It is at times perplexing how in modernity's largely open societies, strengthened as they are by social media, it frequently remains difficult to participate in a vigorous debate on topics such as the past and identity of a community like that of post-colonial Malta.

The set of articles penned by TMIS columnist Mark A. Sammut (Shipwrecked on our own Islands - three Sundays from 7 April) therefore do represent a breadth of fresh air, ventilating analysis and ideas not necessarily supportive of mine on the subject under review. Sammut's intelligent opinions and explorations are evidence of pertinent internalisation backed by research. Unlike several unfortunate retorts I get, worse still through the social media, they are certainly not invalid ad hominem arguments, reflecting lack of better points of view. As an avid partaker of deliberations, I know that while responding to an opposing judgement I must never stop talking to the audience if I believe that such discussions serve best to change the minds of the undecided who ever so often need to unlearn an amount of distorted historical facts. So allow me to dwell further on a few of the points raised by Sammut.

British hegemony

Agreeing with your learned contributor, Francophilia does not come into the current debate of identity especially since a high dose of campaigning for British hegemony in Malta occurred mostly during the last century, when Bonaparte's men had been gone for more than one hundred years. In effect, at the time of the Language Question British omnipotence on the Island was really and truly hostile to local Italianate culture rather than anyone else's. However, due to lack of a scientific approach by most disputants, I have first-hand experience as to how difficult it often is to investigate and consequently appreciate the Island's shared past with any other neighbouring power without obtaining an antagonist timbre against Englishness. In the current George Cross on the flag saga not only the French have inopportunely come under disapproving comments by the majority of opinionists but also the Normans (because of their association with the red and white colours) and the Order of Malta (because of the Maltese Cross) when the Normans and the Knights had no hand in the community's liberal adoption of both as identifying symbols of the Maltese nation. Nonsensical tirades such as the removal of the George Cross from the flag matches the obliteration of the Order's Valletta palaces or that my arguments represent some trivial colonial anguish do not seem to abate.

Since the period between two world wars of the 20th century British imperial tactics to further inculcate their dominion on their Maltese subjects appear to have tried a different tack. After 19th century bounteous British monumental displays - many sepulchral memorials and plaques in Valletta bastion gardens, giant-size monarchical insignia around the Palace and Queen Victoria are unmistakable examples - it was now the turn of social mediums - language, newspapers and broadcasting, history, text-books, the flag - that paved the way for post-WWII total immersion into a British colonial mind-set.

This operation was so successful that the very debate about Maltese identity has to be managed, as we are doing here, in English, courtesy of the Maltese papers in this language. No other serious but popular media vehicle exists in Maltese and those in English are either academic (thank God for these but they do not reach most citizens) or a glossy treasure trove where one could dig up morsels of particularities about persons and events inviting readers to whet their curious appetite, shorn of any debate.

Other foreign languages

Another valid point highlighted by Sammut concerns the study of approaches to knowledge in other languages than English. Most Maltese professionals, historians, lecturers and students of various university disciplines, at some time or other, have been qualified in English academic institutions. They read English literature and practically live in an Anglo-Saxon world of communication, aided by the omnipresence of English. This is all so beneficial; it is one profitable product of the British Empire. But there are other languages too. Unfortunately in Malta the study of other foreign languages remains mostly motivated by economic objectives. We encourage young people to study French, Italian, German and Spanish in order to acquire a job: teaching language and literature, finding employment in the hospitality industry or refining skills of translation and interpretation mostly connected with the EU.

Very few people exploit the acquired continental language to further their studies in other subjects not connected with the language itself. Alas fewer pursue their research in European archives, follow foreign academicians if not in English. They are denying themselves precious perceptions and perspectives of other cultures as seen through native standpoints. Maltese historians are in fact concerned about the fact that fresh students do not read and speak Italian when most of our historic and legal archives, certainly up to WWII, are mostly recorded in Italian, French or occasionally in Latin, depending on the genre and period of the document. Statistics seem to confirm this: Malta Libraries just informed the public that the Bibliotheca, which in 2018 received 4,224 researchers, registered a 10 per cent drop over the previous year.  

Colonial fabricated supremacy

When debating the image the Maltese State selects to portray its identity, through the flag and Valletta monuments, most of these topics come into play. Fifty-five years after Independence and one hundred years since Sette Giugno (I do not recall any colonial apology for the killing of six unarmed protesting Maltese civilians in Valletta) the country should discuss and perhaps review its virtuous public space. Better informed citizens should then exercise their right to decide which expression to adopt for their highest form of identity.

Those, like me, who provoke such discussions are not doing the job of iconoclasts, "who criticise or attack cherished beliefs or institutions". On the contrary my objective is to criticise those colonial manipulations and misrepresentations that blocked our very own identity, rendering it irrelevant for so many years that unfortunately many citizens, including some highly educated ones, are ready to concede their own national pride and identity for a fabricated belief in some kind of supremacy inherited from a historical but humbling colonial past.

Dr Charles Xuereb lectures on critical thinking, collective memory and identity