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Liming in Trinidad: The art of doing nothing
Thomas
Hylland Eriksen
Folk, vol. 32 (1990)
Det finnes en norsk
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The topic and
the context
This article sets out to explore the dynamic interrelations of systems
of morality in an urban setting in Trinidad. It is shown how ethics
of respectability and ethics of reputation, familiar from the anthropological
literature on the Caribbean, interact in different kinds of contexts.
Instead of regarding the two moralities as properties of classes or
persons, they are seen as two sides of the same coin; i.e., as sets
of norms and values which, although contradictory and in theory mutually
exclusive, every Trinidadian must relate to. The focus is on the relationship
of the institution of liming - the art of idling - to other aspects
of Trinidadian society, notably those relating to wagework and the production
of national symbols.
* *
*
Two narrow channels
less than ten kilometres wide separate Trinidad from the South American
continent. Like its neighbour Venezuela, Trinidad is an oil-rich country,
and the material standard of living is far superior to the average of
the area. Indeed, Trinidad has been among the most prosperous territories
of the West Indies for a century and a half. In the 1850s the island
was the beneficiary of a sugar boom, and later in the 19th century the
cocoa industry attracted thousands of workers from less fortunate islands
in the British West Indies. In the latter half of the 1970s, oil prices
were so high, and economic growth so spectacular, that prime minister
Eric Williams declared, in 1977, that "Money is no problem".
Towards the end of the somewhat rougher 1980s, Trinidadians reminisced
about their recent past, telling stories about people who went to Barbados
to buy onions and others who went on weekend trips to visit relatives
in New York. As a matter of fact, even blue-collar workers could occasionally
afford a trip abroad, a private car and a TV set during the oil boom.
Although the standard of living has declined steadily during the 1980s,
the GNP is still comparable to that of industrialised European countries;
in other respects, however, Trinidad must be regarded as a part of the
Third World.
Despite its physical proximity to the Spanish Main, Trinidad is not
a Latin American country. It is true that the island was discovered
by Columbus during his third voyage in 1498; it is also beyond doubt
that is remained a Spanish colony for three centuries, but Trinidad
received little attention and remained an obscure backwater in the Spanish
empire.
Cultural, political and economic links with Spain were severed rapidly
from the early 1780s to the end of that century, and the Spanish period
was to leave little trace except in geographical names. By invitation
from the colonial administration, a considerable number of French planteurs
from neighbouring islands arrived with their slaves during the 1780s,
and these immigrants brought and developed a series of cultural practices
and institutions which remain core features of Trinidadian public life.
The most important were the calypso and the carnival. From 1797 until
independence in 1962, further, Trinidad was a British possession, and
despite a remarkable variation in cultural influences, it must definitely
be regarded as a part of the Caribbean cultural area.
Parametres of contemporary Trinidad
Trinidad is the senior partner of the parliamentary republic Trinidad
and Tobago. About half of the population reside in the urban East-West
Corridor, a densely built-up belt stretching south of the Northern Range
from the western suburbs of the capital, Port of Spain, to the small
town of Arima some thirty kilometres to the east. With Port of Spain
as a natural hub, the urban corridor dominates public life in Trinidad.
Whenever Trinidadians talk of their "national culture" or
something supposedly "typically Trinidadian", they would never
have in mind the Indo-Trinidadian villages scattered among the sugarfields
of Caroni, or the remote fishing villages up north, or even the economically
important oilfields in the south-west. Crucial institutions in the Trinidadian
definition of public self, such as steelbands, calypso and carnival,
as well as the most important economic and political institutions can
doubtless be localised to Port of Spain and the surrounding area. My
own fieldwork in Trinidad (April-November, 1989) took place in this
part of the island; I was based in St Augustine, twelve kilometres east
of Port of Spain. The majority of the population in this area as a whole
is of African origin (negroes), but there is also a considerable number
of Trinidadians of Indian descent (Indians). My own neighbourhood near
the University of the West Indies was, as a matter of fact, a largely
Indian one. As regards social rank, the area is varied, and includes
respectable workers' estates and prosperous middle-class suburbs as
well as squatting areas. Finally, hardly anybody (except some squatters)
lives off the land in the East-West Corridor. My acquaintances included,
among others, taxi drivers, journalists, clerks and other white-collar
workers, university lecturers, municipal workers, shopkeepers, hustlers,
industrial workers, a couple of freelance writers, and a gardener.
The extant literature on Trinidad's annual carnival is fairly extensive
(Crowley, 1956; Hill, 1972; Johnson, 1986; Stewart, 1986). Some of these
studies, as well as occasional writings on calypso (e.g. Rohlehr, 1975;
Warner, 1982) and the steelband movement (e.g. Neil, 1987), indicate
that the black, urban working class has been - and still is - crucial
in the production of the kind of shared meaning which is projected to
a national level in public life in Trinidad. Insights from such studies
have contributed to the perspective adopted in this article. However,
my focus will be on a less conspicuous, seemingly more trivial type
of activity in urban Trinidad, namely, the institution of liming, which
refers to an extremely widespread Trinidadian activity which has hitherto
hardly been dealt with by analysts.
