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Theorizing African Identities and Multiple Modernities:1 Questions Revisited
Lindah Mhando
Drawing on analyses of the social, spatial, ethnic and spiritual organization of crisis in Darfur and the Gulf, this paper traces some of the ways in which questions of personhood and the other racial-embodiment categories are reflected in the production of knowledge (epistemology of hermeneutics). In this work, I argue that the question of identity and personhood2 is unthinkable without understanding the situation of “colonial difference.” Making the situation more complex is the interconnection of the configuration of global labor as well as the polarization between racialized labor and other forms of coercion. Furthermore, this recognition of colonial difference should come from “subaltern”/ “post colonial”3 perspectives that demand a different conceptualization of knowledge and knowing. By subaltern here, I also insist on inclusion of women/feminism consciousness.4 I hope to provide a space whereby we can articulate not only the conceptual arguments, but also articulate how different theoretical frameworks may overlap in terms of political pedagogy and a necessary premise of discussion about social justice and policy analysis -- in not only the geopolitical landscapes but also the role of actors and their agency. I will extrapolate from this discussion of the women/feminist category to initiate a conversation on the current accounts of women’s performativity as leaders, educators, organizers, movers and shakers of the whole community.
I draw on Antonio Gramsci, who challenged the early interpretations of subaltern that emphasized economic pressure and kinship/territoriality as forms of mass mobilization, to instead proposed ‘subalternity’ i.e. on one hand, a structure of power established around class relations in the modern (industrial, western, ethno-racial) world which were crucial for the establishment of class relations structured around labor, the increasing slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa and the exploitation of the Americas. On the other hand, hierarchical relations and consequently a subalternization of knowledge occurred at a different level: one religion, (see the discussion by Wilson Jeremiah “The Wings of Ethiopia”; Duvoils 1971; Mac Cormack 1991; Mignolo 2000), and second by the articulation of world history in the past 500 years. The aftermath of world history can only be articulated by insistence on local history; by revealing the hegemonic project (globalization) through global markets, in which its sole purpose is managing the planet. What remained the same is the history, the conventional wisdom warns us, and “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Behind the wall of the market as the ultimate goal of an economic project that has become an end in itself, there is the Christian mission of the early modern renaissance, the civilizing mission of secularized modernity, and the development and modernization project after WWII. The neo- liberalism project with its emphasis on the market and consumption is not just a question of economy, but a new form of racial formation as well (in which we see genocide, disfranchisement, subordination, outright violence, and xenophobia justified by religious groups and the intelligentsias). What becomes apparent is the racial cleavage that continues to invoke different kinds of tunes in different communities, but remains an imagery that is unavoidable.
A case in point is the most humiliating experiences of laboring populations of Sudan, when they are called ‘abid al arab’ (slaves of Arabs). Sudanese themselves use this term to refer to the descendents of slaves in Sudan, a stigmatized group. The term too connotes religious as well as racial inferiority. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in Moving the Center, like Ousmane Sembene, Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo, Mariama Ba and Chinua Achebe, views the reality of Africa from arrogance and abuse of power to failure of leadership to address socio-historical realities within the confines of personhood. Similarly Chicano writer, Gloria Anzaldua articulated a powerful alternative aesthetic and political “hermeneutic” by placing herself at the cross-road of three traditions, creating a locus where different ways of knowing and individual expression and identity mingle and differ (Anzaldua, 1987).
Borrowing these concepts for pedagogical convenience, I would say that the need for looking at modernity and Coloniality together brings to light the fact that the main concern in Europe from the 16th to the end of the 18th centuries was “nation-state” building rather than colonialism.
Units of Analysis
Within the centrality of personhood, let’s briefly summarize the state of the African continent. The question of who is “African” and what it means to be African should, I propose, be theorized in terms of modernity/coloniality. Coloniality of power therefore is the common thread that links modernity/coloniality in the 16th c. with its current version at the start of the 21st c. For Quijano, the idea of “race,” or “purity of blood” as it was expressed in the 16th c., became the basic principle for classifying and ranking people all over the planet, redefining their identities and justifying slavery and free labor (Mignolo 1993). In a nutshell, Quijano constitutes the Coloniality of power as including the production of knowledge and classifying apparatus. Ethnocentrism becomes intelligence, a metaphor to describe the Coloniality of power from the perspective of subalternity. Such analysis embraces the complexities of subaltern experiences from the neo-colonial time. My understanding of this framework suggests that the postcolonial movement occurs on two levels: beyond specific points in history, and at the same time beyond anti-colonial nationalist theory.
