THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF DOMINICANS: A SKEPTICAL OPINION AND A THOUGHT ABOUT A POSSIBLE COLLECTIVE EFFORT (MORE ON A TOPIC ALREADY MENTIONED) Anthony Stevens-Acevedo, July 25, 2015 The current number of people conducting research and writing in a non-fictional manner about the history and culture of Dominicans as a people and society is so small, and so many aspects of these broad and important themes remain unstudied or insufficiently studied, that one wonders whether there will ever be a day when there may be available as much sound scholarly information about Dominicans as there is on some other peoples and societies, so that any Dominican or non-Dominican, young or old, may count on a rigorous body of information to respond to whatever basic questions they may have about how Dominicans came to be the society and culture they are today. On the one hand, still too little research and systematic writing takes place on these matters, and on the other, too few new researchers get formed and trained so as to create new knowledge at a noticeable pace. If we are to look specifically at Dominicans in the United States –the more natural or immediate human base for Dominican Studies—and more specifically at those Dominicans in the U.S. who try to devote themselves to the study of Dominican history and culture (aside from those who concentrate themselves on the study of Dominican fictional literature), their numbers are so tiny when compared to the size of the growing population of Dominican Americans, that there is no option but to be skeptical about whether the Dominican communities are generating a number even nearly sufficient of future scholars or specialists in the study of their history and culture-- considered beyond its literary manifestations. And if we try to focus even more our observation on those Dominican-Americans that are being able to overcome the steep and very tough –financially and psychologically—academic sequence of doctoral studies in universities within the realm of history and culture studies, the pace at which we are graduating people is just extremely slow. At my fifty-seven years of age, these empirical observations are leading me more and more into the question of whether there is anything humanly possible that we Dominicans in the U.S. can do to change this scenario, so that in the future we have at least a good number of Dominicans involved in the sound preservation of our historical collective memory and in the insightful explaining of our culture (in the broad sense of the word, meaning everything we do as a people) and its history. The immediate answer I am coming up, poked by a sense of urgency, is that we are going to have to be very creative in the face of the problem, as creative as I think all “minority” and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in class societies like ours have to be to even begin to overcome the many subtle but very powerful barriers that tend to confine them where they are collectively. And more concretely, since we are talking of our chances to impact on our reality, the idea that more and more comes to my mind, as an initial spark o push to mobilize collective energies in this regard, is that of an effort to promote rigorous study of our history and culture among Dominicans that are not registered in the university doctoral programs that provide the highest training in these fields of study and even among Dominicans that have no formal previous college specialized training in these fields. What I am talking about is a new possible strategy or collective, longer term action towards creating a new cadre or group of Dominicans with, say, a high school diploma or more who may be willing to devote part of their free time in life to do study and construct new knowledge about Dominican history and Dominican culture in general. The ideal vanguard of such a group would be Dominicans with some kind of college degree that is supposed to have trained them in some more sophisticated reading and analytical skills, but not necessarily. It would suffice with a population of minimally good readers with a willingness and a passion for learning and making a contribution in this regard. This population could collaborate with the few that do have a training in research and study of Dominican history and culture, and by uniting and combining these two constituencies, I think we could begin to move forward the production of new knowledge in meaningful, though very unorthodox ways. For professionals of the Humanities and Social Sciences satisfied with and used to the normal institutional settings, mostly centered in colleges and universities that to a great deal live rather incommunicated with their surrounding communities or the communities they are expected to serve, and very highly demanding in terms of the details of research and study techniques and methodologies, this proposal may generate a number of doubts and distrust as to what kind of intellectually “valid” new knowledge could be achieved by a collaboration between specialized scholars in historical and cultural studies and non-specialized, “regular” folk. In my opinion this question may be a productive one when we are talking of the most complicated “levels” and aspects of studies. But there is a lot in the learning of history and culture that is not so specialized nor so sophisticated and is still left to the world of academia and universities as its only domain, when this does not necessarily have to be the case. And it is in the studying and researching of these more general themes or contents of the fields of history and culture where I think institutionally disadvantaged communities like Dominican-Americans may create initiatives and “carve a space” for improvement as to the learning and knowledge about their own history and culture. In a way, I am talking about beginning the constructing of, for the time being, a kind of “amateur” collective movement for the promotion of Dominican historical and cultural studies that could begin to generate at least a serious amount of