. 90) 39. Dance is what put my feet inside society. . . . I can tell you that dance is my mother, dance is my best friend, dance is my husband, this dance is a language. It’s a means to allow you to speak. . . . When I am dancing, I feel like I’m living. I do it with love . . . (p. 89)

Dance is here personified, not only as an enabling force, but as the ultimate com­ panion and supporter. Dance, painting and poetry (see 40 below) are sources o f life where there is no life. Each is nominalized as an actor/agent in the process o f empowerment. 40. That’s how I have come to think - always in terms o f poetry. That’s what makes my brain work, what makes me live, too. My whole life doesn’t have to pass in

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humiliation. I can give poetry that can make people who once looked down on me see me as something, (p. 81)

Sometimes, on visits to Haiti, we have been overcome by the creative expression o f the people, manifested through their vibrant painting and sculpture in the midst o f the most severe circumstances. It has been noted that women play a lesser role in those forms o f artistic expression, but their creativity emerges in a range of artistic modes as highlighted above. The act of self-expression becomes a powerful tool of resistance in a people who would transcend the bitterness o f their oppression despite the odds. It will not be suppressed. Once again, we see the epitomization of expressive means as a life force.

God: Spiritual Belief Systems The major means of sustained support to the women, other than their mutual support, both formal and informal, is found in their conceptualization of God as a sustaining super-force in their lives. 41. 1 have a lot o f courage that I get from God. That’s Gods grace. Alone I couldn’t go on. (p. 53)

Although it is often suggested that Christianity is an oppressive force in which God is somehow perceived as colluding in their subordination, this is not evident in the womens speakings. It is important not to put First World interpretations on the womens experiences but to allow them to express their support systems as they see them. One woman, who suffered the most brutal attack from the zxnglendo, recalls: 42. I was killed when the men kidnapped m e . . . . But it was G od’s will for me to come back from the dead to speak for all the other victims o f Tintayen who didn’t live. . . . Truly G od wanted me to live for all people who want change, for all women who are struggling for women . . . (p. 106)

As she recounts the incredible story of her survival, with her tongue, mouth and right arm cut off, as well as the fingers of her left hand, her references are continuously to God s role in saving her: 43. But G od was pulling for me again. . . . G od spoke to the hearts o f those men. . . . I was conscious the whole time even when they gave me anaesthesia. Myself, I see this as the work o f G od. . . . G od gave me the strength and the resistance, the

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opportunity and the courage to bring this case to you so that you’ll stand up and join the call for help, (pp. 107-8)

She understandably represents her own position as passivized: “I was killed”, but, in her horrendous brutalization, God is represented as the agent o f her survival. In the First World, the prevailing trend is to dispense with God, since we have had the privilege to live in circumstances which superficially do not appear to demand a higher power to sustain life. This is not the circumstance of the women in question, however. At a more down-to-earth, practical level also the role o f the t i l e g l i is alluded to: 44. So I went with the tide o f the tilegliz> the church o f the poor. . . . I started forming groups, without a penny.. . . Each Sunday I celebrated mass for the group. It didn’t matter that I was a woman, because the spirit o f God was in me to send the good news o f the poor. . . . We asked each other, “Who is my neighbour?” as the good Samaritan asked, (p. 128)

For many Haitians, loyalty is not to the tilegliz but is divided between Roman Catholi­ cism and voodooism, and it is the latter that is perceived as the instrument of resistance: 45. Vodou gives us a lot o f strength, it supports us so that we can combat all bad things. If those country people didn’t serve Iwa, who walk with them, help them, encourage them, they would all have died already. . . . Some forget how vodouizan play a big, big role in society . . . there’s no discrimination in vodou . . . in vodou women have the same rights as men, too. (pp. 87-88)

What is notable here is that it is voodoo itself, like language, which empowers, because it is something that belongs to the people. It is not just the spirits (Iwd) within voodoo that are a life source, but the force o f the movement is in its emanating from within the people. It symbolizes not just their own culture but an egalitarian system, without gender divide. As we read all the examples above, we note that the women concerned allude to an egalitarianism of gender positioning inside the spiritual organizations in the society which contrasts markedly with the situation in the society as a whole. The religions then serve a function o f support to the womens counterideology since within them they have equal rights and are fully empowered to act.

INTERPRETATION A N D EXPLANATIO N Through pulling together the common strands o f female oppression as expressed by the women o f Haiti themselves, it has been possible to build up a vivid picture of

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resistance to the status quo that attempts to pin them down. Were it not for the nar­ rative accounts, we would remain with a sense o f an overwhelming oppression, o f a burden unimaginable, against which the women could not be expected to stand. The istwa effectively establish the reverse. We learn that there are two major sources o f oppression: the state apparatus as it has variously employed oppressive terrorist forces, and the male gender within broad gender discriminatory practices, which are pardy institutionalized and pardy per­ petuated through ideological positionings carried through the course of history. It appears that a consistently oppressive political system has worked double oppression by encouraging man to work out his anger and frustration through violent abuse towards woman. In addition, as Nesha Haniff (1998, 1) writes in discussing male vio­ lence throughout the Caribbean, “Violence against women is embedded in systems and beliefs whose premise is that women are not equal to men___ The litany of abuse taken by women is unending but true, and the advent of feminism - the radical idea that women are fully human - has therefore become essential.” Indeed, we learn simultaneously that there is a counterstance, a solidarity o f womanhood, which stands against the dominant ideology and triumphs over it. The womens identities are, on the one hand, defined for them as follows: • • • •

subhuman slave devoid of human rights victims

But, on the other hand, they redefine themselves as follows: • • • •

providers and life-givers overcomers sources of human strength purveyors o f an egalitarian order

It is clear that, particularly in the last two decades, the educational, cooperative and empowering achievements of womens organizations have been tremendous. In addition, the womens individual support for one another, their view o f themselves as sustainers o f life and perpetuity, and their capacity for unending toil to preserve their children and a hope for the generations to come are clearly evidenced. Even without the text we have examined, it is possible to see that they have found their own voice through the various artistic means o f expression they possess, through

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literacy, through speaking out, through speaking one to another. Their spirituality has sustained them as well as their systems o f mutual support; both have been part o f the counterideology they have forged. Though the istwa are told by two groups o f women, one educated and outwardoriented, the other less educated and localized, their overall views o f themselves and their battle are largely shared. That the former group puts more trust in a global solidarity o f women is inevitable, but, even in this outward-looking group, projec­ tions are towards future solidarity rather than current; achievements thus far have clearly been internal. The articulateness o f the women speaks for itself. They show the consistent capac­ ity not just to present their personal accounts but to extrapolate from them and to evaluate crisply their own situation in regard to the forces o f oppression, their needs and their potential means o f achieving them. Through their choice o f nouns and pronouns, the elements they choose to nominalize, subjectivize or passivize, their vivid use of conditionality, they are able to give clear expression to their perspectives and understanding. Through repetition, front focusing and parallelism, they make their many points o f emphasis. They make considerable use o f powerful symbolism for rhetorical effectiveness and o f Haitian proverbs, which harness their wisdom in their cultural background. They show a consistent capacity for abstract definition and analysis. There is no question o f their being locked into inarticulateness by their lack o f education and, in some cases, literacy. Far from being a primitive tool, the krtyol language serves them as a sophisticated vehicle for transmission o f their understandings, as capable of carrying complex abstraction as any international standardized language. An important outcome of this study must be to offer its female narrators greater access to new, externally accessed means o f overcoming. As the original text and the synopsis above crystallize the nature o f the struggle and their means of overcoming, they also liberate the narrators through the print reconstruction of their experiences in their own words. As a result, the world outside can see that to which they have been blind, and, in seeing, provide the mechanisms of further education and empow­ erment that may bring about change.

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PART TW O

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Preamble

The literary analyses of part 2 o f Writing Rage focus on the impact o f violent scenar­ ios on the material conditions of human lives. The analyses explore the interplay of traumas, which operate with multiplier effect on victims and perpetrators of violence. Trauma theorists agree that myriad forces shape the value-processing capability of any given human being. Persons are biosocial organisms who possess unique genes, unique personal values, and self-structures that mediate the psychosocial reactions to environmental stressors and traumas. As indicated in the introduction, the triggers identified in Kiras taxonomy o f trauma which determine human response and func­ tioning are attachment, individuation, interdependence, performance and flexibility/ survival (2001, 77). The literary analyses flesh out and exemplify Kiras contention that traumas overlap and thereby magnify their impact on individuals and societies. The historical scenario explored in the introduction, which informs the fictional and real-life discourses, was in itself a cause of trauma. The institutionalized violence of decimation in indigenous populations, slavery, indentureship and the underlying racism generates autonomy and identity trauma, as do civil unrest, war and torture. Kira notes that autonomy and identity trauma can ‘ shatter the behavioural and emo­ tional independence of the individual or group or his/their sense o f identity and leads to feelings o f incompetence, inadequacy, alienation and loss o f control over

self and destiny” (2001, 77). Racism, which was the kingpin o f the terrorist coloniz­ ing system, operates to nullify the other based on racial difference and can generate a virulent form o f identity trauma because it works to socialize its victims into shame and self-contempt based on racial characteristics, which in turn facilitate ongoing dehumanization, degradation and disempowerment. Chapter 6 exemplifies the operations o f attachment or intimacy traumas, which impact affective exchanges o f companionship between adults or the relational ties between parents and their infants and children. These traumas occur in cases of aban­ donment, death, kidnapping, divorce, betrayal and any state which creates loss o f intimacy. Intimacy traumas are most intense if they occur in infancy, when the child has not created the other value-processing systems which are necessary for healthy maturation. In the case o f father-daughter incest, its negative impact is intensified since the father forces the dependent child to pay with sex for the attention and nurture which should have been given as a matter o f course. Herman likens this to the fathers initiating his daughter into prostitution (2000, 4). Attachment traumas can shatter the individuals self-worth and ability to connect and can lead to rela­ tionship and personality disorders. The incest scenario in Mootoos Cereus Blooms at Night (1996) provides a case in point. Interdependence or disconnectedness trauma occurs whenever there is rupture in the individuals sense o f safety, security and community - those elements which serve to impart social embeddedness, belonging and purpose in life. Uprootedness and disconnectedness traumas can be triggered by migrations, especially if they are invol­ untary and if they occur in relation to hostile target cultures. The literary evocation o f horrendous family violence within the postindentureship period speaks o f the grim outworking o f this scenario. Achievement and self-actualization trauma is generated by the failure to achieve personal goals that are perceived as central to the individuals survival, progress and advancement. It can be generated by unemployment, underemployment and loss of money, health and prestige. This is intensified if inequity in achievement is supported by perceived inequity based on race and gender. The salient issue for this study is the extent to which poverty, racism and institutionalized underdevelopment can be con­ nected to the crafting of the violent criminal as a young Afro-Caribbean man. Survival trauma can be generated by an event which poses a direct threat to the life o f self or significant other such as violence, crime, war, natural or manmade dis­ asters or attempted suicide. This is o f particular relevance for chapter 8, “Violence

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and Subjectivity”. Kira notes, “A belief system about life, death, and destiny may be part o f a religious, philosophical or ideological value system which contributes to regulating the processing o f such traumas and managing terrors activated by them” (2001, 77). The Haitian sociopolitical debacle explored in chapters 5 and 10, which is arguably the worst-case scenario, provides the clearest demonstration o f the transmission o f indirect traumas in a single step from one person to another, or through a multiple-step transmission over generations. This is the case with his­ torical traumas; or the transmission o f structural violence o f extreme social dispari­ ties over generations; or transmission o f structural poverty - hunger, malnutrition and inadequate shelter - over generations. Yet, as will be fleshed out in chapter 10, it is here that we see some o f the most effective deployments of faith and the therapeutic intervention of narrative in managing traumas. The literary analyses begin then with a gendered exploration o f Indo-Caribbean family violence spanning the period o f indentureship to the 1980s. Chapter 6 explores literary evocations o f the connection made consistently in sociological and historical studies o f a correlation between family violence, traumatic social and cultural dislocation, and attempts to reconstruct a threatened patriarchal tra­ dition in an alien and alienating Caribbean environment. It argues that the early practices have consolidated into a culture o f ritualized violence which persists and creatively reinvents until today. Based on readings o f Harold Ladoo’s No Pain Like This Body (1972) and Shani M ootoos Cereus Blooms at Night, the discussion locates family violence as rooted in the loss o f indentureship. The writers evoke a lush, nightmarish fallen paradise which has lost its moorings, in which women and children become the bearers o f the psychic laceration o f indentureship. Kanh ais “ Rum Sweet Rum” (1999), set some seven decades later, is ambivalently crafted in the spirit o f sisterhood, to inscribe agency on behalf o f women who are marooned in the now mature and only minimally less violent culture, and who must needs learn to kill before they are killed. Chapter 7 shifts focus to the interplay between domestic violence and criminal vio­ lence. It also explores how Caribbean women writers are using the mantle o f the sto­ ryteller to treat with cultural paradigms o f Afro-Caribbean masculinity. The analyses include Jean Rhyss “Our Gardener”, in which a child witnesses the brutal murder o f her mother by the black gardener, who utters “white flesh” as he delivers his fatal chops. The murderous eruption appears to be related to rage over the racial and eco­ nomic inequity on which the colonial s enterprise of gardening in the tropics is based.

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Michelle Cliffs No Telephone to Heaven (1987) and Barbara Lallas Arch o f Fire (1989) both explore Jamaican society of around the 1970s, when criminal and mob violence was unleashed to such an extent that the society seemed to be on the brink o f conflagra­ tion and hundreds opted for migration, fearing for their lives. The explorations o f liter­ ary portrayals o f the deviant male as criminal focus on the forces which account for the making o f the ruthless, bloodthirsty criminal as a young man. They measure the literary representations against the theoretical assumption that the Caribbean feminist agenda is concerned with the well-being and survival of the entire people group. Despite the unsavoury nature of these characters, the female writers demonstrate a high level o f sympathetic identification with the criminals and reveal penetrating insights into the formative influences which shape this manner o f man. Chapter 8 goes further afield and backwards in time to explore evocations o f rape and sexual violence in the Caribbean imaginary. The chapter argues that any attempt to understand the phenomenon of sexual violence must take regard o f interlocking concepts o f sexuality and power, and it must grapple with the interplay between patriarchal postcolonial masculine subjectivities and alternative subcultural mascu­ linities within plural Caribbean societies. Feminist perspectives will be deployed to explore the gendered sexualized nature of the encounter between worlds. In the nightmarish sociocultural ethos created by the colonial enterprise, taboos on sexuality and violence were lifted to provide a play o f infinite possibility and an entire race on which to experiment. Indeed, the eroticization of conquest played itself out in a spate of bizarre sexualized connections in which racial and gendered hierarchies were asserted through violence. The legacy o f this is inherent in global First World-Third World leisure industry interchange and is reflected in the contemporary exoticized representations of the islands and the female body for the promotion o f sex tourism. This chapter draws from the insights of Car­ ibbean feminists on the overlay o f Western ideologies of gendered power relations and their interplay with transported ancestral norms and contemporary media-based roles and aspirations. Lamming s Water with Berries (1971) and Natives o f My Person (1972), explored in chapter 8, deal with the psyche of the colonized and the colonizer respectively. The latter ties the impulse towards conquest to the gross deficiency in terms o f inter­ personal and male-female relations. The former connects the violence inherent to the colonial encounter to a dynamic which works itself out in black mens revenge rape and murder o f white women. This chapter argues that from the inception of

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Caribbean literary expression, violent sexuality has been associated with the outwork­ ing o f a history o f traumatic imperial encounter. In their constructions of Western patriarchal masculinity, the writers propose a correlation between fear o f femaleness and the impulse towards imperial conquest. There is also a correlation between rape and oppressive, male-dominated post-emancipation and post-independent sociopo­ litical regimes. The fictions which deal with contemporary social scenarios include Lovelaces The Schoolmaster (1968), in which the rape o f the virginal sacrificial figure, Christiana, by the opportunistic schoolmaster is symbolic o f the despoliation o f the village in the interest o f modernity and progress. Finally, Dionne Brand s “San Souci” (1989) exemplifies the extent to which rape, even of a minor, is compatible with notions o f counterhegemonic masculinity. In both narratives, the assumption, in the eyes o f the perpetrator and the society, is that marriage nullifies any wrong done. These texts demonstrate the extent to which rape is subjected to silencing and erasure on the part o f the victim, the perpetrator and society. It points to the imperative of unsilencing rape if therapeutic intervention is to be made. Chapter 9 locates male-female violence within the framework o f global violence o f war and civil unrest. It explores the interplay between social, collective and individual violence, and gender and ethnic subject formation. Given that colonial­ ism was at its root a cultural system o f terror, and neocolonialism rests on ongoing ontological erasures, subjugation and depersonalization o f subordinate groups, the chapter explores the power o f violence to create a twilight zone o f a hostile imagi­ nary in which persons are at threat o f losing their humanity if not their very lives. The chapter reads V.S. Naipaul’s In a Free State (1971) and Guerillas (1975) as studies on the interplay between violence and subjectivity. It explores how violence becomes entangled with the political logic o f identity formation and how the expe­ rience o f suffering reshapes the individuals relational response to self and other. It grapples with the strategies employed to mediate terror through narrative in an attempt to understand and by extension to produce understanding o f a culture o f terror. The chapter connects apparently irrational and sporadic acts o f violence in isolated postcolonial territories and the broader forces o f globalization which inform and even generate them. It focuses primarily on three key players in the conflictual scenarios - the oppressed, often constructed in these texts as “natives”, the liberal and the revolutionary. The penultimate chapter returns to Haiti, which retains significance for Carib­ bean peoples as the first black republic to have wrested independence from imperial

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powers in 1804, and yet it remains the poorest, most violence-ridden nation within the archipelago. Like chapter 5, it focuses on the therapeutic role o f the narratives o f Haitian women. “Where Nightmares Are Heirlooms: Narrative as Palliative in Danticat s Fiction” examines the interplay between an unrelenting, oppressive history of state violence and the impact on the material condition o f womens lives. The chapter explores Danticat s attempt to reconstruct and even ennoble a world which is repeatedly shattered by violence so virulent as to undermine the worth o f the human persons. Her narratives insist on individualizing and giving voice to those who would otherwise be categorized merely as faceless victims. She holds up an imperative not to forget - to remember and to pass on the heirlooms even if they can only be night­ mares. It is in this chapter that the palliative impact o f narrative which is alluded to throughout the volume will be fully explored.

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CHAPTER 6 = = = = = = Gendered Inscriptions of Indo-Caribbean Family Violence

. . . In “The Mission”, the shops are crowded At home, the banked chulhah waits Carat always keeps the fumes O f cheap cane juice - Rum, Rum and more Rum The door unlatched . . . She remembers to hide the bullpisde, His stumbling steps, the mule’s slow canter, Oh God, perhaps tonight The Black mule will not fall. -

Ramabai Espinet,

“Tamani: A Cane-Cutting Woman”

The magnitude and intensity o f family violence within the Indo-Caribbean commu­ nity, from indentureship to the present, remain resistant and troubling social issues. The violence was initially attributed to the sex-ratio disparity o f indentees, the relative autonomy o f the few, highly prized women who migrated as bonded labourers rather than wives (Barrow 1996; Haniff 1999)1 and the practice o f customary marriages

which placed disaffected wives out of the control o f the colonial legal system and, even more so, at the mercy o f jealous, vengeful, often murderous mates (Mangru 1987; Poynting 1987).2 Within India, these wife murders became a hody contested, highly politicized issue which fuelled Indian nationalist opposition to indentureship. The combined efforts o f the colonial authorities, the Presbyterian Church and the Panchayats (reconstructed, community-based village councils) were insufficient to halt widespread occurrence of violence. Patterns o f wife-beating and violence against the self - suicide and alcoholism - in response to trauma were also directly related to male attempts to reconstruct a threatened patriarchal tradition on alien and alienat­ ing Caribbean soil (Mohammed 2002, 132).3 These early practices have arguably contributed to ritualized, though constantly evolving, patterns of family violence. In pursuit o f a sociological explanation for family violence within IndoGuyanese households, Basmat Shiw Parsad (1999, 40) dismisses the Western femi­ nist approaches which socially construct the issue o f violence within “ideological contexts o f individual rights and social equality”. Feminist models have pointed to “unequal distribution of power resources between men and women within society and family” and “sexist norms within and outside the family that serve to reinforce a patriarchal culture and the oppression o f women” (p. 41). Parsad suggests instead that a viable explanation may be found in family violence-related norms and an ena­ bling frame o f ethnic and family values. Punitive child-rearing practices, which lead to an acceptance of violence as a means of social control, coincide with an aversion to overt aggression and deference to prescribed authority. Frustration and simmering aggression, fuelled by lowered inhibition due to alcohol consumption, often lead to explosive, violent behaviour. Parsad contends: Violence within East Indian marriages is ritualized to the extent that it conforms to a social script, which has clear rules concerning who is permitted to use violence in a marriage and who is not. The script strongly condemns wife to husband violence but permits violence by mothers towards children and tolerates violence by husbands towards wives, (p. 50)

This is condoned when it is directed by the husband towards the wife because o f the perceived right o f the husband to “discipline” his wife. On the other hand, women experience even stronger pressure to conform to authority and to suppress aggression. Hence, they are inclined to rationalize their husbands’ behaviours as loss o f control and even to condone and rationalize the

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violence and regard it as something that “goes with the territory o f being married” (Parsad 1999, 46). Contrary to the ultimate resource theory popularized by Western theorists, which posits that economically disempowered men are inclined to “resort to violence when they lack the material means to assert their superiority and control” (p. 41), Parsad argues that, given the strong patriarchal framework, “regardless o f his socio-economic status and the size o f his economic contribution to the upkeep of the family, the husband/father is ideally ascribed the dominant position o f household head and the primary intermediary between the family and the wider society” (p. 52). And idealized assumptions o f male dominance, embraced by men and women alike, male and female economic empowerment or disempowerment notwithstanding, are intimately related to domestic violence. Predictably, the earliest female-authored literary representations o f Indian women were as the victim. Jeremy Poynting makes reference to the images o f the battered wife (Dianne Ramdass, “The Drunkard”), the mother struggling against poverty (Veronica Ragoonan, “Underprivileged”) or the most popular representation o f the girl trapped by or revolting against an arranged marriage. He states: “From Mary D ’Kalloos story ‘Doolarie written in 1948 to Rajnie Ramlakhans ‘The Doolaha written in 1974 the theme has attracted several tellings” (1987, 247).4 This chapter explores fictional evocations o f family violence within East Indian households, with reference to the above-mentioned social framework. Harold Sonny Ladoos No Pain Like This Body is set in 1905, midway within the indentureship period (1845-1917). Ladoos husband/Pa, traumatized by the pain o f dispossession, cultural dislocation and stark poverty, causes the death o f his son and imposes on his wife the full force of his psychic laceration. He does so consistently, until her very mind slips. Mootoo sets Cereus Blooms at Night within the framework of the early Presbyterian mission among the indentees and shines the spotlight on the contribution of a civilizing order o f conversion to the construction o f the abusive male protagonist. Kanhai s “Rum Sweet Rum” is set decades later in the wake o f the womens movement and Indian acculturation to mainstream creole society. The juxtaposition o f these narratives provides insight into the inception and the ripening o f a culture o f family violence, as variously inscribed by a male writer and female writers over time. The analysis is inflected for gender o f the author, the period which is being represented and the ideological issues which are implicit in the respective representations. The reading is sensitive to contemporary discourses which undergird the historical reconstructions.

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VIO LENCE A N D THE TR A U M A OF DISLO C ATIO N Ladoos narrative is not reading for the faint-hearted. Indeed it has been termed the most horrific evocation of family violence to date. In the epigraph, Ladoo is careful to locate his painful domestic drama within the temporal, spatial and geopolitical contexts o f the global movement of bonded labour to fuel the capitalist machinery o f the Western world. The novel, published in 1972, is set in Carib Island, conceivably representing a generic Caribbean island. The terse historical overview in the six-line epigraph shadows the history o f Trinidad, briefly mentioning the British colonial takeover and East Indian indentureship. The map which follows and the actual nar­ rative go even further to portray the rural Indian community in stark isolation in a liminal space between the “Bound Coolie Estate” and the “Indian Estate”. The (dis)placement is thereby textually, graphically and metonymically associated with a labour-based proletarian diaspora and with transcultural negotiations within a poly­ ethnic society. These are former indentees who have served their term and have opted to remain to build a life in Trinidad. They scrape a poor living through rice farming and tending domestic animals. Ladoos narrative focuses on a family which represents a microcosm of a com­ munity in crisis. The central issue is an existential one. In this liminal space in the interstices o f cultures, the uprooted migrants face the requirement o f constructing modes of being, patterns of familial interaction and dynamics o f community which can empower and impart life and hope.5 A fearsome dimension of the existential nightmare is children who have been deprived o f childhood innocence and play. Their consciousness of the onslaught against them is so great that they plead to be allowed back into an innocuous world o f childhood, claiming: W I is a little chile. Little, little” (p. 19). The central incident is triggered from the opening scene of children at play, which is a bizarre, pint-sized re-enactment o f the only existence into which they have been socialized. Their play - capturing “crappo” fish in crocus bags - is brimming over with unfulfilled aspi­ rations, futile effort, anger, frustration, lack o f cooperation, bitter contention and profanity. The brunt of verbal and physical abuse is predictably directed by the older and stronger male child, Balraj, aged twelve, against the younger and weaker female, Sunaree, aged ten. Ostensibly to discipline Balraj for dragging Sunaree by the hair through the water, Pa inflicts heinous violence which leads to hospitalization of Balraj and Rama.

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And it is here that the issues of who I am, what is the essence o f the other, what are our rights and responsibilities in relation to each other, our families and our com­ munities, come into focus. The wily father, seeking to trap the child, promised he was not going to beat Balraj because “he was a child” (p. 18). This notion o f a child in need o f protection and nurture and a father embracing this responsibility is not only farcical within this social context, it is a deception proffered to trap the child so that the father can stamp on his chest and “bust his liver wid a kick” (p. 19). Significantly, the evil father, who is irrational and violent in the extreme, is functioning based on an underlying assumption of his right and responsibility to “discipline” his family. The dismal reality is that his ill treatment o f his family, with no objective rationale and minimal provocation, is responsible for Rama’s death and the wifes subsequent slippage into insanity. In cosmological terms, the text frames its bitter domestic battles within the parameters of cosmic disorder. One manifestation o f an inimical world is persistent rain, not in its beneficent form to bless the earth and cause it to produce, but in the form o f an engulfing deluge without end. The constant outpouring disrupts tadpoles, excites poisonous snakes and dislodges the scorpions from leaky roofs to malevolently attack sick, sleeping children. The operations o f the sky and watery foundations of the cosmos are life-threatening. This goes beyond mere pathetic fallacy; rather it rep­ resents how a traumatized sensibility perceives its world. The novel is tied together by a complex line of imagery which binds hostile and inimical cosmic aberrations to human estrangement and to near inexpressible violence. The correlation is estab­ lished from the opening lines of the narrative: “Pa came home. He didn’t talk to Ma. He came home just like a snake. Quiet. The rain was drizzling. Streaks of lightning like long green snakes wriggled against the black face o f the sky” (p. 13). The intense atmospheric immediacy is heightened by an onomatopoeic insistence which con­ nects the water to the atmospheric upheaval, to snakes, to the hissing Pa who is as malevolent as the reptile, and ultimately to a god who is “playing in his arse”. The correlation between the murderous violence o f the father and the murderous hostility o f the environment is sustained through the text: The sky was as black as Sunarees hair, and Pa was watching Balraj. Balraj was almost out o f the water. Pa leaned over the edge o f the riceland and tried to hold his hand. Balraj ran splash splash. Pa ran eastwards along the riceland bank; his feet went tats tats tats. There were many snakes in the riceland; they lived inside deep holes near the barahar tree. Balraj was trying to keep away from the holes, because he was aftaid o f the snakes

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. . . BaJraj was afraid. He knew Pa was going to beat him real bad. Crax crax cratax doom

doommm doomedr The thunder rolled. Balraj looked at the sky; it was blacker than a dream o f snakes and evil spirits, (p. 18)

The child is caught between the snakes of the riceland and the danger o f the rain emanating from a hostile sky god and the snake o f the father whose threat to beat is heralded by an onomatopoeic roll o f thunder. He is surrounded by a multiplicity o f threats to his person which he is powerless to avoid. The only reality which can conceivably be more fearsome is a nightmarish dream in which the consciousness cut adrift from reality can enter into horror which knows no boundaries. This is the reality which awaits Ma, who answers a life o f poverty, displacement, suffering and abuse with the hope for moorings, a place and context, if not for herself then for her children. Her hope is expressed in her oft-repeated mantra: “But by de grace of God dese same chirens goin to come man and woman in dis same Tola” (p. 41). This, Ma believes, is the power to overcome the murderous snake o f the father and the engulfing waters. In keeping with Parsad’s assertions, Ma performs wifely duties, carries the lions share of the domestic food production and yet refuses to leave her violent husband, despite the urging and support o f her parents. With Ramas death and loss o f faith in her progeny’s power o f transcendence, however, her mind cracks and collapses, and she cannot maintain her overcoming. Cosmic, paternal and family violence in this narrative combine to generate a “real world” which is teetering on the brink of nightmare and an illusory world which promises to be even more horrific than the real. The slippage o f Mas mind only foreshadows the fate of all other abused family members. The surviving children, Sunaree, Balraj and Rama’s eight-year-old twin Panday, in response to a world which is disruptive and brutal, each take recourse in an imagined evil which sums up their childlike attempts to confront their deepest fears. Each greets the brother’s death with a fabricated reality which multiplies the terror o f existence. For Panday, death trans­ mutes Rama into his most immediate and present danger - a water snake; Balraj, who suffered deep anxiety due to hospitalization, refuses to believe that Rama has been buried, embracing instead the conviction that he is in the hospital morgue being consumed by rats. Since the objective world is totally unsupportive of the human person and especially of the vulnerable psyches o f the children, each relapses into the subjective, bottomless horror o f private nightmare. And it is here that Ladoo’s narrative instructs greatly about the ontological dev­ astation wrought by domestic abuse. According to Scarry, every other physical and

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bodily event is tied to an object in the world. One may be hungry for food, or fearful o f the dark. But pain is not related to any reference point outside of the physical body and hence it generates a most pressing urge to “move out and away from the body” (1985, 162). Mas response when her mind slips is to flee out o f the restricted confines - the safe zone - o f the settlement under siege and to head out to the depth o f the forest - this is the physical and metaphysical realm o f Blakes forest o f the night (“The Tyger”), Achebes evil forest ( Things F all Apart), Naipauls savage bush (“In a Free State”) and Conrads darkest heartland (H eart o f Darkness). Driven insane by savagery and grief, it is to the unpeopled domain o f the snakes and the savage beasts that Ma yields her person, far beyond the boundary o f community and protection and love and social service. This is not an ameliorative act o f the imagi­ nation, which yokes the power o f the mind to recreate/alter grim adversity; rather, it is a devastatingly painful, insane, limited corporeal reality yielding to limitless, disembodied imaginings. Moreover, it is an embrace o f aloneness in response to abuse. The objective world can be perceived corporately; it can be shared, touched, handled, tasted, experienced together, and hence it provides a basis for communion and community. Pain and nightmare essentially cannot be shared, cannot be linked to external reference. They exist, so to speak, beyond power o f expression, beyond language. This is the realm into which the violence explored by Ladoo ushers his characters and this, in part, accounts for his extremely literal onomatopoeia, as if, so to speak, he touches a realm in which language loses its symbolic referentiality and is reduced to mere sound. A similar dynamic is set up in Mootoos Cereus Blooms at Night, which uses magical realism within lushly sensuous and overpowering Caribbean landscape to explore les­ bianism, betrayal, incest, rape and patricide. In this chapter, this dense and complex narrative, discussed at length elsewhere, will be mined for specific insights into the phenomena explored above - the making o f the abusive father, who in this narra­ tive extends his violent acts to the level of incest; and also the correlations between violence, intense pain and loss of the symbolic referentiality of language. The novel, set in the indentureship period but written against the framework of contemporary gender identity politics, delves deeply into the complex interplay o f identity and dislocation traumas, and how these relate to the father-daughter incest which is at the core o f the narrative. To the best of our knowledge, there is no systematic study on the occurrence o f incest within that period and in contemporary times. Incest is both a criminal