For my own intellectual trajectory, I found that colonial differences have been and are an overarching metaphor which has been articulated through different hands in the history of capitalism. The changing forces have been and are largely enhanced by imperial conflict both within and outside the geo-spaces. In the colonial epoch, science was no less a field of controversy than religion in attempts to comprehend the concept of race and its meaning. Spurred on by the classification scheme of living organisms by Linnaeus in Systema Naturae, many scholars in the 18th and 19th c. dedicated themselves to the identification and ranking of humankind.
Race was thought as a biological concept, yet its precise definition was the subject of debate, which, as noted, continues to rage today. Despite efforts ranging from Dr. Samuel Morton’s studies of cranial capacity,5 clearly the attempt to establish a biological basis of race has not bee dropped into the “dustbin” of history, but is being resurrected in various scientific areas. All such attempts seek to restore the concept of race from fundamental social, political, or economic determination; they suggest instead that the vault of race lies within the terrain of innate characteristics, of which color and other physical attributes provide the most obvious and in some respect the most superficial indicators.
Consideration of the term “black” for example illustrates the density of racial meanings which can be found among different societies and historically within a general society. In contemporary British politics, the term “black” is used to refer to all non-whites. In political and cultural movements, Asian and well as Afro-Caribbean youth6 are adopting the term as an expression of self identity.
In the case of the Rwanda genocide, the Litserian crises in Guinea, the Cote d’Ivore and now Darfur, lessons to be learned include careful observation of the colonial racist mentality, which still exists. Questions of identities mirror the very bridges bequeathed by colonial powers during the scramble for Africa. Consequently, people who shared similar cultural and linguistic values were set against each other by the colonial masters, and later by their own local politicians in villages, not only with new material needs and wants, but the question of rule and exploitation, to rule and exploit them.
The situation in Darfur and the Gulf epitomizes the interweaving of two historical conjunctures: one socio-economical trends, and the other racial/ethnic embodiment within relations of power in global hierarchies. The crisis in Sudan confronts us to rethink personhood in a different light. For example, in the long term, what is the role of state and non-state intervention especially if recovering assets and earning potential are considered important in maintaining pre- and post-crisis livelihoods? Khartoum for example experienced state withdrawl and marginalization particularly during the period of rule by the National Islamic Front. The holistic approach of internal civil war and economic dislocation has intensified. Today the current military dictatorship and the blood hate in these geo-spaces form an organized link to validate ethno-racial conceptions, hallmarked by corruption, “tribal” war, social injustices, and xenophobia which have taken a horrible toll on ordinary Sudanese. Frantz Fanon warned us against petty nationalism (Fanon 1963).7 More recent lessons to be learned should include: who determines that genocide has occurred and who will intervene? How do we view the world and its inhabitants, and how do we think about humanity in general? I am insisting that the issue of perspective or worldview should be rethought beyond the “view” or “gaze” to embody a performativity, a system of knowledge predicated on life-affirming belief systems, a way of ordering the world which reflects our relationship to it, and a sense of ‘ubuntu’.8 Interestingly, however, the colonized is subjected to manipulation that his/her subjectivity experiences non-consciously as ideologies of racism, as well as sexism.
Women as colonized subjects are subjugated to the oppression that can be seen as gendered racism. For example, under slavery “black” women were exploited not only for labor but also as sex objects for white men. And after slavery they were excluded in all social and political arenas on the basis of these same identifications.
For the most part, prevailing definitions of gender in African studies have exclusively come from social sciences disciplines, or the art productions of modern European civilization. Let’s revert to Weber in the instance of the civilizing mission:
“Only in the West does science exist at a stage of development which we recognize today as valid… In short, knowledge and observation of great refinement have existed everywhere, above all, in India, China, Babylon, and Egypt, but in Babylon and elsewhere astronomy hence makes its development all the more astounding, the Indian geometry had no rational proof… The Indian natural sciences lacked the method of experiment.” (Weber 1992 [1904])
Obviously, Weber was blind to the colonial difference and the subalternization of knowledge built into it.
