Academic Clinton Hutton ventures into popular writing
LAST WEEK, Professor Clinton Hutton told an audience at the University of the West Indies, “I’m trying to find a way to link with younger people ... so I’m writing a novel.” He followed up that announcement by reading a poem he’d written recently.
Dr Hutton’s post in the Department of Government at the Mona campus is professor of Caribbean Political Philosophy, Culture and Aesthetics. His extensive research has made “significant and original contributions to the areas of Afro-Caribbean thought, Africana political philosophy, Caribbean political philosophy, African-Caribbean spirituality, including Rastafari, Revival, Vodou and the role of spirituality in the making of the Haitian Revolution, the Morant Bay Rebellion (now called ‘Uprising’) as well as Caribbean art, creativity, aesthetics, healing, and freedom.”
Additionally, while he was being introduced, it was noted, “he has done extensive research on Jamaican popular music, masculinity and decolonisation”. It was revealed that over the years, he had spoken at “hundreds of special and distinguished lectures, conferences, symposia, religious, cultural and educational meetings,” on a variety of topics. He is also a noted painter and photographer.
His desire expressed above suggests that so far, he has been speaking mainly to adults. I was particularly interested in his poem and novel-in-progress. The poem has a number of themes, including at-risk young people, specifically, “a black yute who won’t reach nuh weh,” and the power of words. “Give me words”, runs the poem’s refrain, to speak to the ancestors, to burn out corruption and white supremacy, to promote the beauty of blackness and selfesteem, and to write our own history.
Dr Hutton said he hoped the novel would be published next year, but cautioned, “I write like I paint,” explaining that he painted in the small spaces of time he has between reading PhD dissertations, teaching, and marking papers.
In his speech last Thursday, he stressed the importance of understanding the culture of our people. “I do more research on culture and philosophy than politics, because to understand politics, we need to understand culture – not just political culture, but culture in its broadest popular and modern sense. Culture represents the creative ethos of our people – the way they think, the way they construct things. It captures their attitude,” he said.
He noted that another segment of society he wanted to reach was communities. “We have to write more, teach more,” he said. “Not just at the formal ways like here (at the university), but in communities. We have to write more about our people – their collective experiences – because the way to freedom and creative possibilities of our people. The thing that distinguishes us from the rest of the world is this creative ethos in the broadest sense – artistically, philosophically.”
BOOK LAUNCH
The audience was gathered in the undercroft of the Assembly Building for the launch of Rupert Lewis – the Black Intellectual Tradition, edited by Hutton and academic colleagues Drs Maziki Thame and Jermaine McCalpin. An introductory essay states that the book’s purpose was “to recognise the contribution of Rupert Lewis in the pursuit of Caribbean and human liberation.”
It adds: “Lewis has been steadfast in working in the spirit of Marcus Garvey’s idea that the emancipation of the body could be externally bestowed, but that mental emancipation depended on black people’s own agency.”
The book – a collection of essays with 16 chapters and 13 contributors – was described as “an outstanding publication ... (with) “truly compelling essays,” by deputy principal of the Mona campus, Professor Ian Boxill. He quoted other scholars as calling Professor Lewis”‘revolutionary”, and “a lion of the Caribbean”.
Professor Lewis, who supervised Hutton’s PhD thesis on the Morant Bay Uprising, has written extensively on Marcus Garvey, Walter Rodney, black power, Caribbean politics, race, identity, Rastafari, political education, the African diaspora and Pan Africanism. In 2014, he was awarded the Order of Jamaica, Commander class, for his outstanding contribution to the study of Caribbean and PanAfrican political thought.