The practices and rules of liming
The etymology of the word liming is obscure. It is a Trinidadian word,
probably of recent origin since English has been a popular language
in Trinidad for less than a century. It means, roughly, "hanging
around" - but as we shall see, there is no exact linguistic or
cultural equivalent to liming in the cultural contexts with which most
of us are familiar.
The concept of liming encompasses any leisure activity entailing the
sharing of food and drink, the exchange of tall stories, jokes and anecdotes
etc., provided the activity has no explicit purpose beyond itself. As
such, it may seem as though liming occurs in most societies. But whereas
idling and inactivity are frequently seen unequivocally as shameful
and slightly immoral kinds of social situations, liming is in Trinidad
acknowledged as a form of performing art; it is a kind of activity one
wouldn't hesitate to indulge in proudly. In liming contexts, verbal
improvisation, ingenuity and straightforward aimlessness are highly
regarded, provided one follows the rules, which, however, are nearly
all implicit. For my own part, it took me a great deal of time and effort
to learn how to lime; many of my Trinidadian acquaintances would doubtless
be of the opinion that I never really mastered it, despite a large number
of determined attempts.
Liming is, in other words, an activity not subjected to a formal set
of rules. Its value to the participants is entirely contingent on the
shared meaning that can be established spontaneously. A typical lime
begins when two or several acquaintances (neighbours, colleagues, relatives
or simply friends) meet more or less by chance; in the street, at the
grocer's, outside somebody's home, or in the rumshop. For it is impossible
to lime alone: liming is inherently a social activity; it is constituted
by the (minimally) dyadic relationship and cannot be reduced to the
individual agent. A second necessary condition for a lime is the presence
of an ambience of relaxation and leisure. Both (or all) limers should
relax physically (recline in chairs, lean against walls etc.) in a manner
enabling them to converse at their ease. Thirdly, the situation should
assume an air of openness: a lime is in principle open to others who
might want to join. Liming is, in other words, a social and public activity.
The term liming is nowadays used locally for almost any kind of unspecified
leisure activity; in this analysis, I opt to restrict it conceptually
to the kind of contexts outlined. Groups of people meeting in each others'
living-rooms are therefore not true limers unless the context allows
for the intrusion of gatecrashers.
Limes and limers
Not just anybody can lime together. The Trinidadian term a lime refers
not only to the activity, but also to the liming group, which is frequently
an informal group of considerable duration. Very often, groups of four
or five men lime together on a regular basis. In this way, liming mediates
forms of social integration and differentiation not provided by professional
and domestic careers. Certainly, the overlap between professional and
liming careers is massive; from a structural point of view, it is beyond
doubt that the correlation between class and liming milieu is high.
In other respects, however, distinctions of liming relating to class
are not as clearcut as one might be led to expect, and to this I will
turn later.
The unemployment rate in Trinidad is high (in October, 1989, the official
estimate was 22%, the real figure higher), and to many men, liming is
therefore a major activity. The prototypical limer in the Trinidadian
collective consciousness is a man around thirty, unemployed or irregular
wageworker, living with a woman or not, resident of the eastern suburbs
of Port of Spain. Groups of streetcorner limers can be observed at any
time of the day in these (and structurally similar) areas; they exchange
gossip and jokes, share beverages, cigarettes or ganja (marijuana) -
depending on availability - while continuously on the alert for sources
of financial support, be it a job or a friend. The badjohn, a rough
and somewhat shady character in Trini folklore, is a liming prototype
(and a potential troublemaker) sensitively depicted in Earl Lovelace's
novel The Dragon Can't Dance(1977), but most limers, even of the down-and-out
category, are not badjohns. To hustlers, who comprise a large percentage
of the urban poor, liming is a basic activity bordering on a subsistence
activity (although its frivolous character is always stressed by the
agents), since it is necessary in order to obtain information about
possible sources of income.
It should be emphasised that liming is not an activity restricted to
members of the "lower classes", although daytime limers are
usually wholly or partly unemployed. Starting in the late afternoon
and lasting well beyond midnight, thousands of small groups of men gather
daily at regular places along the East-West Corridor; in rumshops, at
pool halls, at "recreation clubs" and in restaurants; at streetcorners,
in parks and around peoples' homes. A great deal is communicated about
the social identity of an individual through his liming habits. People
who lime together tend to belong to the same age group, to the same
rank category with regards to occupation, and the same ethnic group.
Usually, they live in the same neighbourhood, and finally, liming is
largely a male activity. In this way, liming contributes to the reproduction
of principles for social differentiation, which have significance in
the division of labour, the production and reproduction of ideology,
ethnic organisation and domestic organisation. Seen from a different
point of view, to which I will turn, liming contradicts rather than
confirms these social institutions.
Good limes, bad limes
As already mentioned, activities resembling liming exist in most societies.
