Sylvia Wynter's Dream

by Armiya

Like any good Non-Dualist, my first instinct when encountering two contradictory arguments over one phenomenon is to listen carefully to both sides’ perspectives, to find the empathic center, the thin line running along the middle of the Dao of the conflict, and to try to pull in the opposing forces to build a constructive discourse of healing for the parties.

Regrettably, upon encountering the many layers of generational trauma, brainwashing, delusion, repression and projection in this one seemingly trivial conversation, I paused. I was overcome by the subtle vastness of psychological battlefield and hesitant to enter at all into this war zone of ignorance and will.

The phenomenon: a trending backpack, but also… so much more.

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20230910/no-dunce-allowed

At once, the Dunce brand backpack embodied several modes of rebellion. It symbolized a rejection of the ideal of the institution of Jamaican education: the obedient, respectful, non-disruptive and when possible, pious, child.

It did this by openly calling into question the validity of the ideal itself, the wisdom and competency of those who created and enforce it, the saccharine conformity of those who aim for it, and the revelation that success can be attained by strategically and artfully attacking it. For a conservative teacher (dunce or not) observing such a mirror darkly, this image calls into question the foundations of the beliefs that serve as the foundation of a life of underpaid work that often comes with a set of attendant moral delusions about self-sacrifice as a mode of nobility.

Predictably, the priesthood of educators, armed with their self-righteous fury, responded as all priesthoods do to blasphemers and mystics, scoundrel rebels and their ilk. Not only did this retaliation to what materially amounted to a logo on a schoolbag include the threat of excommunication from the church of school, it also dangled the headache of public spectacle and shame over the fragile hearts of children while echoing like the ghosts of belligerent slave drivers along the school hallways, older orders and mechanisms of control. Mechanisms that, upon even a cursory glance into the Caribbean collective memory, splinter along the most obvious classist and racist lines.

In defense of the priesthood, perhaps the example of the archetypal dancehall artist, peddling a hedonistic, reckless and vaguely sociopathic persona isn’t the most glorious and transcendent example of the good life. He isn’t a meaningful reformer of the system, or really even a serious threat to it. Yet it is this triviality of the infraction against the code that truly makes its brutal response even less justifiable.

When this analysis is paired with the transformation of popular Black music, under the tutelage of capitalist industry, from a generator of authentic community building and rebellion against all modes of slavery, into a hedonistic cult of sex and violence, this tragically small escape from the spiritual death of conformity seems so much less of an infraction. It were as though the teachers simply desired an excuse to lash out against their wards, to terrorize them down to their level, rather than that they possessed any authentic concern for their well-being or long term success.

Truly, I struggle to see how such a violence against the children achieves anything but the further alienation of the youth from the ideals of the education system and the unmasking of the institutions themselves as primary tools of control. It is in the blatant projection of the ignorance of the establishment on to children clever enough to see through their guise that is most offensive. Whether this offense takes the form of intolerance for dreadlocks, backpacks or all manner of fun, it is about time these orthodoxies of hegemony, colonialism and religious conformity meet their demise at the hands of the children.

Like Hansel and Gretel being fattened for a future meal, these institutions’ facade of care for the future of the youth should be recognized for what it is: an excuse to punish and cannibalize the flesh, a mask to hide a dark motivation, a monster in the collective shadow best pushed into the bright fires of its own evil, first for the public to see and understand before it shrieks its final curses.

Post script:

Famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said, “Shadow work is the path of the heart warrior,” and by this he meant, by confronting our own darkest motivations and integrating them into a greater design for our lives, we can grow past our doubts and reach untold greatness.

And yet, he never extrapolated that insight into a larger societal critique. The patient was always an individual in his armchair, never a culture or a people, even as he left the influence of the unconscious open to social factors. This individualism, which fails every culture outside of europe (and perhaps Europe as well) must be transcended.

Our demons are our families and our friends, our educators and our priests. They are our selves and our dreams.

How do we exorcise such things, such doubts and such hurts?

Perhaps we can find out together…