Competing victimhoods: a framework for the analysis of post-colonial multi-ethnic societies

Abstract

This essay seeks to interrupt the dominant discourse on race, ethnicity, gender and class (intersectionality) globally, which has focussed on the experiences of ‘whites’ with their others, primarily in North America and Europe and shift it to the post-colonial multi-ethnic societies of the Global South. It draws on the historical experience of Trinidad and Tobago, the multi-ethnic nation-state comprising the two most southerly islands of the Caribbean archipelago to present the analytic of competing victimhoods as a mechanism for understanding inter-ethnic tensions and conflict in multi-ethnic post-colonial societies. This has the ability to make visible different groups’ interpretations of their histories of hardships and distinct colonial experiences by going beneath the surface of simple hegemony and subordination relations and to examine legitimate and/or illegitimate feelings of fear and insecurity. Such an approach moves our analysis from a focus on individual group identities to the interactions between, among and within groups and the ways in which these various levels of feeling intersect and shape behaviours, attitudes and ideologies.

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