Si­mon Lee

I went away, I leave and I come back home. I come back to stay. I must see my way –An­dre Tanker

It's not taboo to go back to what you've for­got­ten –Akan proverb

If you're tempt­ed to do a Dry Sea­son clean-out and burn that "old rub­bish"–doc­u­ments, fam­i­ly snaps, old news­pa­per clip­pings, tantie's hat, ton­ton's ping pong and granpap­pi's washikong–think twice and be­fore you bun dong your own and your neigh­bour's house con­sign­ing more of our col­lec­tive and your own per­son­al past to the flames of for­get­ting, in­tro­duce your­self and that pile from the past to the Caribbean Mem­o­ry Project (CMP).

Ear­li­er in the year co-founders of the CMP, Tri­ni-born to the bone Dr Kevin Browne, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of Rhetoric at New York's Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty and Dawn Cum­ber­batch, lo­cal film, video and event pro­duc­er and scriptwriter, host­ed a col­lo­qui­um at the Trinidad The­atre work­shop, in­tro­duc­ing CMP, an on­line re­source "to pro­mote pub­lic aware­ness and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the col­lec­tion and cir­cu­la­tion of every­day archives for cul­tur­al, so­cial and his­tor­i­cal re­search."

The gen­e­sis of CMP is ground­ed in the re­cent per­son­al past of its founders. Browne, who left Trinidad in 1989 be­fore en­ter­ing sixth form at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San­do, ex­pe­ri­enced an epiphany on the day in 2004 when he si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­ceived his ac­cep­tance at Penn State to read for his PhD and news of his grand­moth­er's death. Re­turn­ing for her fu­ner­al he was shocked to find out so late in the day that she had been a teacher.

"This project was born of shame" (at his ig­no­rance of this piece of fam­i­ly his­to­ry) and he re­solved to pur­sue his doc­tor­al re­search "in ho­n­our of her."

His sense of loss in­formed his dis­ser­ta­tion and the book Trop­ic Ten­den­cies pub­lished in 2013, "a work of re­con­struc­tion," which set out to an­swer the ques­tion, "What is Caribbean Rhetoric and its role in pop­u­lar cul­ture?"

Trop­ic Ten­den­cies ini­ti­at­ed "a con­ver­sa­tion about the tasks we Caribbeans face" by re-view­ing ver­nac­u­lar cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions through the fil­ter of the "car­ni­va­lesque" and the per­for­ma­tive dis­plays which de­vel­oped "in re­sponse to a his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tion" and "mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion."

Cum­ber­batch re­called meet­ing Browne short­ly af­ter her moth­er's death, when sort­ing through her moth­er's pos­ses­sions she be­came acute­ly aware of the im­per­a­tive of "pre­serv­ing her­itage" and Browne's archiv­ing project im­me­di­ate­ly res­onat­ed with her.

As Browne ex­plained, CMP seeks to go be­yond the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of arte­facts, sto­ries and im­ages to form pas­sive archives, or sim­ply recog­nis­ing oral and folk tra­di­tions, to em­brace "the au­r­al, dance, hu­mour and the ma­trix of in­tel­lec­tu­al and spir­i­tu­al ac­tiv­i­ties, which can raise com­mu­ni­ty con­scious­ness."

The project is in­formed by a sense of ur­gency, dri­ven not on­ly by the era­sure of Caribbean cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions by the ex­i­gen­cies of glob­al­i­sa­tion but al­so by the aware­ness that "we're in glob­al cri­sis. The sanc­ti­ty of hu­man­i­ty and ideas is threat­ened. There's a lot we've for­got­ten."

For Browne, Rhetoric im­plies col­lec­tive re­flec­tion and ac­tion. "What's our sense of pur­pose as a peo­ple?" He pro­pos­es that one of the ways we can an­swer such fun­da­men­tal ques­tions is to re­think our re­la­tion­ship with the past and his­to­ry and de­vel­op "an al­ter­na­tive reg­is­ter of con­scious­ness that con­nects with an­ces­tral knowl­edge both con­scious­ly and un­con­scious­ly in an at­tempt to un­der­stand and ar­tic­u­late the ver­nac­u­lar spir­it."

Re­flec­tion is nec­es­sary in these times of in­for­ma­tion over­load, when the past is tak­en for grant­ed or not at all.

It was his time at Penn State that gave him the dis­tance "to see my peo­ples" and fa­cil­i­tat­ed the "re­flec­tive and crit­i­cal process of ques­tion­ing the flux of (Caribbean) iden­ti­ty."

Af­ter meet­ing Cum­ber­batch, Browne be­gan Foun­da­tion(s), a dig­i­tal ver­nac­u­lar archive, fo­cused on "the dig­i­tal cu­ra­tion, rhetor­i­cal re­search and free dis­tri­b­u­tion of texts of Caribbean im­port," which pro­vid­ed the de­vel­op­men­tal plat­form nec­es­sary for CMP.

