what i agree wholeheartedly with, in what you say here, is the expression "asymmetrical relations." everything flows from that. but as i consider the ills of colonialism, it seems to me that it might be viewed differently from earlier forms of conquest. i've always (in past years) tried to teach the colonial enterprise to my students as one based on a fundamental deception, that is, where the europeans used as their justification for the conquest the argument that they were bringing civilization. then i'd cite all those phrases, white man's burden, kulturarbeit, la mission civilisatrice, etc, and state, actually, it was a conquest that disguised itself as a civilizing mission.
but to use your term, it was a mission in which the power was always asymmetrical.
so, to nuance the thing again, can we imagine situations in which the deployment of power was direct and brutal, lacking any pretense of civilizing, and another where schools and churches were conceived as a positive contribution.
i am thinking of the difference between the congo free state, under leopold, and the colony that followed.
in reading King Leopold's Ghost and other texts around that period i came to understand that the horrors leopold visited on the congolese were not anomalies, but were simply variants of what was practiced in the neighboring states. nonetheless, the brutalities he imposed became a reason for removing him from power and instituting a regime that saw itself as more humane.
20th century colonialism came to want to see itself as a humane endeavor more than a brutal conquest and expropriation of african gold and blood. hypocritical though the colonialists might have been, were there not changes that came, for whatever reason, that denoted a shift away from naked power and toward a more collaborative exercise of power grounded in eurocentric notions of humanism?
so the first universities, with ibadan, makerere, and later dakar; the high schools that carried enormous prestige; the entry of african politicians into the french national assembly, before wwII; the collaboration of intellectuals like sartre with negritude.
asymmetrical though all these features were, centered in european notions of universal values and higher civilization, nonetheless the blatant racism of the early century began to yield to changes. (sartre was not a racist, and would have supported robeson, for instance)
power was handed over to flunkies like ahidjo; to collaborators like senghor; and it was wrenched by opponents like sekou toure. it was taken/received in a mutual act of transmission with nkrumah and kenyatta.
it seems to me that brutal conquest began to change fairly quickly, certainly between the wars, and it ended fairly quickly after that--only 11 years with sudan.
it is in trying to understand this picture of europeans weakening, yielding, being urged, at times compelled, but also facing opposition to brutal power at home that has to be brought into the picture. when de gaulle agreed to end the rule over algeria, there was an attempted coup by his own army.
i feel that all of this is the understanding of a non-specialist, non-historian, who is guided by impressions more than detailed study. so i am open to correction by those who have actually made the study of history theirs, and can provide a more nuanced view. i am trying to understand asymmetrical power in terms that go beyond direct force, and that change over time. and i certainly agree that despite my attempt to see a modification of the initial conquest that the asymmetry is very much still in place, while at the same time, nothing is the same as it was before.
ken
On 1/2/14 8:03 PM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Ken, I didn't say Africans were powerless. We are not. I said that African progress, at home and abroad, has been hampered by the internalization of eurocentric thought and behavior.
I also noted that it would be more productive to discern ambiguity within the constrained actions of African agents as opposed to colonial institutions that are only superficially "ambiguous."
Yes, African Pentecostal churches are financially independent, but their theology tends to slide toward anti-African culture and pro-western values , e.g., hyper materialism. And, yes, funds controlled by white elites don't determine what Africans think and do, but it clearly limits us in significant ways.
As it stands now progressive Africans pursue funds with a sort of trickster approach which is fine, I suppose, but it is still as sort of dependency and doesn't do much to challenge asymmetrical relations of power that date back to the colonial encounter.
kzs
On Jan 2, 2014 7:26 PM, "kenneth harrow" <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:--
dear kwame--
you frustrate me because as much as i want to walk the walk with you, you push a logic with which i agree past the point where it seems reasonable. i mostly agree with your first paragraph below: but there were pretty wide divergences in the churches and people in them. and the more you want to ascribe this to eurocentrism and the west, the more you are distancing yourself from the preponderance of pentacostal churches of today, and the millions of people who have turned to them.
maybe that is your place to begin. if you tell them all, you are being brainwashed by white people, that won't make any sense to them whatsoever.
the other point where i can't go all the way is when you keep removing agency from african scholars, as if they/we can't think for ourselves, can't discern what you claim the privilege of discerning, which is who is brainwashing whom and why. i can't throw away soyinka for writing an adaptation of a greek play; mudimbe, for building so much on foucault's logic and said's approach; or let's say, achebe for writing in english, for responding to graham greene and joseph conrad.
that's where we are today.
i agree with the issue of who funds what, but it isn't just determinism. that old notion of economic determinism was denied by engels himself in the famous response after marx died.
so, let's say we agree that there are interests and forces at play in african history and affairs; that some of those have worked to the detriment of africans; that we are committed to righting the situation; that we can be humble about this, and not claim to be the owners of the truth, but rather people who struggle in what we believe is a just cause.
i just don't like telling fellow activists that i know what they don't. it works better for me if we can actually discuss the issues and try to make our case.
