Guerrilla Governmentality

Nalini Persram

No citations without author's permission.

Department of Political Science University of Dublin

Trinity College Dublin 2 Ireland

Tel. +353 1 6083596 persramnOtcd.ie

Gzrerrilla Governr~terztality Nnlini Persr~ztrl'

Britain has handled us and the question of our independence not in our interest, but in hers.

Cheddi Jagan, The West on Trial2

Introduction

'The period 1953 to 1963 in the history of colonialism in British Guiana is

remarkable. For the British Empire, the year 1953 was a disaster. During that

year a radical, class-based nationalist movement led by indigenous, non-

white, anti-elitist politicians and a Jewish-American Marxist woman was

swept to power in the colony. It was like poetry in motion for proponents of

international socialism, yet it caught the British government almost totally by

surprise; within the frigid anti-communist climate of Western world politics

the victory left behind an imprint of British absent-mindedness and colonial

impotence. Indeed, less than six months later, colonial authority felt itself

sufficiently threatened by the party it had once denied was unacceptable to

the British government3 as to be forced to declare a colonial emergency,

suspend the constitution and remove Jagan and his party from power. It was

a move that, for the British, was considered to be deeply damaging to the

liberal ideology of empire with its benevolent images of enlightening

paternalism, and it was to have major ramifications throughout the British

colonial world.

The consequences for the people of British Guiana would be that what had

been a uniquely successful indigenous anti-colonial force operative in

defiance of that history's self-declared trajectory, would eventually become a

mere casualty of the imperial and liberal-capitalist containment of

1 I would like to thank the participants of the Graduate Seminar, Department of Political Science, University of Dublin, Trinity College and, in particular, David Scott for their comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Jagan, Tlrc Wcst oil TrLl: My Figlit for Grrynrin's Frcer/ortr (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., [1966]), p. 341, hereafter referred to as W.

democracy's radical potential. By 1962 another colonial emergency was

declared, but this time it was upon the initiative of Cheddi Jagan, not the

British.

Yet the eventual demise of Jagan and the People's Progressive Party in the

era of anti-colonial politics was to take another decade to complete. During

that time, a new era in the struggle against colonialism was initiated which

was to see the re-election of Jagan and, for one very crucial period, to contain

the strong possibility that it would be he who would lead British Guiana to

socialist independence. What followed was nothing less than political

disaster for Jagan and the PPP - and, many would say, for Guyana's

postcolonial future. By 1963, the political events following the second colonial

emergency would provoke many sympathisers of the radical faction of the

nationalist movement to denounce Jagan's final political act as a sacrificial

offering to colonial authority - as nothing less than the unrolling of the

political red carpet to neo-colonialism's indigenous lackeys.

Different theoretical and analytical perspectives highlight different aspects

of this period in colonial history. From a Gramscian perspective, the

radicalisation of anti-colonial politics offers the possibility for the

neutralisation of anti-capitalist forces thereby paving the way for Capital;

Guyanese independence thus represented the beginning of a new era of

domination in the form of neo-colonialism. A critique of Orientalism reveals

the attitudes and mentalities of the colonisers towards the colonised and

illustrates the way in which, regardless of the indigenous agency that is

discernible through nationalist discourse, the conferral of political

independence represents only a nominal shift in relations of power between

the West and its Other; the system of thought that enables the practices of

Orientalism remains intact.

Foucault's concept of governmentality involves a more specific object of

inquiry. It is an approach that scrutinises that characteristic rationality of

3 Robertson (Constitutional) Commission: Discussion between The Chairman, the Archbishop of the West Indies and Sir Donald Jackson", 3:20-4:00 pm, 18 February 1954, CO 891/1.

governing upon which British colonial authority relied for the realisation of

its political objectives: liberalism. Through an analysis of the two colonial

emergencies and their consequences what would appear to be colonial

backfire to liberals, textbook class conflict to Marxists, power politics to

realists, and race relations to pluralists is shown to be the powerful effects of

the colonial "conduct of conduct".

Political Imperatives in Caribbean Thought

Raymond Smith has recently written with resignation over the prevalence

of race conceived as a fundamental feature of Guyanese society in even the

most sophisticated sociological, cultural and political analyses.4 History, he

says, is invariably invoked to facilitate understanding, and he accepts that

when speaking about Guyana this necessarily involves the issue of race.

Taking Smith's criticism further, the problem occurs when analysis

endeavours to explain the most persistent problematic in studies of Guyanese

history and politics - the racial origins of the political crisis of the nationalist

movement - rather than seeking to invert the problematic itself.

The need for such inversion arises from the general acknowledgement that

race had become a significant dynamic during the anti-colonial struggle

immediately after 1953 through the process of politicisation. Curiously, the

recognition that race was not a "natural" or autonomous presence that

operated as a dormant essentialism waiting to erupt nevertheless is often

contradicted in the same breath by a resort to the assumptions of the pluralist

thesis: the result is that the crucial identification of politicisation as a

4 Smith idcntifies the work of Clive Y. 'I'honias and Brakette Williams as a prime example. 'Fhonias locates the roots of racial violence in the functional aspect of the division of labour between Africans and Indians. In Williams' anthropological study of contemporary Guyanese society, her ultimate conclusions veer toward the idea that "race" has now become sociologically and politically sedimented. More mainstream work that exhibits similar tendencies is that of Ralph Premdas. Raymond T. Smith, "Living in the Gun Mouth : Race, Class, and Political Violence in Guyana", New West Ittdian Gtiide 69 (3&4), 1995: 223-252, pp. 225,245. Despite the politically incorrect use of the term "race", this paper will deploy it for the purposes of adhering to the discursive formations of the time. Occasionally other terms will substitute it, but these are not so much inconsistencies as variations that represent an overl,.~p of discourses from different historical periods.

fundamental aspect in the history of Guyanese social conflict is underminecl

by deference to an ontology of racial antagonism. The discourse of race seems

to liquefy critical thought. As Smith insists, "the question is not whether

cultural constructions of race continue to exist in the modern world - they do

- but under what conditions does 'race' or 'ethnicity' come to be a major fault

line in the society, making for violence of the kind that was seen in British

Guiana in the 1960s."5 The imperative is thus to recognise the powerful

discursive (and thus sociological) effects of race and at the same time critically

interrogate the ways in which this discourse has been received as the aura of

primordial identity in the imagination of the Guyanese. It is one that arises

out of the acknowledgement that the problems of postcolonial present can be

neither appreciated nor critically understood as long as the colonial past

remains shrouded in the mists of sociological essentialisms.

The work of influential Caribbean scholar, Gordon Lewis, is a case in

point. And it illustrates one of the ways in which race has become

sedimented as a category of political analysis in much of Caribbean thought.

Immediately after the anti-colonial struggle in British Guiana had officially

ended, at a time when disillusionment was deep and political wounds were

still raw, Lewis published a review of Jagan's political autobiography, Tlze

West on Trial: My Figlzt for Guyana's Freedom. Jagan had published the work

Though merely a book review, the commentary is highly political and deeply

rhetorical, not least because of the timing of Jagan's book, which was the year

his arch rival, Forbes Burnham, had been sworn in as the first leader of the

newly independent Guyana. Taking a position starkly opposite to Smith's,

Lewis criticises Jagan for not taking seriously enough the race "rea1ities"of

Guyanese society. Counterintuitive to Smith, Lewis in fact attributes Jagan's

historic downfall to his oz~erpoliticisation of the race issue.

Jagan recognises, of course, the early historical roots of racialism; he can see that occupational differences within the colonial prison generated racialist feelings and that such feelings have indigenous

5 Smith, ibiil., y . 237.

roots. He also recognises the deep power of the creolisation process, creating an aggressive Indian commercial bourgeoisie demanding entry into the social power structure. But he prefers to subordinate these elements of the total process to the thesis of imperialist assault upon racial harmony ...

