(Originally available from Stabroek News)
Arts on Sunday
The Arts Journal: Exploring the Caribbean cultural identity
By Al Creighton
Sunday, February 11th 2007
(The Arts Journal, Vol 2, No.2, March 2006, Guest Editor Gemma
Robinson, (General Editor, Ameena Gafoor), Georgetown : The Arts Forum,
142p)
The two most recent issues of The Arts Journal, together, make an
emphatic statement about the motivating ambitions of this literary
periodical and where it is today. They stand as testimony to the
considerable achievements of the publication, confirming its place
among the reputable line of scholarly and artistic magazines that may
be found today.
In the context of the Caribbean, the attainment of this place is not to
be taken lightly. Although The Arts Forum which publishes the Journal
was only founded in 2004, it gains in importance given the unflattering
track record of such learned periodicals in the region. They struggle
to survive. Only the brave would launch and maintain one of these and
only the foolhardy would expect immediate success, profitable sales,
worldwide circulation and guaranteed longevity. The road to these
achievements is paved with defunct or suspended publications and
littered with the discarded pages of efforts that barely got beyond
Volume One, Number One. So, young as it is, its existence and the
accomplishment of its present strength are not to be taken for granted.
Edited by Ameena Gafoor and supported by a distinguished editorial
board and advisors, The Arts Journal carries a sub-title that
articulates what it provides: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary
Literature, History, Art and Culture of Guyana and the Caribbean.
Further defined, it "is devoted to the critical and scholarly study of
the written literatures, the oral traditions, the visual culture and
cultural expressions of Guyana, the wider Caribbean and their
diasporas." In introducing Volume 2 Number 2 Gafoor explains the
decision to invite guest editors (following a not uncommon practice).
It flows from efforts, "To expand the critical space and offer readers
and subscribers a wide range of critical perspectives on contemporary
arts and culture. Colonialism has impacted on the lives of the peoples
of the Caribbean region in untold ways, in untold sites resulting in
multiple voices. We are still trying to come to terms with the notion
of Independence, both political and cultural, and, without a doubt, we
need to fill crucial gaps in our knowledge and understanding of our
societies and ourselves."
The third and fourth editions of the Journal were guest-edited; Volume
2 No.1 by Victor Ramraj, Guyanese-born Professor of English in Canada,
former editor of Ariel, who has judged the Guyana Prize (as Chairman of
the Jury) and the Commonwealth Prize. Ramraj produced an important
document of some of these multiple diasporal voices, giving readers a
very useful "idea of the current research interests of upcoming and
established scholars in Canada and the UK, whose articles and reviews
would go some way to indicate what our writers with Caribbean
attachments are producing and achieving."
Many of the "crucial gaps in our understanding of our societies" are
filled by these writers who, having migrated to Canada or the UK,
confront what Ramraj sees as "their hyphenated identities" and
linguistically as "Saussurian differentiators." The works of the
writers range from comfortable acceptance of hyphenation to rejection
of it as a way of keeping them out of the mainstream. The volume
showcases these multiple identities while illustrating the high
standards of West Indian writing which Ramraj reminds us, regularly
appears on literary prize lists and shortlists.
In a number of ways Volume 2 No 2 of the Journal complements this
issue. Its guest editor is Gemma Robinson, English lecturer at a
Scottish university, outstanding scholar and researcher on Caribbean
literature, a leading authority on Martin Carter and judge of the 2004
Guyana Prize. She takes on the same diasporal writing analysed in
Ramraj's collection, but enlarges it with a deep engagement of its
history as well as the impacts of colonialism, the notion of
independence and, most definitely, the complexities of the multiple
voices and identities.
Robinson produces an outstanding document of the excellence of this
writing. She has assembled examples of the finest scholarship and art
of the Caribbean, including samples of the work of a few of its best
writers who engage concepts of 'nation' in the region in the context of
the way "the national, the regional and the global have come together
in the Caribbean in divisive, unifying and celebratory ways." This
issue of The Arts Journal "explores Caribbean cultural identity through
creative writing, memoir and criticism. The contributors address
publishing, film, fine art, fiction, photography, poetry and radio.
