Demerara Waves Online News- Guyana Riding on the Crest of Truth
Last Updated on Sunday, 1 October 2023, 8:25 by Denis Chabrol
By Dr. Randolph Persaud, Professor Emeritus
Dr. Randolph Persaud
As university professors my friend Percy Hintzen and I know something that is unmistakably true, namely, that no knowledge is apolitical. I accept that, as I have since my early undergraduate years. Professor Hintzen, however, seems to have forgotten this most settled position in modern epistemology. The baffling thing is that Hintzen is a first-rate scholar who needs no lecturing on the power/knowledge dynamic. How then could his article “On Postcolonial Violence and Oil Extractivism,” be explained (SN 9/25/2023)?
Let us go through Hintzen’s arguments. Before we get into the weeds, I feel comfortable in suggesting that while I have some sympathy for Hintzen’s general historiography, I am a lot less ideological in my approach. I gave up dogma a long time ago.
A good deal of Hintzen’s generalizations are mere ideological swipes that are more performative rather than substantive. For instance, he claims that Mbembe “would be horrified” at my employment of the idea of “founding violence” to articulate my understanding of colonial political economy in Guyana and in the world system of global capitalism. The broadside here is necessary to set up his other claim that I am absolving ExxonMobil of any responsibility for supposedly perpetrating neo-colonial violence in Guyana and elsewhere.
Well, Hintzen and I have a fundamental difference. He sees the global hydrocarbon industry only in the imaginary of exploitation, domination, and atrocities. Nothing has changed from the late 19th century to today. All you need to do is posit the formula of “the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer,” then add Exxon Mobil, and then mix. What you end up with is this – “Now, ExxonMobil stands at the apex of a “ruling group” whose violence is justified and legitimized by a narrative of soi-distant, of the company and its partners as saviors of the people from a life of savagery and abject poverty” (Hintzen, Ibid). It matters not that Guyana is a democracy, compared to the numerous other oil economies mentioned. It matters not that we have a completely reworked framework for oil and gas development.
As you may have noticed in the “In the Diaspora” column, ideology can make life easy for essayists. In Prof. Hintzen’s article, for instance, accusations against ExxonMobil and partners are launched without any data. Rather, the very companies that are helping the Guyanese people to be lifted out of poverty, are accused of violence solely on the basis of what has taken place elsewhere, and on the claims made by a handful of local anti-government elite characters and their overseas associates. You need to keep in mind that the foreign investors are being accused of “violence” against Guyana.
Frankly, I am tired of people living in the US constantly telling people in Guyana that higher wages for you the Guyanese people, who suffered so long in a low wage economy, that you are damaging the environment. What Professor Hintzen ought to know is that he has unwittingly become the voice of a privileged elite who make their living or sustain their status by claiming to speak truth to power from Toronto, New York, Arizona, and Florida, but who will never give up their North American comforts to join the so-call struggle. A little conference here and there will do the trick.
This elite has a complete monopoly in the elite newspaper in Guyana. The “In the Diaspora” column is a mouthpiece for that same elite. It has also been the platform for the WPA-PNC-MCC-CGID epistemic community, soi-distant!
Time now for Red Thread and GHRA. These are darling organizations for the urban elite in Guyana and their overseas, conference-hopping types. The first hides behind gender, the second behind race. No one in Guyana that is not from the elite ever heard of Red Thread. I repeatedly asked people from the countryside what is Red Thread, and the best answer I ever got was at De Willem where several people told me that Red Thread “is some people from town.” That’s it folks! Some people from town. Not one has ever heard of Red Thread. Red Thread only exists in the letter sections of the newspapers. What it knows to do well, is to speak the language of cosmopolitan liberalism and get White people to jump because of their guilt for their past injuries, and their current neo-colonial NGO-interventionism. It is quite easy to fool liberal NGOs from the West in the Third World. You just need the right words.
As for GHRA, it has changed beyond recognition. It played a useful role in getting rid of the authoritarian PNC. Mike McCormack allowed his previous good office to be emotionally captured by WPA activists who have repeatedly used race as a battering ram against national unity. The right-wing WPA (right wing because of its politics of racial populism) somehow managed to get Mike to embark on an agenda so biased that the once venerable institution has lost all credibility.
I know Percy Hintzen is a fine sociologist. But has he allowed himself to become the spokesperson for a jet-setting elite who are bent on bringing down the PPPC, albeit under the guise of climate change activism? As for Mbembe potentially being “horrified” with my use of his “founding violence,” may I suggest that Homi Bhabha would be horrified at Dr. Hintzen’s defense of the MMC as “our hybridity.”
I close by repeating that ExxonMobil and partners have brought much needed investment capital to Guyana, and there is palpable evidence that Guyanese of all backgrounds, in all regions, are experiencing a rise in standard of living, with rapidly increasing opportunities before them every day.
Dr. Persaud is an Adviser in the Office of the President, Guyana.