Navigations: the Fluidity of Identity in the Post-Colonial Bahamas

Navigations: The Fluidity of Identity in the Post-Colonial Bahamas Nicolette Bethel Thesis in fulfillment of requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social Anthropology University of Cambridge March 2000 Introduction 1 Introduction Navigations: tales of nation in the Bahamas It is not at all uncommon for Bahamian intellectuals to assert that the Bahamas has little or no sense of national identity. Discussions of the topic are often greeted with raised eyebrows and comments like ‘National identity? and what is that?’ or ‘We don’t have a national identity’. In June 1998, the fledgling nationalist-intellectual Bahamas Association for Cultural Studies (BACUS) entitled its first annual conference Uncovering Bahamian Selves. The implication was clear: if a ‘Bahamian self’ existed at all, then it was very well hidden indeed. If one believes, as these intellectuals appear to do, that a national identity of any worth resides in a narrative/symbolic ‘myth of nation’ (Smith, 1988), then the palpable absence in the Bahamas of a readily observable symbolic product poses considerable problems. Yet among the Bahamian public, the sense that there is no national identity is not evident. On the contrary: the first thing one notices when beginning a study on identity and nation is the centrality of such conceptions. Everywhere one turns there is reference to the ‘true’ Bahamian experience. The Ministry of Tourism in the capital decorates its foyer with ‘native’ Bahamian handicrafts, and is located above the Straw Market, the quintessential ‘Bahamian’ market. Shops on Bay Street, the main thoroughfare, vie to promote their merchandise as being ‘Bahamian-made’. Popular Introduction 2 artists invite members of the public to celebrate those things that are unashamedly ‘Bahamian’; politicians, preachers and radio talk show hosts ground all discussions of appropriate behaviour in the question of whether it is really ‘Bahamian’ or not. People, places and things are singled out and judged according to their adherence to ‘Bahamian’ sets of ideals—a code that incorporates (among other things) Christianity, community and a strong commitment to family. The second thing one notices is that individuals know what ‘Bahamian’ is when they are confronted with the foreign. Extremely clear demarcations are made between who is ‘Bahamian’ and who is not. This reluctance to recognise outsiders is not remarkable in itself, but in a nation whose apparent lack of ‘national’ symbols has caused many residents to deprecate it, it is certainly significant. My problem in discussing national identity in the Bahamas is manifold. How does one reconcile, theoretically, the disjuncture between the intellectual understanding of Bahamian national identity, and the actual national and nationalistic practices of Bahamians themselves? Part of my difficulty is descriptive, taking on the challenge of identifying Bahamian national identity in a context in which obvious methods—mining the literature of the nation, interpreting collective symbols, delineating processes of integration—do not yield expected results. In part, it is conceptual. Into what theoretical space can fit a study of national identity in the archipelagic Bahamas, a geographically fragmented, multi-ethnic, postcolonial state? And finally, it is a question of auto-ethnography. How do I balance my several roles—anthropologist, Bahamian, nationalist writer—in such a way that I might make sense of my data for all my potential audiences? I intend to address these problems by employing a number of theoretical approaches. Drawing upon widely-ranging studies of nationalism, I shall examine how Introduction 3 the Bahamian example fulfils, and deviates from, expected norms. With regard to the fragmentation of Bahamian territory and the multi-ethnic nature of its population, I shall rely on theories of ethnicity and multiplicity as well as studies of space, place and identity. And finally, I shall investigate the problem of writing about my own society— indeed, of writing about myself—by referring to a discourse of auto-ethnography that expresses that relationship in a variety of complex ways. Nationalism and the ‘myths of nations’ In Imagined Communities, Anderson discusses the ‘three institutions of power’ that helped solidify the nationalist enterprise—the census, map, and museum, which ‘profoundly shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined ... the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry.’ (1991: 164). Such institutions stand atop the pervasive power of print-capitalism, which permits the conceptualisation of the nation, defined by Anderson as ‘an imagined political community’ whose members delineate their belonging in relation to their fellows, despite the fact that they ‘will never know most of their fellow-members, or even hear of them’ (1991: 6). National identity, proceeding from this imagined community, is the fictive commonality that exists among the members of a group that is too large to be linked otherwise. This commonality distinguishes the members of this group from the members of other similar groups; nations are not only imagined, but they are also ‘inherently limited and sovereign’ (Anderson, 1991: 6). The trope of imagination is common throughout the theories on nationalism. The nation, together with its traditions, is ‘invented’ (Hobsbawm, 1983); it comes into being Introduction 4 when certain economic and social factors exist that permit its creation (Gellner, 1983); it is held together by ‘narratives’ that identify it as a unique entity in a world of other unique entities (Anderson, 1991; Brennan, 1990; Bhabha, 1990). Indeed, as Foster observes, the concepts of invention or imagination highlight one assumption shared by various contemporary writers on nationalism (1995: 5): that contrary to the beliefs of nationalists, the nation does not spring from some primordial origin, but is rather the result of the conscious activities of some, or all, of its members. If the ‘nation’ is a fabrication, how does it appear real to nationals and nationalists? For Anderson, it is the process of imagination that gives the ‘nation’ its power. All communities, from the lineage to the clan, are imagined communities. However, whereas communal links ‘were once imagined particularistically—as indefinitely stretchable nets of kinship and clientship’ (1991: 6), nations construct themselves in more general, abstract terms. The older religious communities and dynastic empires were conceived of as though they were a series of centres without margins,1 constructed ‘particularistically’—the former through one’s orientation to the deity, the latter through one’s allegiance to the ruler. By contrast, ... the very possibility of imagining the nation only arose historically when, and where, three fundamental cultural conceptions ... all lost their axiomatic grip on men’s minds ... first ... was the idea that a particular script-language offered privileged access to ontological truth ... Second was the belief that society was naturally organized around and under high centres ... Third was a conception of temporality in which cosmology and history were indistinguishable, the origins of the world and of men essentially identical. Combined, these ideas rooted human lives firmly in the very nature of things, giving certain meaning to the everyday fatalities of existence, and offering, in various ways, redemption from them. The slow, uneven decline of these interlinked certainties ... drove a harsh wedge between cosmology and history. No surprise then that the 1I am indebted to Marshall McLuhan, 1962, for this term. Introduction 5 search was on ... for a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together. Nothing perhaps more precipitated this search ... than print-capitalism, which made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways. (1991: 36). Thus the conceptualisation of the nation represented a markedly different way of imagining one’s community than the ways that previously existed. Nationalism was a product of a new modernity that contrasted sharply with the ‘traditional’, and national identity a ‘profoundly new way’ of thinking about oneself and one’s relation to others. For those theorists who accept the association of nationalism with modernity, it follows that the concept of nationalism—and, by extension, national identity—is a construct that arises in a particular time and place; geographically and historically the nation is unique. Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear the expectation that in the postmodern world nationalism (and national identity) will lose its force and relevance. According to such readings, the concept of the ‘nation’ is a circumstantialist response to a specific context, a myth used by elites to unite disparate groups under a single set of interests. A. D. Smith (1988a) describes this approach to nations and nationalism as the ‘myth of the modern nation’. The idea that nations are wholly constructed collectivities dreamed up for political purposes by nationalist elites, is, in his reading, as much a myth as the nationalist endeavour itself. Many of its components are far more relevant to the social scientists who espouse it than to nation-builders themselves, founded on the very western, state-centred concepts of territory, economy, law and ‘civic ideology’ (1988a: 9). These he contrasts with another national model, one

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