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act and a deeply held taboo; hence persons are unwilling to usher this particular skeleton out of the family closet. This notwithstanding, guidance counsellors and social workers proffer numerous stories o f father-daughter incest particularly within impoverished rural Indo-Caribbean communities. These practitioners identify a dif­ ferent dynamic within Afro-Caribbean households, where incest appears to occur most commonly within visiting unions when stepfathers, brothers and “uncles” target vulnerable young girls for sex within their homes. Senior explores the dynamic which encourages their mothers to take the sides o f husbands, lovers and providers instead o f extending protection to their daughters (“The Mother”).6 Moo too herself, grap­ pling with sexual abuse at the hands o f a male relative, testifies to her deep sense o f anger and impotence and her longing for her parents’ intervention: “I think I really wanted my parents to acknowledge that it had happened and to be supportive, but they weren’t able to be, for whatever reason. There was so much anger because o f other people’s denial” (Mootoo 1993, 4). The incest scenario o f Crreus Blooms at Night is related to, but goes beyond, the category o f ritualized patterns of family violence evoked in Ladoo’s and Kanhai’s narratives. In this convoluted shame and trauma narrative, incest is associated with, but is not fully explained by, the mother’s absence and the father’s alcoholism and determi­ nation to use his daughters as substitute sexual partners. Mootoo points to a funda­ mental determining factor which goes beyond the explanations for father-daughter incest offered by therapist Judith Herman. The incest taboo which holds sway over practically all human cultures is traditionally explained by recourse to three variables: “The incest taboo may be understood as a biological law which prevents inbreeding, as a psychological law which creates the family, as a social law which creates kinship, or as a the sum of all these” (2000, 56). Whatever the root o f the taboo, Herman argues it is male supremacy which accounts for the asymmetrical application o f the taboo to men and women: “Only under male supremacy do women become objects o f exchange. Only male supremacy determines that men have the right to give women for marriage or concubinage, while women have no comparable rights in men or in themselves” (2000, 56). At the root o f incest and sexually exploitative behaviour o f all sorts, she continues, is the pattern o f male socialization within patriarchal society. The male comes into adulthood by rejecting intimacy with his first love object, the mother, in favour of the promise o f confirming his manhood in sexual union with women who are younger and weaker than himself:

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The adult males diminished capacity for affectionate relating prevents him from empa­ thizing or identifying with his victims; without empathy, he lacks a major internal barrier to abusive action. At the same time, because other types o f relationships are restricted, the need for a sexual relationship with a compliant and submissive female is exacerbated. Hence it is that adult men seek out sexual relationships not only with adult women who are younger and weaker than themselves, but also with girl children. (Herman 2000, 56)

Indeed patriarchal assumptions figure strongly in Chandins long-standing abuse o f his daughters. Asha eventually escapes but not Mala, whom he names by a common Caribbean nickname for babies, “My Pohpoti' (our emphasis). Chandin can rape his daughters because he owns them. No one will interfere with his right o f possession. H e can infantalize a dependent female who is on the brink o f adulthood because the womans subordinate position in society is akin to that o f the child. Yet the very community which turns a mildly disapproving gaze at the long-standing incestuous relationship is transformed into a bloodthirsty mob when the crazed victim is sus­ pected o f murdering her father. The missing explanatory factor which is unique to the Caribbean sociocultural scenario is the correlation between his shameful behaviour and his own shame. The child o f indentees, plucked from his family and adopted by the Presbyterian mis­ sionaries, Chandin Ramchandin has internalized the colonizing gaze and thereafter sees himself with deep-rooted shame and self-contempt, which makes him long to become one with whiteness through union with his half-sister, Lavinia Thoroughly. Shame is inextricably woven into Chandins inner makeup. According to therapist Leon Wurmser (1994, 49-51), “Shame is a specific form o f anxiety evoked by the imminent danger o f unexpected exposure, humiliation and rejection.” It is related to “embarrassment, inferiority feelings and low self-esteem, a sense o f degradation, and narcissistic mortification”. Exposure and humiliation come to Chandin by virtue o f his inescapable blackness, which, in the Manichaean economy, is a mere outer projection o f inner depravity. He seeks to address this humiliation through union with the beloved white woman - her whiteness would confer itself upon him by proximity and possession, and thereby confirm his desirability. When rejected, he masks his shame by marrying his dark-skinned Indian counterpart, the female convert Sarah. His humiliation is compounded by Lavinias usurpation o f his posi­ tion when she runs off with his wife, who is also his mask. Stripped to the core and fallen from what has been placed before him and his people as the loftiest role in

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European civilizing order, Chandin loses hold o f the incest taboo and sinks to the lowest level o f depravity. Mootoo, herself a victim of incest, successfully negotiates the tortuous path of creating a sympathetic portrayal o f a perpetrator o f incest. She does this in a manner which encourages the reader to empathize with the woundedness which generates this albeit shameful action. Yet she clearly demonstrates the devastating nature of his action. She accomplishes this by portraying him as the victim of intense and sustained epistemic violation. The Presbyterian ideology persuades him o f his inherent defile­ ment, parades the light before him but denies him full access by virtue o f the colour of his skin; hence it darkens his soul beyond redemption. Mootoos more sensitive and nuanced portrayal o f the traumatized indentee nevertheless shadows Ladoos Pa. Together they inhabit the space beyond community, beyond hope, beyond redemp­ tion. Significantly, in terms of cross-gendered representation, Ladoos Pa is beyond sympathy, while Mootoos Chandin is not.7 Mala remains trapped in the incestuous relationship because o f a genuine under­ standing of her fathers traumatized psyche and from the mistaken notion that she can bear responsibility for the emotional well-being o f adults within her family. It is testimony to her strength and resilience o f character that she sustains a reasonably coherent personality under the onslaught of consistent abuse. Mootoo is careful not to portray her exclusively as victimized. When Ambrose Mohanty comes courting, even Mala perceives their union as betrayal o f her father which warrants his response - repeated and violent rape - which in turn triggers her murderous reprisal. Shame and belittlement generated by years o f incestuous penetration com­ bined with the guilt o f patricide unhinges Malas mind. Like the abused woman o f No Pain Like This Body; Ma, who strikes out for the forest, Mala retreats into a lush overgrown fallen paradise, forsaking community and communication. She connects instead with the earth and animals, communicating in imitation birdcalls, grunts and bellowings. This location marks her rejection o f an abusive social order. To halt growing dissociation between her body and soul and to confirm her sense of being in the world, she consumes hot peppers. Malas retreat into voicelessness is a response to pain so intense that it bears what Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, after Scarry, terms “no referential content in the external world”: Its non-referentiality prevents and inhibits the transformation of the felt experience of pain leaving it to reside in the body, where the sufferer reverts back to a pre-linguistic state of incomprehensible wailing, inaudible whisper, inarticulate screeching, primal

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whispering which destroys language and all that is associated with language: subjec­ tivity, civilization, culture, meaning and understanding. (Sa’ez 1992, 130, quoted in Bakare-Yusuf 1999)

Ultimately, this silencing, initiated through the penile gagging when her father ejaculates into her mouth during the rape, is entrenched when Ambrose deserts his lover-turned-murderous-fiend. Because the power o f language cannot be appropriated by Mala, her rescuer Tyler is also faced with the task of rescuing her from silence, that is, expressing the subjectivity o f the person who has become separated from language through suffer­ ing. Finding Mala requires attention to a range o f narratives, signifiers and signs. Com passion, empathy and patience are required to unravel a sublinguistic signify­ ing chain o f associations, gestures, chirps, grunts, sights, bellows, eye movements, actions and, later, when language slowly returns, snatches o f games, songs and, finally, occasional words. The few articulated signifiers apply to a range o f mean­ ings, the primary example being Pohpoh - Pohpoh the cat, which Mala fondles and pets; Pohpoh, Mala’s home name; my Pohpoh, the fathers pet name for his substitute wife; Pohpoh, the name which Mala therefore hates and tries to dis­ tance herself from; Pohpoh, the girl-self whom Mala loves, befriends and rescues; Poh pohppoh pohpoh, the illusory, transcendent, symbolic bird at the end o f the narrative, who is free at last. Finally, No Pain Like This Body and Cereus Blooms at Night are Ladoo s and Mootoo s contributions to the propensity of Caribbean writers in secondary diasporas to “unhomely” metropolitan cultures to write home. Drawing on Carole Boyce Daviess definition of “writing home”,8 it has been argued elswhere that Caribbean writers, the majority o f whom have come into creativity within metropoli­ tan landscapes, have long been obsessed with “writing home” and in so doing, have addressed the politics o f identity formation within the natal space___ These narratives, the majority o f which are rooted in childhood, are constructed from a distance, the most obvious agents o f displacement being time and memory. Add to this the bitter sweet pain o f exile - geographical displacement, cultural estrangement, and hostile host cultures - and the result is evocations o f childhood spent in the West Indies, which mingle issues o f identity formation with grief o f exile and with nostalgic associations o f paradise lost, innocence defiled, or environmental harmonies disrupted.9

Ladoos nostalgic evocation o f home lacks that bittersweet imaginary plenitude; it constitutes instead a living hell. His environmental réinscriptions speak of a cosmos

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erupting at its watery foundations and threatening the very possibility o f human sur­ vival. There is no imagined homeland o f integration, cohesion, faith. Violence in this text is related to displacement, deterritorialization and decontextualization. All of the characters suffer loss of place and context. A stranger in an alien land, Pa is subject to disconnection trauma and ends finally estranged from self, from family, from God. He represents total lack of hope for reconnection, re-establishment or rooting in place. Moreover, he is estranged from community, which is itself a travesty o f com­ munity. In the rawest sense o f the word, he is disconnected and therefore he is evil and demonic. Significantly, it is the woman who initially seeks mooring in the alien land, and this because of her connection to her children. Since she has bled blood to bring them to earth, it is within this earth, even a portion that is as inimical as Tola, that they must take root, flourish and mature. The maternal grandparents, Nanny and Nanna, are the most rooted, but this is within a transcendent reality. Decent and nurturing, they retain faith in benevolent ancestral gods and in the power and artistry o f the drum to soothe savagery, to alleviate suffering and to create sweetness in the midst o f grim adversity, even, perchance, to call their insane daughter home. The sound o f the drum resonates the sound o f the natural forces and affirms a deeprooted underlying order, harmony and purpose in all things, despite tumultuous surface manifestations. Ladoos settlement never reconstructs itself as a functional cthnucommunity. Instead it remains adrift in a liminal space. For Mootoo, while sustenance o f the wounded human spirit is vested in the healing connections to the earth and its creatures, healing is to be found in recon­ nection with community, language and representation. The victim o f abuse needs above all to reconnect with affirmation o f value and self-worth. The insistence on the therapeutic value o f telling the story o f abuse and re-evaluating the significance of the victim o f abuse within the sociosymbolic system crops up repeatedly in our text and finds its fullest explication in the penultimate chapter of Writing Rage.

BATTERED W O M E N W H O KILL Nevamdovsky, writing on the 150 years of the Indian experience in Trinidad, suggests three rough divisions - the indenture period of 1845-1917 (which is the framework o f Ladoos and Mootoos narratives); the interwar period 1918-1940; and the postwar period, 1945 to the present (which is the framework o f Kanhais narrative). During this postwar framework, the relative isolation of Indians to “tinker with the fragments

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o f their homeland culture” came to an end (Nevadomsky 1996, 377). Conditions during the indentureship period were “not conducive to the perpetuation of Indian culture”. This included the undermining of traditional domestic authority, ‘ a severe sex imbalance which freed the few available Indian women from traditional constraints o f subordination and seclusion . . . . Polyandry, intercaste marriage and common-law union were fairly common” (p. 376). The interwar period saw the reconstitution o f some features o f the ancient heritage. Predictably, the family became the batdeground and the focal point of collusion between patriarchal colonial ideology and patriarchal traditional Indian ideology to reinscribe male dominance and female subordination. From 1945 onwards, acculturation became inevitable. The outcome, though, drew heavily from the ancestral culture and most recently from global technologically oriented representations of what Appadurai terms a reconstructed primordialism which is yoked into the service of contemporary ideological objectives. A pivotal dimension o f this was the redefinition o f the substantial work and economic contribution o f Indian women as housework as opposed to wageearning labour. Ontological and physical violence was a major tool in this regard. The Indian women had to be coerced into seeing themselves as subordinate and deserving o f a violence-ridden existence. Moreover, according to Mohammed (1999), in the reconstituted migrant culture on Trinidad soil, Hindu women and men were expected to live up to “the classist Brahminical tradition to recreate ideal Indian femininity and masculinity, gender and family relations which distin­ guished the Indian community from others in Trinidad” (pp. 64—65). The lived reality saw a strong social script which valorized adherence to duty, obedience, self-sacrifice and forgiveness for women and sharp divergence away from ideals o f loyalty to wife and family for men, along with a tacit acceptance o f violent behaviour from men. The ritualized nature o f the violence was contingent on the negative self-image o f the female. H aniff argues: “It was a classic combination of female biology and male ideology and violence that defined womens roles and kept them in it” (Haniff 1999, 22). Ladoo’s fiction evokes a separate Indian social domain that for the most part is not penetrated by other worlds. His fictional universe focuses on what M otwani and Motwani (1989) term a “separate cultural system within the national community”* And the family was the most significant determinant o f the East Indians cultural system. Socialization, which they define as “a social process that imposes on the individual certain limits o f acceptable behavior”, is institutionally

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supported and reinforced” (p. 67). In this confined world, traditionally, women are considered inferior and subservient to men (Gosine 1989, 68)* In Kanhai’s “Rum Sweet Rum”, which picks up the theme o f domestic vio­ lence several decades later, the separate cultural system is no longer watertight. The close-knit isolated Indian social structure has loosened and for some has yielded to the intrusion o f education and wage-earning professional-level employment for women. Moreover, traditional religious mores and rituals have lost ground and transnational ideologies in relation to womens liberation have begun to impinge, albeit very slowly and very indirectly, on the daily lives even o f unsophisticated, rural, uneducated Indian women. The narrative, though simple on the surface, is an astute exploration of power rela­ tions across gender and class boundaries. Pivotal to its unfolding is the gap between the educated young professional narrator, who defies her father and elopes, and her older, uneducated domestic helper, who is immersed in an arranged marriage and unalleviated abuse. The setting is in the university community of St Augustine, Trinidad, with its surrounding network of rural Indian settlements. The bird’s-eye view o f the domestic violence is given by the educated Indian female narrator, who peers closely into the situation of Dolly. The narrator speaks from her middle-class, educated, suburban perspective and world view which spatially and temporally exist a mere stones throw away from Dollys impoverished rural existence. Representing the interplay of markers of difference in changing cultural scenarios, Dolly marks class differences between herself and her young employer by designating her Bhowjee - a term the narrator ascribed to ‘ old fashioned” Indian ladies who had an arranged marriage and who stayed “at home to take care of the children and do housework” (p. 3). Ritualized violence against women has ripened since indentureship. In Kanhais narrative, the violence has shifted from an unwholesome mode of conflict resolution to violence as ontological assertion in which the male position seems to be: I beat because I am. The illustrious beating career o f Fingers, Dollys husband, is a case in point. Initially the beating is triggered because she does not heat water fast enough for his bath. When it develops it becomes: “Whenever he drink, he beat me. If he come home and he don’t find me, he get in a rage and he wait till I reach and he beat me . . . . If he don’t like what I cook he throw it way and he beat me” (p. 19). The beatings all point to flouted expectations in relation to the female role within the home. The assumption is that the wife’s priority should be to attend to her husbands physical needs and comforts - to realistically and metaphorically provide warm water

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for his bath, swiftly upon demand; she is also expected to be a punching bag for his anger and frustrations, especially after his inhibitions are lifted through alcohol con­ sumption; moreover, since her primary responsibility is to be at home to serve him, even if she is absent from the home to make a living, she is beaten. Contrary to the prevailing notion that women tolerate abuse because they are dependent on the male support, numerous “relative” advantages fail to alleviate Dolly’s lot. She owns her humble property - land given to her by her father and a small house erected with the help o f her brothers. Over the years, she assumes the position of primary breadwinner by an expert mix of begging and wheedling, working and petty thievery. Dolly’s enviable position on a power matrix as worker, homeowner and food provider does not alleviate regular beatings, any more than severe repetitive beatings distract Ma (No Pain Like This Body) from honouring her husband by serving his meals first. The protagonist is trapped in a lifelong relationship which no agency can or will regulate. The family network tacitly sanctions violence and sends her back, declaring: “is your husband, is your luck” (p. 8). The police see the beatings as “ husband-and-wife-business” (p. 8) - the hyphenated inscription demonstrating the inevitable connection between marital intimacy and marital violence. And there is no alleviation in sight for a new generation o f women. Dolly, looking forward to another baby, was hoping it was a boy because girls “have to get married and see trouble with their husbands” (p. 16). The novel demonstrates an ambivalent sisterhood across class lines. In this fictional evocation, Kanhai, wielding her pen with activist intent, identifies beneath the stereotypically silent submission o f an impoverished, uneducated, abused Indian woman flares o f resistance and a capacity to exert agency in the interest o f selfdefence. Dolly becomes a reluctant murderer. She is paradigmatic o f the woman who, despite a lifetime of abuse, values herself sufficiently to conceive and implement a simple but effective strategy - kill him before he kills me: But I getting too old for licks now. All these years o f beating making me weak. One o f these days, I will kill that man. I will have to kill him before he kill me. I study­ ing my head good. It wouldn’t be always the same, you know. The longest rope have an end. (1999, 9)

Suffering transmutes her into something o f a trickster figure - hard, wily, enterpris­ ing, with sharply honed survival instincts. Her historical legacy possesses her to the

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point that rum, which conceivably functions initially as an anaesthetic, becomes her sole fuel. Dolly apparently does not eat and - much to the nurses horror - blood no longer runs in her veins. Espinet s “Barred” offers a brief snapshot of a bartered woman who kills her husband in response to the threats o f the abusive husband to kill their baby. The implication is that what she would have endured for herself, she would not endure for her child. To repeat Dolly’s chilling words, “the longest rope have an end” (Kanhai 1999, 9). Kanhai powerfully invokes the mimetic and paradigmatic power o f literary rep­ resentation. To the extent that fiction reflects reality, the empowered middle-class Bhowjee/employer/little sister/nurse/accomplice voice takes the power of the pen to inscribe agency, pointing to the possibility that some women who appear to have simply endured abuse for generations may well have resisted to the point of murder for generations. And for sisters who are suffering, Dollys narrative offers an unwhole­ some, unfortunate, but perhaps the only possible paradigm for escape. The identification between the two women nevertheless remains cosdy, contradic­ tory and ambivalent, replete with parallels, convergences and divergences. There are as many snapshots o f intimacy and shared experiences as there are of distancings. The narrator is only one generation away from the violence which is represented as practi­ cally endemic to the life of impoverished, uneducated, rural Indian women. And she is guilty about her prosperity, education, painted nails and life o f relative ease. To take Dolly’s issues to heart the narrator must reject female-female loyalty based on class and family relations. She rejects her mother-in-law’s advice. And her husband occu­ pies a shadowy presence on the margins of the narrative, displacing the traditional centrality of the marital bond.

C O N C L U SIO N The narratives explored in this chapter evoke the Indo-Caribbean woman as sur­ vivor as opposed to victim. A major objective has been to unveil agency and to debunk passivity. The imperative to rewrite the stereotype of passivity and impo­ tence which has clung to the Indian woman has been articulated by numerous other women writing from an insider’s perspective (Haniff 1998). Rajack-Talley closes her exploration o f Indian women in the sugar cane industry in Trinidad with the challenge “ How then can we change the perceptions o f the ‘docile Indian woman’? Is it not time to? I believe . . . . we should bury the myth and pay homage where it

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is due” (1999, 192). These fictional evocations recall issues which have been raised repeatedly. As Espinet asks, “Is Indian identity in the diaspora somehow premised on violence against women?” (quoted in Razack 1999, 169). And Razack echoes: For women does the price of community mean “acquiescing to violence . . . if I ques­ tion it, do I risk being ungendered and without community?” (1999, 169). Ladoos sympathetic rendering of his female character speaks reams in terms of positive crossgender representation. But his female character, as surely was the case for the over­ whelming majority of her time and generation, remains a disempowered victim. It falls to women o f a different generation to point a way for rural, uneducated Indian women to press through a long, dark night of ritualized abuse and devaluation and into the clear light o f their day. Indeed the women writers, selectively drawing on the insights and perspectives o f the global womens movement, speak a different word in unison which rejects any ethnic definition which threatens the personhood, equal­ ity, power, dignity and agency of the women o f their ethno-community. There are obvious correlations between the fictional representation of the battered wife and the real-life scenario o f Indravani Ramjattan, whose case was explored in chapters 1 and 2. More widespread recognition o f battered wife syndrome has gradually generated a measure o f understanding of her plight, but an element o f entrenched resistance still remains to be overcome.

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CHAPTER 7

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Cross-Gendered Representations of Criminal Violence

What frightened me then was, had the gunman come inside, would I have had the courage to speak to him? What did we share in the way o f values that would allow me to call him to account for this terrible deed? And it frightens me now that faced with such a situation I might be silent before the evil that is visiting . . . . And yet I hesitate before I grant it so much power. For I am fearful that if I accept its power as supreme, I then accept that this evil is entitled to silence me. -

Earl Lovelace,

“Notes After a Shooting”

IN T R O D U C T IO N Every criminal is shaped to a greater or lesser extent within a family and functions within a complex range of social relationships. Indeed, a common discrepancy in

terms o f daily newspaper reporting o f criminal activity emerges between the descrip­ tion o f the brutal acts o f invariably male criminals and their mothers or primary female caregivers appraisals o f their characters. Inevitably, they speak o f the young perpetrators goodness, care, consideration and potential, as well as the bad company he happened to fall into. This reading mines the selected literary representations for insights into the factors which account for the making o f the criminal as a young man. It examines the roots o f subcultural, counterhegemonic paradigms o f violent masculinity. It questions the extent to which traumas generated by long-term intergenerational structural inequities, with the attendant poverty, hunger, homelessness and squalor, impact the identity formation of young deviants - Why do some who are so traumatized opt for a deviant lifestyle and others become law-abiding and pro­ ductive citizens? How is the situation worsened by the disconnectedness from parents generated by migration? Is the age-old coping strategy of leaving young children to be raised by grandmothers proving to be effective? The reading also focuses on the representation o f the deviant male by female writers. It explores how women writers are understanding and constructing criminal violence. An earlier exploration o f the interface of women writers with cultural para­ digms o f Caribbean masculinity posed the question: “Now that post-colonial women writers have, by dint o f struggle, acquired the didactic and hegemonic mantle o f the story teller, what manner o f man is being generated within the literary womb o f the woman?” (Morgan 2004, 290).1This enquiry extends that exploration to portrayals o f male violence, filtered through lenses o f gender and ethnicity. Any attempt to understand and/or to alleviate violence must take regard o f interlocking concepts of gender and power. Moreover, it must also grapple with the complexity of construct­ ing gendered identities within a Caribbean framework. As Barrow explains, Barbadian men and those in the wider Caribbean internalize and demonstrate their masculinities within a gender system which has its origins in more than one cultural heritage (European, African, Indian, etc.) and has developed into a complex mosaic o f gender ideologies and values. The patriarchy o f slavery, colonialism and the post­ colonial state dictates the behaviour and symbols o f “proper” masculinity, but is chal­ lenged by subcultural, subordinate male constructs. The result is not an unchanging, uniform masculinity to which all conform but one o f variety, ambiguity, contradiction and change. (1998a, 48-49)

Having isolated rape and domestic violence as a distinct category deserving detailed attention within this broader study of the language and literature o f violence,

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we discovered that the propensity has been for Anglophone Afro-Caribbean women writers to focus on intragroup violence, violence against women, family violence or both (for example, Belgrave’s Ti M arie, Brands “San Souci”, Brodbers Myal and Carrington’s A Thirst fo r R ain )} Conversely, the literary imaginary o f white and coloured writers, and particularly those o f Jamaica, appears to be haunted by a different spectre. These writers have tended to focus on portrayals o f criminal acts o f violence perpetrated predominantly by Afro-Caribbean males (Rhys, “Our Gardener”; Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven; Lalla, Arch o f Fire; Senior, “The Dispatcher”). The coloured Jamaican Senior, who, like Cliff, claims a “black” iden­ tity, creates, in contrast, a fascinating portrayal o f the homecoming o f a young professional criminal (“Country o f the One Eye G od”).

CRIM IN AL VIOLENCE A N D CLASS A N D ETHNIC RELATIONS Jean Rhys’s “Our Gardener” (the last creative work published in her lifetime) is a grim poem in which a child witnesses the brutal murder o f her parent by the gardener. It begins: I thought Ken was a nice man Ken was a pal His other name’s Taylor My names Sal

And the poem culminates: People came running Ken didn’t look round He laughed as he was striking Mum on the ground Went on laughing And this is what he said “White flesh, white flesh” Talking to my Mother, dead. (1986, 146-47)

The horror o f the scene and the complex web o f racialized interactions on which it is built are masked by the childlike perspective and the simplicity o f the ballad quatrain. The writer also exploits the traditional ballad’s convention o f nonjudgemental understatement. Subtle markers o f race and colour relations ab o u n d . True

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to convention for master-servant relations, the child calls the adult gardener by his first name. Moreover they are discursively linked by the abcb end rhyme: “I thought Ken was a pal / . . . my names Sal.” Complicit with the infantalization o f slaves/servants as happy children, Sal sees high entertainment value in her pal Ken, so much so that, when he advances, cutlass in hand, she thinks: “it new game / Isn’t he grand” (p. 146). The potential motivation for the crime is alluded to in Kens only words, which thud in heavy iambic rhythm, to echo the lethal chops: “White flesh, white flesh” (p. 147). Rhys (1894-1979), the offspring o f a white creole mother and a Welsh doctor, was familiar with incipient violence within the black/white colonial and postcolonial encounter and with the folly o f the “happy nigger” stereotype which was crucial to the colonizers rationalization o f enslavement. The danger­ ously naïve infants perspective in “Our Gardener” parallels that o f Mr Mason in W ide Sargasso Sea (1966), who underestimates the ex-slaves’ potential for violence in the post-emancipation scenario, even while they are planning the conflagration o f the Great House. The physical and social landscape o f enforced submission to enslavement and servitude has long been (mis)represented in the narratorization o f conquest as the idyllic paradisaical garden, which contextualizes the hierarchy o f white masculinity and racialized dominance within the Western imaginary (see Pratt, Im perial Eyes\ Walcott, Pantomime; Senior, Gardening in the Tropics)} It is in the tropical garden that the white male demonstrates his inherent superiority as the natural basis o f dominance, showcases the pure flower o f white womanhood and reduces the black to invisibility and servitude. But Rhys’s gardener, who represents the enslaved or the servant class divinely ordained for toil in the garden, emerges from the shadows. Even as the ascendant male armed with the camera seeks to metonymically capture his crowning glory, the white woman picking flowers in the midst of the garden, the true labourer Ken, who is represented as “pottering out o f sight” (our emphasis), moves from peripheral invisibility to centre stage to execute the heinous act. The criminal act extends beyond challenging the ascendancy of white flesh over black. Greater venom is reserved for the woman, who has been rarifled as the symbolic repository o f ethnic superiority, desirability, visibility and inviolability. The poem speaks fundamentally o f loss which goes beyond grief over the mothers death; it extends to loss of the landowning class’s illusory garden, loss o f the reductive, unidimensional identity construct, and loss of ownership of our gardener (our emphasis).

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The poem demonstrates that the epistemic violence inherent in master class/ race and servant class/race relations has the potential to generate retaliatory acts o f violence. Indeed, the Wide Sargasso Sea scenario implies that it is sheer power, not fabricated bonds o f love and loyalty or puerile constructs o f happy, child­ like Negroes, which keeps such violent eruptions at bay. Where there is a weak­ ening o f the power base, the oppressed underclass is likely to erupt, albeit in self-destructive, criminal or even insane acts o f revenge. The underlying warped complex o f class and ethnic relations in the Caribbean manifests itself in the present in repeated incidents o f violence, crimes committed by impoverished employees against prosperous upper- and middle-class employers o f all ethnici­ ties. Even today, the focal point o f white/coloured upper-/middle-class animosity and distrust is likely to be the male rather than the female servant. Most chill­ ing o f all is that latent violence seems more prone to erupt where there is some measure o f social interaction, cordiality and even acts o f kindness exchanged between potential criminal and potential victim. This formula is repeated with only minor variations in No Telephone to Heaven. Cliff sketches a grim portrait o f post-independent Jamaican society with its dismal economic prospects, sharply stratified classes, extremes o f wealth and poverty, and insensitive, intolerant and invariably light-skinned upper middle class. This scenario is aggravated by a decadent, wasteful frivolity within the upper echelons and a mindless and incredibly brutal violence within the lower strata. Cliff writes o f Jamaican society in crisis well on its way to becoming what Harriott defines as “crimogenic”, that is, a society in which criminality is “embedded”, “internalized moral inhibitions against criminal acts are increasingly neutralized” and there is “pervasive criminality and disregard for law across all social classes” (2001, 512-27). Acts o f violence against the person are portrayed here as a subset of a pervasive culture o f social injustice, poverty, inequity and hopelessness. Gunst, in Born f i ’ D ead (1995), chronicles the politically motivated instigation and patronage o f gang warfare, as a consequence o f which young male “sufferers” o f the urban slums are socialized into a violent alternative masculinity, exploited by politicians for gang warfare, and then turned over to the police for persecution (as opposed to prosecution) and sometimes blatant assassination when they have outlived their usefulness. In her construct o f the violent subculture o f Jamaica, Gunst emphasizes the correlation between institutional and state violence and the making of the criminal:

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For almost fifty years the people of downtown Kingston have lived with intensifying violence - institutionalized warfare with the police, political banditry, and the quieter brutality of being bulldozed or torched out of their tenements so that one politician or another could build a housing project for his supporters. This has been going on, in one wave after another, since Jamaica went into the first birth pangs of nationhood in 1938.(1995, 65) One consequence o f the growing maelstrom o f violence and social unrest in the 1970s was mass migration o f white and coloured Jamaicans to North America. Cliff zeroes in on a single representative of the countless violent crimes against the wealthy coloured middle class during this period. She plays the tensions of the scene with sensitivity and strategy. She positions the account o f the brutal murder of the wealthy family after the chronicle of the decadent, wasteful lives led by the children o f the rich. She sketches the scene twice. First she shows this as it unfolds to the pam­ pered, self-indulgent son, who returns from all-night carousing to find his family slaughtered. Paul initially recounts the defences which secure the wealthy within their domestic fortresses, only to find they have been breached. The implied reader sympathetically shares Pauls horror at his discovery o f his family’s brutal killing, but the character immediately attracts censure when he treats the maid s death as an inconvenience because of her invisibility - she possesses no last name, no address, no family to his knowing - hence her remains are an inconvenient liability. Significantly, we can place in Pauls mouth words that echo the naïve infant o f Rhys s narrative: “I thought Chris was a nice man / I thought he was a pal.” Blissfully blind to the trauma and hostile intent of his childhood playmate turned yard-boy, Paul neatly facilitates his own death. Adding to the polyvocality of the novel and expressing the voice of the criminal, Cliff retells the distasteful scene a second time, just as convincingly, through the crazed eyes o f Christopher, but not before sketching in his harsh, oppressive, loveless background and revealing the skewed reasoning which leads to the murders. Indeed, in relation to the very acts which Paul labels as bestial, Cliff in the second recounting of the scene supplies a skewed, insane, highly subjective reason, but nevertheless a reason, for the making of the beast. Christopher could well be a descendent of Rhys’s Ken Taylor, who emerges when the social crisis has ripened to create the dungle - an urban slum constructed on a garbage heap. The factors which feed into his making are absentee parenting - an invisible father; a mother who deserts him and becomes a prostitute with a truncated

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lifespan; an aging, poverty-stricken grandmother whose best efforts are inadequate; hunger, poverty, homelessness; lack of human love and connection and eventually despair. The seething rage comes to the surface in relation to a lack of rootedness and an unaccommodation so deep that he is unable to perceive it in relation to himself. The drunken, irrational houseboy invades the masters bedroom at night seeking a burial plot for his grandmother, who has been dead for some thirteen years. He is per­ suaded her duppy cannot rest because she was given a pauper s burial. The pursuit o f a resting place in the land is related to ancient burial rituals and ancestor veneration, which in African cosmology is pivotal to the individual and communal well-being. Christopher is seeking to recuperate his lost ancestress, lost heritage, lost geneal­ ogy and lost psychic positioning. Again demonstrating the propensity to inflict the greatest damage where there has been kindness, he reserves the worst o f his already extreme brutality for the maid who has befriended him, because o f what he reads as a black womans loyalty which bridges class and colour barriers to connect with her employers, as opposed to connecting to him. Note that Cliff evokes markers o f com­ monality. Master and servant are united by a common national language, Jamaican Creole. By his murderous act, he releases the spirits o f the family members to join his grandmother as wandering duppies. The criminal violence explored above exemplifies master-servant relations exac­ erbated by race, class and colour barriers, in which submerged aggression and anger at inherent injustices spill out in violence and murder. The rest o f the chapter shifts focus to criminal violence with an emphasis on the upbringing and social relations o f the professional criminal. Whereas Rhys and Cliff portray violent acts as an overflow of deeply rooted rage and/or insanity, it is to Senior and Lalla that we must turn for sketches o f the professional criminal.4

THE CRAFTING OF PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS Harriott, describing changing trends in Jamaican society, explains: “The general direction o f violent criminality has been towards greater rationality and its instru­ mentality as a means to commonly valued ends (wealth, power, status, respect). Since the mid-1980s, murder has been largely associated with income generating activity in the underground economy” (2001, 519). In recognition o f the professional, who has now become integral to the Jamaican social landscape, Senior introduces “The Dispatcher” (1989b), Jack Spratt:

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People who say overpopulation is the greatest curse o f the nations should give a medal to Jack Spratt for what we over-produce Jack Spratt will reduce with efficiency and dispatch

Naming is instructive. The lovable nursery rhyme character validates the right to choose opposing alternatives.5 Seniors sinister Jack Spratt exemplifies an alternative, anti-heroic view o f manhood. His is the culturally enshrined, fairy tale transforma­ tion o f the pauper into the prince. He is the poor, ignorant country boy who starts with no resources, comes to town and makes good. He affirms the assumption that hard work, efficiency and diligence create success. In a society in which the pursuit of power is an extremely desirable heroic objective, he becomes a repository of personal power and representative of institutional power - public servant, contractor, poten­ tial medal earner. He is set on a clearly demarcated and well-travelled fast track and shows every indication o f arriving at the upper echelons o f the criminal world with his characteristic dispatch. Moreover, as the central authority figure, the supreme signifier o f his world, he has apparently attained an ultimate quest objective - the power over life and death. As Miller argues, “Men marginalized from the material means o f sustaining masculinity, wantonly and callously exercise the life taking powers as a means o f reclaiming their masculinity” (1991, 31): . . . Jack Spratt have the might and the right to decide who sleeping in tonight and who outside in Hope River bottom or in cold Sandy Gully. (Senior 1989b, 107)

The musicality generated by the internal rhyme “might” and “right” and the initial repetition of “in”, ironically affirm the sense o f the appropriateness o f the order created by Jack Spratt and his machinations. The strength of the poem is the extent to which Senior introduces the ironic sense o f normalcy into the deviant criminal world. The exploits o f Jack Spratt are related with a flat, ironic detachment as if it were a communally recognized and accepted success story. The poem zeroes in on the professionalism which is increasingly characterizing

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the criminal scene in Jamaica, and its impact on the young males who are its primary practitioners. How does killing become natural and even commendable? The dispas­ sionate tone o f the poem parallels the dispassionate mask which the young perpetrators learn to wear until violence becomes their second nature. In Bom f i ’ Deati, a young posse member turned star witness explains from a New York prison: To an outsider, it might look like, “ Damn these guys are mean!” But being from Jam aica, you see it growing up, you see it all your life. Even before I killed som e­ body, I felt like I killed before. I think maybe Hollywood had a part in the rude boy thing, with the movies they put out, like certain Westerns. Jamaicans act out a lot o f that stuff, want to be tough like outlaws. Even Delroy [the gang leader]. Every time he would shoot somebody, we would say, “ Hey! You just got another notch in your gun.” When I shot at people, I felt like I did it before. It wasn't like I was trembling and asking, “ What is this I’m doing?” It was like I was into it all along. And I think th ats just from social settings, from growing up around all that violence, the way Jam aica was with the politics. T he way it was when I was a youth cornin' up. (Gunst 1 9 9 5 ,9 )

This testimony speaks reams. Young men habituated to violence in the sociocultural environments from youth are further inured by televised images which add style and glamour to the ugly and gory. Violence-ridden international mediascapes provide scripts of imagined lives that seem more real than lived experience. And the blurring o f the borders between the real and the imagined facilitates transitions from imag­ ined to actualized violence. Peer pressure and group affirmation contribute to the process. The values o f the subculture which valorize killing as a marker o f masculinity encourage young criminals to multiply murders and thereby add notches to their guns. Moreover, the political instigation and patronage that represent affirmation by the compromised hegemonic hierarchy further lower inhibitors and help to make murder normative. Note though the verbal evasion: Delroy [the gang leader] “shoots people” but “I shot

people” (our emphasis).

