I am a social researcher and author situated in a discursive position that focuses on power, resistance and power relations devoid of the discourse of power of causal science, the Enlightenment and white supremacy. Power is exposed at its discursive expression and the instruments of power that arise from its discursive expression, that polices and constitutes the human bodies upon which power is exercised and spaces constructed to serve power.
Power, resistance and power relations are the inevitable product of human interaction, of the sociology of the human group, of two or more humans forced to interact for various reasons. Even under African enslavement in the Caribbean power relations were endemic as were limits to the power of Massa, thereby enabling the deconstruction of the discourse of power and resistance to discourses of power.
The discourse of causal science, of academia, the discourse of the Enlightenment is tasked with masking the reality of power operationalised, hence they themselves are discourses of power and can never be liberationary.
The core issue for me is liberation through replacing hegemonic power of the North Atlantic, white supremacist hegemony with the power and hegemony of non-white discourse in non-white spaces.
To build a foundation of resistance, discourses relegated to silenced knowledges, buried knowledges that have been unearthed and liberated from silence must form the basis of a new worldview; for we cannot use the instruments of Massa to liberate ourselves from the hegemony of Massa. The books and articles I have published are then instances of the utilization of this liberationary methodology which deconstructs hegemonic discourse to expose its discursive constructs vitally necessary to disrupting this hegemonic discourse’s ability to exercise power, especially at the level of the idea. It also unearths silenced knowledges, towards renovating them to attain the potency of discourse challenging hegemonic discourse for power, especially at the level of the idea.
My production of books has spanned two distinct periods. My first book writing period stretched from 2002 to 2014 where I concentrated on the illicit trades of the Caribbean with three books, 2004, 2006 and 2012; on Islamic extremism with three books, 2002, 2004 and 2011; on the politics of race, black on black racism in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana with three books, 2003, 2009, 2010; on the politics of independence from British colonial domination via the discourse of Tubal Uriah Butler of Trinidad and Tobago and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana with one book, 2007; on the deconstruction of the discourse of signal North Atlantic discursive agents used by academia to explain Caribbean realities and discarded counter discursive agents as Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon, with one book, 2004 and on the geo-politics of LNG in Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago with one book, 2014.
My second book writing period commenced in 2018 with an emphasis on completing strategically necessary works of deconstruction to deepen the project commenced in the first writing period with a gaze fixed on the Caribbean. The dominant emphasis in this second period is deconstructing works driven by the discourse of white supremacy rooted in the Caribbean experience, which is an expansion of the work commenced with my book of 2004. To date six books published in the period 2018-2019 have added to the body of work in this project constituting the ‘Idea Series’.
The second stream is adding to the list of books on the illicit trades of the Caribbean thereby ensuring that my analysis of the developments in the illicit trades in the 21st century is current. One book published in 2018 has added to the body of work in this area. A seventh work will end the series on the discourse of white supremacy in the Caribbean which focuses on a deconstruction of the poetry of Derek Walcott, and a fifth book on the illicit trades of the Caribbean is to follow.