Here’s a story from my PhD.
A while ago I was writing about the plantation system and the proto-peasantry in the Caribbean. In part of my essay I quoted a passage about cultivating coffee estates in Dominica. It was written in the passive voice (so it was like, “Terraces were built on steep slopes, and the trees were planted in neat rows. The fields were weeded often.” etc.) and I suggested, as an exercise, that re-wording the passage in the active voice and in the first person would take away the distance that the passive voice imparts and help to show that this is a story of actual people in an engagement with the land (so to think of it as “We had to build terraces on steep slopes, and to plant trees in neat rows. We had to weed the fields often.” etc.) I pointed out that, because this cultivation was done by slaves on the estates, it was a forced engagement, and that the historical account, even re-phrased as I proposed, didn’t adequately convey this element of brutal coercion.
So I gave the essay to my supervisor to read and a few days later we met to discuss it. And she said that she thought that what I had done was a really good device, and she had a suggestion for getting the element of coercion across more clearly. “You could write it,” she said helpfully, “like this: ‘We made the slaves build terraces, and we made them plant trees…’ I think that might be better, what do you think?”
And I just looked at her flabbergasted and speechless. Because I just could not believe that this apparently enlightened (white, North American) woman was looking at (black, Caribbean) me and saying that to me, without even an inkling of realisation that her (white, slave-master) “we” was not at all the same as my (black, enslaved) “we”. I mean, she just didn’t get it. She was so mired in her own assumptions and her Eurocentric way of knowing and understanding the world that she really didn’t have a clue.
A friend of mine asked me if I don’t find this upsetting. I told her that I didn’t, but I guess I do, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the time, a fortnight later, to write about it here. On the other hand, I found it useful and enlightening, because it has made me very aware that I will always have to explain my point of view (my positionality, to use to academic jargon) in ways that other people (who are less ‘other’ than I) will not have to. But on the third hand (or maybe I’m back to the first hand again) it revives my irritation with all the writers I’ve been reading who write about “we” and “us” and “our understandings” and have the privilege of not having to clarify what exactly they mean by “we” and specify who “we” refers to, as if their we is universal and generally understood, whereas my “we” is peculiar and requires explanation.
At home we use the expression “we is we”. But this is a case where we is not we, at all, at all, at all.