There is a minute step from this scenario to the process o f normalizing and ascribing social usefulness to criminality. Crime becomes embedded with other networks o f social relations: But in these communities, violence even when manipulated in offensive mode may be considered legitimate. The “morally legitimating principle is communally bounded utilitarianism, the moral boundaries o f which co-terminate with the social

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community boundaries o f the moral subject. To exist beyond this communally established boundary is to fall beyond the pale of morally accountable action. To exist beyond this boundary as an enemy (political, social) is to qualify as a legiti­ mate target.” (Harriott 2001, 521) Seniors tongue-in-cheek allusion to the social effectiveness o f the professional crimi­ nal points to the potential for the subculture to come to see in murder and mayhem means to socially productive ends. Moreover, the poem stands as an indictment against tension between valorized cultural norms for manhood which automatically deny access to subgroups. These subgroups in turn create alternative, more accessible markers. Finally, it also passes judgement on the extremely materialistic measure of hegemonic manhood based on the size of ones member, ones car and bank balance, the number and attributes o f ones women, and the extent o f personal and institu­ tional power one is able to wield. A major thematic focus o f Seniors short narrative “Country o f the One Eye God” (1989a) is the contribution o f home and upbringing to the making o f the criminal. The domestic setting is the proud rural community with its values o f hard work, decency and stringent morality. Here Jack Spratt, reduced to the diminutive Jacko, has fallen into adverse circumstances and returns to his Grannie, seeking money to escape from the police. As far as Jacko is concerned, his outcome is natural and logical, given his upbringing. It is written o f Jack Spratt (p. 106): his grannie did beat him with supple jack cant done boy so tough never cry Grannie say is bad seed The child is nurtured on a steady diet o f licks to beat out the bad blood and rejection based on the hope, deferred year after year, o f his parents, who have migrated to the promised foreign land, sending for him. The outcome is a man who recognizes no constraint of morality or religion, love or duty, decency or social order. His criminal actions o f robbing and conceivably killing his grandmother for the burial money, which she jealously guards on her person, are framed in his mind as reciprocity for the abuse which he received in the name of an upbringing. The effectiveness of dis­ pensing corporal punishment in the home, in the absence o f affirmations o f love and

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clear moral and ethical direction, comes into question. For Jacko, the constant beat­ ings merely manifested his outsider status. Yet Ma B’s beatings o f all her children to eliminate bad ways were proffered out o f concern and ignorance o f more humane child-raising strategies. True to life, Senior intentionally problematizes the situation - had child abuse been sufficient cause, Ma B would have raised a generation o f criminals, not only one. Hence, Ma searches further afield for a cause: “She h^d coldly cast her mind back to everything she knew about every single member o f the family to discern if there was some­ thing hidden in her tribe that betokened this ending and she could find nothing that warranted such a hard and final cruelty.” Moreover, she searches the range of circumstances successfully confronted by her forefathers and her descendent: “deaths, starvation, hurricane, earthquake, cholera, typhoid, malaria, tuberculo­ sis, fire, diphtheria and travel to dangerous and distant places in search of work” (1989a, 16). Here too she draws a blank, for at no time in the past has this series of adversities produced a hardened criminal. If Ma B and Jacko sat down to dialogue, the criminal would have posited nurture —that is, excessive punishment, rejection, poverty and adverse circum­ stances. And the primary nurturer would have posited nature - “bad seed” and predestination; it is written that the youth raise up “the ways o f their destruction” (p. 19). Each o f these may be a contributing factor, but neither o f these is suf­ ficient enough to nullify the individuals power o f choice A focal point in the story and the poem is the formulation o f life’s objectives and particularly the personal and culturally shared correlations between represen­ tation and desire. For Jacko, and unfortunately for a substantial cross-section of our population, “foreign” represents the culmination o f wealth and well-being; it represents the home and comforts that he has never had, the parents for whom he has longed in vain. Even with his impressive credentials as a professional, “a thief, a murderer, a hired gunman, a rapist, a jailbird, a jailbreaker, and at nineteen a man with a price on his head”, he is poised to shed his grandmothers blood to facilitate his much longed for homecoming: “What? Yu plan to go to foreign?” “What else? Don’t I have mother, don’t I have father in foreign?” (p. 21). To what extent can we “trace” Jacko? This hardened criminal values his own life and retains the power to dream. He is portrayed as coldly, methodically fighting for life, which translates for him into the illusory dream space o f “foreign”. In the exchange, Jacko reverses the traditional social structure which privileges respect for the authority o f age and

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respect for the mother figure based on allegiance and gratefulness for her sacrificial acts on behalf o f kin. O f greater significance for this argument is the power confrontation between alternative, violent subcultural masculinities and a weakening matriarchy - both of which are responses to marginalization within the hegemonic system. We will not enter into the dialogue about the disempowerment o f the reluctant matri­ arch here except to mention that empowerment, for both figures, would best be understood by mapping their position on a matrix o f power markers instead of on an empowerment/disempowerment binary. Ma Bell is financially impoverished by any external standards, but she is rich in the currencies which have imparted transcendence to Afro-Caribbean families in simpler times: contentment, love, loyalty, self-sacrifice, faith, resourcefulness, patience, endurance, and the list goes on . . . . This endangered and dying matriarchal order invested hope and future in children and sought precious little o f this worlds goods, with hope o f gain oriented towards the next life. Her modest hoarded cash is intended to see her on her way. The final triumph over a life o f poverty and meanness is the resplendent coffin in which she aspires to lie in state to receive tribute to the wealth, beauty and order which she had never acquired previously. Conversely Jacko, representative of a new generation and o f an emerging counterhegemonic masculinity, defies and defiles the traditional values of respect for seniority, authority and the mother figure, all o f which are rooted in the ancestral tradition and heightened by gratitude for her sacrifices on behalf o f kin. He embraces a ruthless pragmatic materialism whose god is self-centredness and material gain. And from this stance he challenges the traditional female-centred power base. Despite his fear and anxiety as a wanted man running for his life, he retains the stance o f a masterful, threatening authority figure, holding the power o f life and death over his grand­ mother. She, who treats her excitable seventy-year-old nephew like a child because he had never acquired her calm, is constrained to bow to the evil life force in him: “In the pale light, Ma Bell wondered how such a little boy could suddenly grow so huge as to fill all the spaces in the room. She felt shrivelled and light, compressed into the interstices of space by his nearness” (p. 23). It is from this position that he presents his new order supported by his own logic and rationale - the issue of personal immoral­ ity is subverted for him by the essential injustice o f the world. The criminal is justified in his own eyes. His immoral vision supersedes that o f the Almighty, whom Jacko labels reductively as a one-eyed god who has aligned himself

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with the unjust social power structure: “Him no business with ragtail and bobtail like unno. God up a top a laugh keh keh keh at the likes o f you” (p. 24). Ironically, like his grandmother, he is a man o f faith. Since all power and meaning reside in the material world, he in turn vests his belief in an essentially unjust god o f the materially prosperous, which leaves him free to create his own alternative existential reality as sovereign over a new order in which man turns beast - a dog-eat-dog world in which he can affirm his ascendancy as top dog. The irony is that whereas the birth parents have rejected him, the state is hunting him; his posse has disappeared; the only place o f belonging which remains is in the unconditional love o f his grandmother. Despite her innate knowledge o f his rep­ robate nature, Ma B rejoices when Jacko, fleeing from the police, answers the call of blood and returns to her sheltering. He systematically desecrates the only home that he will ever have, a place in the heart and loyalty o f this mother woman. The weakened matriarchal order stands poised to be executed by the counterhegemonic violent emerging masculinity, and the region is yet to experience the ripening o f the outcome. Whereas Senior locates her criminal character within the underworld subcul­ ture and the family, Lallas canvas includes the entire broad sweep o f Jamaican society and its people past and present. Arch o f Fire is an ambitious and complex historical novel whose plot draws members o f each ethnic group and historical experience into a vast interlocking network. Lallas text does much. It valorizes family and tradition. It celebrates Jamaican landscape, customs and language. It grapples with its utter social breakdown and the gross gratuitous violence which swamped this nation and, for many o f the privileged, destroyed even the possibility o f life as they knew it. It is pierced through with nostalgia for a fine, cultured, prosperous and decent lifestyle. It explores the possibility for the reconstructed plantation as a physical and psychic space for the displaced in the urban society. Much o f the evil in the novel crystallizes around Lallas clear-eyed gangland boss. Austin Louis is a shadowy character developed in flashes throughout the episodic text. He is at the core o f the mystery which develops at the culmination o f the narrative. Moreover, the unveiling o f the character to the reader coincides with a process o f self-revelation in which Louiss inner man is being unveiled to the self through a process o f reconstructive memory, symbolized by the opening o f door­ ways into the dark and unfathomable caverns o f his mind.

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The fabric o f criminal character is woven and revealed through these flashes of memory - the stinking squalor o f his shanty, hours tied to a bedpost while his mother worked, the said mother crafting a voodoo doll for revenge on her employer, the faithful servant who stabs the vengeful one, the child wallowing in pools o f his moth­ ers congealed blood and emerging born again, so to speak, but not into the fraternity o f human beings: “The hag mounted his mind and whipped it to remember forever. Sharper and clearer. The steel pierced into his soul as his own humanity seeped with his mothers blood” (Lalla 1989, 184). Lalla sketches parallel worlds which resist all attempts to keep them apart - bright beauty, order, abundance, fragility and love/darkness, disorder, poverty, starvation, crime. Initially, the stark class differentiation dictates that they remain separate except for the workers who come and go. Eventually, Austin Louis, the criminal on whom the resolution o f the plot hinges, becomes the point o f conver­ gence. And Lallas novel seems, to our reading, to strain at this point o f convergence - when amiable, well-meaning old people exhume the corpse of their son and nephew, seeking the identity o f the criminal. Underlying, and in contestation within Lalla’s novel, are the pat class, race and gender certainties which are associated with upper-strata Jamaican society. Indeed, a significant dimension o f the text is the palpable longing o f the upper-middle-class fair-skinned Jamaican for the possession o f a postcolo­ nial Kingdom. Instead, as the novel progresses, the aging ones are marooned in an urban cul-de-sac appropriately named Oxford Close, while mass hysteria rises, neighbours migrate, properties are deserted and a mass o f unwashed humanity encroaches. This notwithstanding, the text steers clear o f predictable polarities, sketching instead a tight web o f connections and cause-and-effect relationships. It points to shared social and historical responsibility o f all social groups for the outcomes. The criminal, Austin, must constantly deal with this - the trapdoors that swing open unbidden in his mind to readmit intrusive memories o f latrines and stench, abuse, blood, pain, fear and utter despair. Similarly, Grace Goldman, secure in her family's love, feels constrained to dredge the memory for discordant images that are not there. And the text itself becomes an assertion that the images, debilitating and empowering, are the collective inheritance o f the Caribbean people. No social group can live an airtight existence. All must share culpability and credit for the common inheritance.

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Lalla is careful to rebut the upper-class discourse of racism which has proven to be long-lasting and divisive in Jamaican society. Here the evolving outgrowth of the foun­ dational Manichaean order flourishes, replacing a sharp black-and-white dichotomy with a sliding scale of colour gradation. Class demarcation tends to be buttressed by colour demarcation and supported by the essentialized prejudicial assumptions which are intended to fix the impoverished, disempowered black underclass securely in their subordinated position. The clearest demonstration o f Lallas rebuttal of this racist dis­ course is in the portrayal of the Rats Man Lion. Not only is he an honourable man, he is also o f honourable lineage. He and his father are both credited with redeeming the lives of vulnerable young boys and restoring them to their families. They bear favour­ able comparison with Seniors Brother Justice, who stands guard presumably to save a boy from sodomy (Seniors “Summer Lightning” [1986]). They also resemble Hodges nurturing men (For the Life o f Laetitia) and draw attention to hitherto submerged cul­ tural paradigms of Afro-Caribbean masculinity which have been subject to sweeping generalizations and negative stereotyping (Morgan 2004; Hodge 1996). As the desecration o f the matriarchal order, community, love and belonging is at the core of Seniors “Country of the One Eye God”, the affirmation o f family as the last vanguard against the hurtling social chaos is at the core o f Lallas. Moreover, the text features a visual motif, a sprawling family tree which links all o f the major characters, all the ethnic groups, despite the hostilities o f history and contemporary challenges, into one family. This vision, which resembles that o f Brodber in Jane and Louisa, provides a glimpse of utopist possibility in a narrative dedicated to document­ ing encroaching social chaos. In the final analysis, the forces which generate the criminals, and what they in turn generate, destroy their hope o f belonging to family, even to the community of men. The redemptive figure in Austin Louis’s life is Les, who held a different door open - the door of inclusion into a generous and loving family. If a portion o f Louis was slaughtered when his mother was murdered, he personally assassinates any possibility o f rebirth when he arranges the murder o f the man who loved him completely and demonstrated to him the possibility of a better life.

C O N C L U SIO N Together, the fictions point to a range of causes which create the criminal mind. Gender overlaps with race, colour, age and class to create multiple jeopardies for

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a cross-section of young males. Many young criminals are spawned in starvation, abuse, loneliness, deprivation, stench and physical and moral filth. The situation is intensified in the case o f absentee parenting whether in the form of the absent father or the absent mother. Migration aggravates the situation by adding to absenteeism, an unattainable “imaginary homeland”, a dream space which the child assumes will impart fullness o f self. Add to these the inaccessibility o f markers of masculinity valorized in hegemonic society (wealth, status and secure, advantageous employment) and criminal subcul­ tures which valorize alternative masculinities and alternative pathways. The negative impact o f criminal subcultures is heightened when children are habituated to these values from youth. Professional criminals who may emerge from such a process create their own legitimizing meaning systems and assume dispassionate masks which allow them to murder with impunity. State officials and politicians who exploit gang vio­ lence heighten the anomie and blur the boundaries between the dominant culture and the subculture. Criminal networks and subcultures become embedded when they interact with a range o f social networks and come to be legitimized as inherent to the social well-being. Finally, we need to consider how the women writers o f the privileged class deal with the representation o f the dark and monstrous other. This nightmarish figure holds a place o f significance in the literary imagination, recalling Ramchand s evo­ cation o f the traumatized white creoles “terrified consciousness” (1970). Their ambivalent positions as beneficiaries of the institutional violence o f slavery, the leg­ acies o f which are still working for the privileged class o f all ethnicities today, have created a paradoxical stance. The ongoing dependence on a black servant class to ensure the privileged middle-class lifestyle, which is open to upwardly mobile social groups o f all shades and ethnicities, creates the ongoing necessity for and the fear of connection. The criminals may appear dark and unfathomable, beyond control, but the writers probe the possibility and even tacitly acknowledge complicity as secret sharers in the systems o f privilege which continue to be numbered among the factors which shape the monstrous other. Moreover, the ideological imperative o f creating a gendered, anti-establishment reconstruction of history demands exposure o f the root and source o f the violence. The authors demonstrate a deep sensitivity to the connection between the existing mayhem and the inherent criminality behind historical forces at work. The modern Caribbean nation-states were crafted in immense violence against the human person.

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The institutionalized violence and traumas o f slavery and indentureship, racism and cultural denigration, perpetrated in the interest o f mammon, have not been univer­ sally acknowledged as a crime against humanity. No absolution has been sought. No restitution has been made. The Caribbean nations have made substantial gains in terms of self-government, development and the establishment o f prosperous, creative and humane societies. This notwithstanding, institutional and personal violence, the seeds o f which were nestled within the grounding o f our societies and well nurtured thereafter, escalate. The fictions explored here portray the grim criminal sensibility with honesty, artistic integrity and a measure o f sympathetic identification. As the writers display the overwhelmingly bleak sociocultural scenario, they also affirm, thematically and through cleverly deployed narrative strategies, a measure o f identification with and perhaps even a hint o f “literary” atonement for the process. They simultaneously engage with and undermine denigrating stereotypes; create a case for understanding inscribe complicity with inequitable power relations and expose their consequences; document resultant familial chaos and affirm the healing balm o f enriching family love and community. This is the predominant speaking from the female Caribbean writers to date. Yet, as mayhem increases regionally and globally, what tomorrows voices will declare is anyone’s guess.

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CHAPTER 8 Rape and Sexual Violence in the Caribbean Imaginary

Fear. And didn’t know didn’t cry out, didn’t struggle until afterwards in the bigness and hurt o f it and then she tossed out o f a wave o f reborning and fear and pain and hurt and death. - Earl Lovelace, The Schoolmaster Feeling absolutely helpless and entirely at my assailants mercy, I talked to him calling him sir. I tried to appeal to his humanity, and, when that failed I addressed myself to his self interest. He called me whore and told me to shut up. - Susan J. Brison, Aftermath

Symbolically and allegorically, violent sexuality has been repeatedly associated with explorations o f the imperial encounter. This begs the question: does the insistence o f Caribbean creative writers on marrying a history o f oppression to the metaphors o f violent sexuality and discordant familial relations provide a

clue, or perhaps even a trail to the current scenario? Some sociological studies have responded yes (Danns and Parsad 1989; Gopaul, Morgan and Reddock 1994). Cain, in “The Specificity o f Violence against Women”, cautions against too facile a connection between colonization and violence in the past with violence in the present, asking, “How does blowing up a slave for amusement in the seventeenth or eighteenth century connect with taking a cudass to your wife in 1998?” (2001, 508)3Yet the pointers to the formative colonizing enterprise are too numerous to ignore. The narrativization o f Empire has incorporated discourse o f violent masculinist intrusion and conquest over supine, virginal lands, feminized cultures and peoples (Pratt 1992, 19). Historical analyses have laid bare the paradoxical gap between the colonizers “official prudery . . . narrow, blinkered, defective and intolerant attitudes towards sex” juxtaposed with “a practice o f excessive indul­ gence in playing the erotic field?” (Hyam 1990, 2-3) This chapter explores literary evocations of rape and sexual violence within historical and contemporary contexts. We argue that the engendered subject is the site o f multiple contestatory subjectivities. Moreover, in traumatic and transitional seasons and spaces, persons and people groups who are redrawing the fragile boundaries which secure their existence are inclined to invoke substitutional violence to create place and meaning within a signifying economy. Towards this end, historically and globally, rape has been and continues to be a particularly eloquent signifier which is heavily deployed in times of instability and conflict in international and intranational, public and domestic domains. Chapter 5 on Haiti makes real-time connections o f the type that are discussed in this chapter from a literary perspective. This chapter also yields insights on the manner in which rape is subject to silenc­ ing. For the victim, the trauma of rape is so severe that she (or occasionally he) is often constrained to relive the horror in a struggle to grasp it and bring it into the realm of articulation and representation. For relatives, loved ones and the society in general, rape is so repugnant that it seems better silenced, erased, forgotten, unrepresented. Even the perpetrator erases the act, preferring to represent it as anything but rape. The creative writer mediates all of these responses through fictional representations of rape. The writer must face the challenge of narrative inscription o f the unrepresentable, silenced, rational­ ized and erased. This chapter analyses the implied authorial stances which are reflected in the fictional mediation of this phenomenon. It argues that an understanding o f the various vantage points could be a useful tool for persuading the society to confront its darker visage; for empowering the victim to speak the unspeakable and thereby facilitate

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personal and social reintegration; and for constraining the perpetrator to acknowledge responsibility. In other words, literary exploration and analysis may prove to be a useful avenue for consciousness raising and intervention in relation to this vexing social issue. The body is a tent which clothes the self. It marks the boundary between the self and the other. Anything or anyone which is outside o f the tent must interface with the self though the body. The body shelters, masks, reflects, expresses, shields the self from the gaze o f the other. Rape or nonconsensual intercourse transgresses body boundaries, violates ones right to permit or deny access, parodies the human craving for intimacy. And by so doing, it mounts a devastating onslaught against the integrity o f the soul which is housed in the body. Understanding rape, even for those who have suffered its ignominy, is as elusive as it is imperative. Literature offers a forceful way o f representing the horror of this form o f violence, and o f meaningfully representing its effects. Any attempt to grapple with rape as a signifier must focus on the cultural constructs o f masculin­ ity and femininity, subject formation, social aspirations and access to pathways for their accomplishment. All o f these are in a state o f constant flux. Put another way, each rapist and each target o f rape is an individual with the power o f selfdetermination, the power to create change. Each rapist and rape target is also the product o f a system o f gender and power relations, inherited historical background, kinship rules and practices. Each act o f rape occurs within historical, social, familial and psychological contexts. Why is this form of violence gendered?2 Is it biology or the social construction o f gender identities which dictates that overwhelmingly men (biologically fitted with agents o f penetration) assault and penetrate women (biologically fitted with inner space designed to receive such penetrations)? Is it that sex is itself is inherently violent? Or if we assume that power relations are the key to understanding rape, does the social construction o f gendered power relations dictate that the aggressive despoliation o f rape would emanate from the male towards the female? According to Herman (1997, 57-58), “The essential element o f rape is the physical, psycho­ logical and moral violation o f the person. Violation is in fact a synonym for rape. The purpose of the rapist is to terrorize> dominate and humiliate his victim. Thus rape, by nature, is intentionally designed to produce psychological trauma.” Beyond a doubt, sexuality is a particularly appropriate slate on which to signify power relations. This power dynamic becomes increasing complex if we add the other contributors to subject formation - ethnicity, class, and social and historical context.

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The concept o f sexual violence is also potentially problematic. If we accept that the body is a home and a spatial boundary marker, sexual interaction can be seen as a relational transaction - the souls pursuit o f pleasurable interconnections and penetrations which satisfy the flesh, impart well-being and are inherent to life itself. But violence speaks separation, severance o f wholesome and life-sustaining con­ nection. This is why rape is commonly defined in terms o f abusive power relations instead o f sexual relations. Hyam argues, “ Let us first agree that an act is per­ verted if its primary aim is dominion rather than mutual enjoyment: if it becomes an expression o f power rather than sensuality, and is thus so to speak plundering rather than worshipping. Rape is its commonest form” (1990, 9). Sociologists also suggest that gender violence contributes to changing gender difference into gender hierarchy (Karen Moore, letter to the editor, Trinidad Guardian, 20 May 2004). This would make violence a much-used instrument in periods o f transition when gender hierarchies are being reconfigured. This we have already explored in relation to post-indentureship Indo-Caribbean gender antipathy (see chapter 6). In the ancestral memory (and, by extension, in the narrative legacy) of AfroCaribbean peoples, rape and sexual violence against women were endemic to the horrific crossing of the middle passage and the dynamics o f plantation society. The black womans body was the blank slate on which the propertied slave-owning class and their privileged descendants inscribed their racial superiority, which in turn bequeathed the right o f ongoing economic superiority. It was also the ground on which the black woman traded sexual favours and promoted her ginger-headed hybrid offspring to alleviate her oppression.3And it was the slate on which black men inscribed their fragile, assaulted masculinities. The focus o f male and female creative writers on these processes emphasizes rape as a signifier in the Caribbean imaginary.

RAPE IN THE IMPERIAL E C O N O M Y Caribbean creative writers have been masterful in their fictional evocations of gen­ dered violence within the colonial encounter. There are several associations in the literature between imperial history and discordant psychosexual relations. In Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), racial, class and sexual prejudices are played out through a conflictual relationship between the husband/white Englishman, colonizing husband and tainted creole native wife. The sting has gone out o f the system. The signify­ ing economy established through the hegemonic discourse is being overturned. In

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the patriarchal social order, the men, the day-star of the plantocracy, are absent or insane, alcoholic or suicidal, and the white creole woman, signifier o f “pure and lilywhite femininity” is conflated with the economically and sexually violated target o f the imperial impulse. The creole Antoinette, who carries the symbolic weight of psychosexual primivitism, is trapped in a civilizing world o f male power. The hus­ band s violence is largely epistemic: marry her, torment her, then seek to imprison her in a false concept of self. Enslave her to eroticism, then deprive her because of supposed infidelities and miscegenation. Economic greed lies at the base o f his actions, but Rhyss narrative remains sensitive to the ontological threat which the husband confronts. His mask unravels as the luxuriant, wild landscape and a rooted primordial reality point him to his own psychic deficiency. A lost boy/self calls out of the wilderness for acceptance and embrace. Unable to deal with the challenge to his inner being, he finally appropriates Antoinettes inheritance and incarcerates her “Bluebeard style” in a cold English prison. As evident in Rhys’s evocation, counter to the notion o f empowerment and dominion based on racial alterity, the socializing process triggered by the imperial encounter flowed between all o f the people groups involved in the psychodrama. At the root o f the revulsion and the discourse o f racism was fear and desire intense erotic attraction which often found expression in miscegenation. Within the contact zone, sexual, linguistic and cultural engagements played themselves out through consensual and nonconsensual matings. The encounter produced the fruit o f intercourse - bastardization and hybridity in progeny, language and culture. From inception, the racialized woman - black, white, mulatto, British, creole, island woman, mother, wife, whore - has been a highly contested signi­ fier in the hegemonic sociosymbolic economy. The fate o f Rhyss Antoinette, in terms o f the imposition o f the category o f the racialized other on the white creole female* indicates how gender difference tends to be conflated with other hierar­ chically organized forms o f difference. Lamming, in Natives o f My Person, rewrites the historic discourse of encounter, drawing an even more inherent correlation between the forces o f global capitalism which fuelled the imperial impulse and inequity in gender relations. From the begin­ ning, Empires production o f agentic subjectivities was bound up with gender and ethnic ideologies. These ideologies are rooted in the assumption that the normative person is white, male and ruling class, and all others are objectified based on a contin­ uum which is dependent on their location in relation to this norm. Jan Mohammed,

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commenting on the dominant ideological frame o f colonialist fiction - the Manichaean allegory, argues that it does more than “just define and elaborate the actual military and putative moral superiority of the Europeans”. It addresses the nagging contradic­ tion between the theoretical justification o f exploitation and the barbarity of its actual practice. Hence, the obsessive portrayal of “the supposed inferiority and barbarity of the racial Other, thereby insisting on the profound moral difference between self and Other” (1995, 23). Within this symbiotic relation, the Manichaean allegory func­ tions as a transformative mechanism between the affective pleasure derived from the moral superiority and material profits that motivate imperialism, on the one hand, and the formal devices (genres, stereotypes and so on) o f colonialist fiction, on the other hand. By permitting an obsessive, fetishistic representation of the natives moral inferiority, the allegory also enables the European to increase, by contrast, the store of his own moral superiority; it allows him to accumulate “surplus morality” which is further invested in the denigration of the native in a self-sustaining cycle (1995, 23). In Natives o f My Person, Lamming explores its working and the permeability of the Manichaean binaries in the rationalizations o f moralizers on the Reconnaissance who conveniently relegate these damning cross-cultural interactions to the rival colonizing Kingdom o f Antartica: Against the will o f God and the sacred needs o f their own blood they do enter into the most uncritical acts o f fornication with these heathen women, blaspheming against their bodies and in a manner not fit even for the pleasure o f beasts; . . . It is a matter not fit for record, nor would I mention it except as a warning to more noble natures, for it be known these heathens do have a power which may bind some Christian natures against their wish . . . many examples can be found o f men who could not overcome the first taste o f black women on this coast, but did seem to enter a trance o f passion which did make it impossible for them to redeem their Christian nature; wherein it is a fact that they never allow their wives to travel as company or otherwise along these coasts, fearing that a similar spell o f lust might excite them to entertain the heathen blacks who go naked everywhere like beasts, though some in imitating our own discretion do try to decorate their organs with various articles o f nature like leaves or grass, and thereby hide the grossness o f its size, for they be creatures with truly massive instruments which they can erect at will, and without encouragement from the other sex, causing in all Christian men a most terrible fear for the safety o f their lawful wives. (1974, 125-26)

The Manichaean order promotes othering due to fear o f contagion. It ascribes all that is holy, civilized, natural to the European and all that is unholy, uncivi­ lized, unnatural, base, bestial to the so-called native. Yet, as Said (1995) indicates,

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representation o f the other in Western imaginary represents both a form o f crea­ tion and a form o f exclusion. Cultural and physical boundary makers are crucial because the inevitable permeability o f the contact zone guarantees that they are constantly under siege and any slippages possess the power to dismantle the sense of self. Women function as boundary markers. Two factors operate to give them sig­ nificance in this regard. Given the assumption that white skin imparted the divine right o f mastery, the preservation o f racial dichotomies is crucial. Womens bodies guard the threshold o f racial purity and, on the other hand, they allow it to be penetrated. Second, since women are also constructed as markers in male-male power relations, womens bodies become a blank slate on which to ascribe mastery. The passage demonstrates both. Ideologies notwithstanding, admixture, and there­ fore contagion, is practically airborne. The black woman, constructed as seductress and temptress, is blamed for seducing the white male into moral and physical impurity, aberrant sexual practices and untold perversions, with the gross bound­ ary, destroying consequences o f the mixing blood lines; and, by extension, the white woman as repository and guardian o f white supremacy must be protected from the enchantments o f the black male with his gross and magically inflatable organ. In Lammings evocation o f the Western imaginary, penis envy looms large. So great is the contamination o f white morality that Pierre invokes another dis­ tancing device - national boundaries. He projects these polluting interactions onto the rival colonizing Kingdom o f Antartica, creating in the process another basis o f alterity - the other, read “evil”, white. These extracts demonstrate that figures o f alterity are constantly moving, constantly engaged in complex dialectical manoeuvres. The otherness is con­ structed in the Western imaginary not simply in accordance with tropes of so-called civilizing values but as a foundation or kingpin o f these values. Hence European order, beauty, civility are virtually constructed on African disorder, ugli­ ness and savagery. Given assumptions o f ethnic purity, women - black and white - become crucial boundary markers in a Manichaean economy. Slippage is inevi­ table and so too is a correlation between the epistemic violence o f Empire and violent gender relations.4 In his reconstruction o f the colonizers middle passage, the conquistador emerges as an imbalanced male who is unable to face his women and the feminine aspect o f his being. Lamming shares with Rhys that insight into patriarchal social