What is not said is that this subordination formed the basis of both Jagan's

political strategy and nationalist rhetoric. By drawing attention to the

colonially constructed and politicked nature of (in keeping with the historical

discourse) racial conflict, and by mobilising first the Indian peasantry and

then, with the cooperation of Burnham, the Afro-Guianese urban middle

classes, Jagan was able to fulfil the objective of politically unifying along class

and thua ethnic lines the Guitlneae population,

Nevertheless, Lewis focuses on the tensions between Jagan's political

discourse and his strategy of anti-colonial resistance. It would seem that

Jagan's sociological account of the formation of Guyanese society is very

much at odds with his political rhetoric about the divide-and-rule policy of

Brj tish colonialism. Jagan was ultimately left out of the historic transition to

Guyanese independence because he did not sufficiently understand that the

imperialist assault upon racial harmony

concerns itself with the vital question of colonial political strategy. Once his own premises about colonial ruling classes were accepted, he 11ad no right, logically, to trust the British . . . Yet his policy after 1953 was, in fact, based on such a trust, culminating in the astonishing act of unconditional surrender to the Colonial Secretary in the last sad act of the drama in November 1963.7

As far as Lewis is concerned, it was Jagan's "over-simplified" marxism that

blinded him to the race issue - that led him to underestimate the potency of

race as a major component in the social-economic process and instead elide it

under arguments about the legacy of colonial rule. As for the actual mistake

he made, it was, says Lewis, to persist - even after the dissolution of the

official nationalist movement - in "playing the game according to British

Lewis "Review", Caribbean Studies 7(4), 1967: 59-61, p. 60. Ibid., p. 61.

rules". I t was "a game, of course, [the PPP] were bound to lose, for ... the

difference between American sports and British sports (as also colonial

policies) is that whereas the Americans defeat their enemies, the British

disqualify them".s

The assumptions about the "roots" of racism and his

underacknowledgement of Jagan's pre-1953 strategy aside, Lewis is highly

astute in his analysis of what happened in the decade following 1953. What is

interesting for the purposes of this paper, though, is how Lewis' conclusions

focus more on Jagan's political plan of anti-colonial action and less on colonial

strategy. What is left is an abstract rationalist critique of political strategy,

one that does not takes much notice of the political conditions under which

Jagan had to act, nor of the ambivalence of the logical implications associated

with resisting their reigning codes of conduct.

This is where governmentality as an approach to understanding the

specificities of colonial rule is quite illuminating. The implications of

governmentality, furthermore, are that an understanding of the technologies

of domination assists in the critical reading of resistances to them. Foucault

put it the other way around, stating that "in order to understand what power

relations are about, perhaps we should investigate the forms of resistance and

attempts made to dissociate these relations". 9 The precise task of the

argument presented here is to investigate how, during the political quest for

independence in British Guiana, the history of colonial conduct became

interwoven with the history of dissenting, anti-colonial "counter-conductsY.

Unlike some," I view such an endeavour as one that engages in the

familiar issue about indigenous agency, and, involves a variation of the

lbid., p. 60. Foucault, "Afterword: The Subject and Power" In Hubert Dreyfus and Paul

Rabinow, Micllel Folrcault: Beyorld Strtrctlrralisril and Herirlerlet~tics (Hempstead: Harverster Wheatsheaf, 1982), p. 211.

'0 Colin Gordon, "Governmental rationality: an introduction", in Burchell et a1 (eds), Tile Forrcarrlt Efect, p. 5 .

l 1 For example, David Scott, Refasltiorling Futures: Criticisnt After Postcolorliality (Princeton University Press, 1999).

notion of episte~nic violence.12 If the notion of epistemological oppression

conceives the subaltern as being acted upon and inhibited by power such that

representation involves little else than the trace of the original's - the

emphasis being on what we cannot know about the subaltern - the

investigation of political rationality serves to illuminate something different

but nevertheless related. In revealing the technologies that produce self-

governing individuals, individuals who in following their own interests

unwittingly do what they should14 (according to the objectives of colonial

conduct), the elusiveness of subjectivity within structures of domination is, in

affirmation of Scott, of less concern than the governability of the subject.

However, that subject in being unknowable to itself, is one that may be

articulated in the terms of epistemological aporia. As such, epistemic violence

in this capacity represents not just an incidental link, but a necessary

condition for the successful effects of governmental rationality. Before it is

possible to go any further in this direction a brief discussion of what

go-r~ernnlentality entails would be useful.

Governmentality

There has been a great deal of interest recently accorded to the notion of

gooernmentality as developed by Michel Foucault. Foucault states that "we

live in an era of a 'governmentality"' where "the problems of governmentality

and the techniques of government have become the only political issue, the

only real space for political struggle and contestation". What is crucial for our

modernity, he says, is not really the "e'tntisntion" of society, but the

"governmentalization" of the state.15

In contrast to classical political philosophy which is concerned with the

legitimate foundations of political sovereignty and political obedience - that

l2 See Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak", in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, Mnrsisrrl nnri tlrc ltrterl7r~~tntiorr elf Crrltrrre (London: Macniillan, 1988).

'The "original" being, of course, a theoretical impossibility. l 4 Jeremy Benthani as interpreted by Scott, Refnslzior~ing Frrtrrrcs, p. 51. '5 Foucault, "Governmentality", in Barry et al (eds), Foucnult and Political Rensoil, p.

103.

is, the best government - governmentality, according to Foucault, is about

how to govern.lVrom the middle of the 1 6 t h c. the political issues began to

encompass much more than that of the nature of the state or how the prince

could best protect his power. Indeed, virtually every form of human activity

demanded attention to how best it could be accomplished, that is, how it

could be made more "economical". Society - the population - was turning

into a political target. Foucault links this new interest to the emergence and

expansion of centralised state administrative apparatuses in France at this

time. In the 17th c. detailed knowledge about the elements and dimensions of

the state's power developed and was called "statistics", or "the science of the

state". As Rabinow notes, "the art of government and empirical knowledge

of the state's resources and condition - its statistics - together formed the

major components of a new political rationality. A rationality, Foucault

assures us, from which we have not yet emerged." 17

The objectives of government from that point onwards have existed in the

welfare and prosperity of the population. During the 18th and 19th centuries,

the political focus had been on how policing - that is, the transmission of the

principles of good government of the state to individual behaviour and the

management of the family18 - "would manage to penetrate, to stimulate, to

regulate, and to render almost automatic all the mechanisms of society".

Now the focus is on the possibility itself of government.19 With respect to

other approaches to family, population and economy during the classical age,

Foucault's work represents an extension of as well as a departure from the

Annnles school. The long-term changes stressed by this school are linked, by

Foucault, to political processes, the distinction he makes being the placement

of any emphasis at all on these processes, and the conscious rather than

unconscious nature of forces behind them. The practice of government is

16 Ibid., p. 92. 1' Paul Rabinow (ed.), "Introduction",The Foucazilt Reader (Harmonsworth: Penguin,

1984), pp. 15,16. 18 Gordon in Burchell et a1 (eds), Tlle Foucatllt Efiect, p. 7. ' 9 Foucault, "Space Knowledge and Power", in Rabinow (ed.), Tlze Fotlcazrlt Reader, p.

242..

considered a teclttze - a "practical rationality governed by a conscious goal".