A distinguishing trait of liming in urban Trinidad is the fact that
strong and specific aesthetic criteria are applied in the ongoing evaluation
of a lime. It is common to distinguish between a good lime and a bad
lime. A lime is good if there is plenty of money for beverages etc.,
if interesting and/or amusing information flows easily between the participants,
and if nobody is seriously offended. Tense and exciting games of poker,
pool, dominoes or all fours may also add to the success of a lime. A
lime can further be elevated to the category of memorable limes if an
unexpected opportunity for enjoyment emerges in the course of liming;
if somebody appears in a car and invites everybody to come and lime
on the beach at Maracas or Carenage, or if somebody invites the lime
to a party or a film, or if somebody knows about available women nearby,
or if news arrive that there is a stickfight or a cockfight in the area
- or, for that matter (in the case of liming hustlers), if a job offer
appears. A bad lime, on the other hand, is characterised by boredom
and true inactivity, or irritation and sour argument. "Leh we split
dis scene man, dis lime doh have no juice," is a perfectly justifiable
suggestion after a couple of hours of inertia. A lime with no juice
is truly dreadful.
Not all collective leisure activities can be classified analytically
as liming, although the agents themselves sometimes use the term indiscriminately,
and although many non-liming activities may resemble liming both in
their structural and symbolic aspects. I have mentioned that closed,
private sessions can hardly be regarded analytically as liming. But
there are public spaces, too, which are poorly suited for real liming.
For instance, the discotheque forms an inadequate spatial framework
for the art of liming; the rules of conduct are too strict, for discos
involve imperatives of dancing and the loud music makes it nearly impossible
to engage in the loose, improvised conversations crucial for a good
lime. Similarly, it is difficult to lime at the racecourse, unless one
spends the day there in order to lime and not in order to bet on the
horses (which is not at all uncommon). This is also the case as regards
the activity taking place at de gayelle, the venue for cockfights. The
beach, on the other hand, is a well suited place for liming, but this
does not entail that every visit at the beach implies liming. If one
goes to the beach with the family on Sunday, then one simply engages
in an excursion; only if the trip takes place more or less spontaneously
with a group of friends, and only if one does not initially discuss
a set time for the return, is it a matter of liming. Liming presupposes,
then, that no necessary activity must take place, that one is available
for whatever might happen. The important point to note here is that
the liming protects the individual from the social pressures he experiences
in other contexts. In this sense, the context of liming, where a man
is among equals, can be regarded as a backstage in Goffman's (1981 [1959])
sense, when compared to those social contexts which deal with domestic
and professional careers - despite its being public.
Liming expresses availability as a positive value. Being available entails
that one is open to suggestions in a very wide sense. The most serious
sin that can conceivably be committed by a limer, could therefore be
that he tells his co-limers about his immediate commitments at work,
at home etc. If a lime is good, it is not legitimate to leave it, no
matter what commitments from a different frame of reference one claims
to be constrained by. At best, one may make a telephone call during
the lime. But one cannot leave the liming community before the social
ambience declines in intensity.
Liming, as a leisure activity subjected to the rules and constraints
outlined, is very widespread in urban Trinidad. If one were to ask a
group of limers why they lime, they would probably reply - if anything
- that they did so because they enjoyed the informal company of their
friends, because there wasn't anything else to do, or because they wished
a few hours' of respite from their family. Liming is acknowledged as
an autotelic activity (Zapffe 1984 [1942]) - it allegedly contains its
own ends, and it is constantly contrasted with the heterotelic activities
entailed by domestic and professional life. The rules of liming are
undercommunicated or entirely neglected by the limers; the alleged lack
of rules regulating liming is itself one of its important virtues, for
it is this aspect of it that grants the limers a supreme "aristocratic"
feeling of total individual freedom. In this, I believe fundamental,
sense, liming is associated with a state of mind transcending temporal
commitments. It should also be pointed out that the tendency towards
overcommunicating the autotelic ("expressive") aspects of
liming does not necessarily imply that liming cannot function heterotelically
("instrumentally"; - this is evident in the case of liming
hustlers); the point is that it is invariably the aimless, irresponsible
features of liming which are emphasised by the agents themselves.
Activities resembling liming are familiar from a number of West Indian
societies where family life and professional careering are given low
priority in the normative systems of male communities, and it is frequently
seen as "proletarian". However, it is also true that respectable
middle-class family fathers and taxpayers relish the art of liming,
and this fact provides a key to an understanding of a central contradiction
in Trinidadian culture.
Limers from respectable backgrounds
When a group of hustlers, occasional wageworkers or unemployed men lime,
it is easy to understand why, and this has already been accounted for.
