C L R JAMES
CELEBRATING CLR
THREE-DAY CONFERENCE BEGINS TODAY
By Raymond Ramcharitar
Express
September 20, 2001
Page 23
CLR James is more of an iconic name than a scholar, Marxist critic and theorist to most of the Trinidadian public. The work with which he is most readily acquainted in Trinidad is his study of cricket, Beyond a Boundary, and the most-published image of him is of a frail fine-featured old man with white hair sitting in his Brixton flat.
But James was much more than that, as the convocation of more than 100 scholars, critics and theorists at UWI St. Augustine from today in honour of the centenary of his birth, will attest. The CLR James conference "Global Capitalism, Culture and the Politics of World Revolution" will offer the presentation of papers on his short fiction, his Marxist ideas, his influence on the fields now known as post colonial studies, Afrocentrism, and Pan Africanism and, of course, his life, for the next three days at the Learning Resource Centre, UWI.
James the man was a much more interesting character than the Trinidadian period of his life might attest. Not that the Trinidad years lacked excitement. He was born in Tunapuna and from an early age was exposed to the best that Creole society could offer. British values, and literature from Havelock Ellis' The Psychology of Sex, to the Bible, to Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
He went to Queen's Royal College in 1910, refused a scholarship to England upon graduation, and became a teacher. One of his students was a bright young man named Eric Williams, upon whose life James would have an enormous influence. In the early 1960s, he would help Williams set up the PNM, edited the party newspaper, and was influential in the setting up of the trade union movement, forming the Workers and Farmers Party in Trinidad, strongly influencing another young man named Basdeo Panday.
Outside of Trinidad, though, James' life was equally remarkable. He left for England in 1932 and upon arrival impressed himself upon literary doyenne Edith Sitwell. He became interested in Marxism and educated himself and became one of the most ardent and innovative proponents of it, contributing to several labour publications, and also writing about cricket for mainstream newspapers. He left England for the US in the 40s and continued his activities as a Trotskyite, but at the height of the McCarthy era, he was imprisoned on Ellis Island and deported.
James' response to his imprisonment was characteristic. He sat at a desk on Ellis Island and wrote Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, a study of Herman Melville's classic American novel, Moby Dick, which read it as a metaphor for the Cold War. James sent the manuscript to every member of the US Congress at the time with a plea for assistance to defer his deportation. Of course, the silk purse was trampled by the hogs.
James then returned to England and later Trinidad, where he helped Williams set up the PNM, a relationship which went sour when Williams placed him under house arrest, and the PNM party machinery (modeled after the Soviet apparatichik, by the way) began spreading a rumour of his embezzlement of party funds.
On his departure from Trinidad, James returned to England where he spent his time writing and lecturing at universities and colleges. He died in Brixton in 1989 in relative obscurity and, not poverty, but in a far from luxurious setting.
Since scholars have swarmed over his life and work, expanding his reputation to one of the greatest thinkers of the century. Edward Said, one of the holy trinity of post colonial studies named James the first post colonial thinker. The Afrocentrists and Pan Africanists are trying to claim him, although James reputedly supported the idea of black power, but not the ideas of Black Power. VS Naipaul included a portrait of him in his novel A Way in the World.
A new biography by James' secretary in his final days, Farrukh Dhondy Cricket, the Caribbean and World Revolution has been reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic. The reviewers have agreed on one thing: the bewildering range of James' interests and accomplishments.
The CLR James Conference is a collaborative effort of the UWI, OWTU, T&T Institute of the West Indies - Trinidad; and the Brown University, CLR James Institute, George Padmore Institute, CLR James and Small Axe Journals of the USA.
Some of the well-known speakers will be George Lamming, Hillary Beckles, Lloyd Best, Gordon Rohlehr, John La Guerre, Pearl Eintou Springer and Ken Ramchand.
For registration information contact:
UWI, St. Augustine 868-662-2002 Ext. 3243/2020 or
E-mail: deptbhsc@fss.uwi.tt
The OWTU 652-2701/3 or
E-mail: owtu@carib-link.net or
The conference website: http://www.owtu.org
September 20-23
Today
8 a.m. - Visit to graveside of CLR James, Tunapuna Cemetery
8.30 a.m. - Visit to family home, Tunapuna
9 a.m. - Exhibition and videos, Student Activity Centre, UWI, St. Augustine
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
10 a.m. to 12 noon - "Remembrances" followed by "James and Cricket"
1.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. - "James, Political Journalism and the Nation" followed by "James and the Drama"
6.30 p.m. - Formal opening, Learning Resource Centre, UWI
Tomorrow
9 a.m. to 11 a.m. "James and the Marxist Tradition" followed by "James and the Indo-Caribbean Experience" followed by "James, Fanon and Revolutionary Thought"
11.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. - "Caribbean Conversations"
2.30 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. "James Studies Literature and Post-colonial Theory"
followed by "James' Second American Sojourn"
5 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. - Study Groups: A Jamaican Political Praxis
Conference continues Saturday and ends Sunday