The Voice of the Subalterns and AI

In our plantation past, the overseers were always tall, because we were always on our knees. Our history has been imprisoned for far too long. In the Age of AI, the voice of the subaltern must find its place quickly, or else AI assemblages will be trained on discourses that have so far muted the voices of those who were excluded from positions of power. The new capabilities of algorithms that code our lives are not innocent.

AI can assist in retelling the history of Trinidad by using new tools to transcribe and make archival materials accessible, and by providing generative capabilities for analysis and writing. However, a significant concern is the risk of “hallucinations”.

One thing that must happen straightaway is the retelling of our history, to correct every prejudice and prejudgement of the Enlightenment. Across plantation societies, the imposition of Eurocentric naming practices for theoretical categories has barricaded recognition of the historical specificity of distinct social phenomena and their determinations, allowing the application of categories detached from concrete experience.

We must be willing to live our lives unafraid and open to finding our place in the future. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory. He studied Sanskrit and read the Bhagavad Gita in the original text.

When he witnessed the first successful detonation of the atomic bomb, on July 16, 1945, he recalled the verse of the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” (Chapter 11.32). The original Sanskrit verse translates more literally to: “I am time, the cause of world-destruction, mighty; come here to annihilate the worlds”.

In the Bhagavad Gita, this verse is part of a divine dialogue on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. In that moment, Lord Krishna does not ask Arjuna if he can perceive that the amassed army in front of them is dead. Instead, he announces that the warriors on the battlefield are already slain by Him, in His form as Time.

And so Lord Krishna calls out, “Therefore, arise, O Arjuna! Conquer your enemies and enjoy a prosperous kingdom. These warriors have already been slain by Me; you are merely an instrument in the grand scheme of things” (Bhagavad Gita 11.33).

In the age of AI, the darkness of our history is not set in stone. Like Arjuna, we must live in affirmation of our destiny. There will always be dead ends, abandoned ways, obstacles, slippery slopes, and temptations. In the end, it is the choices that we make that will define what we become as a nation.

The first governor of Trinidad, Don Antonio Sedeño, faced resistance from indigenous peoples to his efforts to settle the island. Convicted of being opposed to conversion to Christianity, the First Nations were condemned to bear the burden of slavery since 1533. Barbarous laws placed these rebel indigenous fighters outside the pale of humanity.

But the vivid development neglect of Trinidad was less due to the difficulty of the task than to the delirium that had spread among the conquistadores about a new garden of Hesperides on the banks of the Rio Meta.  An enchanting place with palaces covered in plates of precious metals and streets powdered in a fine dust of gold.

The leader of this land was himself covered in spangles of gold stuck to his skin, which made him shine like the sun, and for this reason, the Spaniards called him “El Dorado”. But every expedition to find El Dorado was useless, with the only good to humanity being an abundance of new knowledge about the Orinoco and the Amazon. Trinidad, at the mouth of the Orinoco, remains historically connected to the adventures of El Dorado.

On the banks of a tributary of the Orinoco, reinforcements arrived from Trinidad during a fresh attempt to discover and conquer the mirage of El Dorado. Three hundred men were detailed under Captain Alvaro Jorge, a Portuguese experienced in combat against the First Nations.

Soon, the expedition party was afflicted by fever and abscesses. In a lethargic condition caused by poor nutrition and inappropriate attire, they were reduced to a third of their number. Those still alive were feeble and reedy. Those confined to their hammocks by sickness were hungry.

The opportunity the resistance had been waiting for had arrived. The First Nations had curated intricate personal knowledge about the destructive effects of their climate on the new arrivals. So they allowed them to penetrate deep inside their kingdom without offering any resistance.

And only when they knew that their prey was utterly defeated by hunger, feebleness, disease, and fatigue, that they assembled and fell on them unawares and effected a horrible carnage, (Pierre-Gustav-Louis Borde, The History of the Island of Trinidad, (2025), Paria, pp. 129 – 192).