Harry Goulbourne has written many books on race relations and ethnicity and identity. Harry talks us through his fragmented school days in South London, how his engagement in student politics drove his interest in American History, and how the work of Frantz Fanon had a big impact on how he thought about himself

Goulbourne, Harry

English

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blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/04/22/academic-inspiration-harry-goulbourne/The books that inspired Harry Goulbourne: “Fanon’sBlack Skin, White Masks suggested that I attended tothe question of who I was”.Apr 22 2012Harry Goulbourne has written many books on race relations and ethnicity andidentity. Harry talks us through his fragmented school days in South London, how hisengagement in student politics drove his interest in American History, and how thework of Frantz Fanon had a big impact on how he thought about himself.Sometimes I think it was fear of working in a factory (following members of my family,who’d moved from being Jamaican small landowners to industrial workers in England)that threw me into a life that I’d hoped would be governed by reason. At other times I’minclined to think it was a combination of the love of myths, story-telling, and fears of the after-life and thehope of salvation offered by the ‘fire and brimstone’ kind of Christianity into which I was born thatstoked a hunger for an explanation of what Sartre called ‘being and nothingness’.I was born and had my early years in the beautiful mountains ofClarendon, Jamaica, and enjoyed the freedom of roaming, butwithout prospects of realizing the dreams we children shared.Like my brothers and cousins, I suffered from the loss of kindlyparents who went-off to a heavenly England, from where theysent warm clothes, money, pictures and letters. We joined themin the late 1950s and attended primary and secondary schoolsin south London. In Jamaica I was regarded as a brilliant pupilin English and arithmetic, but at Crawford Primary inCamberwell and Peckham Manor Comprehensive I spentmany years physically defending myself in playgrounds. I’msurprised that I was not classified as ESN, as so many children of Caribbean backgrounds were.Perhaps this was because the system of education in London in those years was based on unseenexaminations, and in these I often puzzled my teachers by performing well.In the fourth year at secondary school I was introduced to Marx & Engels’ TheCommunist Manifesto and Orwell’s Animal Farm - one, historical overview;the other, story-telling. Both remarkably close to what I’d garnered fromlistening to my parents and others about vague ‘memories’ of Africa, slavery,and the struggle out of poverty by people all over the world.But, perhaps, the long and short of how I came to be demonically possessedby a hunger to understand the human social condition arose from an earlyexposure to the King James’ Version of the Bible, Fox’s Book of Martyrs,John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the Sankey and other hymnals, and therange of African American spirituals. The hypocrisy of church leaders and thecontradictions in their doctrines drove me from the age of 16 onwards to PaulTillich’s The Foundations of our Being, Bishop Robinson of Woolwich’sHonest to God, and theological discussions with Robinson, Margareta Laski,and the then Bishop of Southwark that our head and deputy masters arrangedfor me. Fred Murphy (history) and Mary Hayward (Religious Studies) respectively introduced me toTolstoy’s novels and essays, Hegel’s Philosophy of History, Thucydides’ History of thePeloponnesian Wars (in preparation for my ‘S’ Level examination) and critical analysis of biblical texts.These were to have a lasting effect on my intellectual development about theory, method, and rigorousanalysis, irrespective of how they might hurt.I went to Lancaster to read comparative religion and philosophy under the late Ninian Smart who’d alsobeen Mary Hayward’s tutor. My intellectual evolution from a concern with matters religious to matterssocial was the major factor of my teen and undergraduate years, and I now know that others around meunderstood and helped without my direct knowledge. In these years, my reading of Ernst Trolsch’s TheTeachings of Jesus, Marx and Engels’ The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, andparticularly Feuerbach’s Christianity, pulled me towards a humanistic understanding of social being.I am the product of a fragmented school education (strict colonial; over-liberal, borderless, post-imperial) because none of my interests (agricultural and horticultural; theological and ancient worlds)could properly be developed without a knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and although thesewere offered at Lancaster, I lacked the patience by my late teens to make the necessary investment.More importantly, an unexpected interest in politics drove me back to history,particularly American, because of the Civil Rights Movement to which one ofmy French teachers at school had introduced me via her Masters dissertationon Langston Hughes. Under the guidance of Michael Heale I came to absorbthe work of Alexi de Tocqueville, who, in the 1830s sought to understand thesocial and political experiments taking place in the USA. More importantly,reading Charles Hamilton and Stokeley Carmichael’s (later Kwame Toure)Black Power, as well as Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth andhis Black Skin, White Masks - none of which were on my reading lists –suggested that I attended to the questions of who and where – as distinctfrom the Cartesian problematic of why/whether – I was.In my confusion, I was very fortunate to have understanding and sympathetictutors such as Heale and John Mackenzie, Geoffrey Holmes (history) andHarry Hopfl (sociological thought), who knowingly or not provided me with thewherewithal to reconcile intellectual (and emotional/spiritual?) interests with my academicundertakings. I passed on to the dedicated guidance of Bob Benewick and Donald Wood at Sussex,who introduced me to bodies of social science and Caribbean history and literature of which I’d beenentirely ignorant, and what I felt at the time I would not have had at Cambridge, where I was to go.I’m not now allowed to chronicle why I’ve come to retreat early from academia, and at a point when Iwas poised to write what I hoped would be my most important work.  However, I have an abidinginterest in the historical novel, a genre to which I hope to contribute. In the meanwhile, two academicworks that I’ve been impressed with in the last five years – and which relate to on-going academic andcreative writings about transnational families, post-imperial Britain, and empire – are BarbaraArniel’s Diverse Communities and Anne Spry Rush’s Bonds of Empire. For the first time I’m late insubmitting a work – The Making of Post-Imperial British Society and State (Cambridge UniversityPress), but I would appreciate conversations around this subject.——————————————————————————————-Harry Goulbourne took early retirement as Professor of Sociology, at London South Bank Universitywhere he is now honorary professor as well as visiting professor of sociology, University of Leeds. AtLancaster he read modern history and political theory (1971) and after a year teaching at his secondaryschool in Peckham, South London, went to Sussex for his DPhil in comparative politics (1972-75) onan ssrc major award. He taught politics at the university of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (1975-80) and atthe University of the West Indies, Jamaica, (1980-84), before becoming principal researcher at theUniversity of Warwick. He joined LSBU in 1998. He has written extensively on political development,ideology, ethnicity and nationalism, families and social capital, focusing on Britain, East Africa, and theCaribbean. Of his several books, many in Britain regard his Ethnicity and Nationalism in Post-imperial Britain as his most influential.No related posts.This entry was posted in Academic Inspiration and tagged inequality, Jamaica, London, Marx, race,Sartre. Bookmark the permalink. EditBad Behavior has blocked 1354 access attempts in the last 7 days.

Book review: the books that inspired Harry Goulbourne: “Fanon’s black skin, white masks suggested that I attended to the question of who I was”

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