Only one contributor explicitly names 'transnationalism' (Leon
Wainwright), yet all the pieces consider, in the words of Nicholas
Laughlin, "what 'Caribbean' can mean."
Robinson observes that "the contributors return to the essential topic
of how journeys contribute to Caribbean identity." This preoccupation
certainly informs the volume. For painter and University of Guyana
Research Fellow George Simon it is both physical and metaphoric as he
journeys in and out of self-loss to self discovery, from religious
uncertainties to discoveries of spiritual belief and artistic
fullfilment. These transmigrations accompanied his travels through
various corners of Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. Simon's experience
may be closely related to the similarly structured autobiographical
journey of Anne Walmsley whose studies of the Guyanese Amerindian
psyche through the art of Aubrey Williams complements his own work and
identity. Walmsley's piece in this issue of the Journal gives valuable
insights into her powerful contribution to the journeys of Caribbean
art and letters themselves.
Those same 50 years are covered by Leon Wainwright's study of Williams.
It is the same ground and the same time period over which West Indian
literature developed, and these are the very same preoccupations of
other contributors in this issue whose concerns link the history with
journeys and themes of identity. Walmsley, a leading authority on CAM,
the London-based Caribbean Artists Movement, takes us on the journey
through 50 years of publishing, while Robinson returns to the times
when this publishing began, and the role of radio in its development.
Although Henry Swanzy's BBC radio series Caribbean Voices is very well
known as vital outlet, sustenance and virtual launching pad for West
Indian writers in England, Robinson's critical analysis of it brings
new material to light from the times when the programme was produced by
Una Marson, VS Naipaul and George Lamming. Looking back from the
present might of contemporary Caribbean literature, she focuses "a much
less certain time" in the 1940s and 1950s, looking back at radio, local
Caribbean publishing and Guyanese writers.
Other areas such as photography and film are covered by Sandra
Courtman's A Journey through the Imperial Gaze: Birmingham's
Photographic Collections and its Caribbean Nexus and Projecting the
Caribbean: Case Study of the Barbados Festival of African and Caribbean
film by Jane Bryce. In Bryce's contribution, The Arts Journal keeps
pace with a very important development of more recent times, viz the
advance of film, well accelerated by the increasing electronic
revolution. She uses the African and Caribbean film festival that she
administers in Barbados as a case study of an attempt "to shift the
ground" of "watching" films in the region "from passive consumerism to
active participation in the creation of meaning."
Then, of equal importance as the critical attention to the arts, this
memorable issue of the Journal, like its predecessor, provides a
glimpse of new work by celebrated writers. The very best of Guyanese
novelists is represented by Wilson Harris, David Dabydeen and Fred
D'Aguiar, who join Trinidadian Vahni Capildeo in presenting new,
unpublished work. Even above this is the added advantage of the
provision of introductions by the authors who give background and
context to their work. There is an extract from Harris's latest novel
The Ghost of Memory, which continues this outstandingly original
author's explorations into the "interplay of the unconscious and the
conscious" and "states of mind."
Capildeo's extract is from a non-fiction prose piece, One Scattered
Skeleton and Dabydeen continues his deep interest in Hogarth's Blacks
through his creation of the slave boy Mungo with great ambitions of
becoming a painter/"painterman." The Painterboy of Demerara is another
journey to Guyana, bringing one of Hogarth's black servant boys from
Britain to life and placing him there. D'Aguiar completes the multiple
journeys with a revisit to the infamous site of the fanatic mass
murders and suicides of Jonestown in Guyana's North West in 1978. It is
yet another return by the author based on his trip to do a documentary
for the BBC on the 25th anniversary of the event. This provided him
with the inspiration and material for the novel Naming the Dead, and
readers with yet another important insight into new West Indian writing
in an outstanding edition of The Arts Journal that defines the heights
of scholarship and art at which the publication aims.