Government comes into view as a "function of technology", and one can now

speak of "the government of individuals, the government of souls, the

government of the self by the self, the government of families, [and] the

government of children".20

The issues are about the limitations of governmental activity to enable the

best possible outcome but that are also in keeping with the rationality of

government, and the avoidance of intervention. As Foucault explains,

[I]t is here that the question of liberalism comes up. It seems to me that at that very moment it became apparent that if one governed too much, one did not govern at all - that one provoked results contrary to those one desired. What was discovered at that time - and this was one of the great discoveries of political thought at the end of the eighteenth century - was the idea of society. That is to say, that government not only has to deal with a territory, with a domain, and with its subjects, but that is also has to deal with a complex and independent reality that has its own laws and mechanisms of reaction, its regulations as well as its possibilities of disturbance.21

If the basis upon which liberal government is possible depends upon

maintaining the autonomy of society from state intervention, then the political

spaces that allowed for critical reflections on state actions have to be

cultivated through the activity of rule.22 Based on the recognition that

political government could undermine itself through over-governing,

liberalism, from this perspective, represented less a diminution of

government than a mode of careful, economic and moderate rule. As

Burchell has explained, it is this nctiz~ity - the etllos or techne23 - rather than the

illstitlitiorz of governmentality that interested Foucault. Considered "a

rationally reflected way of doing things that functions as the principle and

20 lbifi., pp. 255, 256. 21 Ihiil., p. 242. 22 Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nicolas Rose, "Introduction", in Barry et a1

(eds), For~cnl~lt and Political Reasolt , p.10. 23 Ibid., p.10.

method for the rationalization of governmental practices" rather than "a

theory, an ideology, a juridical philosophy of individual freedom, or any

particular set of policies adopted by a government", the aspect of liberalism of

interest to Foucault was its tactics rather than its strategy for legitimising

political authority.24

With regard to the population, the objectives of government exist in the

creation of "interest at the level of the consciousness of each individual" as

well as that of the population as a whole (the compatibility of these interests

notwithstanding). Of fundamental significance are that both remain

"ignorant" of what is being done to them, and that coverture is accomplished

by the disposition of things in the service of convenient ends instead of the

impositions of law.25 Political power is thus conceived as a network of

technoIogies for creating and sustaining self-goz~ernnretrt.26 Hence the

materialist rather than theoretical nature of this approach to identifying the

contours of power.27

Colonial Governrnerrtality

Following Foucault's formulation, Scott's recent work on what he calls

colonirzl goz~ernnzentrzlity involves the political rationalities of government as

they occur in the colonial domain. Although not to be uniformly

universalised for the colonial experience, when its trajectory is traced into the

postcolonial arena it is an approach that powerfully addresses contemporary

forms of domination. Hence, the constitutive role of colonial governmentality

in what Scott calls newly emerging imperatives for contemporary postcolonial

criticism.28

z4 Graham Burchell, "Liberal government and techniques of the self" in Barry et a1 (eds), Forrcalllt arrd Political Rensoiz , p. 21.

L5 Fo~~cault, "Governrnentality", Barry et a1 (eds), Fo~icnrrlt nrul Political Rensorr , pp. 94, 95,100.

2b Peter Miller and Nicholas Rose, "Governing Economic Life", in Mike Gane and Terry Johnson (eds), Foilcatllt's Nezo Doiiznirts (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 102.

27 Rabinow, "Introduction", Tlze Foricniilt Reader, p. 10 and Mitchell Dean, Gover~lirreiztality: Pmi~er nrld Rrrle in Motlerrt Society (London: Sage, 1999), p. 3.

' 8 Scott, "Introduction", Rcfnslzioiziizg Frltlircs,.

In moving beyond the task of revealing the agency of the colonised or

colonialism's practices of inclusion/exclusion, or the attitudes or mentalities

of the colonisers toward the colonised - that is, the tasks of critiques of

Orientalism29- Scott shifts the critical eye towards the problematic of how the

colonised have been inserted into modernity through that characteristic mode

problem-spaces of postcolonial criticism surrounding nationalism and

socialist revolution have been superseded by a new one that, as Foucault

seeks to demonstrate, has situated itself firmly and ubiquitously in the

present. In elaborating his argument, Scott refers to Partha Chatte rjee, whose

stated interest is in critiquing "the persistence into the present of an

ideological erasure in liberal historiography by means of which the

assumptions of universal history work to displace . . . indeed repress - the

specificities of colonial powerU.30 Taking exception to Chatterjee's

assumption about the spatial, temporal and even discursive homogeneity of

colonialism being embodied in a singular political rationality, Scott plays

down the significance of the rule of colonial difference (articulated by

Chatterjee through the generalised category of 'race'). He instead attempts to

"impose an historicity on our understanding of the rationalities that

organized the forms of the colonial state". For Scott, it is not the distance -

arising out of the effects of race - between the colonial state and forms of the

modern state in Europe that now needs emphasis, but the change in the

targets of governmental practice that produced the distinctly modern in

which "race1' was to operate.31

Drawing upon liberalism as the locus of critical inquiry and focusing on it

as a means by which the activity of rule derives its inspiration rather than as

an ideology or principle requires, says Scott, a turn towards the metropole

and its modes of domination, hegemony and power in the search for ways of

29 Edward Said, Orietitnlisttt: Westertz Cotzceptiolzs oftlze Orielzt (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1978); Scott, ibiri., pp. 25,40.

Cited in Scott, ibiri., py. 28-9. " Ibiii., pp. 25,28-9,30,31.

understanding how those modes produced specific and related effects in the

colonies. 32 The political rationalities of Europe are important because they

produced novel ways of interacting with and maintaining rule over the non-

Western world, and thus new grounds upon which responses to those

changes could be macle.33 The important problematics, he maintains, have to

do with the kind of platform made available to the colonised on which to

produce their responses. For with the development of the political rationality

of the modern colonial state, "not only the rules of the political game but the

political game itself changedrf. Not only did the relations of power between

coloniser and colonised change to shift the targets of colonial power from the

subjugated as the producers of social wealth to social conditions as the effect

of colonial conduct; the grounds of political struggle did as well. 34

One form of this shift is documented by Frank Furedi in his comparative

study of the colonial emergencies that took place in Malaya, Kenya and

British G ~ i a n a . ~ ~ Furedi notes that these colonies were held up as symbols of

imperial failure; this was due to the belief that the need by the British

government to resort to systematic repression when conventional methods of

political management proved unsuccessful represented a break-down in

colonial power. Regardless of who emerged victorious from the anti-colonial

revolts, it was thought that the imperative to get involved in such conflicts

guaranteed that, inevitably, Britain would have to abandon its imperial

preten~ions.3~ To the contrary, despite the thesis of imperial historians where

colonial reforms were not a survival strategy but the unavoidable - and

32 lbid., p. 25. A perusal through the rapidly burgeoning literature on governmentality shows that the term "government" is not limited to official state power - the state is merely a particular form that government has assumed" - but refers to any rational regime of power, regulation and production. It is thus more useful to view Scott's assertion as more of a political imperative directed towards a body of scholarship that he considers to be increasingly in danger of anachronism.

3"ott, Refnsl~iorliirg Futtires, pp. 31-2. lbid., pp. 31-2,51.

" Furedi, Colorlial Wnrs n11d the Politics of Third World Nntiorlnlisrlr (London: 1.B.Tauris Publishers, 1994).

" U~biii., pp. 3, 86, 188.

unregrettable - fulfilment of Britain's imperial mission,37 the will to imperial

power continued after WWII, as the policies of the 1945-51 Labour

government indicated.38 Thus, regardless of their threatening appearance in

the initial stages, the emergencies eventually became a kind of controlled

experiment in change that used tactics of "rearguard action" in an "attempt to

shape the manner in which change could be achieved by constructing an

environment which restrained mass participation and created a political

framework that was insulated from popular pressure."39

It is perhaps becoming clearer how it might be possible to put together a

problematic from Lewisf critique of Jagan's anti-colonial strategy that draws

upon the inquests40 of governmentality. Creech Jones, deeply fearful of the

consequences of the demise of imperial authority, had viewed decolonisation

as a policy for maintaining order, a method of controlling political change;

decolonisation, states Furedi, was designed to retain empire in rationalised

form.41 But the conclusion of a Conservative Party memorandum on the

colonial failures of Malaya, Kenya and British Guiana was that whilst other

colonies "obtained universal suffrage [and] managed to keep the ship on an

even keel . . . British Guiana capsizedn.42 Thus, the problem is how this

retention of which colonial officials spoke was made possible, particularly in

the face of anti-colonial opposition led by a party that had already put to

shame the British empire. As such, it involves the question of what took place

in terms of political rationalities and their counter-rationalities that inspired

Lewis to describe the events of 1963 as the pathetic denouement to the anti-

colonial movement.

V7l'he Whig Interpretation of African history takes the triumph of nationalism as the culmination of Africa's socio-political development. Ibid., p. 10.

38 lbid., p. 64. 39 Ibid., p. 189. 40 The deliberate (mis)use of this term metaphoricaly refers to the disturbance felt by

Foucault over the simultaneously totalising and individualising effects of governmentality - as Gordon says, over the sort of power that takes freedom itself and the life and life-conduct of the ethiucally free subject as, to some degree, "the correlative object of its own suasive capacity". Gordon in Burchell et a1 (eds), The Foucnlilt Efect, p. 5.

