Goan-ness is decolonial. But as decolonial, it did not so much developed from a need of self-preservation. It did not have a drive to return to some pure idealised precolonial state of existence. It was not and is also not a form of cannibalism that wants to devour the accidental Portuguese influence it had come under.
There does seem to be a pre-Portuguese Goan-ness. Goa itself was simply an island of Tiswadi and did not developed one deep common sense of belonging with other areas that we today recognize and feel as Goa.
Goan-ness that emerges out of Portuguese colonization is resistance as well as transgression. It’s transgression is deconstructive and erases the sting of the luzitanian imperialism by mimicking and hybridizing the Portuguese culture in several ways.
In the Marxist sense, we may say that the Goans then inadvertently saw that the seeds of destruction of the imperial culture are not outside somewhere in precolonial state or post-colonial locus but saw that they are embedded within the reigning culture. Hence, through mimicry and hybridization Goan-ness emerged not in a dialectical opposition but through what we may today call in hindsight negative dialecticism championed by Theodore W Adorno.
Goans expressed resistance through mimesis with a difference. It was not blind mimesis. It did had a mind of its own. It was a kind of rootedness and openness. Goans were not simply blown away by the storm of colonization. The pre-Goa if we can talk about it, still exist in Goan-ness alongside the newness it acquired and hybridized under colonization.
Goans do not stand apart and above Goan-ness. Goans and Goan-ness belong together. It is by Goanizing that a Goan emerges and same dynamics leads to the flourishing of Goan-ness. Goan-ness, therefore, remains unclosed and is irreducible. Therefore, hospitality comes natural to Goan culture. It does not impose a fixed identity on things. Things and people remain unclosed and stay within what Adorno calls non-identity.
Dialectics of identity places things within fixed conceptual boundaries and then think them in oppositional relations. This dialectical thinking thus is cannibalism as it eats and devour one pole of dialecticism. Goan-ness to me appears to be in line with negative dialectics that does not oppose dialectically to arrive at some Hegelian higher synthesis.
Such dialecticism seems to growing around us attacking the tolerance of diversity and otherness in our society. Even our history is reduced be a simple drama some heroes and villains and people’s history is unfortunately set aside and forgotten. But goan-ness is not weaken. It is resilient and rises beyond this unGoan dialectics and divisive traps.
Here we have to understand that Goan-ness is not a leap into Immanuel Kant’s thing in itself neither it is a fall into a no man’s land where there is negation of all identity . In this sense, Goan-ness is not nihilistic. It is no thing and, thus, cannot be thingified. Goan-ness is dynamic and is living and breathing in every Goan in Goa and where Goans live.
What we, therefore, call non-identity is actually difference that refuses to close into identity of sameness. Thus, negative dialectics does not resolve by opposition demanding the otherness to melt into sameness of the higher order where both the opposing poles find a common synthesis. It just embraces all otherness. What really exists is difference or otherness and every trace of otherness has a place in negative dialectics.
Goan-ness comes close to this form of negative dialectics and hence its embrace is cosmopolitan. Every other can feel at home in Goa. There are identities and counter identities in Goa that cross caste, creed and even regions yet Goan-ness has proved to be a glue that keeps all Goans together even when several attempts are made by the ruling dispensation and other forces to divide and rule ( by the imposition of the force of Hegelian dialectics that makes us think that by fighting and doing away with the opposition set up by the powers that be, we shall reach a higher and progressive shore) .
This Hegelian dialectics seemed to be employed by powers that be in Goa today. Thanks to Goans of all walks of life, the divisive agenda seems to be not succeeding. Thus, the difference or non-identity is not about non-distinction. It is actually about no counter-distinction. Goan-ness is different and as a non-identity, it cannot be identified or opposed to other identities. It is irreducible and hence its difference stands out and cannot be fully totalized as it is always in the making or becoming.
This is why those who think that Goan-ness is not Indian enough have not fully understood Goan-ness. There is no one single Indian identity. There are several of them. We have to understand Indianess in non-substantive terms inspired by Buddhism. Thinking in a non-substantive mode takes us close to non-identity thinking whose embrace is wider and non-restrictive.
We do have the challenge to abandon the linear tapestry of the West and come to the circularity of Indian mode of seeing time in our thought. Negative dialectics and Goan-ness thus seem to come closer to the heart beat of India.
The beauty of Goan-ness is that the self and the other relation does not have to close into a higher space of Hegelian synthesis. It does not need this no man’s space of promise where we will have the benefit of higher consensus. Goan-ness has what it takes to embrace the present with all its shades of past and the future. Both dark and bright sides of life can comingle together. Goan-ness is Goan dissensus. Goans can agree to disagree and not wait for some future consensus in the coming
The susegado culture of Goa is ,thus, decolonial and non-dialectical. It appears that we can at best think of it as negative dialectics of Adorno. Negative dialectics is not irrational or non-reason. It is a different mode of reasoning. It moves away from hermeneutics of diatopical mediality. It may be viewed as pluritopical hermeneutics with several medialities.
Goan-ness remains unclosed and does have a single telos or point of closure. Each Goan and several Goan communities have many points of closures. Hence, Goan-ness remains plural in its embrace as well as in its destinies. This is why we can say that Goan-ness is unclosed.
Pluri-mediality of Goan-ness is indeed a remedy for a polarised politics and social organisation that had laid its siege around us. Maybe the decolonial option that (does not need a imagined or real precolonial period to come to a flourishing future nor have the compulsion to match some fixed identity that is deemed as essence of a nation) flowered is growing in Goa has to studied with keen attention and thus, emancipative modes of decoloniality be developed so that the politics of today does not become a mimicry of colonial dialectical politics played by our very own.
