In search of colonial identity in the Caribbean

The identity of any human can be specified by using, singly or in combination, many different universal criteria, e.g. sex, age, religion. However, in the modern, political world human beings are automatically identified with a country, and national identity is generally established by place of birth or place of residence. Very strongly tied to the feature place has been the feature race, so much so that race was once, without reflection, subsumed under place, as for example ‘white’ under European and ‘black’ under African. In fact, the traditional construction of ethnic identity (European, Chinese, Indian, African) is inalienably tied to a historicity of race that evolved in the Old World. Another major feature of identity is language. In a great many cases across the world, and especially in Europe, the name of the language (e.g. le français), the national designation (e.g. les français) and the name of the country (la France) are virtually the same, which suggests that place, people and language are closely allied in the formulation of national identity. Political identity and the notion of ‘home’ overlap, but ‘home’ embodies a psychological factor of attachment, which probably issues from the basic animal instinct of territoriality, but is more an emotional bond created through experience of a place. Because the human being does not necessarily remain in one place throughout a lifetime, ‘home’ is variable and may be place of birth, place of residence or may be defined by the popular notion ‘where the heart is’. The factor of place, as it relates to ‘home’, may also be defined by using the term ‘habitat’, which speaks to a compatibility of human being and place as well as a formative influence of place on human being and the reverse. Race, for example, is perceived by many to be a factor of habitat, though there is no absolute proof that this is so. Even more complicating is the fact that race itself is a construct made up of several components, which also vary depending on genetic combination. Language is in part a universal human factor and in part a factor of place: human language manifests itself primarily in speech as distinct languages, each of which is geographically determined. As a factor of place, language can sharply distinguish between insider and outsider through difference in accent, idiom, structure and word. Language