41 Furedi, Colo~rinl Wnrs, pp. 64, 189, 87. Cited in Furedi, ihicf., p. 3.

The Political Ratiorzalities of Rule

1953

In 1951, not long before Jagan would be elected to power, the Waddington

Commission had been set up to investigate the political organisation and

showed some indications of racial tension but that it was only a positive sign

of growing pains for a colony in transition to self-government. East Indians,

the Commission observed, were indeed competing to enter and integrate into

creole society; but since it was their demand for equal participation in creole

society that was the basic source of the agitation between East Indians and

mainly Afro-Guianese this was essentially a progressive development.

Moreover, the same communities lived harmoniously in the rural areas of the

country, further evidence that British Guiana was not fundamentally a

racially fragmented society.43

The Commission, moreover, did not believe that the development of

disciplined political parties in British Guiana was imminent. This was

probably due to the performance of earlier politicians who, though engaging

in unprecedented radical critique of the institution of colonialism and who

purported to speak for the working classes (as was the PPP now), had not

drawn upon the masses in any significant way in their politics and protests.44

Thus, although the members of the People's Progressive Party had already

been identified as communist subversives, they were not considered to be

serious candidates for politics in the near future of the colony.

It was because of, rather than despite this view, that universal adult

suffrage based on English literacy was agreed as the first step towards local

self-government. Ministers were to be responsible for their offices with the

governor retaining, crucially, the authority to veto legislation as well as

-.

43 Thomas Spinner Jr., A Politicnl and Social History of Guyma, 1945-1983 (London/ Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 33-4.

" These figures included Critchlow (the "father" of trade unionism), Edun and Jacob. Jagan, Tllc Wcst or1 Trill1 WT, p. 60.

specific reserve powers for emergencies, which were not thought to be

potential obstacles on the straight and narrow road to limited self-rule. The

PPP argued that the lack of a Guianese constituent assembly by universal

suffrage prevented the writing of a constitution providing the country with

full, internal self-gc~vernment effective immediately, but in spite of the

protests, Jagan himself admitted that the existing constitution was "one of the

most advanced colonial constitutions for that periodU.45

By winning the election in 1953 the PPP had surprised the entire colony,

particularly the small Guianese middle class. It was a victory that had been

achieved democratically on the basis of class and racial unification. Over the

next few months, attempts at pushing through radical social, political and

economic changes in a very short period of time were made. The first step

towards the realisation of the political and socio-economic objectives of the

nationalist movement were taken. These were, according to Jagan, avoidance

of the "chronic underdevelopment, backwardness and poverty" of Latin

Ameri~a4~ through nationalisation, democracy, "revolutionary scientific

socialist Marxist-Leninist ideology", industrialisation, class struggle,

development, and nation-building.47

It was over the sugar industry that disputes leading to the confrontation

between colonial authority and local government eventually occurred. This is

not surprising when considering that the high degree of centralisation of

political authority that has characterised colonial rule was evident in the

political power of the planter class.48 When capitalist investment began

leaking out of the colony after a prolonged strike by sugar workers, the

Archbishop of the West Indies accused the PPP of promoting the strike. He

called on the colonial secretary "to take such action as he may see fit to ensure

confidence in the Government" since the Party was "trying to use the

45 Spinner, A Politicrzl nrzrJ Socinl His toy , p. 34. Jagan, Forbiddell Freed0111 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1954), p. 62.

47 Jagan, Tlre West 011 Trial, p. 419. 48 Clive Y. Thomas, Plantntions, Peasnnts, atld Stnte: A Study of the Mode of Slignr

Productio~l in Gziynnn (Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, LA and

machinery of democracy to destroy democracy and substitute rule by one

party on the Communist modeI"49 - and since they were "extremely good at

organisation and propaganda".50 The Governor, furthermore, was convinced

that the PPP was going to take over the unions. 51 When Harold Ingram's

report on his fact-finding mission to British Guiana called for covert

operations to be organised by MI6, there was no alternative, as far as colonial

authority was concerned, but to wage a secret war against the PPP.52 Fearing

the nationalisation of industry and PPP dominance over the unions, the

British resorted to the form of political control that was retained in the new

constitutional arrangement, and made the unprecedented move of

suspending the Constitution and dismissing the Party from office after only

133 days of being in power.s3 Armed forces entered the colony "to support the

police and prevent any public disorders, which might be fomented by

Communist supporters" - even though at the time the only imminent crisis, as

one observer noted, wauld have been aver the cricket match with Trinidad.54

The official statement by the colonial authorities was that the suspension of

the constitution was carried out on the basis of political problems at the

domestic level but, more crucially, to prevent its subversion and the

establishment of an alien ideology in Guyana.55

The transparency of Britain's dramatic decision to intervene did little to

suppress the support for Jagan's popularity. To the contrary, it drew attention

to the illegitimacy of the colonial regime in Guyana. Jagan later said of the

Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1984), p. 13.

49 Cited in Spinner, A Politicnln11d Social Histonj, pp. 42, 43. 50Robertson (Constitutional) Ccmmission: "Note of Private Session with the

Archbishop of the West Indies", p. 3,30 January 1954, CO 891/1. 51 Peter Simms, Troz~ble in Gzi!ptln: nrr Account of People, Persorznlities ntrd Politics as They

Were in British Gl~inlrn (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1966), p. 121. 52 Furedi, Cnlotltnl Wrrrs, p. 194. 53 Hintzen, The Costs of Regir~le Sliruivnl, p. 36. V.S. Naipaul states that the Jagans were

the "pariahs" of the West Indies when British entered Guyana in 1953. Naipaul, The Middle Pnssnge: Inlpressions of Five Societies - British, Frenclz nnd Dlrtclz - ill tlte West Ittdies and Solltll A~nericn (Harn~ondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1962), p. 101.

9 Spinner, A Politicnl n ~ l d SocinI Histonj, p. 45.

suspensiu~~ of the constitution in 1953, that "in the field of local government,

[the PPP] were simply putting into practice what prevailed in the United

Kingdom [blut, apparently, what was acceptable in the West was not to be

tolerated in Guiana; what was deemed democratic in the United States and

its possessions was considered dictatorial in British G~iana".5~ This echoed

what C.L.R. James had observed in 1933 - that what was in Britain the greatest

virtue became in the colonies the greatest crime.5'

Dean Mitchell has said that governmentality is usually concerned with

"the moments and situations in which government becomes a problem".

"Problematizations" are uncommon, and have specific dates and places,

occurring in particular locales and institutions. What he calls an "analytics of

government" commences with interrogation about the conduct of governing,

rather than from a coherently theoretical position.58

The problematization chosen in this discussion arises out of the

suspension of the constitution in 1953: the questions posed are thus quite

specific in their targeting of the extremist and unprecedented conduct of the

British government towards a democratically-elected indigenous political

party. The avenues of investigation, the search for understanding that is

organised along the lines of this questioning, however, moves way beyond

and behind the year of this colonial crisis. In 1947, Sir Gordon Letham, the

governor of British Guiana who had recently retired, had said that he did not

envisage the "emergence of parties and a recognised leader". Less than a year

later the Colonial Office had been poised to declare an emergency to suppress

political turmoil in the colony;5' five years later the Colonial Office went

55 Raymond T. Smith, "Race and class in the post-emancipation Caribbean", R. Ross (eds), Racisrrr altd Colo?lialisnl (The Hague/Boston/Sondon: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982), p. 208.

s6 Jagan, The West on Trial, p. 133. s7 C.L.R. James (from "The case for West Indian self-government") cited in Harold A.

Lutchman, Front Coloilialism to Co-operative Republic: Aspects of Political Development in Gtiyailn (University of Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies, 1974, p. 44.

?Wean , G~mrv~e~r t :111tv . FF 28-19 This is one of the first. sustained. single-authored texts to appear that is devoted to the concept of governmentality as it has developed since Foucault introduced it.

59 Furedi, Colc~~ricrl Wars, p. 86.

ahcad and actually declared one. The first and most fundamental thing that

must be asked is how, from the perspective of colonial governmentality, the

unexpected came to be the unexpected.