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and cultural systems which refuse to acknowledge the womans full humanity, and further translate irresponsibility in male-female relationships into the need for male dominance in the world o f political action. The society o f Limestone estab­ lishes strong hierarchical difference between maleness and femaleness; activity and passivity; public and private. The men are sailing away on the Reconaissance from the Kingdom of Limestone on an illicit voyage to found a new civilization released from the tyranny o f habit. However, they are haunted by the shadowy presence of their wives, who eventually materialize as parallel voyagers on the vessel Penalty. Yet their relationships are perverted by inequity that blinds them to the knowl­ edge which the women possess - the very knowledge which would empower them to construct a new society. The conquistadors truly believe that it is the task of true men to conquer nations and to honour their women by laying the bounty at their feet. Yet the women, marginalized from effective social action, are starved for sexual and emotional attention. As the crew argue in relation to the lady of the house, “Wife, you ask? What’s a wife before such privilege? Such power keeps a wife like you would have a cow, a dog or some such animal o f convenience. Why should a man hide his domestic beast when he gets down to . . . a business of the private parts?” (1974, 23). Natives o f My Person demonstrates the futility o f all forms of revolution which preserve gender oppression intact. In this text, Lamming is working towards an admission of the centrality o f women in the task o f building a just and equitable society. Indeed, the inability o f the conquistadors to embrace this potential becomes an indicator of why their enterprise is doomed to failure. Lamming explains: if a man woman relationship is aborted, is perverted, there will be a corresponding perversion in the relationship between man and what he calls his work or his concep­ tion o f fulfillment. The corruption in the individual man/woman relationship - these are symptoms o f a wider and more pervasive corruption o f the society in which they lived. (1973, 88)

The fruits o f this perversion, rape and sexual violence, find full and horrific articula­ tion in Lamming s Water with Berries. If Natives can be characterized as intervention into the narrativization of Empire, then Water with Berries, with its intertextual links to Shakespeare’s The Tempest> can be characterized as backchat designed to decen­ tre the hegemonic narrative of imperial Prospero-Caliban relations and to create an opportunity for Caliban’s speaking. It articulates, simultaneously, dissatisfaction

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with the signification o f Eurocentric imperial discourses and the impulse towards a reconfigured narrative o f origin. In the beginning o f modern West Indian society was a word in desperate need o f reconfiguration. A related issue is the correlation between the inscription o f racialized femaleness within the imperial discourse and inscription o f racialized femaleness within the postcolonial, emerg­ ing nationalist discourse. Sexual violence is fundamental to the unfolding o f the plot. The young migrant artistes exiled from the cultural wasteland o f San Cristobal return to the womb o f the (m)otherland seeking to interpolate themselves as subjects within the sociosymbolic order. These colonials have been trained to desire the mother/land. Their migration leads them to map anew their traumatic separation and alienation. They face in Britain's stony nonacceptance the loss o f child’s coming home to maternal presence to find himself denied the affirming gaze, the imaginary plenitude which will render him complete. Note, though, Prosperos patriarchal order has been emasculated. The only acceptance which can be found involves re-engagement and complicity with a benign, feminized, flirtatious face of Prospero which is no less controlling and engulfing. As Teeton soon learns in his ritual-laden engagement with the Old Dowager, she must offer tea and pluck his pillow into (obedient) dog ears; and he can offer only sweets (read sugar cane) and colabour with her in the garden (read plantation). In this counterdiscursive to the colonizing male-dominated symbolic order, Lamming deems violence to be imperative. The verbally violent Caliban of The Tempest finds expression in three - Teeton, the revolutionary artist; Roger, the musician; and Derek, the writer. All o f these Calibans seek to expatiate their rage against the dehumanizing social order by acts o f sexual violence or murder against women. The Old Dowager represents the decaying imperial order; she is aging, simpering and flirtatious as she seeks to seduce Teeton into her engulfing, emasculating embrace; Randa represents the young black nationalist who is rejected by her husband after she prostitutes herself to buy his freedom; Nicole is the sympathetic, liberal, humanitarian American who would seek with her love and her body to erase the sin against the black race. The other target is the nameless, faceless young actress raped on stage as a stand-in for the royal virgin. In grappling with the trauma o f the imperial encounter and its location at the dawning of the modern New World Caribbean civilization, Lamming sees no way forward but to return to the ancient mythic terrain of a sacrificial economy and

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to configure women within it as sacrificial scapegoats. Moreover, he invokes and at points overlays the scapegoat ritual with an alternative ceremony o f expiation: the Haitian Ceremony o f Souls. The point which remains at issue is the power o f the sacrificial act to truly expiate the sin and avert social crisis. Significantly, Lamming, commenting on the social imperative o f this form o f violence, if not its social productivity, appears to see the symbolic appropriation o f the woman towards this end as totally acceptable: The rape scene seems to me to be working as almost a way o f exorcising that part of their lives. . . . I believe that it is against all experience that a history which held men together in that way can come to an end in a cordial manner. . . . That horror and that brutality have a price, which has to be paid by the man who inflicted it - just as the man who suffered it has to find a way o f exorcising that demon. It seems to me that there is almost a therapeutic need for a certain kind o f violence in the breaking. There cannot be a parting o f ways. There has to be a smashing. (Lamming 1973» 100; our emphasis)

Ironically, in each case the price is not paid by the men but by the women who were complicit with but certainly not central to the process. Each woman becomes a sacrificial victim but none more so than Myra, daughter o f Prospero and the Old Dowager. Within the framework o f this chapter, there are two-tiered issues to consider: Why women? And why violence? In her discussion o f the witch-hunt, Reineke (1997), after Girard and Kristeva, delineates the functioning o f a sacrificial economy with its persecutory patterns. A sacrificial economy kicks in at a point o f crisis in the sociosymbolic order - plague, famine, flood, obliteration or collapse o f hierarchal functioning. The crisis is interpreted as putting the community or even the cosmos under threat. The next step is the concentration o f the threat o f breakdown, civil disorder or contagion within a single (invariably female) person. According to Reineke (1997, 12), Kristeva perceives that, when humans seek to identify threats to human existence and community, contain their menace, and achieve redress in the face o f radical loss, very often a perceived difference between the sexes is “mobilized” by those who would deny or manage loss by projecting its threats onto women. . . . The differen­ tial effects o f sacrificial violence on women, documented in the historical record, create bonds - life sentences which immobilize women and, under circumstances o f radical crisis, place their lives at risk. Regularly made scapegoats in the sacrificial economy, womens lives are forfeited so that others’ lives may be saved.

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Reineke is insistent that to understand the process one must believe that the victim is capable o f both generating and expiating the evil. In the mythic world o f scapegoat­ ing, the victim is capable o f symbolizing and even incarnating order. The sacrificial motif is threaded throughout Water with Berries. Teeton, grappling with the implementation o f a nationalist liberation agenda, must work through the fundamental issues of how to proceed through life dragging the history o f the past. He proves incapable of reconnecting with his wife, who deals with his arrest in San Cristobal by deploying sex as a weapon o f war; she prostitutes herself to the American ambassador in return for her husbands escape. In the murky domain in which the politics o f gender overlap with the politics o f nation-statehood, Randa assumes the right to exert agency for and on behalf o f her husband and o f the liberation move­ ment. In essence, she too assumes the position o f the substitutionary sacrifice in an action which echoes the ritual declaration - “This is my body which I am laying down for you.” The issue is that Teeton, though prepared to sacrifice all for the movement, could not sacrifice his perceived right o f exclusive possession over her body. Significantly, his exile is symbolized as a return to the maternal in the form of Mrs Gore Brittain. He finds himself entrapped in a stultifying maternal order. Why a maternal order? Lamming offers a possible reason, though not an altogether plausible explanation: whereas Prospero in The Tempest is a male force because the world from which he is operating is aggressive, expansionist and conquering, by the time we get to Water with

Berries, that world has now contracted. It has now retreated; it has aged. The power - that obsession with mastering reality, with turning the earth into ones private garden - is now gone; there is only the Old Dowager there with memories o f a great past, o f a great ancestral root. (1973, 99)

The imperial mother is the root o f an alienating signifying system. Moreover, she rep­ resents the mother tongue, the signifying order which paints him black. Their con­ versations are replete with submerged meanings, gaps, silences, paradoxes, erasures. Teetons murder o f the Old Dowager, whom he loves, has been identified as problematic. In her dissertation, Janet Butler Haugaard argues artist Caliban is split into Teeton, Derek and Roger, who in turn represent three forces: rage, guilt and suppression. She argues that Teetons “killing the Old Dowager is tantamount to killing his mother”. Moreover, she charges Lamming with a lexical flaw which confuses guilt with shame: “as the narrative moved from the level o f the individual (Teeton) to that o f the symbolic (Caliban) so Lamming moved from Teetons sense

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o f guilt to Calibans sense o f shame mistakenly viewing one emotion as a variant o f the other” (1980, 246). Our contention is that it is because the Old Dowager becomes his mother that he must commit matricide. Reineke points to this duality when she argues: “Surrogate victimization is quite capable o f presenting itself as surrogate valorization. Indeed the matricidal aims o f the signifying process are encountered at full strength when the figure o f the phallic mother overlays the maternal body o f origins, disguising sacrifice” (1997, 161). Another possible reason for the female-focused violence is to be found in Rogers threat to “rape every royal virgin to celebrate the martyrdom o f his kind” (p. 113). Verbal and epistemic violence promise eruption in sexual violence.5 Rape is conveyed here as the eruption o f rage. The penis becomes an instrument o f male-to-male discourse in a language o f subordination and vengeful posses­ sion. The woman is signified in terms o f her exalted “royal” position within the social order, and her sexual purity becomes the blank slate. Lamming s clearest evocations o f the sacrificial economy are evident in the rape scenes. Within the Eurocentric signifying order, the racialized body, black as well as white, carries high currency. The white woman, signified as the pure and unattainable within the hegemonic order, is desecrated in the vicious male-on-male power play. Myra recounts: “I could only see the flames,” she said, ‘Tike a million tongues licking and sucking up the night. Thats how it was. They’d made a bonfire to celebrate their rape of me. Right there, in the open field, with the flames sizzling and spraying everything with heat. God! It was so hot. I’d never known such heat. And soon I couldn’t tell any longer which was worse. That fire screaming and crackling about my ears, or the terrible pounding that started up inside me. There was only that tearing apart, like instruments opening my insides. They found every crack in my body; operated through every opening in my body. I couldn’t tell how many they were. But they seemed a whole army. Naked as wind they were. Not a rag to their skin. How many I don’t know, nor how long. It seemed like eternity. They would rest and return, giving the interval over to the animals . . . . They gave the animals the same privilege. Until I couldn’t tell which body was the man’s and which belonged to the beasts.” (1974, 150)

Myra narrates her own story. The self-presentation focuses the self as a sacrificial virgin being consumed in a public ritual by a bonfire. In the hellish scene, personification transforms the fire into a parallel rapist with a million tongues licking and sucking, and the flames sizzling and spraying in climactic release. In contrast, the activities of

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the actual rapists are muted if not erased. The fire possesses tongues and it sprays, but the men possess instruments and they operate. The nominalization o f “tear” in the phrase “there was tearing” shifts agency and, by extension, blame away from the brutal men. Moreover, in an abrupt shift o f image, their lethal penile weapons are represented as “instruments” o f incision used in an “operation” which penetrate the boundary of the body through every orifice. The words, which can be ambigu­ ously applied to a surgical process, speak o f what Lamming sees as the therapeutic significance o f the interaction. Moreover, affirming sexual violence as power play, the performance takes place before the gaze o f the father/lover. The addition of the dogs, trained in the art by Prospero, forces Myra to acknowledge shared culpability for the bestial order. And since mating is species specific, this act reduces man to beast. Both unholy acts of rape are sacralized by associations with rituals o f expiation. In the latter, Derek associated the silence before the curtains ascent with the wordless waiting of worship before the service begins. Recalling Rogers threat to rape every royal virgin to celebrate the martyrdom o f his kind, he rapes the young actress on the public stage. Although the rape is intended to violently assert that the actor/perennial corpse lives, here again the rapist is distanced and erased in terms o f agency and the process is enacted by a natural force: “Some hurricane had torn her pants away, as the body struggled to split open her sex” (1974, 242). The initial act is linked with the sacred via the Haitian Ceremony of Souls. The ravaged woman and nameless man linked as victim and potential rapist meet on the Heath and undergo a ritual connection which recalls the Ceremony o f Souls. It is an interstitial space on several counts. The interstitial space between worlds allows for boundary crossings - nonviolent interpenetrations o f body boundaries and reconfig­ urations o f signifiers in the sociosymbolic economy. They meet in darkness, hence the signification of black/white embodiment is lacking; soul is able to touch soul in the quest for the power to retell an unspeakable history and to construct a viable self with the capacity to survive the confessions. The Heath/Ceremony o f Souls semiotic site is free and indeterminate, free o f the groundings o f history and replete with redemptive potential. As Lamming comments, the “journey for these Caliban-like figures rests on this necessity for whatever is dead, whatever has passed on, to be summoned back for some kind of dialogue” (1973, 102). Wide Sargasso Sea, Natives o f My Person and Water with Berries all convey the complex racialized gendered power relations which were pivotal to the colonial encounter. The narrative inscriptive of racialized femaleness within imperial discourse

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and the postcolonial, emerging national discourse show remarkable parallels. Predict­ ably, and in summary, we can adopt the perspective o f Fernando, who associates the colonial encounter with the encounter with women on the Heath. Initially, they seem to be a treasure there for the taking, but they turn out to be syphilitic: “a rotten treasure, a poisonous treasure. That experiment in ruling over your own kind. It was a curse. The wealth it fetched was a curse. The power it brought was a curse. A curse I tell you. And it will come back to plague my race until one of us dies” (Lamming 1971, 229). Although the imperial enterprise has been for the most part a patriarchal undertaking, the imperial hierarchies and the subsequent reprisals o f the subaltern male have inscribed themselves on racialized female bodies, using the markers o f rape and violent sexuality.

RAPE AS DEATH W O RK: C O N TEM PO RARY CO NTINUITIES The rest o f this chapter turns attention to the still unanswered issue o f whether there can be any connection between a history o f sexual violence and its contemporary manifestations. In the fictional evocations of post-emancipation times to the present, the sexualized nature o f the power dynamic implicit in historical interaction between colonizer and colonized has morphed into a range of forms which nevertheless reflect sexual aggressiveness and rape as a key manifestation. Examples abound in calypso and dancehall music - those shapers and reflectors o f popular world view. These modes were, until quite recently, male-dominated lower-strata arts forms with an Afro-Caribbean focus. A popular theme o f the early-twentieth-century calypso was the projection of the male as a walking phallus ever ready to prod women into sub­ mission. The calypso became the stomping ground o f the lower-class proletarian hero with a movie-inflated ego who becomes the tragicomic counterpart o f the historical conquistadors. Hence, a crucial measure for dissipating powerlessness became the projection o f the male as the walking phallus, bringing the illusion o f unimaginable sexual potency to use in the subjugation of women. Beneath the rhetorical force and hyperbolic boasting of real or imagined phallic performance, there lurked impotence and fear. The Mighty Sparrow sings in “Benwood Dick”: Tell you sister to come down boy I have something here for she Tell she is M r Benwood Dick

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The man from Sangre Grande She know me well. I give she already She must remember me. Go on, go on Tell she Mr Ben wood come

Even as the calypso projects the phallic myth, it captures simultaneously another bitter reality. It portrays Mr Benwood as the ridiculously dressed country yokel in an old straw hat and tattered alpargatas who has made a hit with a town girl and has come searching at the address she has given him to see if anything more can come of the relationship. Within the calypso, the phallic boast is undermined by a plea: “she must remember me”, and the walking “dick” in his shabby reality is deflated by the boy. The post-emancipation, lower-strata, Afiro-Caribbean boisterous and scandalridden gender relations became the focus of the living theatre o f the barrack-yard. Former slaves fled the land, migrated into cities and converged in urban barrackyards whose crowding, thin walls and shared yard made it impossible to keep any but the stillest ministrations of love and hate private. This spawned its own literary genre - barrack-yard narratives, or yard literature, which demonstrated the extent to which violent gender relations were everyday fare. Diverse social groups sought to reconstruct a viable mode o f interaction, based primarily on female-centred house­ holds with a succession o f “visiting” males who struggled for control over women and households they may have been maintaining financially, but were largely absent from these homes, thereby creating space for rival lovers. Sexual violence of a different nature emerged in the rural scenario. In Earl Lovelaces The Schoolmaster; rape is the central symbol o f despoliation which comes to the remote forested village o f Cumaca when it embraces progress in the forms of road building and education. Lovelace demonstrates here, in an isolated rural community far removed from the vice and anarchy o f the burgeoning island capitals, a confron­ tation between an ancient and honourable patriarchy and the scheming financial and sexual opportunism of an educated, eloquent but essentially disconnected young man who is dedicated to serving his lusts. The irony is that the young woman is victimized by both parties. The best of patriarchy is presented in a lyrical manner — prosperous older men who love, provide for and protect their children, or others who, in the face of reversal o f their fortunes, struggle to retain their dignity and find comfort in ritual, honour and position. Marriages are initiated with profusely worded betrothal requests directed to the beloved s father. These are essentially, beneath all the pomp and ceremony, male-to-male transfers of the virginal female to ensure purity

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o f the bloodline and, by extension, accurate rights o f inheritance. The palpable love which the father bears his daughter is demonstrated in his willingness to hand her over in the season of her maturity to the love o f another good man, who would court her shyly, respectfully and tenderly. The first appearance o f the schoolmaster and the force o f his gaze foreshadow the eventual outcome. At the point when the young lovers Christiana and Pedro are gravitating towards each other with averted gazes, stumbling feet and distant calls through the music o f the flute, the schoolmaster arrives and Christiana “felt his eyes going over her like hands, grabbed and held the edges o f her dress which was open at the sides” (1968, 66). The rape when it comes is not told directly; rather it is narrated from Christianas point o f view after the fact, in terms o f her inability to prevent it from happening: Then like in a dream she was being taken into his room and she didn’t cry out. Even then she didn’t. Didn’t cry out. Maybe it was a seizure she had. Fear. And didn’t know. Didn’t cry out, didn’t struggle until afterwards in the bigness and hurt o f it, and then she tossed out o f a wave o f reborning and fear and pain and need and death. Out of a valley and down a mountain she had gone without knowing where she had been or where she was until she saw him panting his lips half parted, his nostrils widened and his grin, over her. She knew herself then, turned and spit on him, ran outside, gathering her clothes around her, forgetting the silly books, out into the rain and the gathering dusk. (p. 114)

This literary evocation closely reflects the findings o f trauma theorists. The horror o f the rape is so great that Christiana responds with powerlessness and surrender which is akin to paralysis. Demonstrating the traumatized victims sense of belated­ ness, she endures the rape as if she herself were not present in the flesh. She can grasp it only through re-experiencing or rememory, and this is couched in terms of her lack of agency to prevent its occurrence. Predictably, there is only a baby step between this perception and the onset o f blame, that is, blame for being helpless to prevent that which she could not have prevented. As Herman indicates, women who were immobilized by terror and submitted without a struggle are “more likely to be highly self critical and depressed in the aftermath” (1997, 59). Christiana relives the rape as a series o f absences and negations, responses she could have had, the many things she did not do and did not know, instead of being a transfixed and silenced victim* The telling reflects her distancing from the im m ediacy of the act and her petrification within an altered, dreamlike state. She displaces her focus

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onto a terrifying image - the quivering engorged penis o f the donkey which she notices immediately before and which for her speaks the animalistic brutality o f the act. The vicious act dissociates her from her sense o f self, alienates her from the world as she knows it. Significantly, since the act is perpetrated by the schoolmaster whose task it is to bring knowledge and illumination through icons o f modernity, education and access to the wider world, the rape o f the virgin, which symbolizes the rape o f the village, plays itself out in terms which undermine and invalidate the simple ways o f knowing and ancient patterns o f interaction. Christiana is despoiled by the rapist but she is also murderously afflicted by the patriarchal dictates o f the village and its ancient codes o f honour and decency, which disallow her from telling her pain to either her father or her suitor. Rape, read as desecration of property rights o f the male, would constitute an invitation for either o f them to slaughter the schoolmaster, and this she reasons would result in their imprisonment. The despoiled girl, whose name is a female derivative o f Christ (the anointed one), the ultimate symbolic sacrifice for human redemption, opts instead for self-violation in the form o f suicide as the answer to her dilemma, which ironically is also a self-sacrifice to avert communal disorder. Reflecting the rejection by the hostile patriarchal order, she perceives the suicidal act as the mater­ nal solace and embrace o f her dead mother, who awaits her by a watery grave. Ironically, to the end, the girl and the truth o f the rape remain silenced. In a curious manner, given the sensitivity and compassion with which Lovelace sketches his delicate and fragile female character, the rape remains curiously erased. In relation to this issue, the authoritative voice o f the third-person omniscient narrator yields to polyvalency. The rape is retold initially by Christiana as a narrative o f self-blame, and subsequently retold by the schoolmaster as a narrative o f evasion and ambi­ guity. The priest, whose careful questioning ferrets out the truth, feels keenly the girls pain but nevertheless interprets the crime as a theft of the Fathers property and as impugning the integrity o f the church. He sees miraculous alleviation and resolution in the schoolmaster s willingness to marry the girl. Ultimately, he too is silenced by his confessional oath. Like the mythical rape victim whose tongue is severed to prevent her from telling her pain and implicating her aggressor, Christiana is silenced. None but the muted priest and the rapist know that her pregnancy was the outcome of rape. The reality is that rape creates an interpretative space - since it leaves no concrete verifiable evidence in the objective sense; proof that it has occurred invariably rests upon the

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credibility/construction o f the rape victim. And the reconstruction o f the rape victim as wife is often seen as an ameliorative intervention for this social injustice. A similar scenario is explored from a divergent narrative stance in Dionne Brands “San Souci”, which examines a small, rural Afro-Caribbean island community within which rape and the resultant impregnation o f a minor is “resolved” through mar­ riage. In a parodic imitation o f the patriarchal model, the rapist is a Caliban-like figure who embodies an aggressive and brutal counterhegemonic masculinity. He is a displaced tribal warrior complete with scarification, but deprived o f a cause and a context. He has “two cheloidal scars on his chin and face which meant he was afraid of nothing” (1989, 3). In his perverted self-construction, violence is inherent to his expression o f manhood. He comes armed with a penile weapon to rape the thirteen-year-old child in an enforced embrace which de facto makes her his wife; similarly, he comes armed with a switch to frighten their children and thereby affirm paternal mastery. The alternative constructions which he tries on periodically are the agriculturalist and the thinker: “he liked to think that he sounded like a man o f ideas, like a man going somewhere” (p. 5). His masculinity remains fragmentary and untenable, constructed as it is out o f the Afro-Caribbean rebel badjohn model indiscriminately mixed with media-based fragments o f popular songs and of sayings o f North American evangelists. Rape directed towards a thirteen-year-old is testimony to his power. Through his act, he erases all possibility for her to become anything other than his property. The ease with which the community makes this leap also speaks to latent associations between rape and marital sexual relations as manifestations o f power relations and rights o f ownership: He had raped her. That is how her first child was born. He had grabbed her and forced her into his little room and covered her mouth so that his mother would not hear her screaming. She had bitten the flesh on his hand until there was blood and still he had exploded her insides, broken her. His face was dense against her crying. He did it as if she was not there, not herself, not how she knew herself. And anyone would have seen that he was killing her, but his dense face told her that he saw nothing. She was thirteen. She felt like the hogs that were strung on limbs of trees and slit from the genitals to the throat. That is how her first child was born. (Brand 1989, 12)

The rape is executed twice. Rape as death work in relation to the self, which she associates with the slaughter o f pigs, and rape as communal signifier, as an act

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o f possession as binding as a marriage vow. Several salient points emerge. In this fictional scenario, rape is not conveyed simply as a traumatic event from which one can be expected to simply recover with time. Indeed, it fundamentally alters her sense o f being in the world and being at home in her body. By his violent penetration, he erases her soul, her self - “as if she were not there . . . not how she knew herself” (Brand 1989, 12), and in the process irrevocably alters her ontologi­ cal being - first her way o f knowing her self and subsequently her interface with others. The act erases her humanity and leads to her increasing depersonalization and transformation into an inanimate object - a now-mature tree rooted in its own wooden denseness, which would not see that he was killing her. The said process is confirmed in the power o f the communal gaze which in turn alters her sense o f social connectedness: “They had dressed her with their eyes and their talk and their complicit winks first into a hibiscus switch, then a shrub, and now this, a tree” (p. 14). Finally, the rape points to the conflation in her traumatized sensi­ bility o f death and life. The twice-repeated ambiguous pronominal reference “That is how her first child was born” inextricably links the death work o f rape, and her subsequent transformation into a disemboweled pig, to the life work of reproduc­ tion, which understandably becomes to her a fate akin to death. The protagonist, rejecting her placement as his possession/wife in the sociosymbolic order, finds herself trapped in an eternal present unable to understand the com­ munication of others. Since language and meaning are contextual and relational, Brand s rape victim, like Mootoos Mala Ramchandin, eventually loses her power of communication. Her spatio-temporal positioning is lost and with it her ability to understand language. Language links back into the past and forward into the future. Through language we lay hold o f yesterday s experience and tomorrow s aspirations. Language has a past and a future and conveys a sequential lived experience o f time. When an individual ceases to experience temporal continuity, cannot relegate traumas to the past but constantly relives them in a disconnected and fragmentary present, the link with language may be lost. Brands protagonist lives, then, with the sound of her anguish and the constant squeal o f the slaughtered disemboweled pig which drown out all other speakings and meanings. She lives with a constant process o f transformation into an ossified inanimate object. Her desire to fend off this depersonalization process is manifested in her sporadic fight with the vegetation which constantly threatens to engulf her house:

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Rough grass asserted itself everywhere, keeping the earth dam p and muddy. . . . It kept the woman in a protracted battle with its creeping mossiness - she ripped it out, shaking the roots o f the earth. It grew again the minute she turned her back. The house, like the others running up and down the hill, could clearly be seen from the struggling road, covered as it was by lush immortelle trees with coarse vines spread among them so that they looked like women, with great bushy hair, embracing. (1989, 1)

The dissociation which comes in the wake o f abuse is represented in this narrative as being transformed into wood and being swallowed by vegetation. In Lovelaces narrative, the protagonist yields to a transfixed state followed by a suicidal watery embrace. It appears that these writers have intuitively tapped into a recent finding of trauma practitioners; that is, people who “enter a dissociative state at the time of a traumatic event” are among those most likely to “develop post traumatic stress syndrome” (Herman 1997, 239). She continues: Previously many clinicians, including myself, viewed the capacity to disconnect mind from body as a merciful provision, even as a creative and adaptive psychological defense against overwhelming terror. It appears now that this rather benign view o f dissociation must be reconsidered. Though dissociation offers a means o f mental escape at the moment when no other escape is possible, it may be that this respite from terror is purchased at far too high a price.

These outcomes signal those who treat with rape victims that the admirable calm which may embrace the survivor may be an indicator of extreme disconnection and dissociation which, in turn, may lead to a self-destructive impulse.

C O N C L U SIO N Finally, what do these fictional scenarios indicate in relation to silencing and erasure of the crime and consequences o f rape? The victims explored here are unable to overcome the trauma o f rape. Instead, they are silenced and eventually succumb to suicide and insanity. Simply put, the lesson seems to be that the violent sexual interpenetration o f the body is experienced as extreme objectification such that it is difficult for rape victims to find themselves or locate their subjectivity in the aftermath of assault. Additionally, since the self is always constructed relationally, the social acknowledgement o f the victim as one who has been wrongfully used, traumatized and in need o f support to aid recovery is pivotal to mental health and

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restoration. Significant attention needs to be paid to the remaking o f the self in the aftermath o f rape. A key way in which the victim connects relationally is through language or the ability to reconstruct her experience in order to testify or recount her pain. If one regards the poststructuralist notion o f the self as a narrative construct, to ensure coherence and continuity, the ability to tell, re-tell or re-present the trauma is of extreme importance. The act of representation can affirm the subject position of the teller, the right to tell her own tale and to reconstruct the self not as an object, but as a subject. Retelling within a receptive social environment welcomes the victim back into the communal embrace. The social framework becomes pivotal. Here, even the most honourable and benevolent o f patriarchies establishes for its women punish­ ing standards o f sexual purity and harsh blame even for inadvertent transgression. This study examines several character profiles o f men who rape, the most extreme being Shani Mootoos profile of Chandin Ramchandin, who takes his long-standing incestuous penetrations to the level o f revenge rape to punish his daughters “moral indiscretion” in taking a young lover. Rape masquerades as a bizarre extension too o f his paternal right o f ownership over his daughter and his paternal responsibility to discipline (for a fuller discussion of Cereus Blooms at Night see chapter 6). The rapists profiled in this chapter are, from the point o f view o f their respective societies, normal and even exemplary men. They are not abuse victims, neither are they patho­ logically criminal. The schoolmaster is an example of hegemonic masculinity, a type of superior new man who has come to bring civilization to the village. The husband in “San Souci” fits a common type of counterhegemonic masculinity. A rural badjohn, he certainly is no better and no worse a man than countless within his sphere. The issue is what motivated these men to rape. The common denominator seems to be their belief in their right to forcibly possess the women whom they desire. The character profiles reflect sociological findings that rapists systematically practise erasure. Based on her study o f convicted rapists, Scully identifies three categories: first, admitters (47 o f the sample o f 154 convicted rapists studied), who admitted that they had committed the rape, but understated the force and violence they used. She cites a particularly salient example o f this phenomenon in the form o f a tearful, anguished young man who admitted the age o f his victim, a seventyyear-old woman, but neglected to say she was his grandmother and that she had suffered a heart attack as a result o f the rape. The second group (33 o f the 154) were the deniers, who acknowledged sexual contact but denied that their actions

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constituted rape. Commenting on the various ways in which denials have been interpreted, Scully indicates: they have been translated as evidence o f ego protection - a way o f admitting to oneself ones capacity for committing detestable acts, and they have been seen as an expression o f social desirability and an attempt to negotiate a non-deviant identity with others. But denials can also be taken at face value, the content analyzed as a statement on the cultural learning and socially derived perspective o f sexually violent men. (1 9 9 1 ,2 7 -2 8 )

The third group, thirty-four of the sample o f convicted rapists, denied outright that they had had any sexual contact with the victim and indicated that they were framed or had been present when other persons conducted the rape* To return to the fictional examples, both rapists so belittle their wrongdoing that they perceive their acts as momentary lapses which marriage should readily and even honourably expiate. How do the writers mediate the various silencings in their fictional enquiries? The victim is silenced by self-erasure, submergence and forced rememory o f the traumatic act, through physical silencing or loss o f language and ability to speak to actual suicidal erasure o f the self and being in the world. Lovelace, Lamming and Brand all treat their victims with great sensitivity, with the male author neverthe­ less showing a greater propensity towards authorial erasure. Lovelace never directly represents the rape. He chooses rather to filter it through the traumatized, and not externally verified, filters of rememory. The major connection between a history of violence and its contemporary mani­ festations lies in the fact that historical violence has planted vigorous death-producing seedbeds which need minimal stimulation from contemporary social scenarios to be activated. Some authors, like Lamming, believe that the traumatic history itself demands contemporary violence for its expiation. An additional connection is to be found in reproduction o f historical patriarchies and in the expression of its asymmetries among empowered and disempowered males alike. Whatever the hierarchal social system, whether based on institutional dominance, urban rural dichotomies, race, class or colour, it is women who occupy the base o f every hierarchy, and aggressive sexual relations, often culminating in rape, remain a favoured mode of establishing, adjusting and inscribing hierarchies. In such scenarios, even the most honourable and benevolent of patriarchies establishes punishing standards of sexual purity and blame for its transgression. Finally, the ease with which postcolonial male writers such as Lamming (and, as we will see in chapter 9, V.S. Naipaul), in the effort to

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explore abuses o f colonial domination, can resort to ancient mythologies/metaphors of sacrifice of and sexual violence against women, speaks to the ongoing vulnerabil­ ity o f women in the sociosymbolic order and suggests that sexual violence will be a feature o f human interaction for centuries to come. In conclusion, more questions than answers remain. If rape and sexual violence are rooted in inequitable power relations and enshrined in patriarchal social struc­ tures, what manner of intervention into the said structures will even begin to get at the root of the issue? If sexual violence continues to be enshrined and imparted through myriad forms of popular cultural and literary expressions, can these expres­ sions be used to undermine a pervasive culture o f violence? If inequitable hierarchal relations are rooted in the family and society through practices which demean or exalt women, how can gender socialization be adjusted to address the said inequi­ ties? If female socialization and occupational empowerment seem to exacerbate rather than alleviate violence, then what will it take to define a truly liberatory pathway for women and for men? Compelling issues which evade easy responses. Yet a glimmer of hope seems to reside in the unsilencing of rape: freeing the victim from shame and culpability, providing a nurturing social framework for her to tell her story and in the telling affirm her social worth and seek reintegration into a nurturing collective embrace. A glimmer seems to reside in rapists acknowledging their violation of the other and coming to see it as a violation of the life-giving and pleasure-seeking impulses to plant seed in rage and violence rather than in love, nurturance and the pursuit of pleasure. A liberatory approach for the perpetrator requires forsaking rationalization and justification and embracing responsibility for action. Arguably, narrative, with its capacity for identification and distancing, can be a useful tool for confrontation and consciousness raising. But that is the concern o f another enquiry.

