Welcome again to this series of lectures on
postcolonial literature. We had ended our
previous discussion by saying that with intellectuals
like Homi Bhabha and Salman Rushdie, we move
from the confines of nationalism to the wider
field of cosmopolitanism. And we will use
this, as our starting point today for our
discussion of Caribbean poetry and specifically
for our discussion of the poet Derek Walcott.
But before we move on to Walcott and his poetry,
we will look at Walcott and one of his poems,
in fact, as representative of Caribbean poetry
today. But before we do that, before we move
on to Walcott, let me dwell upon the concept
of cosmopolitanism for a while. Because in
my previous lecture I have presented cosmopolitanism
as a kind of an alternative to the sense of
belonging in a nation, or to the sense of
nationalism.And since we have discussed at
some length the notions of Nationalism and
the concept of nation state, it is all the
more reason that we should discuss this alternative
of cosmopolitanism.
Now, the word cosmopolitanism is difficult
to describe in a brief and concise manner,
and this difficulty primarily comes from the
fact that this word or its variance have existed
for more than 2000 years now.And, this 2000
year long history makes the understanding
of this word particularly complex. But, having
said that, I will try and simplify the matter
as far as possible without making it too simplistic.
But let us start, therefore by looking at
the roots of the word cosmopolitanism. Now,
the word cosmopolitanism has its root in the
Greek language and it combines two specific
Greek words.
One is “cosmos” and the other is “polis”.
Now, here again, these Greek words, which
were relevant 2000, 2500 years ago, are difficult
to translate in today's context. And it is
difficult because most of us are not very
well aware of the Greek context in which these
words had their origin. But, roughly speaking,
cosmos can be translated as the universe,
or the world and the Greek word Polis signifies
ancient Greek city States like Athens or Sparta.
Now, in order to understand cosmopolitanism,
we have to understand how these two constituent
parts, cosmos and polis, they combine and
interact with each other. But again, before
we do that, we need to focus on the component
polis. Cosmos is easily understood. When we
say that cosmos is basically the Universe,
or the World, that is easy to grasp. But,
what is difficult to grasp in this sort of
combination of words is the constituent part,
Polis.
Now, as I said, that polis can be roughly
translated as a city State in ancient Greece.
Butthis is not a very useful definition to
us because in the contemporary world, we are
used to the concept of nation-states, rather
than city states. And therefore, it requires
some kind of an explanation about what a polis
was. Now, but the way I want to explain this
is not by going into historical details about
the Greek polis as it existed.
But rather, I would just like to point out
that the nature of the ancient Greek polis
can be understood, however imperfectly, by
applying to it the parameters of nation-states
and one's sense of belongingness to a nation
with which all of us are familiar. So, just
like we form part of a nation-state, by sharing
certain rights and obligations as its citizens,
ancient Greeks too, just like this, belonged
to one particular polis or another. And they
belonged to these polis by sharing certain
obligations and rights as citizens.
The second point that helps us understand
this concept of polis through the lens of
nation-stateis that just like the strong sense
of nationalism that today pervades most of
the global population and defines their identity,,
the identity of an ancient Greek was also
very strongly determined by his being part
of one polis or another. So, for instance,
in the 5th century BCE, and I am talking about
5th century BCE because we have already referred
to this period in one of our earlier lectures.
So, in the 5th century BCE there was actually
no concept of a Greek Nation, there was no
Greece nation-state. Rather, people owed their
political allegiance to a polis. And this
allegiance, in fact, would define their identity
to a large extent, just like today our affiliation
to one particular nation-stateor another defines,
to a large extent, our identity, defines who
we are. So for instance today, we know Plato
as a very famous philosopher from Greece.
But, if Plato, during his time, would have
been confronted with this identity, that you
are from Greece, Plato would probably have
been very bewildered, to say the least. Because,
he was born in Athens, the polis of Athens.
And therefore, his identity was primarily
that of an Athenian. So, he was an Athenian
rather than a Greek. Now, therefore, the strong
sense of nationalism that often ties us today
with one particular Nation State or another,
we can find a similar sentiment connecting
individuals in ancient Greece with one particular
polis or another.
Now, I hope, we have arrived at some understanding
of what polis, what the nature of polis was,
and more importantly, what was an individual’s
connection with the polis, to which he belonged.
But, now we come to the more important point,
how the two elements cosmos and polis interact
and combined with each other to form the concept
of cosmopolitanism. Now, the first recorded
cosmopolitan in history is perhaps the 4th
century BCE intellectual, who is known as
Diogenes the Cynic.