Racialised Interest

In this regard, an extremely revealing point has been made about the . .

has been described as the stage in the development of the coloni2 state

whereby it begins its withdrawal from society.60 Jagan notes that the effects

of the distance between the mansions of the planters and the plantation

workers were that a "mystique" developed in which everything "white" was

good and everything "black" was bad. Soon, he says, everyone was aspiring

to "whiteness", adopting Western cultural characteristics and traits - personal

features, dress, music, song. With the help of Christian missionaries the

process of de-Africanisation began whereby the African was educated,

anglicised, and made to despise his own cultural background.61

If creolisation is a "stage" in the development of the colonial state, what I

would argue is that it is more than a passive one. It is actively constructed as

the platform for the colonised upon which they may produce their responses

to issues of liberty. The issue of creolisation is where Scott's comments about

the shifting grounds for political struggle become relevant in the British

Guianese context. If there is a shift by colonial power from targeting the

colonised as the wealth-producing Other, to targeting the social conditions of

the increasingly Westist subject as the effect of colonial conduct, this is where

it happens; this is where a new form of colonial power takes effect and thus

enables the initiation of the process of colonial authority's withdrawal from

Guianese society.

60 George Danns, "The colonial state in a Caribbean society: the case of British Guiana," University of Guyana, c.1985: 1-43, p. 36.

Interview with Cheddi Jagan, 21 November 1994, Presidential Secretariat House, George town.

If a political rationality is to be identified to this transition, its early

manifestations may be located during the days of indenture. The work of

Thomas Holt is particularly instructive in this regard. In his study of race,

labour and politics in Jamaica and Britain over the century leading up to 1938,

Holt observes that changes in the arenas of British politics, colonial policy and

ideologies of race initiated novel perspectives on the problem of freedom.

The political dimensions of that problem for British policymakers paralleled the economic: how to reconcile freedom with coercion, or more specifically, how to structure a political system in the colonies nominally consistent with liberal democratic principles, while maintaining ultimate control over black political expression.62

The problem for Holt is that liberalism as a doctrine contained its own racist

contradiction.

In examining the history of British Guiana between the J ears of the early

twentieth century and those in which indigenous political activity first began

to emerge, it is not difficult to see a similar problematic at work. As

previously indicated, the issues surrounding the decision about universal

suffrage for the Guianese people were, to a large extent, about the

cohesiveness of a society that was considered to be divided by racial

animosity and competition. British attitudes towards West Indians in

particular during WWII had stressed the condition of moral decay rendering

the anti-colonial responses that came later as mere greed, frustration and,

irrationalism: racism redressed itself in the notion that colonised subjects

were not prepared for self-determination.63 The pluralist thesis - the influence

of which lay in its seemingly measured, non-partisan approach and its

politically convenient implications - freely acknowledged the role of British

domination in the constitution of racially divided colonial societies: West

62 Holt, The Probletn of Freedom; Race, Labor and Politics in latnnica 17nd Brifnin, 1832-1938 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 217. Also cited in David Scott, Refnsllioilirlg Flrtt~res, p. 88.

6"uredi, Colorzinl Wars , pp. 126, 128.

Indian societies were not "whole fabrics woven by the passage of time" like

the countries of Europe, but "indigenous peoples" existing within different

culturally-bound sections "created by a sequence of political actsr'.@ indeed,

it was precisely because of the constructed nature of these societies that

(issues of colonial accountability aside) they were inherently fragmented and

thus doomed to be uncohesive.

It is precisely these "political acts" that are explored by Jagan in his

discourse of nationalism, an exploration which Lewis acknowledges.

Historically, says Jagan, there had been the feeling that the only way to break

out of the structures of the colonial value system was to assert either Afro-

Guianese or Indian racial solidarity against colonial domination.65 Jagan

traces this tendency to life on the sugar plantation. Similarly, the economist

Clive Thomas has noted that during the 1 9 t h century and into the 20th the

planters used many "stratagems, particularly psychological and cultural

ones" to manipulate the increasingly separate and distinct ethnic groups of

Africans and Indians to their own advantage."66

If anything, this would appear to be a sociology underlying the political

rationality currently seeking expression, rather than a political rationality as

such. But this is precisely a result of the power of the discourse of race.

Heeding Smith's critical imperative with regard to historical readings of

Guyanese society, nonetheless, would mean avoiding the trap of sociological

determinism in the form of "race relations" and keeping alive the question

over politicisation. Thus, rather than interrogating the sociological basis of

political rationalities - that is, the sociology that enabled a certain conduct of

government to be rationalised - what should be asked instead is how such a

sociology was prodziced by specific colonial rationalities.

With this in mind, the way in which race strategically undermined

liberalism and the attempt to contain black power is closely tied to the

political rationality of colonial governmentality in British Guiana in the

64 Ihirf., p. 132. 65 Snlith, "Race and class in the post-emancipation Caribbean", p. 115. 66 Thomas, P l i ~ ~ ~ t r ~ f i o ~ ~ s , Punsnrlfs, nrril Stnfe, pp. 83, 25.

period leading up to 195367 becomes apparent in one particular official

statement of the late '40s, the time of political activism in the colony. In 1947

(the year Jagan entered the Legislative Council) the governor Sir Charles

Woolley congratulated the electorate for producing a 70% turnout for the first

elections since 1935, but stated his regret that much racism had been evident.

Racism, he noted, could only "be a major hindrance to progress

constitutionally and otherwiser' in the colony; it was, in other words, an

anathema to liberal democracy. He then went on to say that this animosity,

however, was not "deep-seated or widespread" (something that was to be

echoed by the Waddington Commission several years later).

Yet Smith has observed that even when immigrants escaped from

plantation labour, they continued to be identified primarily by race. This is

what has brought complications to the class system and worked to undermine

the creation of broad class movements.68 Hence the assertion that creole

society arose from the condition of an immigrant colony lacking a "broad base

of consensual valuesU.69 Contrary to Woolley's implication that the dynamic

of race relations was a matter of rational choice - a choice that involved

prioritising either racial affiliation or liberal individualism - race was a very

powerful force in Guianese society, as a discourse of identity and social

stratification.

With respect to the notion that race undermined liberalism, all of this is a

testament to the sensibility of Woolley's viewpoint and the credibility of the

pluralist thesis: racial antagonism was, to some degree or other, a sociological

condition of Guianese society. To speak, however, of the strategic role that

race played in undermining liberalism requires looking at the colonial tactics

-- 67 It is important to note, however, the particular aspect of liberalism that Holt

addresses, which is "the pure ideals of liberal democracy". Looked at as a doctrine or set of principles in relation to its manifestation within the post-emancipation period of Jamaican history, Holt's account of the dynamic between liberalism and race arrives at the accurate conclusion that the freedom that was produced by this dynamic represented "ideologically, a freedom that internalized its own antithesis". Holt, Tlre Probleitr of Freetforrr, pp. xxiv, xxv.

" Sniith, "Race and class in the post-emancipation Caribbean", p. 113. 6" See Ralph IJremdas, "Ethnic conflict and development: the case of Guyana", United

Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1992, py. 1,3; and Danns, "'l'he colonial state in a Caribbean society".

involving race in the interests of inhibiting political agency. Once again,

Jagan's autobiographical observations are revealing.

Jagan speaks of the "opportunism" that accompanied the process of de-

Africanisation and creolisation whereby and "ezten "black" men by their

accommodation, behaviour and performance were accepted into the "white"

hierarchy of Guianese "creole" society, to the exclusion of East Indian~.~O

Though closer in colour71 to the whites than were the Africans, says Jagan,

they were not allowed into the social hierarchy, being "regarded as outcasts,

and despised by the creole society as 'coolies', as being culturally different

and economically subservient."72 As discussed, in the late 1940s and early

'50s, the British relied on the notion that competitive entry into creole society

by mutually antagonistic racial groups was an diminishing force for any

indigenous political developments that might threaten the power of the

colonial state, even in the face of serious political agitation. Clive Thomas has

noted that the "stratagems" used by the planters were also supported by the

Colonial Office whose interest was to contain the African and Indian

peasantry, despite the British authority's "contempt for the 'saccharine

0ligarchs"'.7~ The "interest" to which Thomas refers initially arises out of the

planters unadorned economic objective of profit-making using the smallest

labour force possible. The means by which it is fulfilled is through the

racialisation of the plantation labour force, such that relatively less cheap

70 Jagan, The W e s t or1 Trial, p. 292, my emphasis. The predicament of the African in Guyana was exemplified by one "Negro" lawyer's view of himself as not essentially African since he knew no other civilisation than the British, and the sentiment that England was truly his "mother country". Lutchman observes that the new middle class politicians who began to emerge in 1926 did not reject but welcomed British values to an even greater extent than did Europeans. Lutchman, "Patronage in Colonial Society", p. 5. Naipaul, on the other hand, observed in 1962 that in Guyana slavery was "hard to forget", and the word "Negro" was resented by m a w Guyanese because of its association with slavery. Naipaul, The Middle Passage, p. 1 07.