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CHAPTER 9

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Violence and Subjectivity in “ In a Free State” and Guerillas

Gardening in the Tropics, you never know what you’ll turn up. Quite often, bones. In some places they say when volcanoes erupt, they spew out dense and monumen­ tal as stones the skulls o f desaparecidos - the disappeared ones. Mine is only a kitchen garden so I unearth just occasional skeletons . . . —Olive Senior, “Brief Lives”

IN T R O D U C T IO N A substantial shift in global political geography is currently taking place. Although violence has always been ubiquitous, it has since the last century taken on a height­ ened immediacy and all-pervasive presence. Whereas it was once possible with a little help from hegemonic perspectives and Manichaean divides to differentiate between war-torn, violence-prone regions and peaceful regions, civilized metropoles and savage colonies, terrorists and peacemakers, these pat categories have dissolved into a soup o f slippery signification to yield uniformly grey shades o f non-meaning.

In a world which makes rubbish o f classifications of them and us, just and unjust wars, in which global leaders play “apocalyptic chess games” 1 (Arendt 2002, 19), it is timely to give attention to the interplay between social/collective/individual violence and gender and ethnic subject formation. N o sharp line can be drawn between collective and individual experiences of social violence. War and civil unrest are generated out o f circumstances o f individual lives. In turn, individuals experience war and violence out o f their unique subject positions - personalities, histories and predispositions. Nordstrom argues, “war is a cultural system that becomes reproduced on the minutiae o f daily living and constructs of what it means to be human” (2002, 273). Indeed, common military strategies - surveillance, harassment, beating, torture, terrorism, rape, genocide, starvation - are designed to rob the enemy o f personhood, self-worth and group and individual identity. Cultural systems o f terror exert a profound impact on the everyday lives of persons who are not physically affected by them. Their aims are to induce political acquiescence in the masses by altering the basic normalcy of life, with the ultimate objective o f controlling people though the horror o f force. Persons under siege and traumatized by terrorizing systems inhabit a twilight zone of a hostile imag­ inary in which they constantly feel depersonalized, hounded and fearful o f losing their humanity, if not their very lives. T his chapter reads V.S. N aipauls “In a Free State” and Guerillas as studies on the interplay between violence and subjectivity - that is, the “felt, interior expe­ rience o f the person” including ones “position in the field o f relational power” (Das et al. 2000, 1). It explores how violence becomes entangled with the political logic o f identity formation and how the experience of suffering reshapes the individu­ al s relational response to self and the other. It grapples with the strategies employed to mediate terror through narrative in an attempt to understand and, by extension, to produce understanding of a culture of terror. The chapter analyses correlations between apparently irrational acts o f violence in isolated postcolonial territories and the broader forces o f globalization which inform and even generate them. It focuses primarily on three key players in the conflictual scenarios - the oppressed, often con­ structed in these texts as “natives”, the liberals and the revolutionaries. In this reading, correlations between violence and power relations are positioned within the broader framework of “imagined worlds” (Anderson 1983). Subject forma­ tion, even in relation to inhabitants of the so-called geopolitical margins, is impacted by the global cultural flows which Appadurai defines as ethnoscapes (unprecedented

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flows of peoples and ethnicities in multiple overlapping roles - immigrants, tourists, exiles, refugees and so on); mediascapes (flow of mass-mediated images, narratives and information which offer scripts for imagined lives); technoscapes (flows o f tech­ nology driven by the availability of skilled and unskilled labour, money and political possibilities); financescapes (flow o f global capital); and ideoscapes (ideologies and counterideologies which define differential relations to state power). These scapes, Appadurai argues, “are not objectively given relations that look the same from every angle of vision but rather they are deeply perspectival constructs, inflected by the his­ torical, linguistic, and political situatedness o f different sorts of actors” (1996, 33). “In a Free State” and Guerillas explore postcolonial states adjusting to the loosen­ ing o f the imperial yoke. The former is set in the immediate postcolonial period in a newly independent African state. The (non)action unfolds against a background o f civil tribal warfare - ancient animosities reignited to fuel contestation over fragile, emerging nation-statehood.2 Rising terror, rumours and inability to differentiate fact from fiction govern besieged sensibilities. Looming large in the psyche o f the whites in the former text is escape to the epistemological and physical reality o f “Suffafrica” , the bastion of white supremacy and legally entrenched racism. Guerillas, set in the post-independence period, deals with a shadowy attempted coup in an unnamed Caribbean island. The fictional evocation resonates actual events surrounding the establishment, in 1971, o f the Peoples Revolutionary Army s commune in Trinidad. Its founder was Michael De Freitas, alias Michael X, alias Michael Abdul Malik. A Trinidadian who lived in England for fourteen years, Malik worked there as a pimp, drug dealer and gambling-house operator until he was transformed through a religio-political conversion into a famous (for a brief season) Black Power leader and underground poet and writer. Fleeing from the law, he returned to Trinidad in 1971, where he established a revolutionary base in Christina Gardens, Arima. The failed experiment culminated in early 1972; the downward slide was initiated on 2 January 1972, with the murder o f a follower and commune resident, Gail Ann Benson: a rwenty-seven-year-old middle-class English divorcee who was brutally stabbed and buried alive in a shallow grave. The Revolutionary Army also murdered two of its henchmen, Steve Yeates and Joseph Skerritt, in the weeks which followed. Naipaul wrote extensively on this case in pseudo-journalist mode in “The Killings in Trinidad” and turns the scenario into the stuff of fiction in Guerillas. Both evocations reek paradoxically of Naipaul s pro­ found understanding and insight, fused with distancing and contempt.

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In Guerillas, the “revolutionary” leader Jimmy Ahmed demonstrates the impact o f transnational flows o f ideologies on identity formation. Ahmed is fabricated in England by white, predominantly female liberals, whom he claims “come flashing their milk white thighs and think they are contributing to the cause” (1975, 42). Conceivably, these women are operating out of their own anti-establishment quest for liberation, combined with their ideologically motivated appetite for transgressive, interracial sexual adventurism. After facing prosecution for rape in England, Jimmy is deported to the Caribbean, where he seeks to establish an agricultural commune. This anti-historical and anachronistic pursuit is yet another product o f Western binaries. To support a polarized stance in relation to the metropole, the project must needs be land based and communal - an illusory plantation, an edenic mirage now restored to the “natives”. Its failure is practically guaranteed given the existing socioeconomic configuration, the urban slum background o f the youths, and its radical departure from Ahmed s Hakwai (African-Chinese) shopkeeping background.

LIBERALS A N D NATIVES IN A CULTURE OFTERROR Both texts feature white European male liberals fleeing from the collapse o f their cultures and delusions, seeking to create for themselves viable identities in violence-prone former colonies. The thin veneer o f civility which masked the raw violence o f the colonial order has been stripped to reveal the savagery at the core. The texts are littered with signs o f the physical and psychic violence and a culture o f terror which were foundational to the construction of colonial reality in the New World. The systems have collapsed and even the dogs trained to preserve colonial territorial boundaries now roam the streets attacking Europeans instead. As Taussig (2002, 212) argues, terror, which as well as being a physiological state, is also a social fact and a cultural construction whose baroque dimensions allow it to serve as the mediator par excellence o f colonial hegemony. The space o f death is one o f the crucial spaces where Africa, India and Whites gave birth to the New World.3

And Arendt points to an increasing reign o f violence with the diminishing power which led to decolonization: “The point is rule by sheer violence comes into play when power is lo st. . . it was the shrinking power o f European imperialism that became manifested in the alternative between decolonization and massacre” (2002, 33).

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How is the subjectivity o f the “native” constituted and shaped within and by a culture of violence? Demonstrating complicity with the epistemic violence which was inherent in the colonizing impulse, the implied author is scathing and contemp­ tuous in the portrayal o f the African and Afro-Caribbean impoverished, lower-class persons and social groupings. He gives fictional representation to what Achebe terms the myth o f the inherent inferiority of African culture and people, who needed to be rescued from a long, dark night o f savagery. In “In a Free State” the “natives”, with the exception o f senior public servants, are portrayed in various forms o f undress and overdress - stinking hotel attendants dressed in livery, rural boys built like men and fit only for buggery, and overfed uniformed soldiers who delight in gratuitous violence. The imperial civilizing order is a flimsy garb which is swiftly being stripped. The ever-encroaching bush resonates the symbolic presence of Achebes evil forest ( Things F all Apart) or Conrads dark interior (H eart o f Darkness). In both Naipaulian texts, an engulfing spirit o f savagery looms out o f the bush, undermining thought, words and even the remotest possibility o f meaningful action: “As he walked he became aware of the night and the bush; and he was undermined again. Melancholy came over him like fatigue, like rage, like a sense o f doom” (1975, 40). Europe’s civilizing mission is reduced to window-dressing in small isolated areas. An aging relic of British military presence, the colonel, is now an innkeeper in filthy clothes sustained by a steady diet o f hatred for his African servants. His predicament is an individual manifestation o f the “boomerang effect” feared by the English government - that the rule o f subject races in distant lands would infiltrate homeland governments such that the ultimate subject race would become the English themselves (Arendt 2002, 33). The colonel is so tightly connected to the violent abuse o f the other that he becomes, in the long term, as much a subject as he is a perpetrator o f the verbal and epistemic violence, which he metes out as a substitute for dwindling imperial power. Despite tribal polarization, the war is being fought not in the interest o f ancient primordialism but in the interest of what Appadurai terms culturalism: “the conscious mobilization o f cultural differences in the service o f larger national and transnational politics” (1996, 15).4 This is manifested once again in a deliberate play with the signification o f dress. The defeated kings tribe, formerly clothed and dignified road builders, are, as a result of war, transformed into naked, near invisible prisoners. The reign o f terror functions to remove every vestige o f normalcy and to depersonalize the enemy by confiscating even their ability to cover their nakedness. Moreover, they

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are also denuded of the power to create roads - pathways of mobility and escape from the unspeakable obliterating horror of the bush. How is the liberal identity shaped and later reconfigured by war? The rela­ tional power which is open to the imperialists is a kingpin o f Bobby’s “liberal” identity formation. This construction has necessitated a flight away from Britain. Comforted during a nervous breakdown by a fantasy o f a filiative homoerotic relationship with his psychiatrist, he is cut adrift when the psychiatrists wife dismisses him as “one o f Arthurs young queers”. Bobby’s claim that he found him self in Africa poses the issues: what is this Africa and what is the self he con­ structs within this new environment? Bobby’s subject position is predicated on racialized and gendered processes which must be contextualized within power relations of the wider global economy. Although he inhabits an expatriate compound, he cannot locate himself in the settler enclave or in the capital, both remade in the image o f England, expanded and exoticized by tropical landscaping. Instead he “finds” himself in the liminal position between the commune and the bush. And, true to the imperialist mentality, he claims this vast, impervious somnolence as his (p. 117). It is here that he peddles his privileged position within the geopolitical order to fulfil his lust and, in the process, affirm supremacy as a white, wealthy, broad-minded, philanthropic, liberal lover o f Africans. The racialized black male body becomes the canvas on which Bobby inscribes himself: Africa was, for Bobby, the empty spaces, the safe adventure of long fatiguing drive on open roads, the other Africans, boys built like men. You want lift? You big boy, you no go school? No, no, you no frighten. Look, my colour, your colour. I give you shilling buy schoolbooks. Buy books, learn read, get big job. When I born again I want your colour. You no frighten. You want five shillings? Sweet infantilism, almost without lan­ guage: in language lay mockery and self-disgust, (p. 109) It is testimony to his internal emptiness that he commoditizes African males as walking fulfilments of his masturbatory fantasies. He objectifies the boys into lust targets by exploiting their desire for the contra­ dictory sociocultural commodities which pull them into the empty civilizing order from which he is fleeing - the promise o f literacy, education, good jobs - elements which would lend them meaning and personhood in the emerging Eurocentric social order, and escape from the steady pull back into the savagery o f the bush. For his role in the enlightening process, he pays the princely sum o f five shillings. As hegemonic signifier, he constructs his targets exclusively in accordance with their

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compliance with this symbolic order which he peddles. For all who would demand more than he offers, he reserves the destructive power o f naming: “An African whore is a boy who wanted more than five shillings” (p. 110). Bobbys badge of liberalism, his native shirt, externalizes his identification with Africans who wear garments patched with oblongs of red, yellow, green and blue. Rather than spell Africa, the dancing shirt is reminiscent o f the patched harlequin. It transmits both the inauthenticity o f his identification (designed and woven in Holland) and the same-sex preference o f its owner (it was like a smock with short, wide sleeves and a low, open neck). The issue is how does the civil unrest demolish Bobbys carefully constructed liberal façade. With the outbreak of state violence, the spatial frame is reconstructed - the Africa o f the long fatiguing drive and the safe adventure is replaced by the persistent surveillance o f the helicopter, o f army trucks trundling along the highway and the rumour of curfew which restricts mobility. The encounter with the African also changes from the single boys isolated in the intimacy o f the car to the collective grouping o f the army. It is in response to these forces that Bobby is constrained to (re)member himself.5 In both narratives, exposure to violence perpetrated by agents o f the state during periods o f civil strife creates in the liberals fundamental changes in their felt inte­ rior sense o f personhood. The torture suffered by Roche in Guerillas falls within the textbook category defined by the 1984 U N General Assembly Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment: torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as [getting] information . . . punishing . . . intimidating or coercing. . . or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation o f or with the consent o f a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. (1985, 1)

Torture is frequently employed by dictatorships and military regimes to break down the personhood of individuals deemed to be dangerous to the regime and, by exten­ sion, to terrorize whole populations into submission. It is intended to produce sub­ jected docile bodies in the Foucauldian sense of these terms: the body is directly involved in a political field. Power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs . . . the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a produc­ tive body and a subjected body (p. 2 5 -2 6 )6

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War and civil unrest obliterate contemporary notions o f safeguarding humane society by sobriety o f punishments; instead they create justification for savagery. Despite U N resolutions to the contrary, one impact o f war is to transform a human being who deserves to be treated decently into an enemy who must needs be subdued at all cost. This is the point o f issue in the post-9/11 debates over the US soldiers’ torture o f Iraqi prisoners. A reality which will become increasingly sig­ nificant for perpetrators in this time is reconciling ones self-concept as a civilized, humane person with a perceived imperative to assert ascendancy over “the enemy” through torture. And for victims, torture proves to be a life-changing phenom­ enon, sometimes with generational implications, as will be explored in chapter 10 in relation to the Haitian scenario. Roche, liberal author and South African torture hero, is a victim o f torture perpetrated as a part o f a continuum o f repressive totalitarian measures intended to suppress democratic rights and invalidate the human person.7 There are two issues how to reconfigure an identity or “find oneself” in the wake o f torture and, a related issue, how to inscribe a narrative o f torture. On the surface, Roche appears to be physically whole, resilient, reintegrated into community and once again involved in social action intended to benefit the oppressed and disempowered. A closer glimpse indicates the extent to which his reconfigured identity shows tell-tale signs o f the constellation o f psychological consequences and post-traumatic stress associated with survival strategies used to cope with torture. These include guilt, shame, dissociation, rupture, fragmentation, meaninglessness, distancing.8 Hermans analysis o f prolonged torture sees the victim o f the political chamber as being held in the same vise as a victim of domestic violence. The latter may not be held in captivity with barbed wire and guards, but nevertheless is held with binding financial and social constraints. The goal o f the torturer is to subjugate the spirit o f the victim using violence exerted on the flesh. The torturer, whether the battle is domestic or political, seeks “affirmation and respect”, signalling success in the ulti­ mate goal - “the creation o f a willing victim” (1997, 75). Indeed, the most significant indicator of Roches altered sensibility is the extent to which he has internalized the value system which equates the torturer with might and power, and the tortured with weakness and impotence. Manifesting the common symptom o f blame, he suffers severe shame at inhabiting a body which can be subject to torture. Traumatized by the vulnerabilities o f the flesh, he claims in retrospect: “All my life I’ve been frightened o f pain or o f being in a position where pain could be inflicted on me” (p. 212).

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Constrained by his publisher to frame his suffering against the emblematic Jewish Holocaust, he identifies his adolescent response as identification with the victims and shame that the human body could be thus tortured. His experience of torture and survival does not produce a sense of moral vindication, a transcendent victory in the name o f a coherent belief system. Instead, like Bobby, he identifies with “the strong”, his torturers, who he is careful to assert are not thugs and psycho­ paths, but normal, ordinary people: You only have to start. Its the first kick in the groin that matters. It takes a lot to do that. After that you can do anything. You can find yourself kicking a man in the groin until he bleeds. Then you find you’ve stopped tormenting. You have destroyed a human being. You can’t put him together again, and all you can do is throw the bleeding meat out o f the window, at that stage it is so easy. (p. 221)

Note the use of the second-person pronoun as opposed to the distancing third person. He represents torturers as ordinary men who authorize and justify their actions by the state apparatus. The torturer is aligned to a political system geared to induce docility under condi­ tions of totalitarianism and war, but Roche sees this as an extreme end o f a continuum which includes institutions as innocuous and pivotal to human society as the school system. Passive and fundamentally broken in spirit, he has lost the capacity to differ­ entiate between legitimate and illegitimate uses o f discipline: “You must understand that I have always accepted authority. It probably has to do with the school I went to” (p. 74). By regarding his torturers as just another socializing dictatorial authority, he seeks to normalize their actions. Note Roche s emphasis on being kicked in the groin (sexual impotence) and his fixation with the pretend Nazi boots o f the enormous thug who incites him to leave England by threatening to kill him. The ability o f the tortured to testify o f the experience is crucial to recovery because torture is practised in secret, denied in the official narratives and, for the most part, effaced by the wider society. Persons protective o f their sense o f well-being, which is predicated on their notion o f the rightness o f their worlds, are reluctant to entertain testimonies or narratives o f torture. In Roches case, the narratorization of torture goes askew in terms o f both his telling and the reader response. It is to his credit that he breaks the circle o f secrecy and perversion of social reality which surrounds the experience o f torture. He testifies, but his narrative speaks more o f the subtle work­ ings o f post-traumatic stress than anything else. He can embrace no transcendent

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moral or philosophical position; rather he appropriates blame for “finding himself” as a victim (blaming the victim, incoherence); he cynically mocks the naive idealism with which he embarked on a course of action which dismantled his sense o f self (dissociation); he confesses impotence in the face of the fracturing state colossus and the lack o f a coherent, meaningful political agenda (impotence and incoherence). All o f these combine to invalidate his own story by underscoring his inability to locate himself as a credible and authoritative witness. His narrative brings him no real empathy and communal reintegration. He is in the end thrown back into extreme isolation. With the normalization of terror comes extreme gratitude at having access to the simple things o f life: “When I eat food and enjoy it . . . when I lie down in my bed at night and make myself comfortable, I wonder why I am allowed to do so. It would be so easy to take it away from me. It would be so easy to torment me” (p. 222). A most telling statement is his inability to find himself - that is, to recuperate a sense o f identity, trust, confidence in self and purpose in life. Instead, he claims to have built his life on sand. A different dynamic applies to Bobby in “In a Free State”. He guards a deep selfhatred and masochistic impulse beneath a sickly sweet exterior which invites attack from man and beast alike. Bobby vacillates between eruptions o f unwarranted com­ pulsions to inflict pain, defeated by impotence, and an eager acceptance o f abuse. This is the function o f both his liberalism and homosexuality: to incite humilia­ tion —the Zulu who spits in his face, the woman who casually dismantles him with unkind words, the Africans who torture him. Hence both Roches heroic gesture and Bobby’s actions simply invite violence because the way o f the transgressor is extremely difficult. Bobby’s mental illness originally took him into a fantasy of escape which crystal­ lizes in a warm, safe cottage on the top of a hill, “A wish to give up, to be nothing, to do nothing, just watch yourself becoming a ghost.” Bobby had repaired his crushed watch-glass as an indication of re-entry into a shared spatio-temporal reality. During the senseless, violent encounter which signals only shifting power relations within the civil war, the abusive soldier demands this paradoxical symbol of wholeness. With its destruction, the illusion collapses: then he felt the boot on his right wrist and he could have cried then, at the clear pure p a in ,. . . the knowledge that what had been whole all his life had been broken.. . . And then he was on the road again in a bright landscape nervous at his own speed, his tyre cracks and the wet billowing road. (1971, 232)

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REVOLUTIONARIES: FUSING PUBLIC A N D PRIVATE VIOLENCE The final consideration o f this chapter is the subject formation o f the third player - the revolutionary. Guerillas demonstrates the impact of transnational flows of ideologies and people and their relation to acts o f political violence. Jimmy Ahmed, formerly Jimmy Leung - the made-in-England revolutionary - is born in part out o f the failed quests o f liberal women for movers, shakers, doers, male icons, in rela­ tion to whom they can locate themselves. Jimmy is the ontologically insecure, quintessential mimic man/playboy/plaything, and can only locate himself in fictions. Reflecting the pervasive presence of imperial fictional constructs, he names his revolutionary enterprise Thrushcross Grange, bor­ rowed from Brontes gothic romance WutheringHeights. In this paradigmatic narrative, a dark, passionate, upwardly mobile stranger o f gypsy stock threatens the social and familial order traditionally undergirded by marriage and inheritance laws. Reflecting his social pretensions and foreshadowing the failure o f his agricultural endeavour, Jimmy appropriates the name Thrushcross Grange, the seat o f the landed gentry, as opposed to Wuthering Heights, the seat o f the prosperous proprietor/gentleman farmer. Moreover, signalling his perspectival distance from the enterprise and align­ ment with imperial perspectives, he conflates a “rooted” narrative of homecoming with the “migratory” narrative of the exploration. In his ungrammatical, clichéridden communiqué Jimmy writes: All revolutions begin with the land. Men are born on the earth, every man has his one spot, it is his birthright, and men must claim their portion on the earth in brotherhood and harmony. In this spirit we came an intrepid band to virgin forest\ it is the lifestyle and philosophy o f Thrushcross Grange. (1975, 17; our emphasis)

Jimmy is seeking to write a viable identity for himself by transforming the squalour, desolation and hopelessness o f ordinary life through the work of the imagination. Moreover, he is seeking to generate a complex social dialogue between his fabricated idealized identity and a recalcitrant, pragmatic, despairing society which he seeks to fashion into a mirror for his delusions o f grandeur. He vacillates, then, between the sick, nervous excitement of self-delusion and the encroaching gloom o f reality, most often symbolized by the bush. Jimmy’s failure is a direct outgrowth of the epistemic violence which underwrites the colonial and neocolonial endeavour. He fails too to differentiate imagination and fantasy. Great world leaders/visionaries (such as he fancies himself) have always been able to impart and implant vision and thereby engineer

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movements for social change by the power o f the imagination. Jimmy proves to be capable only o f fantasy: Further the idea o f fantasy carried with it the inescapable connection o f thought divorced from projects and actions, and it also has a private, even individualistic sound to it. The imagination, on the other hand, has a progressive sound about it, the sense o f being a prelude to some sort o f expression whether aesthetic or otherwise. Fantasy can dissipate (because its logic is so often autotelic), but the imagination, especially when collective, can become the fuel for action .. . . The imagination today is a staging ground for action and not only for escape. (Appadurai 1996, 7)

Jimmy’s basic instability and insecurity have been blown into monstrous proportions by his becoming the playboy/plaything o f white liberal women. The dangerous dynamic is contained only briefly in his relationship with Bryant, the representative o f the nameless, swarming slum children. In this homosexual union, the loveless and desolate Jimmy finds momentary respite, for in Bryant’s rejection, Jimmy annihilates his own. Jimmy’s relation­ ship with Roche is an unhealthy codependency. The West Indian milieu can ill afford the revolutionary in his commune where (non)action is divorced from pragmatism. Where expediency and economic gain are the order o f the day, idealism gets good publicity mileage but nothing more. It takes anomaly, like Peter seeking a basis to establish himself, to see the Thrushcross Grange venture as anti-historical and egoistical and yet to seriously address himself to the scheme. The liberal fraud and the revolutionary fraud need each other. But the primary locus o f Jimmy’s consciousness is the white female liberals “flashing their milk white thighs.” The promiscuous white woman has figured prominently in every one o f Naipaul’s fictional works since 1967.9 Each character is farther along the continuum o f preserving while prostituting the body. Naipaul builds an entire range o f symbolic associations with whiteness, giving full play to very imaginative possibilities for physical and psychical degradation. It is signifi­ cant too that each character unfolds within the context o f cultural confrontation and, with the possible exception o f Linda, each has interracial sexual liaisons.10 Jane, the fullest and ugliest portrayal o f the white woman, falsely treasures the myth o f her inviolability and her ability to move to the next country, to the next man. All o f Jane’s excessively ugly characteristics are extensions o f her girlishness - her gawkiness, the flaunting of intellectual deficiencies, her rapid alternations between livid anger, charm and boredom. A dry sponge, she becomes a scrambled conglomerate of disparate attitudes, reactions and poses, which she is under no

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constraint to unify. Instead, she constantly seeks in a man for some grand uniting purpose or vision to which she can attach herself. With every failed relationship, she casts herself as a violated victim - an abducted wife, an abused mistress.11 Finally, disillusioned by the decaying old-world culture which can no longer afford the individual heroic status, she follows Roche, the new man o f her dreams, to the new world, to witness a drama in which she casts him in the lead role. Her characterization remains a most unpleasant caricature, the embodiment of a distasteful concept. Her biggest indictment is her insistence on embracing what Becker terms “a romantic solution to the problem o f cosmic heroism” (1972, 160) - that is, a yearning to enter into perfection by joining ones destiny to a perfect love object. In terms o f gender construction, Jane is an anachronism. She is the traditional romantic fairy-tale princess adrift in perilous times, waiting passively to be kissed awake and constructed by Prince Charming. Since she assumes no responsibility for her mode o f being, her anguish arises not over herself but in relation to the absence o f the ideal male. Janes orifices suck - witness the graphic images o f her big, ugly, swallowing kiss and her exposed tampon-swallowing vulva. Yet she remains rooted and secure, a sea anemone waving its tentacles, symbolically linked to a fearsome femaleness - the Gorgon - which derives literally from the phrase “the moon as it is terrible to behold . . . a formidable guardian o f the deeply feminine, who makes men marble with too much conceiving” (Shuttle and Redgrove 1978, 45). Naipaul s indictment extends beyond Becker’s “romantic solution” to address how man is to merge himself with some high, self-absorbing meaning in trust and grati­ tude. According to Becker, The point is that if the love object is divine perfection, then ones own self is elevated by joining ones destiny to it. One has the measure for one’s ideal-striving; all o f ones inner conflicts and contradictions, the many aspects o f guilt - all these one can try to purge in a perfect consummation with perfection itself. (1972, 161)

This is what Jane, with her ungainliness, screaming eyes and gobbling kiss, is seeking through union with the perfect man. It is for this she grieves: “she fancied herself speaking with tears, like a child: Tve looked everywhere. I’ve looked and looked.’” She offers sex not merely because she is a promiscuous, fornicating animal but in the grand illusory expectation of gaining heroic stature through union with the perfect man. The disjuncture between reality and illusion disallows her from active participa­ tion and generous involvement in the sex act. The prevailing pattern is dissociation,

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indifference, aggression, all of which elicit violence from her partners (striking or forced anal entry), then come sexual excitement and masochistic submission to vio­ lence. She can welcome and enjoy the violent attention for which she acknowledges no responsibility while leaving herself and her ultimate quest inviolate. It is symbolically appropriate that Jane should find her nemesis in Jimmy. The encounter between Jimmy and Jane represents a clash o f signifiying systems. Her fatal error is to have bought into the phallocentric signifying order in which she is a lack, absence or vacuum seeking to be filled with meaning. Jimmy, on the other hand, is trapped in the imperialist signifying system, constantly courting the gaze of the white other in order to realize himself. Hence, she becomes for him the faceless Clarissa/Marjorie/Jane conglomerate which represents all the white women whom he has courted to ascribe meaning to himself. And since he assumes the position o f the other/oppressed/subjugated/dominated, he experiences his bisexuality by regularly inhabiting the illusory white-woman perspective the better to inscribe Jane s yearning for his powerful heroic male presence. Indeed, the only way he can write himself into being in a masculinist signifying economy is by investing in the subordinated female perspective of the mesmerized rabbit. The fatal resolution of Guerillas exemplifies the complex interweave o f the dis­ parate forms o f subjectivity and violence - epistemic/ideological, physical/psychic, sexual/transsexual, private/public, local/global, interethnic/intraethnic. It is in a vain attempt to realize his illusory identity that Jimmy perceives that Jane does come “like a mesmerized rabbit” to succumb to his abuses. And Jimmy, by inflict­ ing pain as power over her, dissipates his own powerlessness. In her suffering, he watches himself expand to the required greatness, to the stature he sought to authenticate in his writing. The failure o f the ill-conceived uprising deprives Jimmy o f the self-construct o f revolutionary leader. He desperately needs Bryant’s gaze and Clarissas/Janes affirmation to avoid existential annihilation. However, in the murder/sacrifice, a crucial element is denied him. The narrative o f the gang rape appealed so strongly to Jimmy that he (like Jane) could only allevi­ ate and disguise his sexual inadequacy in forceful violation, affirming his illusory strength and power followed by recognition o f his heroism, reflected by the love and gratitude o f the raped girls “fear turning to love” as she drinks water from his cupped hands. This is his affirmation that the pain he inflicts is experienced not as pain but as subjugation, willingly acknowledged and received. However, at the moment of death, Janes eyes close, destroying Jimmy’s reflection.

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He saw the day o f sun at the beach, sea sky bright beyond the coconut grove, the girl bleeding on the fender o f the motor car, accepting water from the cupped hands, and love coming to her frightened eyes. But the eyes below him were closed. They knew nothing; they acknowledged nothing; they had taken away everything with them. He entered a void; he disappeared in that void. Then he was lost, lost since the beginning o f time. But time had no beginning. And he was disembodied. He was nothing more than this sense o f loss that grew deeper and deeper as he awakened to it; he would have liked to scream for relief. (1975, 243)

As in the private, so in the political domain. Jimmys act is exposed as impotence reaching in vain for violence to assuage increasing disempowerment. As Arendt argues, “impotence breeds violence. . . . Politically speaking, the point is that loss of power tempts into substituting violence for power” (2002, 33). To substitute violence for power exacts a terrible cost.