And he was born in the polis of Sinope which
is located in present-day Turkey. But at that
point of time it was a Greek colony. Now,
it is said that once when Diogenes was asked,
where he came from.
He replied that he was not a citizen of any
particular polis, but, he was a citizen of
the world. And the Greek word that Diogenes
apparently used was kosmopolitês, which is
the root word of cosmopolitan that we use
today. Now, it is generally agreed that what
Diogenes was indicating, by his answer, that
he was a citizen of the world, was that he
was no citizen at all. He did not belong to
any polis.
So, in other words, the claim of being a citizen
of the World, is to be understood here as
a negative claim, rather than a positive one.
Which means that by saying, that he is a citizen
of the World, Diogenes is saying that he is
no citizen. And he is, in fact, beyond and
above all the rights and obligations that
bound individuals in ancient Greece with their
polis, and binds individuals today with their
nation-state.
Now, this idea of renouncing the ties with
all geopolitical entities, be it a Polis or
a nation state, this kind of renunciation,
as a kind of cosmopolitanism, has been shared
by very few people in history. Yet, the critics
of cosmopolitanismhave levied their criticism
primarily at this strand of cosmopolitanism,
which advocates a lack of commitment to any
particular State or geopolitical entity. And
we are reminded here, of course, of the persecution
of Jewish intellectuals in Soviet Russia by
Stalin.
And these Jewish intellectuals were labelled
as cosmopolitans, or as rootless cosmopolitans.
And they were labelled as rootless cosmopolitans
because the Soviet State under Stalin believed
that they were not patriotic enough, they
did not have enough commitment towards the
Soviet State.
Now, as I said that this brand of cosmopolitanism,
though it has often been criticised, adherents
of the idea of cosmopolitanism seldom speak
about this kind of cosmopolitanism. Rather
they speak about a different kind of cosmopolitanism,
which can be identified, for instance, among
the Stoics.
Now, Stoics are practitioners of a philosophy,
or a worldview, which is referred to as Stoicism.
And Stoicism, as a particular way of thinking
about the world, first emerged in Greece during
the 3rd century BCE. And since then it has
passed through many phases and transformations.
And, here again I will not bore you with a
detailed history of the various phases and
transformations of Stoicism as a branch of
philosophy.
But, what is to be noted here is, unlike Diogenes
the Cynic, the Stoics believed that being
a citizen of the world was not in itself in
opposition to being a citizen of a particular
State. In other words, the notion that one
is the citizen of the world, is not in conflict
with the idea that one is also the citizen
of a particular state. The Stoics, in fact,
considered themselves to be citizens of the
wrld. Because, they believe that all human
beings formed part of a universal community.
And any individual had duties and obligations,
not just to his fellow citizens of a particular
state, but also to this greater human community.
Now, the whole world therefore, was conceived
by the Stoics as a huge polis, or as a state
in itself. And all human beings were regarded,
first and foremost, as citizens of this world
state, or world polis, or cosmo polis.
And, but, if the entire world is a state,
and therefore each of us have obligations
to that world state and to all the human beings
who are citizens of that world state, then
the notion of commitment becomes somewhat
diluted. Because, if we are to be duty-bound
to everyone, then there is a risk that we
end up being duty-bound to no one. But the
Stoics had another argument.
The Stoics said that, we can serve the citizens
of our own nation state or polis as representatives
of that world state. Because it is not possible
for us to serve everyone, we serve a representative
section of that human community. And that
representative section can be the citizens
of your own polis, or your own nation state.
So, the state, or the nation, or polis, according
to this Stoic worldview, fits into the concept
of a world state, or a world polis, as smaller
wheels fit into a larger wheel.
And, one’s commitment, to these two overlapping
spheres of the polis and the cosmos, of the
state and the world, is complementary and
not in opposition to each other. So, I mean,
just to repeat myself so that you understand
this very clearly. You can serve both your
polis and the world state, simultaneously,
according to the Stoics. There is no conflict
in this dual sense of commitment. They fit
as if they are concentric circles, one within
the other.
Now, the most powerful proponent of this particular
version of cosmopolitanism which conceives
the world as a super state, as a huge polis,
and which tries to couple one's allegiance
and commitment to nation state and to the
universal human community, is the 18th century
German Philosopher, Immanuel Kant.
