Stories, or narratives, are seen as integral aspects of the human condition. From the dawn of history, we have attempted to make sense of the world through the creation of stories; and, to an almost all-encompassing degree, we literally live through our stories. Within our families, we know the story of how our mother favoured our younger brother, and he was the “apple of her eye”. In our village, we know the story of how a shopkeeper became so wealthy because of his frugality that he was known as “Money Ketch-Kai”. In our country, some know the story of Cheddi Jagan as the “father of our country”. Internationally, we know the story of how Europeans dragged us to these shores to exploit our labour.
But to each of these stories, there are counter stories that challenge the assertions of the first. Our mother maintaining that the “favoured” brother had been very ill as a baby; the miserly shopkeeper maintaining that he valued his hard work, and would not fritter away his reward; others in our country telling the story of Forbes Burnham as the father of our country, and Europeans maintaining they “civilized” us.
What are we to make of these conflicting stories? In his novel Nausea (1938), the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: “A man is always a teller of tales. He lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.” In a word, we use stories to navigate an evidently chaotic world, but, as is evident from the examples offered, our stories could lead us into conflict with others when the implications clash.
In our country, much of what we describe as our intractable “ethnic conflict” comes out of the different narratives that have been congealed within our ethnic groups as they dealt with the world into which they found themselves. The narratives of the Indigenous Peoples, whose lands were expropriated by the Europeans as they were relegated to the forested and mountainous interior of the country, has to be different from the narratives of the Africans, who were enslaved to labour without recompense; and both narratives differ from the stories of the Portuguese, Indian and Chinese Indentureds who followed as economic migrants.
But, as we know from our lived experience in Guyana, our clashing stories can lead to overt clashes – verbally and physically – that have served to stymie our progress as a nation. What can we do? One proposal on the table is for the “facts” on which our various stories are based to be investigated by impartial scholars, and a “meta” story be reframed around these accepted “facts”. Such projects must be encouraged and facilitated as, for instance, in the present debate about the relative contribution of Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham to the formation of our nation. The stories, enriched by accounts from “others”, can offer us more nuanced views. But we must accept that this process has been going on for decades without any overarching consensus, and it is unlikely there will ever be agreement “on all fours” – if for no other reason that the complexity of integrating so many interpretations.
One suggestion that has been made is for us to be taught and consciously adopt a perspective that accepts the multiplicity of our stories that “explain” our world, in order to reject dogmatism and accept that “we could be wrong”. Perspectives or world views are normally shaped by our place in the world, our beliefs, values, and what we think matters, but they can be taught. As the philosopher Elisabeth Camp explains, a perspective ‘helps us to do things with the thoughts we have: to make quick judgments based on what’s most important, to grasp intuitive connections, and to respond emotionally, among other things.’ Through perspective, some features of our experiences ‘stick out in our minds, while others fade into the background.’
Our perspective of unity through diversity must reject the insistence of “my way or the highway”.