C O N C L U SIO N This chapter explored the impact of cultural systems of terror on individual subject formation. These fictional evocations sketch several disturbing characters and social scenarios. The chapter explores acts of murderous violence which are related to the search for significance in lives which have become perverted, distoned and undervalued by epistemological violence of racist and patriarchal ideologies. Transnational flows of ideologies between so-called First and Third worlds, which were instituted with impe­ rialism, have entered into a vigorous but no less insidious second phase. The infusion of warped ethnic and gender politics combines with anti-establishment ideologies to produce out of young and not so young males half-baked revolutionaries. Naipaul skil­ fully presents papier-mache figures modelled on true-life characters and events, fabricated out of fragments of inflammatory ideas, propped up by illusory, ego-inflating interracial sexual fantasy and practices. This type finds an answering resonance in “liberated” white females thirsty for significance, for connection with ennobling greatness and for inter­ racial sexual adventurism. The dangerous brew erupts in sexual violence and murder. Naipaul intertextually connects Guerillas with the quintessential Bronte romances Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, both of which simultaneously contain and legiti­ mize boundary-crossing romantic liaisons. Jane Eyre portrays Rochester as purified from lascivious sexual indulgence with his tainted creole wife by the consuming fire, the love of plain Jane and a return to pure faith. Guerillas revisits the Roche-Jane

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liaison with unwholesome, even fatal, consequences for the aging, socially impotent hero and the ugly, immoral heroine. Naipauls novels, like Lammings, explored in chapter 8, imply that the violent dynamic which was inherent in the confrontations between worlds has not yet worked itself out, and interracial sexual violence remains a key dimension o f its contemporary outworking. In terms of the full effects of violence on the abused, the chapter hints at a surprising possibility. It focuses on a person who appears to have survived torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment, written about it, and successfully reintegrated into society. It intimates that even a person who has testified of his torture and has received communal recognition, to the extent of being acclaimed as a torture hero, may still be manifesting the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The following chapter, which focuses on modes of reiteration and reconstruction, will explore further what is required to reconstruct ones subjectivity and significance and being in the world in the aftermath of violence. Finally, as long as wars rage, their disastrous outworkings in social relations and collective and individual identity formation will remain to be reckoned with. In 1915, Sigmund Freud, decrying the inability of civilized persons to find an alternative to conflict resolution (and specifically, given the prevailing ethnocentrisms o f his time, of “the great world-dominating peoples of the white race upon whom the leadership of the human species has fallen”), declared: The war exceeds all limitations instituted during peacetime and known as International Law . . . ; it ignores the prerogatives of the wounded and o f the physician, the distinction between civil and military sections o f the population, the claims o f private property. It overwhelms with blind rage anything that stands in its way as though there were to be no future and no peace afterwards. (1953-74, 279)

Presumably, at the time o f his writing, the only constraint which war entertained was the limitation on its own power. The technological sophistication o f our world has lifted this. A technologically proficient, boundaryless world virtually possesses the power to exert violence that knows no boundaries, except the value that we place on human life itself. Man now has gained the power of global self-destruction. The imperative to work towards a measure o f peace can be equated in our time with whether or not we will choose life. The more we as individuals and communities and nations fail to know and understand each other, give way to a purple haze o f blind rage, yield to the impulse to level everything in our path, deny the common creatureliness and interdependence of man, the closer we come to self-annihilation.

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CHAPTER 10 Narrative as Palliative in Danticat’s Fiction

When there’s anguish in Port-au-Prince Its still Africa crying We’re outing fires in faraway places When our neighbours are just burning They say the Middle Passage is gone So how come overcrowded boats still haunt our lives I refuse to believe that we good people would forever turn Our hearts and eyes away Haiti Im sorry But one day we’ll turn our heads Restore your glory - David Rudder, “Haiti, I’m Sorry”

IN T R O D U C T IO N Female writers o f the African diaspora have explored the potential o f physical and psychic violence and specifically the violence of slavery and its outworkings to usher

its victims into a liminal, nightmarish state. Erna Brodber came to creative expres­ sions as she sought for a tool to communicate to the “children o f the people who were put on ships on the African beaches and woke up from this nightmare to find themselves on the shores o f the New World” (1990, 164).1 And Toni Morrison wrote Beloved to unearth the child lovingly murdered by her runaway slave mother to prevent re-enslavement.2 Morrisons aim was to rescue the ghost child Beloved from the nightmare o f in-betweenity and thereby to unsilence slavery’s violated, traumatized, aborted and murdered ones. The narrator declares paradoxically: “This is not a story to pass on” (1987, 260). This statement plays with a dual impera­ tive - it is the necessity to put the ghost/narrative to rest and not pass it on; on the other hand, it is the imperative not to pass on/bypass submerged traumas and psychic wounds so deep, so festering, so systemic that they threaten to rupture to create dis/ease and mayhem in families, communities and nations, even centuries later. Edwidge Danticat’s chronicles o f traumas of Haitian societies and the vio­ lence wrought against and by its peoples explore the imperative and potentialities o f passing on nightmares as “heirlooms”. There is no escaping a legacy o f nightmares o f violence. Nightmares, like vio­ lence, do not knock politely to ask admission. Violence can create injury to the body or mind which requires structural repair. Intense violence has the power to change ones relationship to self, to ones body, to ones community. It changes ones precon­ ceived notion about the world and ones place in the world; it can create mental and physical disorientation and can result in loss of hope. Violence breaches ones inner fortress and pillages ones resources. It is as if the parameters o f ones world fall apart, leaving one wide open and vulnerable, without boundaries and without a safe place. Nightmares belong to realms of intense and exaggerated, surreal horrors which are experienced substantively in the psyche. They are characterized by intangibility and yet a piercing ability to penetrate beneath the surface of reality. Our worst fears are often vented in nightmares. Unreality is their mitigating factor. Where lived reality takes on the quality o f nightmare, where it becomes a collective horror o f epic pro­ portions involving a range o f actors, where denial and erasure abound on individual and national and transnational bases, there is an ethical imperative to articulate the grim reality and to pass it on. It is out o f the conviction o f the inadvisability, if not impossibility, o f erasing nightmares o f violence that women writers o f the African diaspora undertake

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a task o f reconstructive memory; that is, they unearth “nightmares” o f history. These silenced and submerged pasts are disclosed to become the core o f con­ temporary narratives to be written and read against contemporary political scenarios and ideological minefields. The narratives then become platforms for individual and collective reconstruction. De Vries and Weber point to the “ethical imperative o f bearing witness” which emerges as a possible response to the resurgence o f the most brutal and immediate physical violence which char­ acterizes our time (1997, 9). Morrison, Brodber and Danticat arguably set out to fulfil such an ethical imperative and invite readers to take note and, in turn, to become witnesses. The issues are: how do the historical and contemporary practices o f state and political violence impact upon the material conditions o f the individuals life, and particularly on womens lives? In the face o f unmitigated violence which endures over generations, what does this violence come to mean? In other words, how do the writers contextualize violence historically, politically and culturally? How can a world shattered by violence be reconfigured in narrative? Moreover, what symbols, metaphors and motifs are deployed in the process o f constructing these narratives? In a scenario where the most valuable legacy is the nightmare of unmitigated terror and trauma, what is the benefit o f the telling and what palliative impact can such narratives have? Horovitz (2000, 6), posing the question “How can such a lost, indefinable existence be narratively represented?” asks: Can narrative itself, by compelling victim-survivors to remember and to repeat stories suffused with terror, panic and pain, serve a palliative role in the healing process? Cer­ tainly psychoanalysis believes that crucial to recovering from an experience o f trauma is the capacity and willingness to incorporate that traumatic event inside oneself as an indistinguishable piece o f personal history and identity. Since narrative . . . is inextri­ cably entwined with memory and the process o f remembering, the greater ones ability to “make story” out o f trauma . . . the more likely s/he is to regain control o f his or her life after that trauma.

The power of retelling traumatic experiences has already been demonstrated in chapter 5, with the personal narratives o f Haitian women who have been able to tell their experience to another and, in the telling, come to terms with disempowering identity constructions imposed by the powers that control and violate them. Through their speaking, they reconstruct themselves as empowered survivors.

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IMPACT OF VIO LENCE O N W O M E N ’S LIVES Haiti occupies a paradoxical position in the league of nations. The site o f the first black republic to have wrested its independence from colonial powers, in 1804, the nation and its people have been demonized for daring to consider their right to be free and more so for going on to seize that freedom. This is an assault that the Western world cannot readily forgive and will not forget. In retaliation, the representational and political war rages. Since then, Haiti has been subject to a virulent externally and internally generated history o f violence and oppression that culminated in 2004, the bicentennial anniversary of the Haitian Revolution, in the ousting o f the Haitian president, followed by a brief stint of American occupation, ongoing civil unrest and enduring hopelessness about the potential to recuperate the nation. Danticat s narratives instruct in a grim lesson - violence is violence whatever the specificity o f the historical, political and domestic determinants. Its consequences are remarkably consistent whatever the cause. And womens disempowered positions in human societies dictate that they suffer a disproportionate share o f the outcome of state, societal and family violence. The violent traumas experienced by Danticat s pro­ tagonists crisscross and multiply in all of their complex interlocking manifestations. Moreover, in Danticat s reading o f Haitian society, it is imperative not to forget. Her narratives are an extension of an oral tradition intended to record the stuff o f life. Danticat deploys what Gay Wilentz terms oraliterature3 to convey a multitude of personal and collective crises, where necessary rescuing them from the sea of oblivion and by extension passing them on as indirect or vicarious traumas - that is, traumas passed from generation to generation through symbiosis, empathy, attachment, enmeshment, personal or collective identification, parenting and acculturation. Krik? Krak! (1991), Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) and The Farm ing o f Bones (1998) all rehearse the impossibility of containing and isolating acts o f violence. Danticat explores the Dominican Republic dictator Generalissimo Rafael Trujillos ethnic cleansing of Haitian migrants at the border which separates that nation from the Dominican Republic. This policy to “de-Africanize” the Dominican border resulted in the mass slaughter o f thirty-five thousand Haitians at the River Massacre (the pivotal incident o f The Farm ing o f Bones). The act is perpetrated against young people who have witnessed and who constantly relive through dreams and retell­ ings the loss o f their parents through natural disaster. Genocide compounds this intimacy trauma, creating in its wake loss o f love and potentiality to marry and

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bear progeny, and loss o f a sense o f being in the world {The Farm ing o f Bones). Absences and pain remain fresh sources o f indirect trauma as generation after generation o f women take their progeny to the river to introduce their children, through narrative, to the presences o f their foremothers who suffered and died at the river o f blood (“Nineteen Thirty-Seven”). Danticats interrelated narratives serve to expose the rhizomic root which runs underground to crop up anew in successive generations. The consequences of vio­ lence create a complex interlocking mosaic which cannot be fully understood, the telling of which cannot be complete, until every fragment is drawn in, scrutinized and set in place. The narrative structure o f Krik? Krak! reflects this process o f setting the fragments in place. The structure of the text reflects the process and power of narrative. Each short story in the volume omits vital information which is filled in in subsequent segments, leaving a trail o f clues and a dense interlocking network which is both relational and causal. In “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” a nameless protagonist, mentally desta­ bilized by repeated miscarriages and her husband s adulteries, finds a dead infant on the street, names and lovingly tends the corpse until its decay forces her to try to bury her beloved Rose in the garden o f her rich employers. At this point she is caught. The story ends with the promise of police prosecution for necromancy hanging over her head. The reader is acutely aware o f her vulnerability to being implicated because of her inability to tell this bizarre story. In this pivotal narrative, which is located half­ way through the collection Krik? Krak! (the fifth o f nine stories), crucial narrative and relational strands are connected which pull the entire volume together: Mama had to introduce me to them, because they had all died before I was born. There was my great grandmother Eveline who was killed by Dominican soldiers at the Massacre River. My grandmother Defile who dies with a bald head in a prison, because God had given her wings. My godmother Lili who killed herself in old age because her husband jumped out o f a flying balloon and her grown son left her to go to Miami. (1991, 94)

To learn o f the interrelatedness o f the protagonists is to learn o f the dense network o f violence and trauma which links the women back through time. The root cause is fear o f otherness. It is racism which impels the ethnic cleansing, perpetrated by Dominican chief o f state General Trujillo, which takes Evelines life; fear o f otherness based on gender and supernatural power which dictates that Defile be executed in a prison built to constrain the nocturnal activides of lougaroux

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(“Nineteen Thirty-Seven”); violence against the self which takes the lives o f both Lili and her husband. The husband is emasculated by the social superstructure and opts instead to fly, thus resonating the myth o f the flying African. He leaps to his death from a hot-air balloon. And this against the framework o f his sons re-enactment of the heroism o f Boukman, the Jamaican maroon who played a pivotal role in the 1804 rebellion. Male aspiration, underachievement and failure are foregrounded against the haunting, larger-than-life historic victory, which sets up an unreachable standard of heroism for men of successive generations. Lili eventually succumbs to loneliness and despair. When systemic violence becomes so great as to overwhelm inner resources to deal with its outworking, the recourse is violence against the self (“A Wall o f Fire Rising”). And it is the culmination o f forces - state violence, racism, obeah and self-inflicted violence — that will ensure that, generations after, the protagonist o f “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” (whom we can infer from “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” is named Josephine) will face prosecution in Port-au-Prince. The traumatic engagements with myriad forms o f violence are passed, as it were, through the bloodstream o f inheritance as surely as genealogy is transmitted, and this notwithstanding the death o f the predecessors. Within the Haitian context, the ontological violence which was endemic to slav­ ery s racist ideologies is a particularly vigorous rhizomic root. The Farming o f Bones and “Nineteen Thirty-Seven “ demonstrate Balibar and Wallersteins contention that it is spurious to establish division between a racism of extermination or elimination and a racism o f oppression or exploitation - “the one aiming to purify the social body of the stain or danger the inferior race may represent, the other seeking by contrast to create hierarchized partitioned society”. They contend and Danticats texts indicate that neither exists in a pure form: “a determinate racist configuration has no fixed frontiers; it is a stage in a development which has its own latent potentialities as well as historical circumstances and the relations o f force within the social formations will shunt around within the spectrums o f possible racisms” (1988, 40). One manifestation o f racism is violence against the other based on the perceived danger that difference based on race may hold for the collectivity or body politic. Safeguarding self and state from this danger requires a range o f more or less violent interventions ranging from exclusion based on assumptions of inferiority, through marginalization in relation to powerful social positions, to the ultimate elimination or genocide. In The Farming o f Bones, Danticat also illuminates the other face o f racism, that is, the inability to sustain the notion that the target o f the racist impulse

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is different enough for it to matter. This yields the sneaking suspicion that the other may in fact be the mirror image o f the self. This is where difference based on gender begins to take on meanings. In The Farm ing o f Bones, the Haitian infant Amabelle loses her parents through their drowning at the border and is adopted into the family o f Don Ignacio as a companion for his motherless young daughter, Valencia. The girls grow like sisters until they become teenagers. Then inequity in social stature shows itself in Amabelles relegation to servant status in the household. As a result o f the state-motivated massacre of Haitians, the intimacy between the women is dis­ solved abruptly; in addition, Amabelle loses her lover and future. Where the women would have continued to build bridges o f friendship and cooperation, the men opt for ethnic war. The irony is that Valencias husband, a military officer who directs the execution, is, judging from the hue o f his daughter, tarred with the same “blackness” that the ethnic purging is seeking to eliminate. Valencia has some sense that to have lost her childhood companion is to have lost a dimension o f self. The functionaries who implement state violence, of whom the husband is a representative, remain as dense as the proverbial block of wood. Their inability to know the Haitians is a mere reflection o f their inability to know themselves. In the fleshing out o f the impact o f state or institutional violence on the material conditions of individual lives, Danticat points to an underlying logical flaw - for the Dominicans, it is not the Haitian presence that is the other; Haiti comes to represent the dark underbelly o f the self. One cannot destroy the Haitian without mutilating the self. A recurrent symbol o f the violence which permeates Haitian womens lives sur­ faces in the form of dead, disfigured and stillborn babies. The dead baby Rose of “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” is a more powerful symbol o f loss than if she had been the protagonist s own stillborn child. She represents both her inabil­ ity to have a child o f her own and her sheer desperation, as reflected in her crazed inability to differentiate a dead child from a living one. In “Carolines Wedding”, the structural violence of poverty and deprivation drives the family to America through a dubious immigration scheme. In the promised land, they encounter institutional violence after the mother is arrested as an illegal immigrant, in the form o f an injected sedative which results in malformation o f her three-month-old fetus. Carolines stumpy arm symbolizes both technological violence which the family faces in the United States and the loss o f the Haitian homeland, which is akin to losing a limb. Thus Danticat reminds us that, notwithstanding the brutality

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and intensity o f unmitigated state violence in Haiti, those who are lucky enough to successfully migrate do so at tremendous sacrifice and risk. It is in Breath, Eyesy Memory and “Children o f the Sea” that babies come to represent most directly beloved, violence-ridden Haiti and its inability to come to fruition as a nation. The children featured here are the progeny o f the dreaded Tonton Macoutes - a rural militia used by Duvalier to create political subjugation. They came to be known as the dew-breakers because o f their propensity to carry out their nefarious activities in the early hours o f the morning. Significantly, before the Macoutes stalked the land, they inhabited the psychic terrain, living in mythol­ ogy as the Haitian counterpart o f the universal bogeyman used by generations o f parents to threaten badly behaved children with the risk o f being carried away. This relatively benign traditional mythological figure predated the walking nightmares, who fed in turn into a contemporary mythology o f state terrorism to create a cycle in which myth, nightmare and reality achieved a seamless blending. Danticat reveals perpetrators who themselves have become victims o f state vio­ lence, as their childhood innocence and potential for balance and judgement are replaced by an implacable, blind and murderous heartlessness. Servants of suc­ cessive regimes, these youthful torturers can hardly pause to ask whose uniform must I wear today and who is my enemy? (“The Missing Peace”) The lack o f such knowledge causes young men to turn guns on each other. Their arsenal o f terror­ ist strategies, including gender-based violence, is designed to strike dread into the entire society and to dismantle the humanitarian basis of community. Moreover, it results in the fathering o f progeny who, but for the healing power o f community, would be the walking powder kegs o f a new generation. The Macoutes ripen into adults who would deliberately destabilize a persons mode o f being such that it becomes difficult, if not untenable, for them to continue to live with the persons they are constrained to become. This dehumanization is devastating for persons who are forced under gunpoint to violate their deepest sexual taboos - men who are constrained to have sex with their daughters and with their mothers, after which the Tonton Macoutes arrest and even execute them for vice. This disassembling o f the inner being and erosion o f righteousness in the service o f repressive government becomes the greatest threat to the well-being o f its citizens. The distinguished feature o f the violence produced by the state is the loss o f distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence. In “Children of the Sea” the Tonton Macoutes terrorize a neighbour

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ostensibly to find her son who has committed “treason”, whom, incidentally, they have already beheaded. The dilemma for the man next door, who is crouched hiding with his family in the latrine, is if I should emerge to help, my family and I will be killed; if I do not emerge my sense o f myself as my brothers keeper and a just man who stands bravely in the face o f injustice will be destroyed. The point o f issue is not the individual s heroism or lack thereof; it is his survival. Thus the state machinery garners the power to become a purveyor o f violence with greater efficiency, greater reach, greater complicity from the subjugated population, and greater “legitimacy” than other purveyors o f the same. The state also functions in protection racketeering in which they create the crimes - largely treason, for dis­ loyalty against the state - pass the judgement; debase and humiliate their targets; and extort protection money from these already impoverished citizens in return for sparing their lives. It is these scenarios, compounded by poverty and absence o f opportunity, which drive the Haitian citizenry to despair. Traumatized and terrorized by a state which eats her children, they opt instead for the treacherous crossing by boat in a migration which shadows the slave journey and prompts calypsonian David Rudder to sing, “They say the Middle Passage is gone / So how come over­ crowded boats still haunt our lives.” Such is the state violence which leads Celeste in “Children o f the Sea” to buy passage on a boat bound for Miami but fated never to arrive. Raped and impregnated by the Tonton Macoutes, she succumbs to despair and rolls slowly into the ocean waves after summoning up the courage to throw away her stillborn baby. Rape in a cane field by an unknown masked man who is assumed to be a Macoute fatally mars sixteen-year-old Martine Caco (Breath, Eyes, Memory). The location is significant because it points to the abuses inherent in forced and voluntary labour within the death-generating cane fields in a process which is akin to “the farming o f bones” (1998, 55). Moreover, the location points backwards to the sexual abuses endured by generations o f women in cane fields as part of slavery’s mechanism o f dominance. It intimates that generations later the daughters o f the diaspora are not free from this grim legacy, wielded now by new recipients o f “power”. The horror o f rape is heightened by the fact that her assailant is masked and Martine confronts him for the first time in the face o f her daughter, with whom she is reunited after twelve years. This, and her own pregnancy by a loving man in a nurturing rela­ tionship later, stimulates the classical symptoms o f post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Traumas quality o f belatedness is rooted in the protective device o f dissociation and distancing o f the conscious memory while the event is taking place. Yet the body remembers even when the mind cannot immediately take in the full horror of the event. The body remembers the plunder, the horror o f not seeing the face and the eyes o f the opponent as he plunges deep for rage and for pleasure. And the sensorimotor memory o f the panic, the fear, the vulnerability, triggers an almost nightly reliving o f the nightmare o f rape, which can only be stilled as she plunges a knife seventeen times into the fetus which becomes the enemy, assumes the iden­ tity o f the rapist, entrenches her shame, curses her as a filthy whore. The nature o f the speaking is significant. The unborn child articulates the rapists disavowal of blame for the violent sexual encounter and the victims appropriation o f self-blame for that which she could not avoid. This is echoed in society’s propensity to blame the victim. Stillborn, deformed, mutilated, murdered babies are representative o f the Haitian society’s inability to come to fruition, birth and maturity. They also symbolize women’s unique vulnerability to the interplay o f private and public violence by dint of their reproductive capability and the power of their mother love. A final consideration in the interconnected web of violence is the internalized patriarchal strictures which establish older women as the custodians o f the sexual purity o f their offspring. Like Africa’s female practitioners o f cliterodectomy, mothers guard the virginity o f their children by inserting a pinky into their vagina to determine if the hymen is intact. The abhorrence with which the daughters endure the testing is insufficient to release them from the impulse to themselves become the testers o f a succeeding generation. To avoid this humiliation, Sophie horribly mutilates herself with a pestle, an instrument closely associated with Haitian culinary culture because it is used to grind its unique spices. And it is the self-wounding which brings her full circle. An unbroken circle begins with a mother who was raped and thereby alienated from sexual pleasure and moves to a daughter who mutilates herself to avoid abusive patriarchal strictures and to express internalized shame and self-contempt and is thereby alienated from sexual pleasures for life —both self-mutilators by the knife or by bulimia, both insomniacs, for to sleep brings the inevitability o f nightmares. Cartographies o f pain etched on women’s bodies; cycles of generationally transferred traumas begging for interruption, for healing. Such is the nature o f the nightmare which Danticat evokes. The second part o f this paper turns attention to the process o f healing.

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THE THERAPEUTIC POW ER OF NARRATIVE Krik? Krak! is a call to storytelling based on the interplay between the traditional African griot and audience in the collective storytelling ritual. The invitation is to participate in a story that may be voiced by an individual but is in reality a dimen­ sion o f a collective continuity, the telling o f which continues without end, since every time the listener says “Krik?” there is an answering “Krak”. The result unites participants in a shared, warm, pleasurable experience. Oral narrative, like drama, takes on a certain spatio-temporal materiality. It invites the teller and listener to come face to face. To the extent that storytelling evokes sympathetic identification, the teller invites the listener to take a stance or position in relation to the characters and the narrative event. In rehearsing stories of trauma and injustice, this sympathetic identification takes on a deeper significance. It creates an opportunity to destabilize prejudicial assumptions in relation to every character and scenario which is being explored. This in a case when, arguably, an enabling environment for ongoing oppression and injustice has been gen­ erated by distancing, masking and erasure in relation to its target population. Storytelling works on multiple levels. It represents insistence on the humanity and the individuality of the other, where acts o f ontological and state violence are predi­ cated on dissociation. Moreover, the stories make connection between violence and material life conditions rather than facilitate assumptions that persons live as they do because they are lazy, because they deserve to, because they are poor, because they are stupid, because they are ignorant, and the list goes on. . . . The stories carve through these circular and prejudicial assumptions and make connections clear. Although the plight o f Danticats protagonists stands as representative o f the suf­ ferings o f all people like themselves, she steers clear o f the representational dynamic o f the slave narrative. The slave narrative constructed its story o f suffering on behalf o f the masses with the intent o f generating consciousness and even more so a call to corrective action. Speaking for the collectivity invariably demanded the repression o f personal voice and individual preference and suppression o f any element that would poison the readers’ reception and prejudice the desired outcome. Conversely, Danticats characters are extremely diverse and individualistic; in short, they are ordinary people with ordinary weaknesses, needs, hopes and aspirations. Several of the narratives are focused thematically on the process and impact o f making stories out of traumas. Danticat s stories pass from generation to generation

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within the bloodstream o f inheritance. Although the fathers retain a measure of involvement, storytelling is predominandy the preserve o f the women. In a society in which crises and social unrest take lives casually and efficiently such that human existence is cheapened, persons are cherished through narrative and their memories kept alive intergenerationally through sisterhood. The young girls are drawn into the female-centred networks and introduced to all o f their foremothers, dead and alive. The foremothers are reconstructed in relation to their suffering. Bloodlines are significant but so too are sororities o f suffering such as that which springs up in rela­ tion to the survivors at the River Massacre. The sisterhood is defined and perpetuated through storytelling games which serve as both kinship and identification and which, as a socialization mechanism, are so intense and binding that the assumption is that if you know the storytelling games, your ancestors were there, and by extension you were there and your heart is one with mine. As indicated by Rocio Davis (2001, 68), D anticats narratives present the voices and visions o f women, usually mothers and daughters whose personal tragedies impel them to form community in the midst o f oppression and exile . . . the telling o f stories heals past experiences o f loss and separation; it also forges bonds between women by preserving tradition and female identity as it converts stories o f oppression into parables o f self affirmation and individual empowerment.

In “Carolines Wedding”, the stories of suffering persist even in metropolitan exile when other customs and rituals surrounding marriage and death fade. The free asso­ ciation game, which can wind on for hours, requires the constant repetition of the key word “loss”. The story of the boat people all presumed dead in “Children o f the Sea” miraculously survives so that their loss can be mourned in “Carolines Wedding”, for stories have power and life which transcend accepted avenues o f transmission. Whatever else happens to the people, their stories live, and they live through stories. Heirlooms become significant as they guarantee a place in this storytelling matrilineage, such that a child whose mother dies without receiving an inheritance is sorely disadvantaged to the extent that she must reconnect with her mother in order to create one. In this equation, it is the death o f the mother with the passing of the narrative as heirloom which fixes the female progeny squarely within the matrilineage and which makes her a woman. In “The Missing Peace”, the daughter Emilie must return to the probable site o f her mothers grave in Ville Rose, and while there construct her own heirloom - a quilt o f fragments loosely sewn onto a fabric o f purple, which is the mothers favourite colour. The fragments represent her mothers

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treasured relational memories, including a square of her wedding dress and a bit o f her babys blanket. The daughter cannot become a woman until she reconstructs her mother’s heirloom and drapes herself with the quilt whose loosely sewn squares are already falling apart. The central motif of “The Missing Peace” signifies Danticat s kinship with contem­ porary griots who are “making story” out of women’s versions of collective historical trauma of the African diaspora. The colour and symbolic quilting link the story intertextually with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) and her grassroots definition of womanism: “A womanist is also defined as a lover o f music, dance, love and food and roundness,* o f ‘individual men’ and other women ‘sexually and/or nonsexually\ Although the womanist appreciates and prefers women’s culture’ . . . [she is] ‘com ­ mitted to survival and wholeness of the entire people, male and female’ . . . Woman­ ist is to feminist as purple is to pink” (1984, xi-xii).4 The motif o f the purple-backed quilt impliedly links Danticat to a womanist as opposed to a feminist agenda and a vision o f black communalism as opposed to feminist separatism. Walker uses quilting as a symbol of African American cultural continuity and o f repressed female creativity and the functional beauty o f craft for everyday use. It represents the art of creating order and wholeness out o f fragments and waste. For Walker’s protagonist, quilting becomes a medium to order and recall the past, using raw material that is closely associated with domestic pursuits and which, for women, would tend to function as a more effective trigger o f memory and measure o f time than dates, times and seasons o f linear, historical time. Danticat extends the image to convey a process of retrieving a life wasted by mindless state aggression from the oblivion o f an ignominious death and an unmarked grave in order to cherish its achievement and celebrate its continuance in its progeny. Emilie weaves the rem­ nants o f a life into a loosely constructed mantle which empowers her as a grieving daughter to drape herself with ancestry. And the youthful guide, having witnessed the process, changes her name from La Morte (Death) which describes the tragic circumstance o f her birth on the day her mother died. She takes instead her mother’s name, Marie Magdalene. The healing power o f narrative is associated then with the ability to assume a place in a chain o f continuity, being, affirmation, self-naming, rootedness and connection. A key coping strategy in facing the grimmest scenario is to be found in the use o f myth to reconfigure narratives o f despair into narratives o f hope. The fiction deploys personal mythology and mythology drawn from the African cosmology

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and especially those myths which were originally deployed to explain the harsh realities o f slavery- Personal mythology creates explanations based on the interven­ tion o f nature and the supernatural, often to account for the unspeakable. Danticat draws the recurrent motifs o f flying and drowning from the pool of communal myths that figured escape for enslaved Africans from life scenarios which have become unbearable. The myth o f the flying African originated in the impulse to explain the fate o f the African slaves who responded to their oppressive condition by leaping off the decks o f slave ships. The myth, operating to affirm transcendence in the face of loss, tells that these slaves were so spiritually empowered that they walked off the decks of those ships and did not stop walking until they reached Guineas shores. The oral narratives record that some escaped by flying and others by drowning. Hence, Danticat s boat people on a sinking craft in the middle o f the ocean rehearse another myth: “As though the very day that my mother birthed me she had chosen me to live life eternal, among the children of the deep blue sea, those who have escaped the chains o f slavery to form a world beneath the heavens and the blood-drenched earth where you live” (1991, 27). Note though that the myths are deployed not as a sufficient explanation for reali­ ties too grim to bear but as a palliative. The myth provides hope that the husband who floats away from humiliation and emasculation in the hot-air balloon to crash in a suicidal leap at his family’s feet, in some miraculous essential manner which transcends the heap o f mutilated flesh, also manages to keep on flying to a safe place. Flight brings the hope of escape, but it also brings the certainty o f worse news in the form o f black butterflies as messengers o f the death o f the children of the sea. The mythic dimension proves to be a palliative; nevertheless, Danticat is firm in her belief that traumas must be confronted in order to be disarmed of their power to hurt. When the young child Sophie Caco asks how she was born, the reality o f the horrific faceless rape is supplanted by an empowering personal myth of origin. Her Aunt Atie tells her “the story o f a little girl who was born out o f the petals of roses, water from the stream, and a chunk of the sky” (1994, 47). Her mother eventually tells the truth tersely, unwilling to verbalize the pain: “A man grabbed me . . . pulled me into a cane field and put you in my body. I was still a young girl then barely older than you” (p. 61). It was only after years o f reconstruction and a process o f trans­ ference, as a result of which Sophie appropriates her mothers nightmare, that the daughter is able to narrativize the feel o f her mothers experience: “He kept pounding her until she was too stunned to make a sound” (p. 139).

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C O N C L U SIO N A major therapeutic intervention resides in the ability to speak ones pain in the face of traumatic events which stun individuals and peoples into silence. Caruth, drawing reference to Freud s notion o f uncanny repetition, terms trauma the wound that speaks. The repetition is rooted in the inability to know the traumatic act in its entirety at its initial occurrence. The greater the dissociation at the point o f the initial event, the deeper the submergence o f the pain. Yet the wound is compelled to speak. If allowed to, it will surface and speak through the conscious mind and voice. If disallowed this avenue, it will speak through repetitions o f a nightmarish nature and even through repetitions o f life events. Victims o f unresolved traumas gravitate towards or even generate uncanny repetitions in their life patterns that they seem helpless to avoid. To use Caruths terminology, in a “peculiar and sometimes uncanny way” catastrophic events seem to repeat themselves in the life of trauma victims, “appearing in some instances as a sort o f fate which is outside o f their wish or control” (1996, 2). For Martine, the wound speaks from the nightmarish domain o f a pain so intense that it drives her to rip her sheets and bite off pieces o f her flesh and, eventually, to suicidal self-mutilation. Danticat s authorial stance seems to mirror that of the therapist in Breath, Eyes, Memory who urges Sophie to stand with her mother in the location o f pain: go to the cane field, conjure up the rapist father, give him a face, and through forgiveness, disarm him o f his haunting nightmarish power. Martine s fatal self-mutilation is representa­ tive o f what can happen when an individual, a community and a people cannot confront the ghosts of the past, cannot speak the unspeakable, cannot forgive the perpetrator, cannot lay the pain to rest. It is for this reason that Sophie, demonstrating therapeutic possibility both for intergenerational transfer of traumas and intergenerational transfer of healing, after her mothers funeral runs to the site o f Martines woundedness and beats out her anger on the cane, rather than once more internalize the pain and perpetuate the cycle. Danticat s fiction indicates that individual, but more so collective, traumas beg to be expressed so that they can become memories to pass on. Indeed, the woundedness goes beyond the initial infliction to perpetuate itself in patterns o f haunting repeti­ tion and rememory. The fissure between the collective trauma and its re-presentation by the storyteller allows the telling to be yoked into ideological agendas o f the nature of those described by Merle Hodge (1970), who invokes the power of narrative to

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change lives. When Morrison penned Beloved, she was addressing the collective amnesia o f a people rooted in an oral tradition who had experienced horror so great and so immediate, it was easier to forget than to tell. Brodber s narratives too are dedi­ cated to articulating the half that has never yet been told. A generation apart from these literary foremothers, Danticat from her youth has been dedicated to unearthing submerged memories. It is an indication that the commitment to making story out o f trauma has rooted and flourished. It is an indication that its healing power has not yet accomplished its work. We too hope that one day we will be able to pass on these stories. But the time has not yet come.