My focus here is to insist on other forms of knowledge whereby our understanding of the resurgence of slavery, militarization and institutional resources cannot be articulated without looking into the legacies world histories bleed into, but also into the absorbent and displacing hegemonic forms of knowledge of the subalterns. I am not claiming to invent any new perspective here, but rather to offer an insight and reflection on the knowledge of subalterns which can be drawn from multiple sites such as drawing from local realities, the organized matrix of the social economy (the role of women in sustaining livelihoods), and historical agency.
Of importance here is the articulation of critiques of the erasures of agency and the voices of African women. In particular, an expression of the struggles across historical landscapes to understand gender spaces -- local, natural and global -- and at the same time understanding the multiple medians of class, race, gender, age and sexuality that contextualize and inform individuals. Race is encoded through all the key tropes of enslavement, not only through power, but sexuality as well.
Abena Busia suggests to readers that the limitations of feminism are “based on a divide and rule philosophy!”, and refers to ‘womanhood’ as “a balance of pain and joy, anger and sadness with more wisdom as a result.” Chikwenye Okonjo has championed “African Womanism,” whereas Buchi Emecheta refers to herself as “a feminist with a small ‘f’,” condemning the gender relations western feminists often perpetuate. Many Kolowole’s womanism and African Consciousness, as well as Aminata Sow, Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head, and Mariana Ba, among others, have all “denied being feminists at various times,” calling for the consideration of racial, economic, and cultural divisions among women.
Writer Filomena Chioma Steady advocates a “humanistic feminism that encompasses women and children.” Adamantly debunking western categories, in the same token Oyewumi argues the organizing principle of Yoruba cosmology is not the binaries of female/male like in western societies. Kolowole denounced the one-dimensional portrayals of women, lacking in complexity, of the characters portrayed by Achebe’s world in “Things Fall Apart.” She argues women participated in struggle against European domination.
D’ Almeida, author of “Francophone African women,” argues African women and their experiences are idealized, transforming then into “mythical and symbolic figures.”9 Patriarchy has been understood as one trademark of Western cultures, but we can see the same principles in the human code that proceeded and outlived capitalism -- the last I checked, the conception of women as the most oppressed being on the continent still prevails.10 Attention must be paid to the urgency of women as the primary forces behind agricultural production, and also assuming greater work burdens in households while taking the lead in protests against global change. Even where men remain in the household, many families have come to rely on income provided by women and women are nonetheless the “de facto” heads. In Mexico, 40 percent of wage earnings are now generated by women within the category of household income. Women in Zambia are thought to head between 30 and 60 percent of households. In Sudan, up to 50 percent of migrant and refugee families are headed by women. As the AIDS epidemic gathered force, it orphaned millions of children, 1.7 million in 1997 alone. It has crippled worker households, which try to function with fewer living or working adults, and appreciably slowed economic growth, which was modest or negligible to begin with.11
Let me turn to one of the adages of African traditions, i.e. oral traditions. I am always amused to hear this Swahili adage “tafuta karama yako sasa, uking’oja kesho utakuta mwan si wako, which translates as: “set your honor now, tomorrow might not be yours.” The social cultural meaning of this commonly used adage is again to confirm the lessons that history taught us all along as evidence of the not too distant past, the scars of slavery among our own people. Gender is becoming “racialized” in new ways. Racist models for organizing the majority of the world’s workers are now being redeployed to organize large groups of female workers as subordinate “ethnic workers.” Gender relations are becoming more racist, and racism is broadening to include more working people. The hallmarks of these scars are still staggering among us, tribe against tribe, male against female, young against old, economically deprived against the wealthiest, one religion against the other, one caste against the other. I want to recount what Bob Marley warned us not too long ago:
“…until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior, is finally, and permanently discredited and abandoned, until there are no longer any first class and second class citizens, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes....12
To conclude one might ask, what implications can be drawn for policy? Policy analysis can create a space to theorize a set standard to which we can learn from our shortcomings and paradoxes, and glean positive lessons across the hemisphere. For instance, neo-liberalism monopolizes the imagery of empowerment and creates visions of the future where radical democracy and socialism appear to be unthinkable. However, the resurfacing of anti-systemic movements for deeper transformations in the social contract bring us glimpses of hope. Further, they expose the actual roots of global unrest in the transnational realities of inequality, disfranchisement and lack of sheer freedom. It seems to me that in the current atmosphere it is relevant for youth not to have simple nostalgia for a highly mystified, golden revolutionary past. Instead, we can combine both Du Boisian and Saro Wiwan ideologies of empowerment, and re-center agency in our theories of change. In the final analysis, accounts of racialization processes that avoid the pitfalls of racism, ethno-tribalism, nepotism, corruption and the sheer greed of the African continent remain to be written.