Browne is an un­usu­al, ar­guably unique post­mod­ern An­glo­phone Caribbean schol­ar/archivist/pho­tog­ra­ph­er/po­et/blog­ger; one of a rare breed who is not shy to mar­ry the­o­ry and prac­tice, in a prax­is which in­ter­ro­gates such fun­da­men­tals as: "Who am I; Where are we go­ing? What are we sup­posed to be do­ing?"

He's un­usu­al in that hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced the vis­cer­al life on the ground (pover­ty, vi­o­lence) along with mi­gra­tion, ex­ile, iso­la­tion and a be­lat­ed cere­bral ca­reer (af­ter serv­ing as a US ma­rine), his in­tel­lec­tu­al fo­cus and strate­gies of en­quiry are found­ed on his ver­nac­u­lar roots, and by ex­ten­sion those of all Caribbeans.

Fur­ther­more his the­o­ry(ies) are ground­ed in pre­cise­ly that ver­nac­u­lar "every­day" life we all ex­pe­ri­ence, but most­ly take for grant­ed or dis­miss in a dig­i­tal land­scape clogged with in­fo over­load.

If we can't keep up with Face­book, Twit­ter and the rest of the so­cial me­dia, is there any time left for the past? The past of old fam­i­ly snap­shots, doc­u­ments and all the de­tri­tus, we're tempt­ed to sim­ply delete?

Browne ap­pro­pri­ates the same dig­i­tal me­dia, which is an in­escapable facet of our glob­alised post­mod­ern world, to al­low an egal­i­tar­i­an ac­cess to a fram­ing of what we take as mun­dane prod­ucts and ex­pres­sions of the past, in or­der to re­con­sid­er our present and fu­ture.

CMP is dri­ven by a sense of ur­gency, as Browne ex­plains: "How to of­fer a work­ing de­f­i­n­i­tion of Caribbean iden­ti­ty" at a time of era­sure when "the young are dy­ing with­out knowl­edge of the el­ders."

The wish to be re­mem­bered is as much a part of hu­man sen­si­bil­i­ty as a sense of mor­tal­i­ty; that de­sire be­comes more acute in such post­colo­nial so­ci­eties as ours and the wider Caribbean, still painful­ly strug­gling out of the strait­jack­et of our his­to­ry of si­lenc­ing and re­pres­sion.

But as the Do­mini­can schol­ar Tor­res-Sail­lant notes: "Once one has learned to see An­til­leans as speak­ing sub­jects, the next chal­lenge...is to grasp that An­til­leans them­selves de­serve cred­it as re­li­able in­ter­preters of their own re­al­i­ty", or as Browne puts it: "The fun­da­men­tal mo­tive of the Caribbean prac­ti­tion­ers is to be recog­nised, seen and heard."

CMP by­pass­es much of the emp­ty "her­itage" hype with on the ground, roots projects like its in­ter­views in T&T of those over 70; gath­er­ing old doc­u­ments and pho­tos for scan­ning; col­lect­ing ob­jects and be­long­ings for doc­u­men­ta­tion be­cause "no sto­ry is too small.'

The CMP Web site is in­ter­ac­tive, so any­one can up­load a mem­oir via the Pass it On por­tal, up­load a short sto­ry via the Tell Me Nah por­tal or share im­ages and videos via the up­load por­tal.

Al­though so far CMP has been self-fund­ed, it's high­ly am­bi­tious with a pan-Caribbean scope.

The Ba­hami­an project has re­sult­ed in archive ma­te­r­i­al pro­vid­ed by the daugh­ters of the first Ba­hami­an prin­ci­pal of the Col­lege of the Ba­hamas, along with more ma­te­r­i­al pro­vid­ed by the daugh­ters' un­cle–the first Ba­hami­an born arch­bish­op.

An­oth­er project, The Dis­card­ed Archive, rep­re­sents col­lec­tive am­ne­sia, or wil­ful in­dif­fer­ence from T&T–a car-full of books res­cued from the dump af­ter be­ing thrown out from the Na­tion­al Archives Li­brary.

Al­though not all the texts have Caribbean con­tent, as Browne re­marks, this Dis­card­ed Archive pro­vides in­sights in­to at­ti­tudes in the Civ­il Ser­vice and why cer­tain texts were dis­card­ed.

The The­atre Work­shop Sym­po­sium func­tioned as more than a sim­ple in­tro­duc­tion to CMP, as the au­di­ence were in­vit­ed to an­swer three ques­tions: "Who do you re­mem­ber?"; "How do you re­mem­ber?" and "How do you wish to be re­mem­bered?"

The re­spons­es, some tear­ful­ly emo­tion­al, demon­strat­ed how time­ly and rel­e­vant CMP is, in cre­at­ing an eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble, user-friend­ly re­source, all Caribbeans can be part of in the on­go­ing en­quiry as to who we re­al­ly are.