When a group of middle-aged white-collar state employees lime, on the
other hand, there is something puzzling about the entire scene. On one
of my first days in Trinidad, I was taken aback at the sight of four
gentlemen in three-piece suits, sharing several bottles of rum and laughing
loudly in a cafe in central Port of Spain early in the afternoon. For
a while, as I gradually grew more familiar with Trinidadian society,
this kind of behaviour remained inexplicable. For roughly the same cultural
distincions are applied to distinguish between working-class and middle-class
culture in Trinidad as elsewhere in the West Indies: The "lower
classes" of manual and occasional workers are believed to lead
disorganised and promiscuous lives where no considerations pertaining
to family life and professional career are allowed to interfere with
their natural inclination to be led by coincidental and spontaneous
notions. The middle class represents a complementary moral code in this
system of representations: these people are believed to live in stable
marriages and to be highly competitively minded and career-oriented;
many would even allege that middle-class people choose their spouses
and friends with their professional career in mind. These perceptions
were confirmed many times by people I spoke with in Trinidad. A municipal
worker from Arouca, for instance, told me that he wouldn't dream of
envying the middle class for their lifestyle. "I've got everything
I need," he explained, "food in my belly, clothing to cover
my body, a house, and a bit left over. I would never want to live down
in Valsayn. It must be a bore to just sit there with your remote control,
eh, your wife all dressed up next to you and the kids silent as eggs
(...) - and at your job you've got to lick the bottom of your boss all
day; you wouldn't have any freedom, man."
Another acquaintance, with a different background, had a job in an organisation
lending money to small businessmen. Most of the loans were never paid
back. "The problem of those working-class people," he said,
"is not that they're lazy or dishonest, but that they're so extremely
irresponsible. What do they care if they go bust?" A common assumption,
not least common in the urban working class itself, is that black working-class
Trinidadians don't invest themselves in "respectable activities"
such as wagework and family life. Life is too sweet.
As a matter of fact, liming is much less widespread among "respectable
citizens" than among members of "the lower classes".
The Mas Camp Pub, a respectable pub in the west end of Port of Spain,
is typically crammed with liming groups in the weekends, while it is
nearly empty on weekdays. It is common for respectable citizens to spend
their evenings at home with their families, and they frequently entertain
guests in their homes (which cannot be regarded as liming). But the
longing for the "free life" of the worker is an explicit theme
among men in the middle class of Port of Spain. When they lime together,
remarks to the effect that "if it hadn't been for the wife and
the money, I'd gladly have left the rat race" are common. An implicit
condition of their liming is that it is being limited by structural
constraints they would rather have been without. Therefore, middle-class
limers indulge in liming with perhaps greater enthusiasm than their
working-class counterparts: to the sales manager and the architect,
liming is a scarce resource which thus represents a set of cultural
values deserving to be overcommunicated; to the the regular streetcorner
and rumshop limers, it is seen as a normal condition.
A shared value in male, urban Trinidadian culture is the notion that
too much pressure is an evil to be avoided; in other words, that it
is virtuous and pleasant for an individual to be in charge of one's
own life to the extent that nobody takes decisions on one's behalf.
People in "respectable" jobs and stable marriages are more
likely to be deprived of this feeling than others, since they know that
they cannot take a day (or a week, or a year) off any time. Their private
life is, in addition, closely monitored by colleagues and competitors,
and it is considered imperative to keep a respectable face. The rank
of the middle class in Trinidadian society depends to a great extent
upon the ability of its members to display responsibility and respectability.
This gives their liming a streak of indecency and illegitimacy, and
they might often stress, when talking to outsiders such as myself, that
this is something they seldom do; that their job and their family places
great demands on them, etc. It is acknowledged by the men of the urban
middle class that their position in society denies them the right to
indulge in excessive liming; simultaneously, there are strong cultural
incentives encouraging them to do just that.
One may well ask what could be the "benefit" of liming among
middle-class men. It is doubtless true that liming serves to confirm
friendship, but it is equally true that sociability more or less directly
related to professional interests would rather take place in closed
contexts, frequently with accompanying wives. Like members of the working
class, middle-class men tend to lime with old friends with whom they
share no immediate business interests. It is indeed hard to see that
there could be a directly utilitarian aspect related to their liming.
On the contrary, liming serves to weaken the respectable image of the
middle-class, and it can also create immediate practical difficulties
(arguments with the wife, hangovers at work, bad reputation...). It
is therefore necessary to examine the kind of cultural system encouraging
liming in some detail, before discussing the peculiar place of liming
and its associated values in Trinidadian society.
Liming and West Indian systems of morality
Many anthropologists who have carried out research in the West Indies
have been struck by the "flexibility" in the social organisation
on the levels of the household and the local community; the lack of
wide, formalised systems of rules for interaction have been noted, and
equally, the many opportunities culturally available for the breaking
of whatever rules might be there. In particular, the family institution
has been depicted as an extremely loose and non-formalised one, and
the generalised West Indian male, in particular, is frequently described
as a character fighting against his own values when attempting to live
a regular and predictable family life. The generalised West Indian man,
as he emerges in e.g. Wilson (1973) and Eidheim (1981), seeks support
and confirmation not with his family or employer, but in the peer group;
the men he drinks and plays with, and at the same time the men he competes
with for women. The morality of respectability represented by the domestic
sphere is directly contradicted by the morality of reputation encouraged
in the context of the peer group. Whereas any man's friends would want
him to spend the entire night buying drinks, play cards and tell jokes
(and while he himself perhaps thinks about his mistress, who clearly
belongs to the reputation sphere), his wife would wish him to work in
a disciplined fashion, to support his family steadily and to stay at
home in the evening.
The notion of these two systems of morality which have now been sketched
briefly, has usually been applied to societies where the larger part
of the male population does not participate in regular, bureaucratic
wagework (Wilson and Eidheim have been mentioned as examples; I have
myself (Eriksen, 1986) described a similar pattern in a fishing village
in Mauritius). The contradiction between "moralities of respectability"
and "moralities of reputation" is often assumed to correspond
to the conflicting interests of the sexes; it is also often invoked
in comparisons between social strata. A crucial part of the definition
of the middle class in West Indian societies - stressed by its members
and by others - is thus that this category of persons, in addition to
earning higher wages and working more regularly than the working class,
represents a morality of work and domestic life related to the wish
to be, and to be perceived as, respectable. These notions about the
respectability of the middle class are socially very significant throughout
the West Indies. Wilson thus notes that the family ideology and to some
extent, the practices of the few middle-class families on Providencia
are different from, and much more "European", than that of
the majority (Wilson 1973: 98ff.; cf. also Smith 1988: 33). It is generally
assumed, by West Indians as well as by anthropologists, that the West
Indian middle classes live in a more predictable fashion in matters
regarding education, sex, work and so on, and that their institutionalisation
of the family is stronger and stricter, than the working classes.
As regards Trinidad, this moral duality has been documented extensively
in fiction as well as being consistent with my own research; two splendid
examples are Edgar Mittelholzer's study of class and ethnicity in a
Trinidadian office, A Morning At The Office (1979 [1951]), and Vidia
Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (1957), which tells the story of the creolised
Hindu entrepreneur and his wife, who enthusiastically upgrade their
moral codes as they climb socially.
In our discussion about liming in modern Trinidad, it has been suggested
that these classical West Indian dilemmas are not restricted to relatively
autonomous village communities, and further, that they do not denote
a clearcut cultural distinction between classes or even between individuals:
the cultural contradictions described by e.g. Wilson can be identified
in the midst of the contemporary Trinidadian middle class. This is significant
insofar as Trinidad was never a mature slave society, and is is also
interesting to note that those who "suffer" from the contradictions
can be highly respected, prosperous and disciplined citizens in a modern
nation-state. The apparently contagious character of proletarian lifestyle
and attitudes evident in the uneasy endorsement of liming among middle-class
Trinidadians, indicates that the urban working class may have been the
central exponent, and the ultimate source, of shared Trinidadian culture
since Trinidadian nationalism was invented in the 1950s.
The "proletarian values" expressed through liming stand in
a contradictory relationship to the self-image, lifestyle and professional
aims of the middle class, yet the power exerted by liming as an exemplary
activity is considerable regardless of class. It is therefore tempting
to suggest, provisionally, that the urban working class is culturally
hegemonic in Gramsci's sense, or even that the working class represents
the good taste in Trinidadian culture (cf. Bourdieu 1979). This will,
however, not do by way of conclusion. Below, I explain why.
Up to now, the aim of the discussion has been to describe in what ways
informal and apparently chaotic patterns of interaction in an urban
environment are subjected to rules and norms which form part of a wider
socio-cultural system. I have shown that these rules are frequently
implicit, and that they should be classified as strategic rather than
constituting rules; that is, they are articulated exclusively through
ongoing interaction. Since individual freedom and lack of commitment
are highly appreciated values among male, urban Trinidadians, the normative,
regulated and heterotelic dimensions of activities such as liming are
systematically undercommunicated.
The next step in the analysis must be to relate the values and practices
associated with liming to the wider socio-cultural system of Trinidadian
society. We will, then, explore the relationship of this "institution
of inactivity" to its wider context; in particular, the attempt
to develop a shared, Trinidadian identity. It will now become evident
that the cultural contradictions indicated in the institution of liming
are pervasive in a more fundamental sense than implied by the dichotomy
of respectability and reputation - indeed, that the contradiction is
an irreducible aspect of a great number of social situations and is
constitutive of the social person.
Liming and key symbols in Trinidadian culture
The carnival, the calypso and the steelband are key symbols in the official
national culture of Trinidad. These are all institutions symbolically
linked with the urban working class of Port of Spain. An acquaintance
of mine, a journalist who was of impeccable middle class origin himself,
thus once remarked that "the Trinidadian middle class has not been
able to create anything of lasting value, and it therefore has to be
parasitic on the culture of the working class". Whatever the case
may be, it is doubtless correct that all of these institutions are associated
with slightly mythological conceptions about the loose and free life
of the proletarian, contrasting this image with the phlegmatism and
boring Protestant virtues of the European-influenced middle-class lifestyle.
In this respect, aesthetics, humour and frivolity (my terms, not necessarily
those of the agents) as ambivalent, but nevertheless as expressions
of "typically Trinidadian" culture.