new knowledge in these fields, even if “basic” in the eyes of the Ivory Tower scholars, but which could begin to satiate the thirst and the hunger for more and improved knowledge about Dominican history and culture than what we Dominican-Americans have available to ourselves as a people or ethnic constituency within contemporary U.S. society. (Just think about the incredibly few books we have in English on Dominican history and culture even when it comes to general overviews, not to mention the almost absolute lack of “age-appropriate” books and other materials for young Dominicans about these fundamental issues of their families’ history and culture. Something tells me that there has to be a “middle of the road” or a “mid-level” production of knowledge that we could collectively create that could begin to fill in the huge void that we have even if it has to be gradually. (Better gradual but measurable advancement than unnoticeable or no advancement at all.) In other words, I think that there has to be a way by which we can activate the human capital we have (the vast constituency of Dominican high-school graduates, Dominicans with college-training of any sort, Dominican school teachers/educators and the small population of few Dominican college-based scholars) to mobilize towards the production of much needed informational resources about Dominican history and culture. I am going to assume that there is a number among the close to 1.5 million Dominicans and Dominican-Americans today residing in the U.S. who are not so oppressed by the harsh struggle for employment and survival in U.S. society in these times –still—of crisis, who have time left in their lives to cultivate themselves in the learning and studying about Dominican history and culture. This population is the one I am mainly envisioning as the potential protagonists of the initiative I am proposing for what would be, in fact, a more collectively constructed and democratic production of our own knowledge of our own history and culture. Call it publicly-sourced or popular-workshop-made history, or what have you. The important novelty would be the generation of a whole new set of books, essays, websites, online pieces, documentaries, etc., that, even without the most cutting-edge sophistication of the currently more prestigious, commercially and/ or university-produced sources available, would constitute a minimally-valid collection of cultural tools to consolidate, and expand and deepen our current knowledge of our historical and cultural backgrounds. So far, the social order prevailing in societies like the U.S. and the Dominican Republic (and it is probably similar in many if not most of the countries of the world) tends to generate this scenario of lacking when it comes to the preservation and creation of knowledge about disadvantaged groups. And I do not see in sight any reasons to believe that those in power in our societies are going to promote on their own any improvement or change in this regard. That is why I am saying that those of us concerned about these issues need to think “out of the box” and try to generate “innovative” initiatives that have a chance to promote at least some steps forward within our own lifetimes, so that whatever each one of us has left in living is not just a continued repetition of this current experience of seeing the study and the knowledge about the history and culture of our ethnicities and communities almost absolutely stagnant, or at least tremendously stagnant, with a lack of production of new knowledge to offer to ourselves and our younger generations that we definitely do not deserve as a people. Dominican teachers or educators, for instance, those who work within the pre-college school systems in the U.S., due to their general training associated with learning, and more concretely those Dominicans who are teachers of Social Studies, could play a great role in the kind of collective enterprise I am talking about. For years Dominican educators beginning their careers used to say that they could not devote themselves to anything else besides the “job” because the rest of their energies had to go into taking courses to acquire their licenses and securing their job tenures. Given the years passed, for hundreds, possibly thousands, of Dominicans working in the pre-college educational setting that process is over, and I wish I could hope that some of them, again, would have time in their lives to devote to this enterprise of what would be a collective consolidation and production of a culture from a study angle. (And obviously those I suspect are beginning to enter the status of retirees should also have a contribution to make.) I know the topic is large and complex, that this is too-quick a first writing, and that the discussion will require time and patience. But I am persuaded we need to begin discussing it with concrete results in view, the sooner the better. Otherwise, again, a large generation of several age-cohorts of young Dominican-Americans will come to age deprived of materials about the history and culture of their families and of a people they are part of without decent, sound and abundant sources of historical and cultural information they deserve as human beings of the early 21st century. So, to conclude momentarily this reflection, if you know of a young person that expresses a serious desire, interest and/or curiosity in devoting time to engage in serious, ambitious learning about Dominicans, their society, culture or history, and who is willing to listen to somebody senior that could help them with some advice and orientation in these matters, send them my way and I will explore my most effective possible manner of assisting them. And if you know more senior Dominican-Americans who have a concern for their history and culture and would be willing to at least entertain a conversation on these issues, you can also send them my way in this regard. Constructive comments are also welcomed.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:06:29 +0000
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