Professor Lewis Gordon, head of the philosophy in the University of Connecticut, equated revolutions such as the Haitian revolution with love, at his feature presentation during the Kwame Toure Memorial Lecture Series at NAPA, Port of Spain, on June 15.
Gordon spoke on colonialism and revolution through the eyes of Frantz Omar Fanon, a French West Indian psychiatrist, political philosopher and Marxist from Martinique.
“At the heart of every revolution is the radicality of love,” he said. “At the heart of revolution is the courage and the commitment to build the extraordinary in such a way that future generations could live it in their own ways, which would be ordinary for them.
“And what a love that would be indeed, because if you do it right they would say, like what we said to Kwame Toure, Frantz Fanon and so on, is to enable the subsequent generations to say thank you.”
He said in order to be freed from the shackles of colonialism, people must be given power, through their institutions, culture and other areas.
“Power is the ability to make things happen with access to the conditions of doing so,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many abilities you may have, unless you have access to the conditions to make those abilities work, there is no power.”
He said education, language, words, architecture are conditions that give people the power to free themselves from colonialism. In contrast, he said, colonialism is dis-empowerment.
“We already know that colonialism works not simply by using violence, but by convincing you that black skin is truly inferior.
“If you could be convinced and all the ways you rally for knowledge is to support your inferiority, then you don’t need police or soldiers – because you dominate yourself.”
He noted that people who were taken from African nations and carried to the Caribbean in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade were part of complex systems where they were contributors to their society and had power.
“The people being enslaved were physicians, architects, they did agronomy (a branch of agriculture that deals with field crop production and soil management). The people directly from Africa had the knowledge from Africa and the conditions in the Americas were hostile for what they wanted in plantations.
“This was not just enslaved labour, this was enslaved knowledge. Part of oppression was to limit the conditions that people had access to.”
He encouraged the audience to think about the conditions they could affect today that would make a brighter future for generations to come.
“If you are looking to build a better world, that has in it the question of value that transcends you. That is dignity. It is when you understand the radical force of love.
“Hate is easy, you see something you hate, burn it down.
“But (love is) building homes, liveable homes where the people that come in are valued, where people come in as human beings and are treasured, where people learn to respect their environment
“It is where people understand that it is not just about us today, it is about understanding that we are the conditions of possibility for those to come.”
Read more on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday
