Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice

Thirty-two years have passed since the collapse of the Grenada Revolution. As wounds slowly heal, discussions about it have become more reflective, and David Scott’s Omens of Adversity is a timely example. The book could not have been written before this historical moment in which the fervor that has historically characterized debates about the revolution’s unseemly demise in which several leaders of the revolution were executed is beginning to fade. Drawing on the revolution as a significant global event that helped define an entire generation of Caribbean women and men, Omens of Adversity, as the subtitle suggests, tells us something about the nature of tragedy, time, memory, and justice.The first part of the book, “Tragedy, Time,” calls for a shift in our conception of time from the teleological frame that has characterized Marxism and its Hegelian roots to a more cyclical conception. Here the Grenada Revolution becomes one of many revolutionary moments in Grenada’s history, and the tragedy that beset it a series of events that, once sparked, resulted in a crisis that spiraled beyond the control of its political actors. (One such event was the People’s Revolutionary Government’s decision to put Prime Minister Maurice Bishop under house arrest and, more incredibly, the decision to execute prominent leaders of the revolution at Fort Rupert, including Bishop.) As Scott argues, when we understand this tragedy as a moment within a cycle of events in Grenadian history and politics in general, we can recognize tragic events as part of a cycle of tragedies (87).Part 2 of Omens of Adversity, “Memory, Justice,” questions the premises of transitional justice. While taking for granted the primacy of liberal democracy, transitional justice holds countries that once deviated from this model to a standard that liberal democracies themselves rarely, if ever, reach. As Scott suggests, transitional justice rationalizes liberal democratic power while falling short, even as an objective, of bringing about reconciliation or closure following traumatic social and political events.Transitional justice is about widening the gap between the “illiberal regime” and its liberal replacement as a way of legitimizing the idea that, in the aftermath of the Cold War, liberalism and neoliberalism are the only valid systems of governmental practices (163). According to Scott, it leaves little space to question the role that liberal democracies have played in undermining and subverting the freedoms of legitimate “illiberal” governments while contributing to practices that are antidemocratic (in the broadest sense) and that undermine popular support for these governments.One strength of Omens of Adversity is also a weakness. Historically, the Caribbean has made significant contributions to the global economy (the system of slavery and colonialism), culture, and aesthetics (in literature, dance, popular music such as reggae and salsa, and even religion, if we consider the spread of Rastafari alongside reggae). In examining tragedy, memory, time, and justice through the prism of the Grenada Revolution, Scott achieves what many theorists fail to do, namely, to draw universal lessons out of the particular experiences of the Caribbean, in this case Grenada’s political history. Implicit in his analysis is the idea that this tiny island has a great deal to contribute to the world and our collective humanity. We cannot escape, however, the sense that, in its particular and painful and local specificity, the genuinely human tragedy that beset the people of Grenada and the wider Caribbean is almost lost in theory.Thus more description of the historical actions and context that contributed to the revolution’s tragic outcome would have been welcome, providing the reader with a greater sense of the urgency that Scott’s analysis implies. In the absence of such detail we perhaps lose sight of the depth of Grenada’s trauma and tragedy on their own terms, and how they might inform and transform our understanding of tragedy in general.While so much discussion of the Grenada Revolution has been overdetermined by the role that particular personalities played in the internal conflict, personality is perhaps understated in Omens of Adversity. When it most mattered, the revolution’s leadership, individually and collectively, failed to demonstrate the flexibility or political maturity that could have averted disaster. More discussion about the specific characters involved (both their strengths and their weaknesses as leaders) and the callous ways in which “comrades” treated—and treat—their fellow human beings would have added another dimension to Omens of Adversity, bringing us closer to understanding the human constraints and agency that propel and limit transformative processes, and how we can not only recognize past tragedies but potentially avert them in the future by consciously learning from the past.

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