Now, Kant, in his seminal essay, Toward Perpetual
Peace, which was published in 1795, talks
about a world state. And, not only does he
talk about, the world as a single State, but
he also talks about world laws or cosmopolitan
laws, which will be applicable to everyone,
to the entire humanity. Because all of them,
all of us are citizens of that world state.
But here we need to remember that Kant does
not propose the end of individual sovereign
states.
But rather, what he proposes is a delicate
balance between the individual states, and
the nations, and the notion of a world state.
So again, we go back to this idea of concentric
circles, where nation states fit within the
large circle of a world state. And how this
might work, wee get a glimpse of this by studying,
for instance, how institutions like the United
Nations, function today. How laws or charters,
like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
are implemented today.
How International Law Courts like the International
Criminal Court in the Netherlands, how they
function. And they are these institutions,
these laws, these rights, which are internationally
valid. They echo this idea of cosmopolitanism
that we first find in the Stoics and then
again in Kant. But when we talk about Cosmopolitanism
as a State of being simultaneously committed
at a local level to the polis, or the nation,
or even to our own family, to our village,
to our clan. So, these are our local commitments.
And we also speak of a simultaneous commitment,
at a global level, to the entire humanity.
In doing so, we are actually talking about
various forms of sharing and overlapping.
Let me simplify this for you. If, I am to
be committed towards my own nation state,
as also towards the universal sort of entire
humanity, the universal notion of human beings
as citizens of the world state, what is going
to be my commitment, what is going to be the
nature of my commitment.
Well, the nature of my commitment, can be
various, and can be different. And can be
different primarily because different commentators
of cosmopolitanism, have understood this overlapping
in different ways.
So, for instance, it can be political, this
overlapping, where we act out our duties as
citizens of India, for instance, by abiding
by the laws of this country, while also performing
our duties to our fellow human beings, by
forwarding the cause of universal human rights
which is an International Law, right. So,
here, we are simultaneously committed to the
laws of our nation state and to the universal
law of human rights. There is no conflict,
right.
And this is our political engagement, with
both the nation state, and with the world
state. Apart from this political engagement,
there can also be moral engagement at these
two simultaneous levels. For instance, this
can be a moral sharing, where we perform our
moral duties towards our families, while at
the same time we try to reach out to humanity
at large through participating in institutions
like, the Red Cross Society, and institutions
like, for instance, Doctors without Frontiers.
But, it can also be cultural sharing, cultural
commitment, where we share our sense of belongingness
to multiple cultures. And it is this cultural
cosmopolitanism, or multiple cultural belongingness
that we will study today with reference to
Derek Walcott and his poetry. First, let me
introduce Walcott to you before we go on to
discuss his poetry.
Walcott won the Nobel prize in literature
in 1992. And he was born in the Caribbean
island of Saint Lucia in 1930. And is renowned
worldwide both as a poet and as a playwright.
And he has been a prolific author, known both
for his ability to produce epic poems like
Omeros, for instance, but also for his ability
to write shorter verses, very powerful shorter
verses.
And as a dramatist he is perhaps the most
well-known for his play, Dream on Monkey Mountain,
which was first produced in 1970. Now, to
understand the notion of cultural cosmopolitanism
and how it operates in the writings of Walcott,
we need to keep in mind the specific 
context from within which Walcott writes his
poetry or his plays. And this specific context
that I am talking about, is a context of Caribbean
history.
Now, this context of Caribbean history situates
Walcott at a unique crossroad of cultural
identities, and to explore the sense of multiple
cultural belongingness, or cultural cosmopolitanism
that this context opens up for Walcott, we
will be looking at a very well-known poem
by him which is titled, ‘A Far Cry from
Africa’. But first, a few words about this
Caribbean context, and Caribbean history.
Now, the islands that form the Caribbean,
or the West Indies, were infamously described
by the 19th century British Historian, James
Anthony Froude, as an island uninhabited by
“rational” human beings, and a space which
did not contain any trace of civilisation.
Now, part of this statement is of course informed
by the colonial snobbery of a white man who
is speaking about a subjugated land.
And we have seen this snobbery at work when
we discussed the African context, where to
someone like Marlow, standing in his boat,
the Africans do not even qualify as human
beings. So, part of Froude’s rejection of
the Caribbean as a land uninhabited by rational
human beings, of course comes from this white
colonial snobbery.
But, part of it is also true, in the sense
that, the native inhabitants of the Caribbean
islands were driven to near extinction by
the Spanish Colonisers during the 16th century.
And this meant not only a wiping out of a
whole community of people, but also a wiping
out of entire cultural and knowledge systems,
which the indigenous people of a Caribbean
islands possessed.