Aesthetic judgements are ubiquitious in Trinidadian society. The aesthetic
sense of Trinis naturally reaches a natural peak during the annual carnival,
but aesthetic judgements are also omnipresent during the remaining 363
days of the year. For one thing, Trinidadians are concerned to look
their best, and to a great extent, they judge others according to their
appearance. Beauty contests of every shade (from Miss Republic Bank
to Miss Swimsuit) are common and widely attended by men who sometimes
bring their families. The ugly and the corpulent are frequently the
victims of satire and assorted rudeness; and it is important for men,
too, to look good. A slightly different aspect of this aesthetic attitude
to the social world is the Trinidadian emphasis on personal style, traditionally
an aristocratic criterion for judgement of others. In a Trinidadian
context, much can be forgiven in terms of rude and careless behaviour
with or without malicious intent, provided the act is carried out in
style. Verbal statements are frequently evaluated according to the criterion
of style; that is, the content is less important than the form (cf.
Abrahams 1983 for similar observations from St. Vincent). Indians are
thus frequently chided for lacking style. Edgar Mittelholzer, who belonged
to the "olive-skinned middle class" himself, notes that the
Indian accountant Jagabir invariably eats lunch at his desk in order
to save money. His coloured, stylish colleague Lopez, passing Jagabir's
desk on his way to a restaurant, considers the appearance of the Indian
at his desk. "He saw the bulge in Mr. Jagabir's coat pocket - and
the grease stain. The grease from the roti had seeped through..."
(Mittelholzer 1979 [1951]: 235) Jagabir had no style and was therefore
ultimately chanceless in the milieux of Port of Spain. A further example
is that a presumed favourite colour among Indo-Trinidadian housebuilders
is jokingly known as coolie pink: it is an extremely bright pink.
Humour pervades the central literary tradition of Trinidad (and the
Caribbean); namely, the calypso. It may take the form of political satire,
dirty jokes or witty puns; a good calypso nearly always contains a humourous
element. During liming, too, the ability to make people laugh is highly
esteemed. And in regional jokes, where Guyanese are usually depicted
as inherently dishonest, Bajans (Barbadians) as stupid and Jamaicans
as violent, there will normally appear a Trinidadian taking every conceivable
opportunity to fete and enjoy himself.
Urban Trinidadians regard the ability to enjoy oneself, and the tendency
not to worry about tomorrow, as characteristic of themselves. The most
spectacular example is, of course, the carnival, which is an immensely
erotic, rhythmic and colourful party with hundreds of thousands of slightly
dressed and equally slightly intoxicated participants. The sexual element
is very dominant during carnival, and not only then: sexual themes are
omnipresent in Trinidadian discourse throughout the year. Sexual infidelity
is evaluated as partly legitimate, but there is always a minor scandal
whenever a "respectable" man or woman is "caught at it",
and such news sometimes reach the weekly press. An indicator of the
extent of extramarital sex, is the rapid spread of Aids among heterosexuals
in the East-West Corridor; further, the expression "deputy"
is used casually about women with whom one has sex while married to
another. The existence of female sexuality is, incidentally, acknowledged.
The current prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago, Mr. A.N.R. Robinson,
has been the subject of much malicious satire since he was elected in
1986; not because he is perceived as being stupid or incompetent, but
because he seems to lack an understanding for these basic elements in
Trinidadian culture - the sense of beauty and style, a good and subtle
sense of humour, and a measure of irresponsibility. A popular explanation
for this is that Robinson, the son of a preacher, is a Tobagonian and
therefore fails to understand the "Trinidadian character".
The values, or cultural themes, discussed above; aesthetics, humour
and frivolity, are all characteristic of liming, which can therefore
be regarded as metonymic of the Trinidadian nation, seen from the perspective
of the urban population. Apart from being defined culturally as a characteristically
autotelic kind of activity, liming could, therefore, express a form
of national self-consciousness or identity. However, as suggested several
times, liming could only be metonymic of the one half of such an identity.
Values of Trinidadian nationhood
In black urban Trinidadian society, it is common to contrast values
of respectability with values of reputation; discipline and obedience
are contrasted with individual idiosyncracy; the careerism in the labour
market is contrasted with the egalitarian practices of the rumshop;
frugality is contrasted with hedonistic joy, and so on. To most Trinidadians,
their shared culture (whether they endorse it or not) appears as a set
of happy-go-lucky attitudes, for better or for worse. Simultaneously,
Trinidad is a highly competitive capitalist society where individual
prosperity and social climbing are highly valued. The contradiction
between the two value systems creates practical dilemmas for the many
individuals who lead their lives between the poles, but the dilemmas
- which seem unresolvable intellectually - are not necessarily seen
as inherently destructive; people rather tend to shrug and identify
them as natural. Like most of the people studied by anthropologists,
most Trinidadians are not moral philosophers and do not necessarily
require internal consistency between their diverse "models for
action". For instance, in Trinidad, there is rarely a practical
contradiction between religious piety and a multitude of sexual partners.