71 Sindey Mintz notes the significance of colour as an ideology, not just indication, of status in Caribbean societies. Mintz, Caribbeatl Tratlsfornlntiotls (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1974), Chapter 11.

72 Jagan, 'The Wes t on Trial, p. 292. There is a relatively small section of society occupied by Portuguese people originally brought from Madeira as labourers whose members are somewhat marginalised in this account, given their "whiteness", their treatment as lion-Europeans by the British notwithstanding. The position of this group in the stratification of Guyanese society was just under that of the ruling class.

free74 black labour is forced to compete with relatively more cheap Indian

indentured labour, thereby producing a discourse of racial animosity based

on competitive "market" relations. The implications of this discourse,

furthermore, extend to such issues as, first, the economic threat (from the

planter perspective) of self-sustaining African free villages, and, second, the

tendency for Indians, whose cultural practices under indentureship have been

assaulted to a lesser degree than had African culture under slavery, to hold

back from entry into creole society, and, third, the antagonism to which the

relation between the two gave rise.

This is an important point. It exposes a crucial aspect of the "sociology of

race" and governmentality. By establishing a clear connection between the

ethnically divisive conditions cultivated on the plantations, the discourse of

race (that Wolley's advocation belies, the pluralist thesis implies, and C.

Thomas's comments affirm) and the colonial interest of limiting indigenous

freedom, the political rationality of colonial power is shown to be derivative

of as well as essential to the determinist conception of "race relations". To

take the implications a step further, the dynamic of the political rationality of

rrrcirzlised interest aligns itself with Scott's assertion that, for colonial

governmentality, the issue is not so much the inherent racism of liberalism

but the way in which the move towards liberal modes of social being comes

"to depend upon a discourse of race".75 Holt's critique of the intersection of

racism and liberalism, and, indeed, the fraudulent and immoral character of

early 1 9 t h century liberalism in Jamaica is about a liberalism that promises

freedom with the hand of abolition, and fully intends to cut it down with the

hand of qualification. Scott's critique of the same intersection is slightly, but

significantly different. When turned towards the problematisation in British

Guiana it is not through the false pretense of dismantling the discourse of race

that liberalism begins its entry into the social existences of the colonised;

rather it is through the ideological and teclznologicrrl practices of sustaining that

73 Thomas, Plantations, Pensarlts, arid State, pp. 83, 25. 74 Meaning ex-slave. ' 5 Scott, Ri'ftlslljo/litlg F~I~II~L's, p. 88.

discourse and shaping it in a particular way - via Westist discourse and

policies designed to cultivate the grounds for socio-economic competitive

entry into creole society176 - that liberalism is rationalised by colonial power as

being advantageous to the continuation of colonialism's project of domination

and thus allowed entry into the domain of incrementalised "subaltern"

agency. It would be when the social conditions had been cultivated, whereby

"following only their [racialised] self-interest" the colonised "would

[unknowingly] do what they ought"77 that liberalism would be appear

seemingly to transcend what Chatterjee would call the rule of colonial

difference.

The Crisis of Conduct

Though the study of governmentality leading up to the colonial

emergency of 1953 in this essay largely adheres to the basis for

problematisation articulated by Dean, it justifies itself along lines that are

contrary to the observations on the character of governmentality made by

Miller and Rose. Miller and Rose have noted that "whilst 'governmentality' is

eternally optimistic, 'government' is a congenitally failing operation." As an

indication of the character of governmentality and of this essay, this statement

is particularly useful. Part of their point is that failure is a central element in

governmentality to the extent that it is what inspires the attempt to develop or

submit programmes that would be more efficient. Indeed, "the 'will to

govern' needs to be understood Iess in terms of its success than in terms of the

difficulties of operationalizing it." 78 The potential implication of this

imperative resonates with my reading of many the studies of governmentality

that I have come across. Generally, they involve the endeavour to understand

critically how government operates as a practice, rather than merely the

76 See Alan Adamson, Slrgnr Witlrolrt Slaves: The Politicnl Ecorrotr~y of British Glrintln, 1838-1904 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972)., and Thomas, Plarztntiotzs, Peasants, and State.

~7 Jeremy Bentham as interpreted by Scott, ibid., p. 51. 78 Miller and Rose, "Governing Economic Life", in Cane and Johnson (eds), Foircatllt's

Nezo Dorrrnins, pp. 84, 78, 85.

reflection of the art of ruIe.79 In this way, these essays may be described as

accounts of the "positive", that is, successful frzits rzccoztlplis, of which their

effectiveness for moulding the conduct of the population in the form of

identifiable tactics of government has been cause to name them

problematisations.

But it is precisely the ease with which the political rationality that guided

the colonial conduct of conduct in British Guiana from the late 1940's to the

electoral outcome of 1953 was operationalised, the presumption of its success,

and, furthermore, the final lack of its success that renders 1953 a curiosity for

the analytics of government. For not only was colonial power unable to

control the conditions under which the subjugated colonial would emerge as

a quasi-free subject unknowable to itself. The unsuccessful nature of the

guiding political rationality of colonial conduct lay in the necessity to

undermine indigenous freedom by force, rather than by recourse to the effects

of disciplinary power. It was precisely because Britain could not split the PPP

the suspension was inevitable.80 Foucault noted that if power is power only

when the agents upon which it works are free to choose different paths of

action, then power depends upon the ability of that agent to act - it does not

arise out of the opposite, that is, the extinguishing of that ability. To the

surprise and shock of colonial authority, freedom, in the historical moment

that is manifested in the internal self-rule of the colony led by the PPP, does

not yield revolutionary practices of civilised self-reform, but civilised

practices of revolutionary self-liberation. Two particularly important aspects

of governmentality in Guiana during this period now surface: first, the

ambivalence of the discourse of racialised interest, as illustrated by the

comments of Woolley which suggests, second, that self-reform in by the

partially liberated colonial subject moulded by the rationality under which

the conduct of conduct acts can explode the boundaries of governmentality.

This is the risk of government: that the taste of freedom will encourage an

79 Pat O'Malley, "Indigenous Governance", Gane an Johnson (eds), ibid., p. 156. 80 Furedi, Colo~lial Wl~rs, p. 262. 81 Gordon in Burchell et a1 (eds), The Fozical~lt Effect, p. 5.

appreciation of old politics in new contexts, rather than inspire the quest for a

different politics that suits its new conditions.

The failure of colonial conduct cannot be assumed to be an instance of

mere incompetence on the part of British colonialism. It is also indicative of

the power and agency of the indigenous political movement led by Jagan and

the PPP, of the capacity for resistance against colonial rule. The point

represents a divergence from the main themese of the current body of

literature on governmenality. As Pat O'Malley has pointed out, in privileging

official discourses, governmentality makes it difficult "to recognise the

imbrication of resistance and rule, the contradictions and tensions that this

melding generates and the subterranean practices of government

consequently required to stabilise rule". This is one of the assumptions of the

argument presented here; the constraints of space, however, have rendered

the focus the general object of inquiry in studies of governmentality - the

rationalities of power - which means that any elaboration in this regard must

be made elsewhere. The rest of this paper will thus focus on the shift in the

tactics of colonial governmentality as a result of suc.cessfu1 resistance to it.

