Discourses

Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention – Joyce Appleby

One of the positive innovations of CXC after becoming our official examination institution was to insist that “communication studies” and “Caribbean studies” be compulsory if a student wanted to write our version of Advanced Level – CAPE.

As a ‘science student’ I’d always been a bit sceptical of the narrow focus of some in the field. I wasn’t comfortable with looking at the world through the lens of only one discipline. That’s the reason why I wrote so many ‘non science’ subjects at CSEC.

With CAPE, however, the science subjects and Mathematics were so detailed that I wondered how we were going to be able to deal with the ‘soft’ nature of communications. Being compulsory, I was forced to find out.

What it did was to open up my eyes to much of what goes on around us that is taken for granted and ignored but have profound effects on shaping who we are and what we may become. Take this concept of ‘discourse’ introduced by the French philosopher Foucault. Before communication studies, I thought ‘discourse’ was a polite and formal way of talking about a ‘gaff’.

Well it is, but it’s so much more! Discourses, Foucault proposed, are all the ways in which a particular way of looking at an idea or a phenomenon is formed. Gaffing or even gossip is one aspect of this process which begins with the language in which the gaffing occurs.

Language itself isn’t neutral – it’s handed down to us with so much baggage that it isn’t even funny. We can start with the well used – but sadly still pertinent – example of the word ‘black’ in the English language that we have been bequeathed.

Formed by the English, ‘black’ is the repository of everything bad and negative – black as sin; blackguarded, blackmail, etc. It should not be hard to imagine how the word assisted in the process of enslaving Africans who were generally black in colour.

The word though is only the beginning of the discourse, which consists of all manner of human communications. Books – think travels into Africa, novels – think “Heart of darkness” and it’s cry of ‘the horror! The horror! Plays – Shakespeare’s Othello is the exception of the dominant rule.

Even the so called ‘neutral’ science studied and reported on the ‘inferiority’ of blacks – think of the great Linnaeus from my studies of biology – he divided mankind into five races of which Africanus were black-skinned, relaxed, and of negligent character. Discourses would also be extended by law – think of the premises of all the slave laws.

It can therefore be seen as an act of revolutionary vision when Caribbean leaders decided to establish our own examining body to filter what would be taught and examined in our schools. It is rather sad that some of the teachers have not changed with the times.

Of great interest to me in communications studies were the discourses that shaped and continue to shape views of females in our society. While the law is being altered to deal with some of the violent outrages against women, nothing will change until we change the fundamental idea of women as inferior still pushed by the dominant discourses.