Repairs are pending

REPAIRS ARE PENDING 

When the book A Small Place came out, it got the reputation of being an anti-travel narrative (Musiol) probably because of the direct negative descriptions of tourists coming to Antigua, and the reader being spoken to as one of these tourists.  What this direct negativity covers up or overshadows is the less direct, but still explicit criticism towards the Antiguan government and even more so the imperialist Britain. It may function as an anti tourist guide, to some people, but once you put the first impression aside, you will see that it is not you or me, she is angry at, even if it feels like she is aiming her anger at us.

Writing is one way of working through anger and disappointment, but more important, it gives the ordinary people a voice, if we let it. Jacues Rancière claims that literature is politically independent of its author, and that democracy of literature "is not a social condition, but a symbolic break: a break with a determined order of relationships between bodies and words, between ways of speaking, ways of doing and ways of being"(2011, p 11.). Looking through the critical lens of Jacues Rancière, seeing literature as political, and as an 'expression of society', one has to champion the right to other voices that do not praise the way their country is run, and voices that are not one of those voices that are considered the voice of the victor in history.

I have chosen to close read a couple of quotes/parts of a paragraph from A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (2000) pages 8-9. The paragraph shows how most of the book is structured. The book seems to be divided into three parts divided by black and white illustrations. The paragraph functions more as a chapter, than a paragraph, because there is no distinct line between all the information you get within one paragraph. I have chosen to look particularly close at the quote 'Repairs are pending'.

In this assignment I will work with the quote, and the themes of identity, time, imperialism, ethnicity and power, or rather the notion of being powerless. It is important to note that the themes of emotions, ethnicity, imperialism, time and power are dealt with through the entire book, but I will use the quote "Repairs are pending" as a link, because it works as an emotional link- and as a microcosm of the entire book.

The structure of the paragraph resembles a stream of consciousness, jumping from one thing to the next, and then back again. This stream of thoughts runs with the long sentences, forming long paragraphs. Starting with the books you as a tourist brought with you, you follow her thoughts. At first it seems she is judging you, but then this leads to the thought that you could not have borrowed books in Antigua, even if you wanted to, because there is no library to borrow books from.

"Antigua used to have a splendid library, but in The Earthquake (Everyone talks about it that way­­­­­—The Earthquake; we Antiguans, for I am one, have a great sense of things, and the more meaningful the thing, the more meaningless we make it) the library building was damaged"(p 8)

The library becomes a metaphor of a broken nation, and the way she narrates shows how complex the topic of identity is. A nation built on several identities, might create a state of confusion. They are sad about the library; about how they feel "[b]ut [...] you must not think of the damaged library"(p 9), because you must not utter your disbelief, which is essentially considered to be a British stereotype. This might be directed at Antiguans themselves as much as the British. The word splendid is used several times to describe the library, and other things connected to colonial times. You get a sense of irony, when the word is used to describe damaged things, and things that the narrator does not really feel belong to- or in Antigua. There is nothing splendid about a damaged library, and it shows that there are a lot of ambiguities and contradictions in Antigua.

The library soon after the earthquake got sign that says; REPAIRS ARE PENDING:

"The sign hangs there, and hangs there more than a decade later, with an unfulfilled promise of repair, and you might see it as a sort of quaintness on the part of these islanders, these people descended from slaves—what a strange, unusual perception of time they have "(p 9).

The sign Repairs are pending, is here a symbol of a people struggling to find their identity as one people, a free people, not one people controlled by another.

What is strange about this passage is that she shifts from "we Antiguans" to "they", as if she identify as an Antiguan when she feels like it, and when she does not, she look at them from the outside. This links back to the theme of identity, and how our identity consists of more than just one constant self.

The way Kincaid portray time alludes to time as being different in a small place like Antigua, to that of a bigger country, or more precisely a Western country, where time is rushed, and is seen as something that you never have. Here (in Antigua) it is slow, almost standing still, even if you do know that time never stops.  The portrayal of time, and the use of the word 'quaintness' to describe Antiguans in this context makes it seem like, because they are descended from slaves, they are used to being told what to do and when no one is there to tell them to fix things, it will not be fixed, but then again the British has showed them how things are ruled, and with the corrupt government coming after the independence that are not really ruled by Antiguans either, things do not seem to change:

"REPAIRS ARE PENDING, and here it is many years later, but perhaps in a world that is twelve miles long and nine miles wide (the size of Antigua) twelve years and twelve minutes and twelve days are all the same" (p 9).

It is when you pluck the book apart that you discover how connected every sentence is, and how every sentence talks back to the one before, and the one coming after. After talking about how the Antiguans might see time, she, the narrator picks up the use of splendid. In that way she connects the notion of time standing still, to the notion that this feeling of unease is lagging behind from colonial times:

"The library is one of those splendid old buildings from colonial times, and the sign telling about repairs is a splendid old sign from colonial times" (p 9).

In this context both the time standing still since colonial times, and the way the Antiguans blame the British for colonising them are connected. This shows when she explicitly states that Antigua, not very long after The Earthquake, which you might think, rendered Antigua less valuable to the British, got their independence:

"Not very long after The Earthquake Antigua got its independence from Britain, making Antigua a state in its own right, and Antiguans are so proud of this each year, to mark the day, they go to church and thank God, a British God, for this. But you must not think of the confusion that lie in all that and you must not think of the damaged library" (p 9).

When your identity is built in the image of an intruder, it is hard to disentangle your self-image and see a clear distinction between yourself and that of the perpetrator. Kincaid tries to express this state of confusion and frustration, by showing the reader through words, the spectrum of emotions of a human being, of several human beings. 

The temperature and anger most critics are describing derives from this notion of not being whole, that there is something missing. The people of Antigua are still in this narrative pending to be repaired, because of their history of being slaves, the British imperialists leaving them to a new corrupt government, and not fixing things that got ruined in The Earthquake before leaving. Kincaid is also aiming at the government of Antigua. If the rulers of a country cannot fix a broken library, they cannot fix the notion of that unfulfilled promise of repair. This book is political, no matter if one looks at it from the author's point of view or the book as an object in it self. The narrator descends from a colony of slaves, and if the times were not changing, this narrative would still be perceived as mere growl (Rancière).

Bibliography

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Print.

Lepore, Jill. "Just the Facts, Ma'Am " The New Yorker 2008. Web. 30.10 2014.

Musiol, Hanna. "Migrant Fictions 5 Kincaid." 2015 (2015). Web. 01.03.15.

Rancière, Jacques. "The Politics of Literature." (2011). Web. 15.02.2015.