And later, when the decline of the Spanish
empire in this part of the World was followed
by the coming in of the British, and the French
Colonisers, and the Dutch colonisers, they
brought to the Caribbean millions and millions
of slaves and indentured labourers, from distant
parts of the world, like Africa for instance,
or India, and thereby changing the entire
demographic profile of these islands.
The Caribbeans is therefore a space which
do not retain much of the traces of its original
inhabitants and their cultures, but which
is nevertheless a huge melting pot of different
people, from different parts of the world,
different languages and different cultures.
So, on the one hand, the original cultural
template was scrubbed clean almost by the
Spanish conquistadors.
But, on the other hand, Caribbean island as
a location, where various different people,
with various different cultures from different
parts of the world came together, made Caribbean,
a huge melting pot of peoples, of cultures
and of languages. However, as I just mentioned,
when Froude wrote about the Caribbean islands
in the late 19th century, the civilisation
and cultural attainments of the indigenous
population had all but vanished
and a new Caribbean culture was yet to emerge.
Therefore, in the Caribbean, Froude could
see only an empty space of civilizational
nothingness. And the sense of nothingness
that Froude associated with the Caribbean
in the 19th century was again echoed in the
20th century by the Caribbean born author
V S Naipaul, an author with Indian origins.
And he too believed that his home country
was actually a space of nothingness. It did
not produce anything, it did not have any
history of its own. But when we come to Walcott,
we see that this very nothingness becomes
a position of cultural strength and cultural
experimentation.
And Walcott uses the notion of his homeland
as a blank slate to forge a new identity that
brings together the traces of all the multiplicity
of peoples, of languages, of cultures, that
had come together in the Caribbean. Thus,
unlike the nationalist writings that we had
studied before, in the Indian context, where
we saw the attempt to recover a pure Indian
identity by carefully separating out what
is foreign, and by trying to reach at the
indigenous core.
In the writings of Derek Walcott, we come
across something really different. We come
across an attitude of eclecticism, an attitude
of universal acceptance. And this eclecticism
is beautifully brought out in the poem that
we are now going to discuss, the poem, which
is titled, “A Far Cry from Africa”. Now,
“A Far Cry from Africa” was written in
response to the news of the British atrocities
against Kenyan freedom fighters during the
Mau-Mau uprisings of the 1950’s.
And in the poem Walcott extends his solidarity
to the dead Africans. And here we need to
remember that some of Walcott's own ancestors
came to the Caribbeans from Africa, bound
in slave ships. But, even while extending
his solidarity, Walcott cannot distance himself
from the English language which he has inherited
from the very British colonisers who enslaved
his ancestors and who now persecuted the Mau-Mau
revolutionaries in Africa.
So, he talks about his, “love” for the
English tongue which,, though it originally
belonged to the colonisers, is now being used
by him to lament the death of the people suffering
from the atrocities of colonialism. The language
of the colonisers being used to lament the
atrocities of colonialism. And, this is very
important. This cultural appropriation is
crucial in Walcott. Because it speaks of how
we can take hold of the very weapons of colonial
oppression.
And indeed, the forceful imposition of English
language on the colonised subjects was an
act of cultural oppression. But, what Walcott
is showing that we can take hold of such weapons
of colonial oppression and we can then use
them to our own benefit. We can make these
weapons, the tools of our self-expressions,
in which case, they seized to be modes of
oppression and they become the means of showing
empathy, of showing kindness, of showing solidarity.
But this process, which Walcott performs very
beautifully in the poem “A Far Cry from
Africa”, is not an easy process. Appropriation
is never easy. Because as a legacy bearer
of both the coloniser and the colonised, Walcott
feels his identity in conflict. And therefore,
he writes in his poem, that he is, and I quote
his words, divided to the vein, the veins
that run within his body.
And probably, all of us who have passed through
the colonial process, or whose ancestors have
passed through the colonial process, and irrespective
of the fact whether we belonged to the side
of the colonisers, or to the side of the colonised,
we are perhaps all divided to the vein, and
our identity is invariably informed by this
conflict. For Walcott, however, this conflict
becomes the very essence of his hybrid identity,
of his new Caribbean identity.
Because there is no way he can wash away the
African blood that runs through his body and
neither can he unremember the English tonguewhich
is as much part of his identity as the African
blood in his veins. We will discuss, this
notion of Hybrid Identity, further, in our
next lecture on Diaspora and diasporic Literature.
Thank you.