1963

Burchell has noted that the relationship between government and

governed is one in which "individuals are identified as, on the one hand, the

objcct and target of governmental action and, on the other hand, as in some

sense the necessary (voluntary) partner or accomplice of government". This

can lead to the paradox wherein the failure of governrnentality

may not of itself result in a public rejection or disqualification of this style or art of government. It would seern that the relationship between governmental activities and the self conduct of the governed takes hold within a space in which there can be considerable latitude vis-iz-zlis criteria for judging whether

government has met the criteria advanced by itself for its capacity to govern.82

In the case of the suspension of the constitution in 1953, the judgement by

colonialism's own admission is, despite all ideological claims to the contrary,

that British colonialism failed. There is, however, some disagreement over

what exactly was not made sufficiently operative, and this is related to the

issue of resistance (something again that is given minimal treatment in an

essay of this length). From the perspective of governmentality, it is

interesting to note the advice of Edward Gent, head of the Eastern

Department of the Colonial Office, who said that "the best use to make of

'leftist' views was to convert them to reformist views". This was a practice

with which colonial authority would not have been unfamiliar. During the

early 1940s, the influence of Soviet ideology in the colonial world had been

such that Britain had publicised widely its alliance with it in order to gain

credibility; leftist rhetoric was used for the purposes of justifying the imperial

mission.83 Here failure would have to be the lack of success in such

conversion. Others maintained that the problem was "an ui~derdeveloped

and ill-educated population getting a vote before they have learned how to

use it" which would "lead to eventual disasterU.84 Colonial authority from

this viewpoint had not sufficiently educated the population nor created the

social conditions in which the colonised would, of their own accord, support

moderate or reformist political policies.

Contraindications, on the other hand, refer not to the failure of colonial

authority to navigate power, but to the success of anti-colon ial resistance

itself, an emphasis that shifts the focus away from the deficiencies of

governmentality and towards the agency of the colonised. Colonial Secretary

Oliver Lyttelton warned that "the men and women round Dr Jagan are cool,

sophisticated politicians operating with full knowledge of all the weapons in

82 Burchell, "Liberal government" in Barry et a1 (eds), Fozicnlilt a~ld Political Renson, p. 26.

" Fi~redi, Colotlir~l Wors, pp. 59, 72. 8.' l l l i d . , p. l65.

the Communist armoury. That is the menace in British G~iana."~5 With less

militancy and greatcr circumscription, someone in Whitehall on the 1953

suspension stated that "the depressing fact is that it is only the Jagans who

seem to understand how to play the political game."86 Another statement

observed the PPP to be very different to other West Indian parties in the way

it kept itself together.s7

If complicity is the issue, then with respect to the electoral victory of the

Jagan in 1953 it was colonial authority which has been duped. With regard to

1963, it was, to contrary - and according to Lewis - Jagan who has been

fooled. It is the period between the collapse of colonial governmentality and

that described by Lewis, where Jagan and his party were seen to have

conceded away their political power, that I now turn. What is of interest is

the fundamental change in the power of colonial authority that led up to the

situation where, first, Jagan "gives away" the political upper hand and,

second, actually calls upon the colonial governor to authorise military

assistance in abating the potential violence that is occurring under his

leadership.

After 1955, Jagan and his party were viewed as having lost their

revolutionary fervour and were considered to have been pushed by the

racially derived affiliations of the population, instead of having led the people

"forward".88 It has been said that national solidarity in the form of class and

racial unity gave way to a new form of race relations, that had been politicised

by the split of the PPP into two factions with Jagan and Burnham as the

respective leader~.~9 Furthermore, class ideology "had become dominant and

racialism submerged in the period 1950-53", however, during the 1955 58

I35 lhid., p. 2. lbiii., p. 177.

R7 lbiii., pp. 147-48. R8 Martin Carter, "The race crisis - British Guiana," Speech at the Inter-American

University of Puerto Rico, c.1964, p. 10. 89 Hintzen, Tlre Costs ofRegirrre Slrrvivnl, pp. 39,46.

period "race and ideology jostled for supremacy, both playing an almost

equal role on the political sceneU.90

In the year after he had admitted to the Prime Minister that the

"conditions of the people in the Colony were largely responsible for the

support given to the communist led PPP at the election" of 1953, the colonial

secretary Lennox-Boyd stated that colonial policy and tactics were now at the

service of allowing for the emergence of a new National Labour Front which

would, potentially, neutralise the PPP through coalition. The ultimatum

given to Jagan was based on the correlation between constitutional advance

and political stability: Jagan's aims could not be "inconsistent with Western

Parliamentary democracy".91 Caught under a constitution that was explicitly

intended to isolate the radical movement in British Guiana,92 Jagan was left

with the choice of political obsoleteness or playing the game according to

colonial rules. 93 By 1958, Governor Patrick Renison was able to declare

smugly that "[wle have seen the unusual picture of the communist Jagan,

both before and after the election, competing with all other parties and

politicians to attract and reassure capitalist investors".~

Later, under the Kennedy administration, it was Arthur Schlesinger who

devised a plan to establish a system of proportional representation in Guyana

designed to undermine Jagan's electoral advantage (he had won 57% of the

Parliamentary seats based on 42.3% of the vote). After the British government

and the CIA had proposed the plan to Burnham and Peter D'Aguiar, (leader

of the United Force - a conservative party supported by Christian churches,

foreign multinationals and Western governments), these local party leaders

officially presented it to the colonial office. A racially based campaign of anti-

communism was waged against Jagan' party.95 It was a plan intended to

-.

Jagan, The West 011 Trinl, p. 174. Jagan refers to the political ideologies of socialism and capitalism when he uses the term "ideology1' in this instance.

91 Cited in Furedi, Coloizinl Wnrs, p. 207. 92 lbid., pp. 202. 93 Ibid., pp. 206,207. 94 Ibid., pp. 203. 95Ironically, Burnham had been perceived by the metropolitan powers as a black

racist, and had actually been considered less desirable than Jagan for a time.

delegitimise Jagan's claim to power and authority over the people of the

colony, and it worked.% Indeed, it was, as history testifies, successful beyond

all expectations. In February 1962, three unions representing a large portion

of government employees declared a general strike against the Jagan

government. A march with over 60,000 people led by Burnham and D'Aguiar

took place in Georgetown. Rioting, arson and the looting of Indian homes

ensued, but the police and parliamentary units were sympathetic to popular

discontent and ignored the situation. Left without the support or loyalty of

the armed and security branches of the state, Jagan made a formal request to

the colonial government to send in British troops to restore order. To the

wider pro-American, anti-communist world, it was a picture of indigenous

incompetence which, in its drama and pathos, was a rather glorious victory.

The PPP's inability to instil order in the country was used against Jagan to

force him to accept the constitutional change to proportional representation,

and to agree to new elections before a decision on the colony's independence

would be made. Thus, although it was formerly supposed to be the winner of

the 1961 elections who would be given full executive and legislative powers

and lead the country to independence, it was not until after the 1964 elections

that a date for independence was granted. With the electoral system in place,

it was a coalition government consisting of the (officially) moderately socialist

People's National Congress and the capitalist United Force that attained

office, and in the end Burnham who became the first leader of an independent

Guyana. The politics of race that had ensued after the nationalist coalition

between Jagan and Burnham had collapsed not only had guaranteed the

political isolation of the Marxists, it had produced a more ideologically

acceptable group of leaders who had a degree of influence over the lower

96Ot1e of the reasons Jagan's Marxism was seen as a particular threat to the West was that the PPP victory had come two years after the Castro revolution and soon after the Bay of Pigs. Hintzen, Tlle Costs of Regirrre Slirviual, p. 52.