Contrary to national symbols associated with the state, like the flag,
the national anthem and the national mottos, liming and related institutions
have firm roots in the daily practices of people, and can therefore
more easily contribute to the production of shared meanings. Independence
Day is perceived by most Trinidadians as "jes' anodder holiday",
while j'ouvert, the opening ceremony of the carnival, is an event hundreds
of thousands of people anticipate with great expectations every year.
I mentioned earlier that the middle class is represented as confirming
values of respectability, while the working class is held to confirm
values of reputation. The simplification, culturally almost a commonsensical
one, is empirically crude, and in fact, most individuals relate situationally
to both systems of evaluation - although their relative emphases vary.
(For instance, profession and education are important variables whenever
a liming group is founded, but during the liming itself they are undercommunicated.)
Still, it is probably correct to assume that the anarchic flexibility
represented by liming is structurally relatively unproblematic if related
to the daily practices of those in a personal situation entailing few
formal commitments, and that problems of reconciling liming with other
activities grow with the growth of formal commitments. People who are
committed to values of respectability through their choice of professional
careers, domestic situations and formal contracts such as bank loans,
act, as it were, against better knowledge when liming, for liming is
a denial of the social structure they relate to. Yet even middle class
men lime.
The interaction between "Apollonian" and "Dionysic"
values is a Leitmotiv in urban Trinidadian culture, sometimes codified
as class conflict, sometimes not. An illustration of the tension can
be provided by looking at the patterns of expenditure in relation to
the carnival. It is expensive to take part in the bands; one has to
pay the choreographer and buy one's costume; still, there are poor Trinidadians
who spend several months' wages on this brief, annual event. During
the months leading up to the carnival they save in impeccable "Apollonian"
or respectable manner, only to spend everything at once in an intense
"Dionysic" orgy, with no overt worry about paying the rent
of next month. Now, members of the middle class also spend much money
on the carnival, but this rarely leads to their losing control of their
personal economy. This is possibly due to the fact that the middle class
are better off, but it is widely interpreted as an indication that the
middle class are superior planners, but inferior enjoyers, than the
working class.
The contradiction between the value systems, and particularly the fact
that it is easier to "sell" reputation than respectability
values, emerges as a problem in every context related to nationbuilding
and national planning. Two events involving Eric Williams, the first
prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago, illustrate that this contradiction
is very much alive in individuals of middle-class as well as working-class
membership.
When Dr Williams, already then an internationally known historian, began
his political career in the mid-fifties, he did so by giving a series
of lectures at Woodford Square, the "Speaker's Corner" of
Port of Spain; a small park in front of the Parliament, which has been
an important venue for public discourse and private discussions for
over a century. The topics of Williams' lectures could be the political
philosophy of Locke or Plato, or for that matter, the writings of Carlyle.
The purpose was to contribute to the political education and self-understanding
of the ordinary citizen; most of the lectures were spun around themes
of imperialism, slavery and exploitation. These lectures were immensely
popular, and Williams - a small, chainsmoking man in a grey suit, with
a low voice, hearing aid and a pedantic style (or lack of it) - was
cheered as though he were a great calypsonian, by people overwhelmingly
belonging to the urban proletariat of Port of Spain. In his lectures,
Williams directed his attention directly to the desire of Trinidadians
to be respectable, to be on a par with the rest of the world culturally
and intellectually. In this way, Williams also attacked the morality
of reputation: he promoted serious political organisation and intellectual
ambition. The morality of reputation contains a strong element of ressentiment:
it defines itself in contrast to, and through a rejection of, the colonial
morality of duty. Through his lectures at the "University of Woodford
Square", Williams encouraged his listeners to make a productive
and positive force of their ressentiment by making respectability its
servant, convert it to an "authentically Trinidadian" system
of values, and exploit it for their own ends.
As long as he remained in Trinidad, Williams (who died in 1981) would
frequently criticise his electorate (that is, the generalised black
Trinidadian) for lacking seriousness and discipline. When he attended
conferences in Europe, however, he sometimes invited his European colleagues
to come to Trinidad "to learn how to enjoy the good life".
In other words, Dr Williams was himself caught in the contradiction
between the two systems of morality.
The flamboyant, elegant, unworried man-of-words or man-of-style is a
dear prototypical character to Trinidadians of all classes. Its roots
can partly be localised to strategies of resistance during slavery (Serbin
1987: 114ff; Lewis 1983: 180-2), which on the one hand expresses a rejection
of hierarchy and formal organisation, overt through the ressentiment
directed against the English and later against all kinds of bosses.
On the other hand, it also expresses an affirmative national identity.
But like every modern nation-state, the Trinidadian state demands obedience
to values of respectability. A recent, authorised national motto is,
thus, "Discipline, Production and Tolerance", and complaints
are common to the effect that "it is difficult to get anything
done around here, because nobody cares to make long-term plans".
On the other hand, norms related to respectability can be encountered
right at the centre of the domains of liming - literally and metaphorically:
Virtually every rumshop in Trinidad features easily visible wall placards
admonishing the customers not to swear while patronising the establishment
("No obscene language!"); further, homosexuality is nearly
universally regarded as an abominable perversion, and the weekly press
of the island, the calypso of the printed word, explicitly condemns
strip shows and pornography (the same papers are filled to the margins
with photos of girls in bikinis). The steelbands, who represented the
rough reputation ethic of the badjohns in the urban slums, played classical
tunes from the very beginning, and thereby indicated that they earnestly
wanted to be taken seriously by the colonial establishment.
