Beyond Western Recognition:
History, Memory, Responsibilities
MOSES: The “crisis of African Studies” obviously transcends the encroaching approach of externally-generated theoretical trends and the de-localization of knowledge. It is partly a crisis animated and magnified by the absence of a contiguous linguistic – and some might say – cultural community in Africa. The problem, as some have suggested, is the idea of Africa itself, with its unnaturally homogenizing effect, as well as the burden of documented difference bequeathed by European colonialists. The problem is complicated by the passionate appropriation by Africans of colonially-demarcated constituencies. The contention about the shiftiness and incoherence of Africa finds expression in the absence of a community of mutual intellectual intelligibility on the continent. As a Francophone African scholar who has successfully and superlatively negotiated the linguistic-intellectual divide in Africa, give us some experiential insights into how big the problem is, and how, if at all, consistent pan-African intellectual dialogue can be realized in the face of these linguistic interpellations.
MAMADOU: I tried to engage with some of the issues raised here in my previous answer. I think that the situation is much more complicated than what is covered by the notion of “crisis of African studies.” Europe is multicultural and multilingual as well as multi-religious; still Europeans have been able to work on creating an European Union community across recognized differences since World War II. Based on such an experience, we can assume that common African identities do not need to rest on common cultural or racial elements. The paradox is that the idea of African unity (or common identity) has always been associated with the existence of a common African culture and roots. The work of the Senegalese historian and philosopher Cheikh Anta Diop (in particular his first book, Nations Nègres et Culture) is the best illustration of such an association. In fact, we need to recognize our differences to be able to work together on a common project. We must be able to imagine an African community as a permanent (re)invention. The idea of Africa was not only invented by Europe, it was also an invention of Africans and people of African descent through their pain and suffering, their mobilization for struggle, and their dream of freedom and citizenship. The people who fought for a seat for Africa and Black people at the Versailles conference in 1919 and marched in Paris, London, and New York against the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy also contributed to the construction of an African identity that was international until the days of the Cold war. Africa has been constantly reinvented by Africans, the African Diasporas, as well as the rest of the world. What we have to interrogate is the complex entrappings of the multiple images, representations, and knowledges generated. Africa is multiple and we have to live with that and negotiate an African project that protects the various identities and identifications.
MOSES: What are your thoughts on the state of political leadership in Africa, particularly with regard to the evolution of democratic governance, by which I do not mean Western liberal democracy but representative, accountable systems of governance?
MAMADOU: Political leadership in Africa is in a terrible shape. One of the most striking aspects of the political transition - with the institutionalization of a certain kind of liberal democracy in relation to economic liberalization and the adoption of IMF/World Bank structural adjustment, and other economic and administrative policy packages, and the organizing of regular (s)elections – is the degradation of democratic governance, the worsening of corruption, and in some cases the complete dilution of political and public responsibility, accountability, as well as political participation. (S)elections are understood as mechanisms allowing elected officials the right to do what they want, in particular to plunder the economies of their countries and to distribute wealth, prestige, and power to their cronies. It seems to me that such practices legitimized by ‘elections’ are having disastrous effects on African societies, destroying systematically and steadily any possibility of exercising citizenship rights. In many cases large sections of the population are accepting such behavior, adjusting to it to gain resources. The consequence in many African countries is the acceptance of corruption, clientelism, and violence in the public space and the transformation of the latter into an arena of tribal and religious politics.
MOSES: How do we move beyond this?
MAMADOU: The crucial issue is the initiation of a radical (re)foundation of African politics and societies building on the complex political, social, and cultural trajectories that have kept reconditioning and recalibrating the African condition while taking into account the reconditioning of external influences such as Islam, Christianity, colonial rule, and contemporary global structures and ideas. Africa has been heading in many directions with extraordinary achievements in many registers as well as terrible setbacks all at once. “Traditional” and Western resources have been part and parcel of the paradoxical elements which have been defining the African condition. The challenge is to find how to address such paradoxes in a constructive manner. I strongly believe that if we want to reinvent politics, restructure the public space, and recreate a strong sense of community and the common good, we need to rethink the political architecture of representation, participation, and accountability. This could help to rearticulate the geographies of power, taxation, access to, and usage, of resources at the local, the national, the regional, and continental levels. I also believe that the converging effects of urbanization, the increasing number of African migrants in the West, and of educated Africans – women in particular – are producing new civilities that are supporting the creation of new civic communities that are in turn slowly transforming African political landscapes. Are they going to ultimately produce a new leadership? I believe so.
MOSES: Can the peer-review mechanism of NEPAD engineer a new culture of political accountability on the continent, and what lessons does African history offer for such continental models of self-reclamation?
MAMADOU: NEPAD (and the mechanisms attached to it) is an interesting concept, whose aim is precisely to trigger a new culture of political accountability and an internalization of African problems and solutions. Unfortunately the peer-review mechanism lacks institutions, actors, and procedures to implement it at all levels, from the local to the continental. For the moment it is more rhetorical than effective. In such a context, more than the lessons offered (or to be offered) by African History, we need to develop a powerful culture of control and validation of power, framed, maintained, and constantly revised on a daily basis by African citizens and African public opinion. We need to invent a culture of good governance, social justice, and democracy, which will permeate all walks of life – from the household, the ethnic group to religious, national and continental communities. Each of those instances calls for a usable past to imagine a common future and to rearticulate productively the “two publics” identified and analyzed more than thirty years ago by the Nigerian sociologist, Peter Ekeh. In my view, NEPAD is also the first attempt by the African leadership to formulate an African vision of development, in the context of economic liberalization – the so-called Washington consensus – and globalization. It could be read as a critique of the new moment’s emphasis on the economies of services, ITC, financial flows, and their geographies, which exclude or marginalize the African continent. On the contrary, NEPAD insists on infrastructure and institution building – an orientation that was resisted by the international community – and advocates for an agenda defined by Africans themselves. It could also be considered a critique of the politics and paradigms which dominated African developmental rhetoric and policies from independence to the transitions of 1970-80s (economic adjustment programs) and the 1990s (political and democratic liberalization). All that celebrated a delinking from the world market, and authoritarian political centralization. The NEPAD and African Renaissance conversations are contributing to the opening of an internal African debate as well as the reframing of African engagement with the global world. And I believe it is a positive sign and a step in the right direction.
MOSES: The appropriation of the historical concept of African Renaissance by political leaders on the continent invites concern at the potential bastardization of a lofty Pan-African ideal as well as a measured admiration for the sense of historical awareness that is driving some of today’s political pronouncements on the continent’s fate and destiny. What are your thoughts on African Renaissance in both its conceptual and programmatic manifestation?
MAMADOU: The concept of African Renaissance has been present in the African/Black public space and in debates, claims, reclamations, and agendas on modernities since, at least, the beginning of the Atlantic world. It has been associated successively with religious redemptions, cultural and aesthetic innovations, and political and economic reforms or revolutions. It will probably be with African/Black communities for years to come until its essence – it has always taken the risk of essentialization – and politics are captured by the ideas of Black power and Black emancipation (the most powerful expressions of the Pan-African ideal). Its deployment will always be contradictory and contested, and will always be positive and negative like the many representations of the continent, “at once the most romantic and the most tragic of the continents,” according to W. E. B. Du Bois. I strongly believe that maintaining and organizing the many audible and repressed African voices, taking stock of the intellectual and artistic production generated by African scholars (Western and non-western trained) and consolidating citizenship rights and responsibilities will help to feed the African Renaissance conversation.