Lindah Mhando is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Minnesota State University, St. Cloud.
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1. “Multiple Modernities” can best be seen as the different expressions of an increasingly emergent global modernity rather than simply as multiple societal forms. As such modernity can rise anywhere in the world; it is not a specific tradition or societal form but a mode of processing, or translating culture; it is not a culture of its own and therefore can take root anywhere at any time. The thrust of modernity is a capacity to transform culture in a continuous process.
2. My use of the term ‘Personhood’ implies a historical product of modernity linking personal and collective liberation of social products of multiple forms and locations of oppression (economic, racial, sexual, and age). Peoplehood, on other hand, can mean a national identity, and as such frequently clashes with the interest of the mass of “underpaid workers” that constitute the larger population.
3. One must note the controversial relationship between the subaltern studies project and the postcolonial interventions. Many in the subaltern camp neither contrast the nationalistic project nor sufficiently problemize gender and ethnicity. Postcolonial theory on the other hand, stresses the social consequences of hybridity and at the same time challenges the very aspects of homogeneity of the nationalistic projects. See: Spivak (1985), Chakrabarty (1992) Sarkar (1997), Sas (1989) and Chatterjee (1993).
4. For the lack of space, the feminist position I have chosen to focus on here, is to debunk the theorization of nationalism, citizenship, and colonial discourse where women are constantly erased in history, their political significance unacknowledged, dismissing the complexities and their political differences, projecting a false homogeneity which is just as oppressive as the structures of imbalance of power that nationalist projects attempt to combat. Collins, (1896), Caraway (1991), Mari (1989), Mohanty (1991), Amadilline (1987), Busia (1996), Dans (1986), Ong (1994).
5. Pro-slavery physician Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) acquired over 800 crania from all parts of the world, which formed the sample for his studies of race. Assuming that the larger the rise of the cranium translated into intelligence, Morton established a relationship between race and skull capacity. Gosset reported that, in 1849, one of his studies included the following results: The English skulls in his collection proved to be the largest, with an average cranial capacity if 96 cubic inches. The Americans and Germans were rather poor seconds both with the cranial capacity of 90 cubic inches. At the bottom of the list were the Negroes with 83 cubic inches, the Chinese with 82, and the Indian with 79. (Ibid, p. 74) On Morton’s method’s, see Stephen J. Gould, “The Finagle Factor,” Human Nature, (July 1978).
6. Sivanandan, “From Resistance to Rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain” Race & Class 23 (2-3) Autumn/ winter 1981.
7. See Fanon, in the Wretched of the Earth (1963). Revolutionary nationalism is distinguished from cultural nationalism, and national liberation from national occupation. Similarly Aime Cesaire, Cabral, Mugabane and Memmi relate the internalized self-degradations of racism to the structural impositions of colonial dominations. (See also Du Bois, Cox, Winant and Gilroy bringing out the complex and exclusionary conditions of social structures marked by race, caste and class.)
8. Ubuntu is a Zulu word which reaffirms the concept of humanity. “Because I am here, you are here,” or “Utu” in Swahili.
9. For D’Almeida, one of the flows of Negritude as movement is the depiction of Mother Africa which idealizes African women without acknowledging positive contributions made by African women. She argues the ‘mother Africa’ image must be examined within the context of female/male power relations to capture the complexity of their relationship.
10. Africa as a diverse continent has variations of kinship, with Queens and Matriarchal powers, as well as Patriarchy. My own mother’s lineage is from Matriarchy, with a strong sense of Women as shakers of the community, in terms of the economic power base. See the eloquent discussion by Amadiume in Male Daughters, Female Husband (1987).
11. Donald G. McNeil, Jr., “AIDS Takes a Toll in Africa, Even after Death” New York Times, November 16, 1998.
12. http://teravista.pt/portosanto/4330/war_speech.htm