On building and rebuilding communities

His reply repeated the note that has resounded throughout the week.

He was from Manchester, he said, and despite the fact that a number of people had been targeted and spat on in the aftermath of the horrific event, it was more important for him to be seen to be part of the growing wellspring of cohesiveness forming as part of the reaction to the tragedy.

His words brought home the fact that disaster can create unity.

They also pointed to an awakening desire across the globe to resist the spread of terror not by more violence, but by strengthening bonds within communities.

The mother of one of the first named victims, Olivia Campbell, who was 15 years old, also appealed at a mass rally on Wednesday not to let the bombings “beat any of us” and make “us victims.” Lines such as “Crowds gathered to show defiance against terror and declare the city ‘will not be intimidated’” stare at readers in all newspapers.

I am also at the same time rereading the poetry of Kamau Brathwaite whose later poetry emerged out of successive traumas, including the death of his wife Doris, the destruction of his home and archives by Hurricane Gilbert in Jamaica and the fact that he was attacked, tied and beaten up in his house. The poems that come after these events are amongst the most innovative in Caribbean literature.

Brathwaite has developed an idea of community based on what happened in the wake of the destruction of Amerindian culture, the violence of colonialism, the enslavement of Africans and the introduction of indentureship.

For him community is a form of resistance. This, for him, is most evident in the Maroon communities of Jamaica. Their flight to the hills was an act of resistance to enslavement and loss.

For Brathwaite, this resistant spirit of the African remains submerged and alive through what he calls “the self-in-maroonage.” For this Barbadian poet, theorist and historian, the poet too is a “self-in-maroonage.” As speaker and recorder of his society, he must resist all efforts to suppress his right to create and to speak.

What he means is that when terrible events happen to the individual it causes repression and emotions to “go underground.” The artist has to find ways to bring these emotions and memories to the surface. If not, then acts of terror will continue in cycles of abuse.

Brathwaite has invented what he calls “Sycorax video text format,” which is in the first instance a way of keeping records in a concrete and visible form, in a manner similar to film or video. His style of writing uses the computer as a memory bank to keep records. He is also saying that what we remember is carried in stories and in the way that we tell them to future generations.

The method of the telling becomes important. After all, what we remember is shaped by how it is told. So that his poems use the ability of the computer to simulate noise and tone of voice and to provide emphasis through different font sizes and types.

He is here seeking to make the electronic media have the same effect as a storyteller of old.

We see the value of resistance movements, the cementing of bonds and retelling of narratives in the persistent attempts by the Carib community of Arima to assert their rights. Their struggle has finally borne fruit. The Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts has announced a one-off holiday commemorating the First Peoples on August 13, and lands have also been set aside to build an Amerindian Heritage Village and Living Museum for the Santa Rosa Carib community on the Blanchisseuse Road.

What Brathwaite suggests in his writings on the Caribbean is that our history has provided us with unique attitudes and lessons of survival. We have learnt that acts of violence can bring together disparate peoples.

We have also learnt the value of difference and that when apparently dissimilar peoples come together in unity after an act of terror or violence then something new happens. He uses the process of creolisation as a way of demonstrating this. The collective acts of terror that brought so many races and cultures together in the Caribbean led to unique forms of cultural adaptation and expression.

Brathwaite’s writings on creolisation also point to the fact that the building of community is nonetheless fraught with danger.

Alongside the idea of community comes that of the scapegoat.

So often in the process of becoming coherent, societies demonise those who are different.

Groups need a focal point around which to rally. So that the danger of mass rallying in Manchester and across Britain is that all people who look as if they are Muslims become the objects of hate. This, of course, is what the counsellor at M a n - c h e s t e r Unive rsity was s e e k i n g to prevent by insisting on being visible.