cla~ses.~7 "That there were hypocrisy, breach of faith and fraud", says Jagan in

great understatement, "was recognised widely".Yg

Guerrilla Governmentality

In examining the events leading up to 1963 it is interesting to note that the

British government had been left completely at sea in gauging the

consequences of the 1953 suspension of the constitution for the nationalist

movement and the image of British colonialism. This situation was quickly

abated with the split of the PPP and the racialisation of party politics. The

sociological determinism inherent in the rationality of racialised interest,

presumed by colonialism in the early '50s to be capable of forestalling any

form of effective radical indigenous politics, had been rejected by Jagan in the

pre-PPP days of peasant mobilisation, and it had been symbolically as well as

politically transcended when Burnham joined the PPP and, following Jagan's

strategy, led the party to victory with Jagan in 1953. But by the late '50s that

same racialised interest was now an essential component of Burnham's

political rationality. Insofar as Burnham's plan for gaining political

advantage now rested on the same rationality as colonial authority's tactics of

government, it may be said that Burnham himself became a kind of

instrument in the service of colonial governmentality, if his political ambition

is viewed less as the target than the technology by which colonial rationality

aimed to circumscribe the exercise of Jagan's agency. Indeed, it is once

Burnham appears on the scene as Jagan's political and ideological Other and

colonialism's effective accomplice, exacerbating through his racial political

and social policies the conditions in which the anti-colonial movement would

be reduced to indigenous racial conflict, that colonial governmentality may be

said to have turned its failure in 1953 to a victory. Paradoxically, the

politically contingent character of racialised interest had become both

extremely evident by the way it had completed its rounds - from occupying a

position in the political rationality of colonialism, to that of Jagan's anti-

colonial nationalism, to that of Burnham's post-colonial aspirations - and at

the same time extremely entrenched as an essentialist sociology. The natives,

in other words, were doing what they should be doing with an efficiency that

was beyond the wildest expectations of the British.

From the perspective of an analytics of government, it would be possible

to end at this point the account of colonial governing in British Guiana during

the decade of the nationalist movement put together thus far. The

implications the colonial emergency of 1953 for representing the failure of

colonial governmentality has been shown to have experienced a radical turn-

around by 1958. The carefully cultivated freedom of the colonial subject that

had unexpectedly grown wild had been severely pruned to produce magical

results. Although the endeavour to recover agency and celebrate resistance

misses the point about how they are produced and how they are "inserted in

a system of purposes", the question of agency and resistance asked in this

account is highly compatible with an assertion made by Burchell. Namely,

that the techniques of the self are not reducible to technologies of domination,

and that the study of their interaction would appear to be extremely relevant

to "the ethical problems of ho~u freedom can be practisedU.99 The issue arising

out of the relation between agency, resistance and ethics is also what brings

Lewis back into the picture.

Despite and, I will argue, because of the success of the political rationality

of colonial authority by the late 1950s, Jagan continues to be a significant

target of colonial technologies of reform. The reason for this, I suggest, is that

colonial governmentality is so-named because of a qualitative difference from

Foucault's conception of the conduct of conduct - one that forces an emphasis

on aspects of governmentality that are counter-intuitive to his arguments.

One of the things that had disturbed Foucault in his work was the

discovery of "the kind of power which takes freedom itself and the 'soul of

99 Burchell, "Liberal government" in Barry et al (eds), Follcatrlt a d Political Reason, p. 21.

the citizen', the life and life-conduct of the ethically free subject, as in some

sense the correlative object of its own suasive capacity".l"0 Within the arena

of colonial governmentality generally, and in light of the colonial emergencies

in British Guiana particularly, it is the term "ethically free subject" that I find

difficult. In acknowledging the stress in the literature on governmentality on

rule in liberal democracies, Dean raises the issue of the kinds of resources

available to begin understanding the dynamic of "liberal rule through non-

liberal means"lo1 and the lack of any extensive discussion of what he calls

(following Philpott) authoritarian and non-liberal governmentality.'02 One

again, the gaming metaphor comes into play.

Foucault once said that "Our societies have proved to be really demonic

since they happen to combine those two games - the city-citizen game and the

shepherd-flock game - in what we call modern states".l03 Dean interprets this

statement as being a reference to the attempt by liberalism to balance the

forces of pastoral power and the deployments of sovereignty (through the

limiting power of law) "to limit, to offer guarantees, to make safe and, nboz~e

nll, to legitimate and justify the operations" of pastoral power and

disciplinary practices. However, he continues, liberalism can never fully

contain the "'demonic' possibilities" of this combination.lO4

It is the theme of legitimacy and justification that is of particular interest to

me. Scott, Dean and L. Mead all refer to the work of Mill in their discussions

of governmentality in the colonial situation.105 And their comments relate to

the critiques of Holt and Chatterjee on the subject of race. Liberal government

holds the possibility of despotic forms of rule because liberalism itself is a

doctrine that is inherently discriminatory. according to Mill, not all

populations embody the kind of subjectivity through which liberalism may

- - -

100 Gordon in Burchelf et a1 (eds), Tlte Forlarlilf Eflect, p. 5. '0' Dean, Gouenl~rlenfalify, p. 131. '02 Ibid., p. 145. '03 Cited in Dean, ibid., p. 132. 104 Ibid., p. 132 105 1 have yet to examine Mead, Tlre New Pnterrlnlism: Sirpervisonj Approaclres to Poverty

(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997) upon which Dean relies for his argu nlent.

operate, hence authoritarian forms of rule are necessary in order to cultivate

such a subjectivity. If Holt talks about the internal racist contradictions of

liberalism, Chatterjee speaks of race as the colonial rule of difference and Scott

conceives of race as the enabling discourse of liberalism, what is apparent to

me js that the emergence of the ethically free subject as artefact is what is

necessary for the legitimisation and justification of race as the rule of colonial

difference.

The implications with respect to what happened between the late 1950s

and 1963, the year of the "the last sad act" of the anti-colonial movement, are

significant. Jagan continues to command popular support by the early 1960s

and, despite the success of governmental tactics as manifested in the

fraudulent power of Burnham. Authoritarian governmentality, however, is

not the answer; not only has it been a visible mode of conduct within the

context of Cold War conflict, it threatens to produce a pyrrhic victory in

which ideological gain for the West spells loss for governmentality as the

source of modern postcolonial subjectivity and the limitation of its freedom.

Jagan, in other words, must be seen to willingly step out of the competition

for leadership of an imminently independent Guyana. As previously

inaccessible documents in the Public Records Office (Kew Garden) are made

available nearly forty years after the incidents leading up to Black Friday in

1962 when Jagan called for British troops to enter Georgetown, it is becoming

increasingly clear just how the conditions from which the self-reforming

subjugated subject would emerge were established by colonial power.

The demonisation of Jagan by colonial authority goes beyond the

association with "authoritarian governmentality": with the declaration of a

secret war against the PPP, the covert and conspiratorial strategies of control

and removal, and the insidious placement of political snipers, the conduct of

conduct in British Guiana is more aptly named "gutjrrilla governmentality".

From this perspective, Lewis is entirely correct to attest to the utterly tragic

and pathetic way in which the anti-colonial movement effectively ceased to

operate. But I would maintain that what appeared to be surrender to the

British on the electoral reform issue may was in fact surrender, but it did not,

contrary to what Lewis implies, represent either the act of quitting or an act of

stupidity on Jaganfs part. What Lewis fails to sustain in his otherwise cogent

account is that the right disposition of things arranged to produce convenient

ends meant that Jagan was doomed to be disqualified from the game of

colonial politics. Refusing to budge on the electoral reform issue may have

left him standing with ideological dignity, but it would have totally destroyed

what little chance a severely circumscribed political reason would have had to

allow for a spontaneous act of self-reform by colonial authority. Justice,

however, is not part of the obejctive of colonial governmentality. Legitimacy

is.

Coszclusion

Every intensification, every extension of power relations to make the insubordinate submit can only result in the limits of power . . . [Elvery strategy of confrontation dreams of becoming a relationship of power and every relationship of power leans toward the idea that, if it follows its own line of development and cornes up against direct confrontation, it may become the winning strategy."106

The argument presented in this essay has been that between 1953 and 1962,

the limits of colonial power, the success of a strategy of anti-colonialism, and

the reassertion of power were, one by one, evident in the political struggles in

Guiana. But the operations involved in the reassertion call into question the

legitimacy of the practices of the liberal rule by non-liberal means. In the case

examined here, they did so to the extent that even naming s~zch a regime an

authoritarian version of governmentality is insufficient. For even that term

exists as an established "ism" in the lexicon of political theoiy. Guerrillas, on

the other hand, are something entirely different.

106 Foucault, "Afterword: The Subject and Power" in Dreyfus and Rabinow (eds), Micllel Fo~icniilt, py. 225-6.