In Trinidadian society it is extremely important to be able to bet on
both horses simultaneously, as it were, regardless of one's cultural
class membership. When the highly respected Trinidadian historian, marxist
and Pan-Africanist C.L.R. James died in London in 1989, the legendary
calypsonian The Mighty Sparrow could therefore remark (on the phone
from Bonn): "Me and James, together we cover the whole spectrum
of Trinidadian culture".
Finally, it should be added that 1956 was for two reasons an important
year in the history of the Trinidadian nation: The respectable Dr Williams
won the election on a nationalist platform, and the reputable calypsonian
The Mighty Sparrow won the Calypso crown for the first time. In a word,
the two main elements of Trinidadian national symbolism were consolidated
through these events.
The moralities of reputation and respectability are aspects of a shared,
dynamic system of values, and some of the tensions as experienced by
Trinidadians are illustrated in Table 1 below. If we were to adopt a
Parsonian "theory-of-social-action" (Parsons 1968) perspective
in this analysis, we might perhaps claim that all Trinidadians in any
given situation have to choose between the two moralities. It ought
to be stressed again, therefore, that these "situations of choice"
always take place in practical, not discursive contexts; in other words,
the contradictions may not be as important to the actors as it seems.
Notwithstanding this, the dichotomies of Table 1 do express contradictions
which are recognised by urban Trinidadians - and they could, perhaps,
be labelled cultural premises for the evaluation of situations. The
sets of values are contradictory at a logical or discursive level, but
in practice they are de facto complementary because nobody lives within
just one of them. Respectability and reputation cannot strictly be regarded
as poles on an analog scale either, since the rules are of an either-or
type. However, it would theoretically be possible to locate total, individual
patterns of action over a period, on such a scale. Individual and class-specific
variations are considerable, but everybody has to relate situationally
to both sets of values. It is in this sense that it is possible to claim
that all urban Trinidadians "belong to the same culture",
culture being an ambiguous property of series of social processes and
relationships, not a static property of society.
Respectability * Reputation
Scarcity of time
* Time not subjected to scarcity
Discipline * Chaos
Obedience * Freedom
Hierarchy * Equality
Contract * Trust
Large-scale society * Personal networks
Articulated purposes * No explicit purpose
Regularity * Unpredictability
Responsibility * Irresponsibility
Cumulation * Immediacy
Delayed returns * Immediate returns
Plan * Spontanity
Seriousness * Humour
Writing * Speech
Planning carnival * Carnival
Job, family * Liming (etc.)
Table 1. Some variables
in the codification of Trinidadian morality
Concluding remarks
A metonym for an important segment of a Trinidadian definition of
self, liming is a social institution (and a cultural state of mind) reproducing
the contradiction-ridden symbolic relationship between discipline and
freedom. As a formidable anti-structure (Turner 1974: 44 ff.), liming
is the symbolic counterpart of official national symbols and values; it
is explicitly spontaneous and unorganised, it contains its own ends and
is evaluated on purely aesthetic grounds. However, contrary to the African
village societies inspiring Turner's work on structure and anti-structure,
liming and structurally similar situations are prevalent in modern Trinidad;
they are visible and culturally recognised, and they are regarded - by
members of both the working class and the middle class - as being more
authentically Trinidadian than those values and forms of organisation
with which they are contrasted. Liming is unthinkable in a cultural context
not encompassing modern, bureaucratic virtues in addition to those represented
by the liming itself, since liming is dependent on its own negation. This
duality endows liming with its inherently contradictory character. It
remains true, nevertheless, that one cannot be recognised as a real Trini
unless one masters the art of liming, even if one happens to be prime
minister. Cultural values which can be codified as irresponsibility and
spontaneous joy, initially countercultural values of ressentiment, have
become indexical for der Volksgeist in the public spaces of modern Trinidad.
This entails that some of the key symbols of the "lower classes",
and their related values, create a normative pressure vis-à-vis
members of the "higher classes", where the contradictions between
the moral systems are most evident. As I have shown, the normative pressure
between the moral systems is mutual, but proletarian values (which can
clearly be traced back to slavery) remain remarkably strong in daily practice
and discourse in the Trinidadian class society. The morality of reputation,
which is linked to the working class and the lumpenproletariat in Trinidadian
culture, represents not only the performing art of doing nothing; it also
represents the calypso, the carnival and the steelband, which are key
symbols - not only in the self-image of the working class, but also in
official Trinidad. This paradoxical situation, where "low culture"
takes the former place of "high culture" in the ongoing production
of national symbolism, is clearly a legacy of colonialism. It should also
serve as a reminder that facile assumptions about "cultural hegemony"
and the presumed dominance of bourgeois values in capitalist society deserve
closer scrutiny.
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