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CONCLUSION D o wc know, then, precisely where violence comes from, precisely where it begins, resides, or ends, and what (or whom) exactly it is directed at? Is i t . . . a “fact o f life” even o f “spiritual life?” If violence thereby seems to lose its specificity as physical, psychological, political, colonial, structural, dom estic, sexual, or even verbal violence - do we have a clear idea o f what it is that would bring violence to a halt and m ark its cessation? - Hent de Vries, “Violence and Testimony: On Sacrificing Sacrifice”

The end o f all flesh has come before me for the earth is filled with violence through them. - Genesis 6 :1 3

Violence is ubiquitous in human society. It is evident in societies of all periods and locations. It appears to be part o f a primordial order which can be alleviated but cannot be completely expunged. In a strange twist o f fate which defies notions o f civilization and progress, contemporary societies are unparalleled in terms of their practice and range o f violence and, even more so, in their mind-blowing, civilizationdestroying capacity to inflict violence. This text has demonstrated that, in the case of modern Caribbean societies, histor­ ical genesis in the horrors o f colonialist imperialism established a culture o f violence which has continued to shape contemporary manifestations and contexts of violence in the island archipelago. It has had a particularly devastating seminal impact in the arena of family relations. Moreover, contemporary socioeconomic conditions, including persistent poverty and exploitative underdevelopment, exacerbate exist­ ing tensions and spill over into more violence. This predicament is fuelled further by drug abuse established as a result of the Caribbean’s geopolitical positioning as a drug transshipment point. Notwithstanding numerous attempts at intervention, the reality for the Caribbean scenario is that there is little or no sign of alleviation o f family violence, which threatens to spin out of control and to put our fragile societies at risk. It seems that the state itself authorizes violence as the solution to violence. This is especially manifested during the perennial contestation over political power. Even justice systems today work what is tantamount to legalized violence as their recourse in dealing with criminal violence and brutalization, and thus further disempower the violated rather than offering them true redress. No nation demonstrates the interplay o f public and private violence as clearly as does Haiti, which remains, in 2005, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, with radical problems of these kinds at every level. The fictional and real discourses analysed in Writing Rage point to the dense inter* relatedness o f all forms of violence. All attempts to address family violence must take regard o f the full spectrum o f violence and the intricate web of cause-effect sequences between macro- and micro-levels in society. The nature o f the beast is such that it cannot be contained within the family, and hence cannot be resolved exclusively using measures which apply on a familial basis, however desirable this may be. O f necessity, our explorations have touched on issues ranging as far afield as state, institutional and technological violence, all in the attempt to understand their outcomes in relationships between individual men, women and children in families and communities. Our research indicates that whatever the source o f the violence,

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at the bottom line, it is the women o f the respective societies, who tend to be physi­ cally weaker, more economically disempowered than the men, who bear the greater brunt o f the onslaughts of violence. And given the race, class and colour differentials and prejudices which, along with gender, create an interlocking grid to fix women in their place, invariably it is the women, triply jeopardized by occupying the lowest intersections on this grid, who suffer the most. This has been consistent whether we were exploring disciplinary systems, dying patriarchies, cultural expressions, media perspectives or core familial relationships. The fictional evocations simply resonate, contextualize and expand the real-life scenarios. The first segment o f the text deployed the theoretical parameters o f discourse analysis —most specifically critical discourse analysis - to demonstrate how entrenched asymmetrical power relations and prevailing gender constructions collude to the detriment o f the female victims of domestic violence. The findings are remarkably similar whether the primary material is drawn from the judicial process, the media or personal narratives. That section ends with the assertion that the disempowered people o f Haiti, operating within the framework o f their world view, ultimately seize agency to generate resistance and self-affirmation. Significant to this process is faith in God, in themselves, in their individual and collective capacity to overcome, through survival and procreation, in mutual support, in self-expression, and in the very act o f reconstructing their experience in narrative. They point to hope in humankinds capacity for overcoming despite the odds. The second segment, which draws its primary material from literary expression, plots textual constructions o f the endemic and interconnected nature o f violence from the inception o f modern Caribbean society to the present. However far and wide the enquiries roam, they invariably boil down to familial or male-female violence. It seems that no matter how complex and wide reaching the fictional scenarios, the bottom line is that men must needs rape and batter women, and women too are prone to become complicit with, and perpetrators of, acts of vio­ lence against themselves and against other women and children. Why do so many acts o f violence, notwithstanding their source, seem to come to roost in women? The literary analyses point to a telling possibility. Male authors prove capable o f compassionate portrayals o f their female protagonists. Even sympa­ thetic portrayals, however, do not alleviate the tendency o f male authors to represent their female characters as scapegoat figures - destined in some way to expiate com­ munal violence. Hence, in the male-authored fictions, gross violence against women

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is conveyed in the figural play of the narratives as a therapeutic intervention for socie­ ties teetering on the brink o f destruction, and this even in the case o f subaltern male authors who are writing to analyse and exorcize traumas generated by disempowered positionings within the colonial and postcolonial social orders. This is not to say that the male characters are not also victimized by multiple forms of violence. But the dominant pattern is that even the men who are victimized by poverty, structural inequities, exploitative and brutal employment systems, unreachable social expecta­ tion and their own ontological insecurities release their frustrations through violence against women. Increasingly, though, men are also becoming the targets o f battered women who may themselves kill before they are killed. There can be no doubt that violence escalates in conditions of shifting cultural norms, when traditional values may be under attack. Caribbean societies are now encountering radical shifts in gender relations, pardy in response to the global womens movement and the contemporary education and career successes of girls and women. This new phase of gender relations is both facilitated and hampered by the impingement o f transnational migrations and media flows. Forces in opposition collide. Men, for example, feel that women are getting out o f control, moving out o f the home, seizing their jobs, not looking after the children, emasculating them by their independence. The traditional norms which underwrite violence against women have proven to be remarkably resistant to change in response to modernity. Forces o f modernity and globalization have had a paradoxical impact on vio­ lence within the Caribbean. Indeed, the study, in the vein o f the postcolonial ethos and in relation to family violence and violence against women, debunks any notion o f Western progress and enlightenment ushering darkened peoples and communi­ ties along a smooth trajectory and into a better world. The world, now shrunken to a global village, remains a contradictory, sometimes empowering, but oftentimes inimical and hostile place. Transglobal ideological flows have proven to be two-faced. Their benign aspects include those positive and culturally relevant dimensions o f womens liberation ideology which have successfully intervened in the social construction o f gender. Sig­ nificant indeed is the slow but steady popularization o f the notion that marriage does not legitimize violence against women within the marital home. On the other hand, Western notions of progress have been unmasked and undermined both philosophi­ cally and actually, so that the pull towards traditionalism which was evident in the Indo-Caribbean population early in the twentieth century could just as readily recur

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today through a “neoprimordialism” yoked to contemporary political and ideological objectives. A technologically driven age has created access and opportunity for agents o f empowerment as well as for agents o f violence and disempowerment. We have grappled with ways for this research to speak to both academics and practitioners because o f the keen sense that the greatest benefits will not be realized until academic insights are incorporated into policies and strategies. In the process o f conducting this research, a symposium on the culture o f violence, with a focus on practitioners, was held at the University o f the West Indies, St Augustine, in 2004. The deliberations o f this symposium are expected to become the basis o f a companion volume, The Culture ofViolence: Commentaries and Perspectives. Practical implications o f the Writing Rage research project, some o f which point to directions for further research, are nevertheless summarized below.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS The practical measures which are suggested below fall into two categories. One cat­ egory falls within the purview o f institutional bodies who deal directly with both victims and perpetrators o f violence. These include rape crisis centres, shelters for battered women, mediation centres, legal and penal institutions and counselling facilities. The second category falls within the purview o f the more fundamental societal agents of socialization - the family at base, then the school, and beyond that, the religious bodies and the media. The assumption is that ongoing sensitivity to conditions which predispose persons to becoming practitioners o f violence or victims o f abuse can hit at the causal root by intervening in the socialization process. We are o f the view that meaningful intervention will require action on both fronts simultaneously. Indeed, exclusive attention to agencies, institutions and procedures for dealing with violence after it has occurred will not significantly impact its rate o f occurrence. Interventions must aim at the root; cycles o f violence must be inter­ rupted from their inception.

The Potential Impact of Media Representation of News Events Our text has shown the media’s propensity to blame the victim o f abuse, even when that person has been subjected to long-term brutalization o f the most extreme kind. Societal mores with respect to gender and ethnicity have been shown to undergird

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a journalistic response which focused attention and blame on the battered woman, levelled absolutely no censure on the male abuser o f eleven years, and made very litde reference to the two men who actually committed the murder. The “husband mur­ derer’’ was sentenced without a trial. Four years later, when the press itself decided to exonerate the wife, it quoted the judge in the appeal case as condemning men wholesale by the decontextualized representation of one small element o f his summing up: “Men Are Animals”. Again, the press was speaking in the interest of sensationalism, fuelling passion in relation to a delicate, even life-threatening issue. What further reprisals might not these same wife-batterers mete out to their wives, come Friday night, when they have been so insensitively portrayed in the media? Higher standards o f media professionalism would lay an imperative on the press to act more responsibly in the interest o f justice and equity. Trained social psy­ chologists and communication analysts can be employed to inculcate the necessary sensitivity and to assist media houses in establishing guidelines and criteria in this regard. In any case, editors should be constantly attuned to the power o f the media and its impact on a volatile public. Given the power of prejudicial media reporting on high-profile, controversial crimes of violence, justice systems need to ensure that they seek absolute means o f keeping juries away from the media and from the public who absorbs their indict­ ments throughout any trial. And given the assumption that the self is constructed in and through narrative, prison personnel and social workers should also ensure that detainees themselves have no access to these distressing depictions o f their situations while they are involved in legal proceedings.

Problems of Abuse and Judgement within Societal Institutions Our analyses indicate that societal problems in relation to violence permeate all levels o f that society, including the institutions which have responsibility for maintenance o f justice. The police and armed forces need to acknowledge that problems of family violence are endemic to their own kind, that the very training for custodial duty and equipping with weaponry can further brutalize individuals who may be already beset with violent personal histories, fragile ego boundaries and negative gender-role perceptions. In other words, the process for training for the armed and protective services may exacerbate the potential for abuse. At the most basic level, the training

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process needs to be carefully examined and recalibrated to take regard of this propen­ sity. Additionally, there is a need for counselling and appropriate medical and legal intervention to assist abusers. Preventative measures should also focus on attitude and values clarification in relation to these issues. As indicated in the linguistic research, attitudinal issues and ideological positionings can have a negative impact on judicial decisions in relation to family violence. The wheels of change move slowly when they entail real changes in mindsets and attitudes, in deep-seated ideological positionings, even among the highly educated gatekeepers o f the justice system. The reality is that “moral” stances are particularly suspect because we perceive them as just, at the deepest level, without perceiving that they may themselves be skewed based on gender, ethnic and class prejudices. In particular, Caribbean societies remain dangerously backward in the arena o f mental health issues. It is not only “battered wife syndrome” which is not really understood but the full plethora o f mental illnesses which can be unleashed by the interlocking grid o f societal problems. During the research period, students on the St Augustine campus o f the University o f the West Indies were reported to fear visiting the counsellor at the campus health centre because o f the reprisals o f students who saw them entering the establishment. At campus meetings, staff evi­ denced related prejudices very readily. Strong education and attitudinal change are required to promote understanding that “mental” illness can be a physical condition. Under traumatic stress, the constitution o f the brain, as well as the chemical signals passing through it, can change physically and induce altered psyches. There are many genuine cases o f diminished responsibility that render persons less in control of their actions. This is not to exonerate all, for to say that there is no responsibility or culpability for action is to rob the individual o f the power to change. Neverthe­ less, there is need to weigh the evidence carefully before ascribing blame and meting out appropriate justice. The bottom line is that administrators o f the legal and justice systems, along with representatives o f other public institutions, must not treat perpetrators or victims in ways which will lead to the perpetuation o f abuse rather than the reverse. There is a further practical implication for the penal system. The assumptions o f “licks” as a cure-all was most recendy manifested in the statements of the Trinidad and Tobago prime minister when a group of young criminals slaughtered a rival gang member in the main street o f the capital in broad daylight in April 2005* In response to this and the runaway rate of crime and violence, the prime minister promised

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réintroduction o f capital and corporal punishment within the penal system. We see danger in the notion that “licks” can fix criminals, especially when the strong pos­ sibility exists that “licks” helped to create them in the first place. Moreover, such a determination has the potential to exacerbate the growing brutality and criminality within the police and armed forces.

The Need to Stem the Tide of State Violence The fictional evocations of the social breakdown in Jamaican society of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the Haitian scenario, constitute a strong warning on the impact of entrenched poverty alongside the political deployment o f gangs to win political advantage in seasons o f electioneering. Trinidad and Tobago in the 1990s and 2000s has been steering dangerously close to this incendiary form o f party politics. The entire region needs to mount a vanguard against state violence and its impact on the material conditions of the lives of its citizens. For example, we need to inves­ tigate what the links are between widespread kidnappings which have instituted a reign o f terror throughout Trinidad, the self-elected protection agencies which may be deployed by political parties on choice occasions, the traumas suffered by all citi­ zens and, finally, the effects on women and children who above all live in constant vigilance and fear.

The Cyclic Nature of Family Violence The discourse examined indicates that abusers —even those who may not be hard­ ened in the abusive practice - do not heal themselves. Hence, it is futile to expect a quick patch-up to heal abusive behaviour. Indeed, extensive real-life and fictional scenarios o f long-term abuse culminating in loss o f life indicate that early interven­ tion is imperative in order to interrupt a downward spiral and generational transfer of patterns o f abuse. The analyses also yield insights into why this scenario can remain unalleviated from generation to generation. Our text dramatizes the pro­ pensity for even small children to re-enact violent gendered adult behaviour as a mode o f conflict resolution, even while themselves being victims o f it. Even among children, the acts o f violence are perpetrated by males on weaker, more vulnerable females, and this in response to male frustration.

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The propensity towards violence is reinforced by alcohol consumption. The ritual of drunken wife-beating after payday is so well entrenched that domestic violence and other self-empowerment agencies can conceivably assist battered wives to take practi­ cal measures to avoid these weekly ministrations. One crucial measure is debunking the notion that family violence is husband and wife business and hence lies outside of the purview of law-enforcement agencies. Indeed, relevant laws need to be insti­ tuted, enhanced and implemented as early as possible in the violence cycle to prevent it from ripening into greater tragedy and loss. In terms of socialization practices, women need to practise and inculcate a zero-tolerance policy for violence against their person in the marital home. The greater challenge is not just to disrupt this destructive socialization pattern but to prevent it from setting in. Persons whose family history may make them a poten­ tial prey may be targeted for dialogue and instruction on alternative methods o f con­ flict resolution. It would be useful, for example, if marriage counselling programmes and manuals which are sensitive to such possibilities could be used to instruct the counselled accordingly. Both the fictional and real-life discourses indicate that women are in a greater measure perceiving themselves as agents who need to intervene in the cycle o f abuse in order to alleviate their sorry condition. The likelihood is that, if the interventions of the criminal justice system and other social agencies remain as deficient as they have been, women may be increasingly inclined to kill their abusive partners as a last resort. In terms of policy formulation, law making and counselling practices, abused parties need to be conceived of as potentially evolving into perpetrators o f violence.

Violent Child-Rearing and Criminal Violence Again, the discourses analysed point to an association between violent child-rearing practices and acts of criminal violence in adulthood. This is not to imply that all children who were beaten emerge as criminals. There is a prevailing assumption in Caribbean societies, and particularly within the less educated segment, that effective child-rearing requires constant surveillance and beatings. Indeed, severe brutalization of very young children in the home has been at the root o f several violent crimes. In the most bizarre cases, young children have lost their lives for minor infringements such as crying incessantly or “stealing” food from the refrigerator. Here again gen­ erational patterns persist. Many would quote sanctimoniously: “Spare the rod and

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spoil the child” and follow through with the statement: “I was beaten and it only benefited me.” The socializing agents - family, church and school - can intervene to address this issue. Caribbean societies remain intensely religious. Indeed, religious organizations can play a pivotal role in shoring up the moral and ethical underpin­ nings o f a crumbling social order. There is need for religious bodies to address skewed and inaccurate interpretations of injunctions drawn from their sacred writings which support violence against women and children in the home. Moreover, there is the responsibility o f contextualizing any such injunctions within the framework o f love and nurturance which these religions promote and which should be the birthright o f every child.

The Failure to Alleviate Cycles ofViolence Writing Rage paradoxically identifies the family as the primary locus o f violence and dislocation and at the same time sees the family/community as the locus o f nurtur­ ance and reintegration. Real-life and fictional discourses dealing with the troubled nation o f Haiti are particularly illustrative o f this. Here again the distinction between the function o f socialization as opposed to corrective intervention becomes relevant. In contemporary societies, the flawed and inadequate family has steadily been losing ground as the shaper of youth sensibility. In response to individuals, families and societies in crisis a slew o f professionals has emerged —psychologists, psychiatrists, guidance counsellors and peer counsellors. Each role is a positive one, but each tends to perform a corrective as opposed to a constructive function. In the contemporary scenario, the individuals deepest confidence and soul-searching become the business of professional counsellors and institutions who are not in a consistent enough posi­ tion to offer love, affirmation and role modelling. This research points to the need for a renewed focus on the family as the primary guide and socialization agent o f the young and as the primary shaper o f their moral and ethical sense. It suggests that the professional agencies should facilitate the family unit in reconstructing itself, thereby empowering it to provide the necessary support from within. The pseudo-families which young people seek in gangs and clubs often have their own stringent, anarchic hierarchies and codes, which cannot offer a viable alternative. As this research dem­ onstrates, the Caribbean family itself has been much buffeted by undermining forces. We nevertheless contend that this is where the traumatizing ruptures were felt most keenly, so this is where the healing is required; this is where the socialization cycle is

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initiated anew with each successive generation, so this is where the change process is rooted; and this is where cycles of abuse and violence perpetuate themselves, so this determines how the professional interventions must be applied. The discourses are clear on the imperative for and the power of families and communities to restore themselves and their traumatized members to order and equilibrium.

Ideological Change in Relation to Ethnicity and Gender Fictional evocations o f criminal violence point to racialized gender interactions and the attendant web of inequities as components or even roots o f criminal activity. Male-female relations across ethnic lines have the potential to play themselves out in violent interactions. The literature implies that abuse, poverty and even struc­ tural inequities o f black males can erupt in sexual violence against white women and women o f colour. This poses several challenges for scholars and practitioners. Since racialized categories and the attendant privileges function most effectively coverdy, it is seen as inappropriate to bring race issues to the table for open dialogue and understanding. This form of violence tends to be interpreted as a spontanteous blind rage divorced from any causative (potentially race-related) factor other than the sheer wickedness of the perpetrator. To address this dimension o f rape and criminal violence against women, the complex web o f cause-and-effect linkages needs to be unravelled through scholarly study with a link to policy as well as practical interventions. It is the task of educators, especially in the social sciences and humanities, to explore the roots o f racism and the connections between historical legacies and contemporary manifestations in todays violent eruptions. Moreover, in a social framework where generations of young people are manifesting increasingly angry and violent behaviours which are being set off by minuscule triggers, there is an urgent imperative to teach young people to speak their feelings, to articulate the suppressed roots o f their anger and to choose avenues other than violence for expression. There is room here for interventions using forms such as literary and other case studies, drama and educative interactive theatre to promote dialogue, self-expression and understanding.

THE HEALING POWER OF NARRATIVE The analyses indicate that violence is rooted in competition and in fear o f differ­ ence and otherness, whether this be based on gender, class, race, colour, ethnicity,

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nationality or any other perceived divide. Yet, using the nation o f Haiti as our most extreme example, there seems to be the simultaneous operation of divergent forces. The personal and fictional narratives with a focus on violence portray Haiti as a nightmarish land o f unspeakable horror and yet also a land o f nurturance and healing for wounded spirits and mutilated bodies. When Haitians board their death ships fully aware o f the odds loaded against them, they tell stories and sing passionately for the sake o f the love o f the land they have left. We read this as a metaphor of human possibility. There seems to be, on the one hand, a universal leaning towards human cooperation manifested in our very use o f language to commune together and to mutually construct systems; but, on the other hand, that cooperative tendency readily gives way to violent reprisal in the face o f real or potential opposition to the human will or in the face o f ascendancy. At that point, dominance strategies are implemented to yoke the will o f the other into subjugation. The reality may well be that violence cannot be entirely expunged from society, being endemic to the heart o f humankind. If, as we argue, violence is ubiqui­ tous, can any salient distinction be drawn between the violent and the nonviolent person? The concept o f a just war implies that it is the assumed responsibility o f men to go to arms and to exert violence as a restraint, to interrupt violence which is perceived as unjust. This, then, becomes the salient distinction. The socially balanced individual will resort to violence only when maintenance o f the social and communal order con­ strains it, whereas the destructive individual will resort to violence even in a social framework which discourages it, because o f a desire to fulfil self: the catalyst is the need to dominate and control, to subjugate with force in order to impose individual will and to satisfy individual desires. Feminists have struggled long and hard for the establishment of a just and equita­ ble society in which women are not disempowered and subjugated based on gender. It is now becoming evident that legislation, though a pivotal factor, is insufficient to induce attitudinal change; that education and access to financial resources and mobility for women have not eliminated violence, but may rather have seemed to exacerbate it. This study supports any agenda which aims at prevention o f violence by shaping constructions o f maleness and femaleness based on mutuality and complementarity as opposed to competitiveness. It promotes, too, the eradication of dividing wails of

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otherness which loom so large. In relation to gender construction, while we unequivo­ cally support the complementarity of men and women, we recommend undermining divisive constructs o f hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity, and especially those ele­ ments which imprison the human person in otherness and contribute to adversarial gender relations. As men and women, we share more common ground and common hopes, aspirations and feelings than it may appear. The greater the appreciation o f commonality, the less our need to fight. The study has hinted at the capacity for therapeutic interventions in relation to violence. It is to Lamming, Danticat and the Haitain womens personal narratives that we owe the perception of the tangibility o f violence and its outworkings which reside in the human body and in the body politic. If the horror has been so great as to become unspeakable, it setdes in the subterranean depths as a bitter root, ready to sprout when the conditions are conducive. Violence must be unearthed to be exor­ cized or excised. At a personal level, this kind of reconciliation o f experience is one solution. We have witnessed the women of Haiti overcoming through the very act of redefining their position in narrating it. On a micro scale, we have read how a bru­ talized police-officers wife makes sense o f her experience in the same way. We have also seen how sociopolitical activism can be therapeutic even in instances in which the trauma o f a persons personal circumstances remains unchanged. We have seen how women will protect others, sacrificing themselves in so doing. In all these cases, a greater good seems to transcend even the impulse to preserve life itself. In terms o f the broadest societal therapeutic intervention, Writing Rage points to the fact that, since violence is constructed by humankind within society, violence can also be undermined and even unmade by the same humankind within society. The alleviation depends on the individual survivor o f violence, but even more it depends on the ability and willingness of societies to empathize and to reincorpórate the wounded individual and, in so doing, wipe away the implications o f the violent act. In Mozambique, for example, whole villages have been found to support the violated individual by a complex restorational act-sequence which lasts many hours. Victims of violence are bathed and freshly clothed, supported in song and oratory throughout the night, lifted high within the village community: They held her up in their arms talking o f rebirth in a healthy place among people who cared for her . . . each member o f the audience . . . danced for the patient in a reaf­ firmation o f life . . . the woman was continually reassured by supportive stories that highlighted two core themes: her need to blame the war, not her own actions for her

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plight; and her responsibility not to inflict on others the violence to which she had been subjected . . . these healing resources were not restricted to the civilian victims o f war. Demobilized soldiers were also carefully reintegrated.. . . As people explained: “We have

to take the war out o f these soldiers. . . I f they were truly to defeat their opponents, they had to defeat the war, and that meant turning soldiers from warring to peaceful pursuits. (Nordstrom 2002, 289; our emphasis)

Here we see the cycle of cooperation and discord earlier alluded to working itself through to its better conclusion in the cooperative. Is there not a cooperative principle whereby humankind seeks cooperation up to a point, but where self-will comes in (or where superiority is assumed), then the struggle for dominance enters, with violence as its henchman? When that same violence takes over the entirety o f life, the restoration of life itself exists in a return to the cooperative, in building together for the restitution of wholeness. It is in this way that evil can be overcome with good.

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NOTES E INTRODUCTION 1. This has been one o f the most challenging dimensions o f the preparation o f this material - to find a language, tone and approach that would speak simultaneously to practitioners and academics and satisfy the requirements o f both groups. Yet we felt strongly that it was imperative and socially productive for academics to link arms with practitioners for solution-oriented studies o f issues o f this nature. 2. The purpose o f the commission was to investigate the Afro-Caribbean family as a social problem. The commissioners travelled through the regions collecting data on social and eco­ nomic conditions and their impact on family forms. The focus o f the investigations was largely on disorganization, promiscuity and consensual cohabitation. Note though that these lowerstrata family forms - female-headed households, serial polygamy and visiting unions - have now become prevalent among Caribbean families o f all social strata and classes and have been increasing in occurrence in industrialized nations. 3. Kira goes on to propose a second basis o f classification based on the objective o f external characteristics o f the traumatic events: “ It may be fictitious or trauma-like or it may be real; it may be direct or indirect. And direct or indirect traumas may in turn be transmitted in a single step from one person to another or they could be multiple step transmission over generations, as is the case with historical traumas or the transmission o f structural violence o f extreme social disparities over generations or transmission o f structural poverty —hunger, malnutrition, and inadequate shelter - over generations” (2001, 77).

4. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin argue that a most extreme colonizing mode occurred in the West Indies which combines all o f the most violent and destructive effects o f the colonizing process. The West Indian colonies were bereft o f the “temporary illusion o f a filiative relationship with that domination culture, whilst the colonies o f intervention and exploration had traditional precolonial cultures which continued to coexist with new imperial forms” (1989, 26). 5. Merle Hodge, who leads this organization, recendy spoke out strongly again on the subject, at the Culture of Violence workshop held at the University o f the West Indies, St Augustine, as a part o f the total project o f which this text is a pan.

CHAPTER 5 1. B at tenéb refers to women coming together to beat pots and pans, anything that they can seize in their hands, to create a powerful din o f protest when need be and despite circum­ stances forbidding it. It symbolizes their irrepressible resistance and solidarity. In this chapter, all kréyol expressions are italicized. 2. A more recent United Nations Development Program report (2002) highlights significant developments in education and representation but comments specifically on the continuation of violence against women. The very improvements are a testimony to the forcefulness o f the resistance we are describing; the continuation o f the violence is a great cause for concern. 3. A particular death squad within the larger group o f squads, the ungiendo, brutally terrorized Haiti from 1991 to 1994 between Aristides two presidencies. 4. Tilegliz became organs o f popular opposition to repressive regimes, particularly in the past twenty years. Generally, they represent Christian believers whose philosophies and doctrines are based directly on the Bible Scriptures.

CHAPTER 6 1. Barrow (1998b, 343) indicates that “The majority o f female indentured labourers were either widows escaping the misery o f life with their in-laws, women who had been deserted by their husbands, unmarried pregnant women or prostitutes, all independently seeking a new life in the Caribbean. Indeed it is quite conceivable that many used their scarcity to advantage by pursuing improvements in socio-economic status through beneficial sexual alliance.” 2. Writing on the sex-ratio disparity and its consequences under the indenture in British Guiana, Mangru (1987, 217) states that in 1857, “the ratio was 35 women to 100 men rising progres­ sively to higher levels o f 50 to 100 in 1860”. In comparison, the “official statistics showed 23 murders of Indian women by their husbands or reputed husbands in the period 1859-1864, 11 between 1865-1870, 36 between 1884-1895 and 17 between 1901-1907”. 3. According to Brereton (1979), in the post-indentureship period, the Indian man whose wife had been unfaithful “suffered a disastrous loss o f self and in the absence o f

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other mechanisms for expressing anger and self assertion, violence directed against the other (murder and mutilation o f the woman) or against the self (suicide was almost as frequent in these situations) was the only way to cover his pride” (p. 183). 4. Mary D 'K alloos “ Doolarie” appeared in the Trinidad Guardian, 23 May 1948. In “My Grandmother Worked in the Field”, HanifF indicates that in the Afrocentric male-dominated calypso arena, the focus is also on the East Indian woman as victim: “The stereotype is not so much in the details o f the personality but in the communication o f the Indian Woman as victim within her family and community” (HanifF 1999, 19). 5. As if in tragic fulfilment o f the murderous ethos which he represented in his textual world, Ladoo met a violent death at age twenty-eight, when he returned to Trinidad from Canada to mediate in a land dispute which had dispossessed his mother. Although the offi­ cial cause o f death is listed as hit-and-run, to this day, suspicions o f foul play cling to his untimely passing. 6. This statement implies that incest may be more prevalent within impoverished, iso­ lated families. The reality is that this pattern o f occurrence may be more apparent than real. Herman, drawing reference to three studies o f father-daughter incest in the United States, indicates that “ Russels findings also confirmed many o f the observations o f our small clini­ cal studies. Incest appeared to be as common in middle-class and wealthy families as in poor families, and its prevalence varied little among ethnic groups. One finding that we did not anticipate was the role o f abuse from stepfathers. Russel found that one in six o f all women who had spent any part o f their childhood living with a stepfather had been abused” (2000, 223). 7. Both abusive men resonate the dangerous freedom of Toni Morrisons Cholly Breedlove

(The Bluest Eye, 1970), who recognizes no connection or loyalty to family and community and hence destroys himself. 8. For a full explanation o f this phenomenon see Davies 1990. 9. This propensity to write home applies to writers of all ethnicities, genders and social classes. As early as 1934, the white creole Jean Rhys wrote in Voyage in the Dark, “Being black is warm and gay, being white is cold and sad” (p. 27), expressing a craving to belong in terms o f a simplistic, ultimately untenable identification with black otherness, which she saw as the essence o f Caribbean rootedness. She inscribed in her masterful evocation o f the post­ emancipation cultural milieu (Wide Sargasso Sea) the desolate creoles loss o f a fallen edenic Caribbean landscape and the craving for a cultural homeland. She parallels M r Biswass strug­ gle for a house such that he would not die “unnecessary and accommodated” (p. 14) and his futile quest for romance in post-independent Trinidad (A Housefor M r Biswas [1961]) and Boy G s pleasurable probing o f the pain o f exile as the tongue probing the space left by an extrac­ tion (In the Castle o f My Skin [1953]). The underlying issues o f belonging to landscape and sociocultural milieu are associated with the potential for political engagement in the adult protagonists o f N aipauls M im ic Men (1967), Lam m ings O fAge and Innocence (1958) and H earnes Voices Under the Window (1955).

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CHAPTER 7 1. The paper “Under Womens Eyes: Literary Constructs o f Afro-Caribbean Masculinity” was presented at the symposium The Construction o f Caribbean Masculinity: Towards a Research Agenda, January 1996, University o f the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. It has since been published in Reddock 2004, 289-308. 2. A recent case in point is Carringtons A Thirst for Rain (1999), in which a love-struck teenage boy erupts in violence when his tentative advances and craving to assume the role o f lover/protector are mocked by his desired one, who has been impregnated by another. 3. This m otif recurs in Seniors Gardening in the Tropics (1994), as well as in Walcotts

Pantomine, in which Jackson forcibly constrains Trewe to admit that Crusoe’s occupation was not a delightful meander through a tropical paradise to be romanticized in flowery language: “O silent sea, O wondrous sunset” (1980, 148). Rather, it involved violent, selfserving appropriation o f the resources o f the New World to meet his needs. 4. Some elements o f this discussion o f Olive Seniors work were included in the presentation “Under Womens Eyes: Literary Constructs o f Afro-Caribbean Masculinity” at the symposium The Construction o f Caribbean Masculinity: Towards a Research Agenda, Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University o f the West Indies, St Augustine, January 1998. Aspects o f the discussion on Olive Seniors texts have been published in Interrogating Caribbean

M asculinities: Theoretical and Em pirical Analyses. 5. The rhyme goes: Jack Spratt could eat no fat His wife could eat no lean And so betwixt them both between They licked the platter clean.

