Elsa Goveia

In a society which has been shot through by diverse inter-racial features and inter-continental thresholds, we need a philosophy of history which is original to us and yet capable of universal applications. Caribbean man is involved in a civilisation-making process (whether he likes it or not) and until this creative authority becomes intimate to his perspectives, he will continue to find himself embalmed in his deprivations – embalmed as a derivative tool-making, fence-making animal. As such his dialectic will remain a frozen round of protest.1 So argued the Guyanese novelist, Wilson Harris, in the third of his Edgar Mittelholzer lectures delivered in Guyana in 1970, adding that, in his view, there were only two Caribbean historians – the Trinidadian C. L. R. James and his fellow Guyanese, Elsa Goveia – who came close to adumbrating such a philosophy. What was it about Goveia that, for Harris’s generation at least, rendered her and James of equal stature? While James’s philosophy of history was derived from his (albeit shifting) position within Marxism, Goveia, a generation later, subscribed to the aims of the New World Group which had been active in the Caribbean throughout the 1960s, and of which Goveia had been an early member. Her philosophy of history fitted with its aims: New World is a movement which aims to transform the mode of living and thinking in the region. The movement rejects uncritical acceptance of dogmas and ideologies imported from outside and bases its ideas for

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• To be Liberated from the Obscurity of Themselves

  David A Scott, Diane L Scott et al.•Small Axe A Caribbean Journal of…•2006

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• Colonial Subjects

  Open Access•Marc Matera•Journal of British Studies•2010

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• Eichmann in Jerusalem

  Hannah Arendt•Eichmann in Jerusalem•1977

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• General History of the Caribbean

  Open Access•B W Higman•General History of the Caribbean•2003

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• Slavery and Emancipation

  Open Access•Rick Halpern, Enrico Dal Lago•Slavery and Emancipation•2002

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• Colonial West Indian Students in Britain

  Lloyd Braithwaite, Lloyd Brathwaite•Colonial West Indian students in…•2001

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• Les esclaves aux Antilles francaises (XVII^e-XVIII^e siecles)

  Elsa V Goveia, Gabriel Debien•The American Historical Review•1976

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• The Moyne Commission and the West Indian intelligentsia, 1938–39

  John La Guerre•Journal of Commonwealth Political…•1971

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• The Social Framework

  John Hicks, J R Hicks•Economica•1952

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• The Caribbean Artists Movement

  Edward Brathwaite•Caribbean Quarterly•1968

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• Education and Social Change in Ghana

  L J Lewis, Philip J Foster et al.•British Journal of Educational…•1966

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• West Indian Intellectuals in Britain

  Bill Schwarz•West Indian intellectuals in…•2003

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• Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century

  Christopher Lasch, Elsa V Goveia•The William and Mary Quarterly•1967

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• Politics, Nation and PostColony

  Anthony Bogues•Small Axe A Caribbean Journal of…•2002

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• The Quest for Independence in the Caribbean

  Open Access•Colin G Clarke, Colin Clarke•Journal of Latin American Studies•1977

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• Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830-1885

  C C Wrigley, K Onwuka Dike•The Economic History Review•1956

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• A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the End of the Nineteenth Century

  J Harry Bennett, Elsa V Goveia•Hispanic American Historical Review•1957

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