CHAPTER 8 1. Cain (2001), reacting to Danns and Parsad (1989), questions the assumption that domestic violence is related to the colonial imposition o f the male breadwinner model which imposes social aspirations which are out o f reach for urban lower-class males. 2. It would be difficult for the overwhelming majority o f women to sexually overpower the overwhelming majority o f men. Arguably, female-against-male sexual aggression would take the form o f sexual manipulation and seduction for the sake o f exploitation and dominance rather than for pleasure. 3. The female slave body was signified within the colonial order as her master s possession, in terms o f both its productive and reproductive capabilities. It proved a major challenge for slave women and their immediate descendants, who themselves often learned to commodi­ tize and trade their sexuality, to conceive o f their bodies as belonging to themselves. This produces curious formulations in relation to their sexual and reproductive capacities. The

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rebellious slave woman Sethe in Morrisons Beloved, fleeing enslavement, figures herself as a repository o f milk. She is empowered on her dangerous journey by the compulsion to take her nursing breast to her babies who have gone on before. For Sethe, the maternal impulse proves to be simultaneously empowering and objectifying. In Alice Walkers womanist fairy tale The Color PurpU, the healing process for the protagonist, abused in a prolonged incestuous relationship (by her stepfather, who she believed to be her father), begins with the reformula­ tion o f the notion o f virginity. Her lover/healer Shug terms Celie a virgin because she has never experienced sexual pleasure. 4. From the inception o f Caribbean literary expression, violent sexuality has been associ­ ated with the outworking o f a history of traumatic imperial encounter. In their constructions o f Western patriarchal masculinity, the writers from backgrounds as varied as Jean Rhys in

Wide Sargasso Sea to Derek Walcott in Pantomine pose a correlation between fear o f femaleness and the impulse towards imperial conquest. 5. This statement echoes the assertion in The Tempest o f the verbal violence o f Caliban: “You taught me language and my profit ont is, I know how to curse” (p. 179). Colonizer and colonized are forever bound by language - symbolic code infused with signifiers of dominance and subordination.

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IN D EX

.

.

Note: The letter « in a page citation refers to a note (for example, 99n2 refers to page 99, note 2). Where there are two notes o f the same number on a page, the chapter is also indicated (for example, 99n5:2 refers to note 2 for chapter 5).

Africans, 196, 213

Ballantyne, Jillian, 67-72, 76

Afro-Caribbeans

bar rack-yards, 12, 183

family patterns among, 11-13

“Barred” (Espinet), 150

in fiction, 196

barrel children, 73

incest among, 142

battered wife syndrome, 44, 70, 230

masculine paradigms of, 131, 166, 18283, 186 and violence, 80, 154, 196 as writers, 7, 154, 208-9 alcohol consumption

in Ramjattan case, 35-36, 42, 50-51, 5 5-56 symptoms of, 56 Becker, Ernest, 204 beliefs, 131, 163-64. See also religion

among Indo-Caribbeans, 13, 136, 149

Bell, Beverly, 102, 103

poverty and, 15

Beloved (Morrison), 9, 209, 223, 242n8:3 A Bend in the River (Naipaul), 243n9

and violence, 27, 75-76, 149, 150, 232 Anacouna, 102

Benson* Gail Ann, 194

Appadurai, Arjun, 193-94

“Benwood Dick” (Mighty Sparrow), 182-83

Arch o f Fire (Lalla)> 164-66

“Between the Pool and the Gardenias”

Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 105 armed forces, 229, 237. See also Tonton Macoutes

(Danticat), 212, 213, 214 bias. See also gender bias in justice system, 43-45, 54

bias (cont.) o f media, 33-36, 39, 40, 77 o f writers, 76 Bly, Robert, 80, 82

as murderers, 144 as possessions, 143, 189 sale of, 107 “Children o f the Sea” (Danticat), 215—16,

body, 171, 172, 198. See also torture

B om fi* Dead (Gunst), 156-57, 160

219 class

Bo ukm an, 212

and artistic expression, 167, 182-83

Brand, Dionne, 133, 186-88, 190

and criminal violence, 154-58, 165-66

Breath, Eyes, Memory (Danticat), 211, 215,

and domestic violence, 72-74

216-17, 222 Brodber, Erna, 209, 210, 223 calypso, 12, 182-83 Caribbean. See also specific countries; AfroCaribbeans; Indo-Caribbeans colonialism in, 10-11 family studies in, 2 feminism in, 148, 227

in fiction, 196 in Haiti, 109, 113, 114, 127 and ideology, 109 media and, 29 and perspective, 113, 114, 127 racism and, 165-66, 167 women and, 72-73, 167 Cliff, Michelle, 156-58 colonialism, 7 -8

First World influence in, 35-36,38, 39,227

in Caribbean, 10-11

leisure industry in, 132

feminist perspectives of, 7-8

male-female relations in, 11-12

and gender relations, 175-76

masculinity in, 153, 166, 186

literature of, 7, 174

traditionalism in, 163, 227-28

and sexuality, 132-33

writers in, 7, 154, 208-9 “Carolines Wedding” (Danticat), 214, 219 Carrington, Roslyn, 24ln 7:2

Cereus Blooms at Night (Mootoo), 137, 141-45, 189 child abuse, 107, 138-39, 161—62. See also fathers

and violence, 132-33, 146-48, 169-70

The Color Purple (Walker), 220, 242n8:3 conversation. See also discourse; narrative, personal amplification in, 86-87 analogy in, 88, 95 Creole use in, 88-89, 91, 93

in police family case, 93, 94, 98, 100

dialogue use in, 93, 94

in Ramjattan case, 57

disfluency in, 86

children. See abo child abuse

duplication in, 86-87, 89

as abusive, 83, 231

explication in, 86-87

and attachment/intimacy trauma, 130

fillers in, 99

corporal punishment of, 16, 107, 136, 16164,2 3 2 -33

focusing devices in, 96, 99

death of, 212, 214-17, 243n2

hedges in, 89, 99 hesitation in, 86, 89

discourse of, 85

images used in, 96

in fiction, 138-40

markers in, 86

o f migrants, 73

parallelism in, 96-97

258

Index

passive voice in, 90

dance, 123

repetition in, 86-87, 88, 90, 91-92,

Danticat, Edwidge, 134,209,2 1 0 ,2 1 1 -1 7 De Bourg, Claire, 105-6

9 6 -9 7 , 99 shared understanding in, 87, 89

De Freitas, Michael (“Michael X ”), 194

tag use in, 89, 92, 93

Dejean, Lise-Marie, 120

word choice in, 96-97, 99

de la Bastide, Chief Justice, 51-53, 54-60

counterideology, 108, 116-19, 194 “Country o f the One Eye G od” (Senior), 161-64 Creole (language). See also kreyòl in conversation, 88-89, 91, 93

discipline, 200 fathers right to, 12, 138-39, 189 husbands right to, 12, 15, 136 discourse, 21, 108. See also conversation; discourse analysis; language

in newspaper text, 69

anti-female, 7 2 -7 6

vs. Standard English, 49, 88-89, 91, 93

family, 84 genres of, 71-72

creoles, 172-73 crime. See also criminal violence

interpretation in, 69

masculinity and, 160-61, 163

in justice system, 49-50, 53, 54, 58-59,60

newspaper reports of, 152-53

in newspapers, 6, 28-38, 68

poverty and, 15

and power, 23, 108

sources of, 156-58

prior reference in, 66, 69

as useful, 160-61

spoken, 6, 22-23

criminals, 158-66 criminal violence, 152-68. See also crime

discourse analysis, 4—6, 23, 84-86. See also critical discourse analysis

child-rearing and, 232-33 and class relations, 154—58, 165-66

o f newspapers, 31-32 o f personal narratives, 85—98

and domestic violence, 131-32

poststructuralist, 5-6, 23, 108-9

and ethnic relations, 154-58, 167-68

units of, 109-10

family context of, 81, 106, 152-53, 157-58, 161-65

discourse sociolinguistics, 29 “The Dispatcher” (Senior), 158-61

in Jamaica, 156-57, 158-66

Dolly, Frank, 83

migration and, 157

dom estic violence, 2 5 -4 0 , 6 2 -7 7 , 226.

women writers on, 153-54 critical discourse analysis, 4 - 5 , 28-3 2 , 10 8-10. See also discourse analysis

See also child abuse; wife abuse acceptance of, 15-16, 106, 115, 136-37,

and ideology, 108-9 power and, 23

149 class and, 72-74 and criminal violence, 131-32

and reality perception, 5, 28-29,65-66, 99

effects of, 140-41

“Cufls and Slaps No Gift o f Love” (Ballantyne), 6 7 -7 2 ,7 6 ,7 7 The Culture o f Violence workshop (2004), vii, 83, 228

Index

explanations for, 64, 79-84, 97-98, 136-37 gender in, 40, 135-51, 226 in Haiti, 107

259

dom estic violence ( cont.) Indo-Caribbean, 79, 80, 131, 135-51 justice system and, 16-17, 41-61, 230 legislation on, 16-17, 27, 61 media and, 64—65

as disciplinarians, 12, 138-39, 189 and sons, 79, 83, 90-91, 93 feminism, 7-8, 77, 80-81 in Caribbean, 148, 227 fiction. See also poetry; writers

patriarchy and, 80, 136-37, 147

Afro-Caribbeans in, 196

police and, 47, 78-100, 94, 229-30

Caliban figure in, 177, 179-80, 186,

prevention of, 228-34 as self-perpetuating, 81, 115, 231-32

242n8:5 class in, 196

in Trinidad and Tobago, 64, 148-50

colonialist, 7, 174

in United Sûtes, 68, 79

criminal violence in, 153-54

drug abuse, 15, 225

cross-gender representation in, 151

Duvalier, François, 104-5, 215 Duvalier, Jean-Claude, 104

forest imagery in, 141, 144, 196, 197,

202 garden imagery in, 155, 177

economics, 105-6, 173-74

gender relations in, 11-12, 226-27

education

Indo-Caribbeans in, 137

and power, 43, 122-23

linguistic analysis of, 4, 7

women and, 17—19, 120-21, 122-23,

Manichaeanism in, 143, 166, 174-75

148,227

rape in, 144, 170-71,190,205-6, 216-17

English language. See Standard English (SE)

reality in, 202

Espinet, Ramabai, 150

shame in, 143—44, 199-200

ethnoscapes, 193-94

wife abuse in, 140-41

Etienne, Yannick, 117 Fairclough, Norman, 49 families. See also specificfam ily members; domestic violence Afro-Caribbean, 11-13 discourse among, 84 female-headed, 1 1 -1 2 ,6 3 , 107, 183 Indo-Caribbean, 13, 15, 146—48 o f police, 79, 81-82, 83, 85-98 as socialization agent, 233-34 as source o f violence, 81, 106, 152-53, 157-58, 161-65 studies of, 2

The Farming o f Bones (Danticat), 211-12, 213-14 fathers, 12, 144, 146 abusive, 138-39, 141

260

First World Caribbean influence, 35-36, 38, 39, 227 as context, 67, 68, 109, 110-11 media influence from, 39, 66, 160

vs. Third World, 39, 68, 125, 162 For the Life o f Laetitia (Hodge), 166 FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress o f Haiti), 105 Freud, Sigmund, 207 gangs, 160, 230-31, 233 political manipulation of, 156, 160, 231 gender, 8, 84. See also gender bias; gender relations changing roles, 17-19, 227 in domestic violence, 40, 135-51, 226 language and, 84 and power, 132, 163

Index

and race, 177, 234

A Housefo r M r Biswas (Naipaul), 240n9

stereotypes of, 15, 236

husbands, 34, 94

and violence, 6 2 -77, 236 gender bias, 42, 44 4 5 ,4 6 ,4 8 -4 9 , 56-59, 61 gender relations, 8, 125, 142-43, 173-74, 175-76

as disciplinarians, 12, 15, 136 as murderers, 16, 17, 32, 44, 136 as murder victims, 149-50, 227, 232 unfaithful, 48, 71

in fiction, 11-12, 226-27 genocide, 211—12, 214, 219

identity, 129-30, 133

Gilles, Lçllçnne, 117

in istwa, 112-14, 126-27

globalization, 20, 109, 207, 227 government, 5

ideology, 4 -5 , 108-9, 118-19, 194, 234. See also counterideology; feminism

as oppressor, 106, 126

First World vs. Third World, 39, 148 global vs. local, 109, 114

as violent, 214-16, 231

and Haitian women, 109, 114—16

and gangs, 156, 160, 231

Guerillas (Naipaul), 194-95, 198-201,202-6

Manichaean, 7, 143, 166

Gunst, Laurie, 156-57, 160

o f power, 23 Western, 8, 227-28

Guyana, 136-37

“In a Free State” (Naipaul), 194, 196-98, Haiti, 1 0 1 -2 7 ,1 3 1 ,1 33 -3 4 ,2 0 9 ,2 1 0 ,2 1 1 17,225. See also istwa Ceremony o f Souls, 178, 181 class differences in, 109, 113, 114, 127 domestic violence in, 107

2 0 1 ,243n9 incest, 130, 141-44, 189 indentureship, 13, 138 and family structure, 146—47 and violence, 80, 131, 135-36, 167-68

history of, 104—7, 211

India, 136

migration from, 107, 211, 214—15, 216

Indo-Caribbeans. See also Ramjattan,

Ministry for the Status and Rights o f Women, 120

Indravani (Pamela) alcohol consumption among, 13, 136, 149

narratives of, 235, 236

attitudes of, 136-37

oppression in, 102—3, 104—5,114, 115-16

domestic violence among, 79, 80, 131,

resistance in, 103,T 19-25, 226 River Massacre, 211—12, 214, 219

135-51 family structure of, 13, 15, 146—48

sexual violence in, 215 slavery in, 104

incest among, 142 inequality, 28-32, 175—76

state violence in, 214-16, 231

International Tribunal for Violence Against

United States and, 104—5

Women in Haiti (2000), 106

women in, 105-7, 109, 112-13, 236 Haugaard, Janet Butler, 179-80

intertextuality, 22, 65-67, 69, 77 In the Castle o f My Skin (Lamming), 240n9

Hearne, John, 240n9

istwa, 102, 103, 110-11, 127. See also narra­

Herman, Judith, 8 -9 , 142—43, 199 Hodge, Merle, 166, 222, 239n5

tive, personal identity in, 112-14, 126-27

homosexuality, 197-98, 201, 203

Index

261

Jamaica, 132, 154, 156-66, 231

71-72

James, C .L.R ., 12

newspaper use of, 30, 33, 34-35, 65,

Jane and Louisa (Brodber), 243nl Jane Eyre (Bronte), 206

6 8 -7 1 ,7 2 -7 3 as resistance tool, 122-23

Jan Mohammed, Abdul R., 7, 174

units of, 109—10, 127

Jordan, Alexander, 45-46. See also Ramjattan case

law. See justice system

justice system. See also police

liberalism, 197, 198, 201

bias in, 43—45, 54

lime (mens get-together), 75-76

discourse in, 49 -5 0 , 53, 54, 58-59, 60

linguistics, 4, 7, 23, 29. See also discourse;

and domestic violence, 1 6-17,41-61,230 gender bias in, 42, 44—45, 46, 48-49, 5 6 -5 9 ,6 1

language literacy, 122-23. See also education

Louisiana (Brodber), 243nl

language used in, 22,49-50, 58-59,71-72

love, 6 2-77

manipulation in, 58-59, 60

Lovelace, Earl, 133, 183-86, 188, 190

media and, 39, 229 and poverty, 43 and power, 43, 54, 60-61 prior text intertextuality in, 69 racial bias in, 48 violence in, 225 Kanhai, Rosanne, 131, 137, 148-50

Manichaeanism in fiction, 143, 166, 174-75 ideology of, 7, 143, 166 marriage, 87, 107 masculinity, 12-13, 167 Afro-Caribbean concepts of, 131, 166, 182-83, 186

“The Killings in Trinidad” (Naipaul), 194

Caribbean concepts of, 153, 166, 186

Kira, Ibrahim, 9, 129-31

crime and, 160-61, 163

kreydly 122, 127. See also Creole (language)

fathers influence on, 79

Krik? Krak! (Danticat), 211, 212-13,218-21

machismo as, 12-13, 19

vs. matriarchy, 163, 164 Ladoo, Harold Sonny, 137, 138-41, 14546, 147, 151

materialism, 163—64 matriarchy, 163, 164. See also mothers

Lalla, Barbara, 164—66

matricide, 179-81. See also mothers

Lamming, George, 173-82, 190, 240n9. See

media, 5, 15, 194. See also newspapers

also specijic works landscape (in fiction), 141, 146, 155, 177

bias of, 39, 40 and domestic violence, 64-65

in Mootoo, 141, 144, 146

First World, 39, 66, 160

in Naipaul, 196, 197, 202

and inequality, 28-32

language, 187. See also specijic languages; discourse; linguistics; silence

influence of, 26 -4 0 , 63 and justice system, 39, 229

and agency, 116

and power, 42

o f artistic expression, 123-24

and violence, 5, 27-28, 160, 228-29

and gender, 84 justice system and, 22, 49-50, 58-59,

262

men. See also fathers; husbands; masculinity Afro-Caribbean, 166

Index

as disempowered, 11, 14—15, 106, 144,

morality, 121, 174

2 0 5 -6 ,2 1 3 as family heads, 63

Morrison, Toni, 9,10, 209, 210, 2 2 3 ,242n8:3 mothers, 12, 107, 146. See also matriarchy;

in Haiti, 107 homosexual, 197-98, 201, 203

matricide “The Mother” (Senior), 142

Indo-Caribbean, 13, 136, 146-48

Moyne Commission (1938-1939), 2

as marginalized, 3, 17-18, 27-28, 38,

Mozambique, 236-37

159, 163 as migrants, 73

murder

as oppressors, 126

o f husbands, 32, 56-60, 149-50, 227,232 o f wives, 16, 17, 3 2 ,4 4 , 136

as privileged, 12-13

M yal (Brodber), 243nl

as rapists, 189-90

myth

rights over children, 143, 189

o f flying African, 213, 221

rights over women, 12, 15, 146-48,

use of, 220-21

186-87, 189 shame of, 82-83, 97, 98, 143-44 silence of, 75, 82-83 as underachievers, 130, 213 as victims, 114, 227 as violent, 74-75

Naipaul, V.S., 194-95, 203-5, 240n9. See

also specific works bush imagery in, 196, 197, 202 narrative, 6. See also narrative, personal context of, 109, 110-11

white, 172-73

from Haiti, 235, 236

women as threat to, 17-19

as heirloom, 219-20, 222

as writers, 72-76, 190-91, 226-27

oral, 23 perspective of, 110-11, 114

mental health issues, 144, 230. See also battered wife syndrome post-traumatic stress disorder, 8 -9 , 1 99-201, 2 1 6 -1 7 , 230 self-mutilation, 217, 222 suicide, 216, 222 Mighty Sparrow, 12, 182-83 migration, 14, 73-74, 107

power of, 3, 118 o f resistance, 101-27 slave, 218 structure of, 111-12 o f violence, 85-98 narrative, personal. See also istwa analysis of, 85-98

and criminal violence, 157

conditionality in, 117-18, 120

from Haiti, 107, 211, 214-15, 216

generalization in, 111

trauma caused by, 73, 130, 138, 177

o f Haitian women, 102, 103, 110-11,

Miller, Errol, 27-28

127, 134,210

Mimic Men (Naipaul), 240n9, 243n9

language use in, 116

miscegenation, 173

metaphor in, 116-17, 122-23

“The Missing Peace” (Danticat), 215, 219-20

parallelism in, 120

Moore, Karen, 82, 172

passive voice in, 121-22, 124-25

Mootoo, Shani, 137, 141-45, 146, 189

and reality, 111-12, 116

Index

263

narrative, personal (cont.)

in Haiti, 102-3, 104-5, 111, 114, 115-16

reflexivity in, 116, 122

o f men, 114

restatement in, 115-16

by state, 106, 126

as therapeutic, 134, 146, 188-89, 191,

o f women, 106, 115-16, 176

2 1 0 ,2 1 8 -2 3 , 236-37

otherness, 175

natives, 195—201

“O ur Gardener” (Rhys), 131, 154-56

Natives c f My Person (Lamming), 173-76,181-82 newspapers, 15, 25-40, 62-77. See also spe­

painting, 123, 124

cific newspapers; Ramjattan, Indravani article structure in, 31-32, 38 and audience, 29, 33-35, 39—40, 65-67, 74, 77 authority figures in, 36, 37, 68 background information in, 31-32, 3 6 -3 7 , 66, 67, 69 bias in, 3 3 -3 6 , 40, 77 class and, 29 crime reporting by, 152-53 discourse of, 6, 28-38, 68

Panday, Basdeo, 16

Pantomime (Walcott), 24ln 7:3 Parsad, Basmat Shiw, 136-37 patriarchy and domestic violence, 80, 136-37, 147 as honourable, 183-84 and sexual purity, 217 and sexual violence, 185, 189, 190 penal system, 230-31 penis man as, 182-83 as weapon, 181, 186

emotional appeal in, 29, 38, 65, 70-71

penis envy, 175

fact selection and use in, 30, 32-33, 47

Phillips, Daphne, 63

focus shift by, 30, 37, 39-40

poetry, 123-24. See also fiction

headlines in, 31, 32-33, 35, 37, 40, 64

police

language use in, 30, 33, 34-35, 65, 6 8 - 7 1 ,7 2 -7 3 love and violence in, 62-77 as manipulative, 33-35, 36, 37-38, 40 photographs in, 34, 36, 65, 69

and domestic violence, 47, 78-100, 229-30 families of, 79, 81-82, 83, 85-98 and prisoners, 49-50, 54 post-traumatic stress disorder, 8-9, 1992 0 1 ,2 1 6 -1 7 , 230

quotation mark use in, 34, 35

poverty, 14-15, 43

reality in, 30

power, 23. See also gender relations

text in, 3 1 -3 2 , 66

discourse and, 23, 108

women in, 15, 18

dressand, 196-97, 198

nightmares, 209-10

education and, 43, 122-23

“Nineteen Thirty-Seven” (Danticat), 212-13

gender and, 132, 163

No Pain Like This Body (Ladoo), 137, 138—

justice system and, 43, 54, 60-61

41, 145-46, 149, 151

No Telephone to Heaven (Cliff), 156-58

liberalism and, 197, 198, 201 media and, 42 o f narrative, 3, 117-18

O fAge and Innocence (Lamming), 240n9

police and, 49-50

oppression, 126

race and, 175

264

Index

and rape, 171—72, 180, 186-87

silencing of, 144-45, 185-86, 187-91

and sex, 175, 190-91

as trauma, 184-85, 187-89

structures of, 42—45

unsilencing of, 133, 170-71, 191,221

and violence, 80, 156, 163, 173, 193— 94, 226

o f virgins, 180-81, 184-85 reality

Presbyterian Church, 136

in conversation, 99

prostitution, 177, 179

in critical discourse analysis, 5, 28-29,

quilting, 219-20

in fiction, 202

65 -6 6 , 99

racism, 130, 175 and class, 165-66, 167 and criminal violence, 154-58, 167-68 and gender, 177, 234 in justice system, 48 and power, 175 sex and, 173, 175 and violence, 203-7, 213-14 Ramjattan, Indravani (Pamela), 28, 32-38, 41-42. See also Ramjattan case abuse of, 4 5 -4 6 , 50, 55-56 police abuse of, 49, 54 testimony of, 4 9 -5 0 Ramjattan case, 4 5 -53 appeal, 42, 48, 50-60 battered wife syndrome in, 35-36, 42, 50-51, 55-56 child abuse in, 57 evidence, 4 5 -4 6 , 47-50, 55-56 secondary reality in, 45-50 self-defence argument, 45-46, 57, 60 summing up, 51-53, 54-60

narrative and, 111-12, 116 newspapers and, 30 secondary, 45-50 Reineke, Martha J., 178-79, 180 religion, 13, 131, 233. See also beliefs and resistance, 124-25, 127, 226 women and, 13, 124-25 Rennie, Bukka, 72-77 resistance artistic expression as, 123-24, 126-27 and gender equity, 176 in Haiti, 103, 111, 119-25, 226 language as tool of, 122-23 narratives of, 101-27 religion and, 124-25, 127, 226 by women, 103, 108-9, 119-25, 149 revolution, 105-6, 202-6. See also resistance Rhys, Jean, 131, 154-56, 172-73, 240n9.

See also specific works Rudder, David, 216 “Rum Sweet Rum” (Kanhai), 131, 137, 148-50

verdict, 51, 54, 56

sacrifice, 177-81, 185, 191, 205-6

world opinion in, 35-36, 38

“San Souci” (Brand), 133, 186-88

rape, 17, 27, 133, 182-88

Scarry, Elaine, 140-41

and body, 171» 172

The Schoolmaster (Lovelace), 133, 183-86, 188

in Caribbean imaginary, 132, 169-91

Scully, Diana, 189-90

in fiction, 144, 170-71, 190, 205-6,

self-mutilation, 217, 222

216-17 in imperial economy, 172-82 power and, 171-72, 180, 186-87

Index

Senior, Olive, 142, 158-64, 166. See also

specific works September 11, 2001, 66

265

sex. See also sexuality; sexual violence

tourism, 132

power and, 175, 190-91

tradition, 163, 227-28

and racism, 173, 175

trauma, 8-10, 129-31, 222. See also post-

sexuality, 132-33 sexual violence, 11, 44-45, 215. See also rape

traumatic stress disorder achievement and self-actualization, 130

in Caribbean imaginary, 132, 169-91

attachment/intimacy, 13 0 ,2 1 1 -1 2

interracial, 203-7

autonomy and identity, 129-30

patriarchy and, 185, 189, 190

collective, 222-23 o f dislocation, 138—46

slavery and, 172, 216 shame, 8

o f identity, 129-30, 138-46

in fiction, 143-44, 199-200

impact of, 9, 184-85, 187-89, 193

among men, 82-83, 97, 98, 143-44

interdependence/disconnectedness, 130,

among women, 217 silence

138-46 migration and, 73, 130, 138, 177

o f men, 75, 82-83

rape as, 184-85, 187-89

rape and, 133, 144-45, 170-71, 185-

survival, 130-31

86, 187-91,221 slavery, 104 and violence, 11, 80, 167-68, 172, 216 society

theories of, 8, 9-10 Trinidad and Tobago, 26-40, 147, 231 Domestic Violence Act (1991), 16-17, 27,61

and infidelity, 48

domestic violence in, 64, 148-50

and violence, 1-2, 40, 61, 235

newspaper coverage in, 30, 40

song, 123. See also calypso

Peoples Revolutionary Army, 194

spirituality. See beliefs; religion

support for women in, 15, 16, 18, 27

Standard English (SE), 109

violence against women in, 26-28, 40

storytelling, 218-19. See also narrative

Trinidad Express, 32-38, 67-72 Trinidad Guardian, 64-65, 72-76

subjectivity, 192-207

“Triumph” (James), 12

suicide, 216, 222

Trujillo, Rafael, 211

vs. Creole, 49, 88-89, 91, 93

“Summer Lightning” (Senior), 166 syntax, 30

The Tempest (Shakespeare), 176-77 terrorism, 66, 133, 193, 195-201 text

United States domestic violence in, 68, 79 and Haiti, 104—5 University o f the West Indies, vii, 40, 83, 2 2 8 ,2 3 0

in newspapers, 31-32, 66 shared understanding in, 71, 77 Third World, 39, 68, 125, 162

van Dijk, Teun, 29, 31-32 violence. See also criminal violence; domestic

A Thirstfo r Rain (Carrington), 241n7:2

violence; sexual violence; torture

Tonton Macoutes, 104, 215-16

acceptance of, 15—16, 225

torture, 198-201

Afro-Caribbeans and, 80, 154, 196

266

Index

alcohol and, 27, 75-76, 149, 150, 232

Walker, Alice, 220, 242n8:3

colonialism and, 132-33,146-48, 169-70

Walking on Fire (Bell), 102, 109

contemporary, 190

“A Wall o f Fire Rising” (Danticat), 213

cycles of, 231-34

war, 170, 192-207

gender and, 62-77, 236

Warner, Chief Justice, 46

global, 20, 68, 133

Water with Berries (Lamming), 176-81

impact of, 209-10, 211-17

West India Royal Commission (Moyne

indentureship, 167-68 institutional, 9 interdisciplinary approach to, 3-4 interrelatedness of, 225-26 in justice system, 225

Commission) (1938-1939), 2

Wide Sargasso Sea ( Rhys), 155, 156, 172-73, 181-82, 240n9 wife abuse. See also battered wife syndrome; Ramjattan case

legislation on, 16-17, 27, 61

alcohol and, 75-76, 149, 232

love and, 6 2-77

as control, 96-97

media and, 5, 27-28, 160, 228-29

descriptions of, 88-98

narratives of, 85-98 postcolonial, 11-12

effects of, 94-95 in fiction, 140-41

poverty and, 14-15

justice system and, 44—45

power and, 80, 156, 163, 173, 193-94, 226

in police family, 79, 81-82, 83, 85-98

prevention of, 228-34, 235

rationalization of, 95-98, 99, 136-37 verbal/emotional, 89-90

racism and, 213-14 slavery and, 11, 80, 167-68

range of, 91 -9 3

wives. See also wife abuse

society and, 1-2, 40, 6 1 ,235

as murderers, 32, 56-60,149-50,227, 232

sociohistorical background of, 10-13,

as murder victims, 16, 17, 32, 44, 136

190

rape victims as, 185-86

state, 214-16, 231

Wodak, Ruth, 29

and subjectivity, 192-207

womanism, 220

victims of, 9, 27

women. See also mothers; sexual violence;

o f women, 71, 107 “Violence: A Gender Perspective” (Rennie),

wives African, 11

virginity, 180-81, 184-85, 217

Afro-Caribbean, 80, 175 changing position of, 17-19, 63, 72

virility. See masculinity

class differences among, 109, 113, 114

vocabulary, 30, 33, 34-35

and class issues, 72-73, 167

voice (active/passive), 33, 34-35, 90

counterideologies of, 108, 116-19

Voices Under the Window (Hearne), 240n9

and economic development, 105-6

voodooism, 104, 125

and education, 17-19, 120-21, 122-23,

72-77

Voyage in the Dark (Rhys), 240n9

148,227 as family head, 11-12, 63, 107, 183

Walcott, Derek, 24ln 7:3

Index

in Haiti, 105-7, 109, 112-13, 236

267

women (cont.)

and storytelling, 219

hostility towards, 17-18, 27—28, 63,

as subservient, 13, 147-48

7 2-77 indentured, 13

support for, 2 7 ,4 7 , 120, 126-27,

Indo-Caribbean, 13, 15, 80, 136-37,

as violent, 71, 107

146, 147-48, 150 liberal, 203-5 as life-givers, 117, 121-22

236-37 white, 173, 175, 180, 203-5 working, 17-19, 27-28, 148, 227 as writers, 67-72, 153-54, 167

male rights over, 12, 15

Women Working for Social Progress, 16

as migrants, 14, 73-74

writers. See also fiction; poetry

oppression of, 106, 115-16, 176

Caribbean, 7, 154, 208-9

organizations of, 119-21, 126

contextualization by, 72, 77, 109

patriarchy and, 217

diasporic, 145-46, 208—10

as possessions, 186-87, 189, 24ln 8:3

men as, 72-76, 190-91, 226-27

as promiscuous, 203-5

models used by, 29-30

and religion, 13, 124-25

and social cognitions, 29-30

resistance by, 103, 108-9, 119-25, 149

voice of, 70, 71-72, 73, 74, 76

rights of, 18, 107, 114

women as, 67-72, 153-54, 167

as scapegoats, 177-81, 226-27 shame of, 217 solidarity among, 112-13, 119-21,

Wuthering Heights (Bronte), 202, 206 youth, 233, 234. See also gangs

126-27, 149

268

Index

Human interaction has always been marked b), ex, pervasive dynamic of rage and violence. Thi and the ubiquitous social problems that are its cor Lave long engaged scholars. In W r i t i n g R a g e : U n m ask ii through C a r i b b e a n D i s c o u r s e , Paula Morgan and Valei sef apply strategies of linguistic and literary analy. is to a range of real-life and fictional discourses on the theme of violence. Their work explores the multifaceted spectrum of violence and its intricate web of cause-and-effect sequences at the macro and micro levels in Caribbean societies. This book will inform the first interdisciplinary course in this area to be taught at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, and it will also be essential reading for students and teachers ofCaribbean cultural studies elsewhere in the region and throughout the diaspora. "In comparison to other critical studies, it is unusually grounded* in textual analysis and, in comparison to ether discourse analyses, unusually sensitive to expressiors of human need and suffering. It is unique as an integration of literary and discourse analysis in response to an urgent . • • a gripping, powerful and timely work." - B a r b a r a L a l l a , D epartm ent o f L i b e r a l A r t s , West I n d i e s , T r i n i d a d a n d T o b a go Paula Morgan is Lecturer in the Department : associate of fc'fee'Cenfe^e. iox G m fidet sktid Development studies, and co-ordinator of the Cultural Studies Graduate Programme, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trir.i ibago. Her primary area of research, teaching and publication is women's literature of the Caribbean and the African diaspora. She has published the texts L a n g u a g e P r o f i c i e n c y f o r Tertiary Level and Writing about L i t e r a t u r e (with Barbara Lalla). Valerie Youssef is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Head p.f the Department of Liberal Arts, University of the West Indies, • , Trinidad and Tobago. Her m a j o r rjs ft \discourse analysis and language acquisition, but si. also published in sociolinguistics and language education. co-a , with Winford James, of a descriptive sociol . T o b a g o n i a n entitled The L a n g u a g e s o f T o b a g o .