thanks for pushing the buttons all the same, and for your willingness to put these issues out there for discussion. i think we are much more in agreement over what really matters, even if we don't always read the situation in exactly the same manner.
ken
On 1/2/14 11:32 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Brothers John and Ken,--
Thanks for the correction on the Brits. It has been some years, about 2002, so that error is likely mine. She probably did say France and Germany. Whatever the case, the Brits weren't in Cameroon for altruistic reasons, they were in Cameroon to protect and promote their own selfish interests at the expense of local populations as was the case with any European colonial govt in Africa. And what you read as the "complexity" of missionaries is only superficially complex. Scratch the surface and you will that missionaries at all times, like all other colonial institutions, had the same racist "civilizing" mission which was itself a cover for exploiting Africa's material resources.
Africans scholars are severely mistaken in looking for "complexity" and "ambiguity" in colonialism. Comparatively, I challenge you to find Jewish scholars going on and on about the gestapo "complexity." Our problem, I believe, is that our thinking has been colonized. The scholarly questions we ask are shaped by white liberal thought as opposed to African-centered thought. Unsurprising given that we are mostly educated in Eurocentric institutions (within and outside Africa). We are also shackled by western funding which shapes are inquiries and conclusions in subtle and not so subtle ways.
kzs
On Thursday, January 2, 2014 10:52:41 AM UTC-5, John Mbaku wrote:KZS:
The Cameroonian that talked to you either does not know anything about Cameroon history--Kamerun (Germany); League of Nations Mandates (UK & France); UN Trust Territory of Cameroons under French administration; UN Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons & UN Trust Territory of Northern Cameroons under British administration; Republic of Cameroon (1960); Federal Republic of Cameroon (1961-1972); United Republic of Cameroon (1972-1984); Republic of Cameroon (1984-present)--or intentionally distorted it. The atrocities committed by the country's colonial governments are well-documented. None of that history, even that written by radical scholars, list any atrocities committed by the British in any of the two territories they controlled.
Also, the history of the Christian Church in Cameroon and any part they may have played in colonialism is more complex than your informant told you. For one thing, the church joined the local people in fighting the German expropriation of lands belonging to African groups. On the other hand, Christian missions were quite instrumental in the persecution of the Bamoun King and his subsequent removal and exile to Yaounde, where he died.
On Wednesday, January 1, 2014, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
--Brother Ken.
My point of view on Cameroon is informed by a radical Congolese women and a Cameroonian I met during my graduate school days. Most of the Cameroonians I have met are radical like me, but that just means we are moving in different circles. My radical African comrades don't typically share their views with whites. But my point wasn't about what Cameroonians think about of colonialism (what Cameroonians think on the matter is certainly important). You said that from your experience Cameroonians don't generally hate Germans. Fine. Nevertheless, we must be clear that, although the methods varied, Europeans were uniform in their brutal oppression of African people. I must insist on that "absolute" assessment. Germans committed genocide in Namibia, but you aren't likely to find a generalized hatred of Germans in Namibia.
We Africans are much too forgiving and our thinking is overly influenced by the perspective of liberal whites. This is precisely the sort of thinking that Biko was challenging. By comparison it seems to be that Jews are far less forgiving of Germans and, moreover, you certainly will not find Jews naming their children after Nazis.
But, again, we must be clear that Euro names and languages were imposed on African people. Missionaries schools sometimes violently imposed Euro names and languages. After several centuries of slavery, apartheid, Jim Crown, lynchings, and colonialism, Eurocentric schools, and so on, Africans on the continent and abroad have come to internalized their oppressors outlook (hence the Cameroonians named "Adolf")--even as we have consistently challenged these impositions (these instances of ambiguity as it relates to African agency are, I think, are more defensible than looking for ambiguity in Euro institutions).
Respectfully, I must note, too, our relative subject positions. Your status as a long-time scholar of African Studies is, itself, an outcome of colonialism, ongoing white privilege, and the white control of the production of scholarly knowledge about Africa. I, on the other hand, grew up in the ghettoes of Los Angeles. For generations the vast majority of African Americans have been taught in white-controlled institutions that gross stereotypes about Africa. In other words, as Malcolm X pointed out in the 60s, African Americans have been taught to hate their heritage ( "self-hate"). Likewise, even today, many of the educational institutions in Africa are Eurocentric (My Nigerian wife studied in Nigeria and Salone through secondary school. Her ethnic group, Yotti/Bali/Chamba, straddles Nigeria and Cameroon).
kzsOn Jan 1, 2014, at 5:25 PM, kenneth harrow wrote:
correction. meant to say germans left after world war one. no one really remembered them, and bizarrely enough, whenever folks evoked them, it was with positive tones. probably the bad was forgotten, but there were memories of the train and water systems that people evoked in positive terms. i had a colleague whose name was adolf. germans were not hated in cameroon.--
but it was so long ago...
On 1/1/14 4:58 PM, kenneth harrow wrote:
kwame
i know a lot of cameroonians, and over 40 years. maybe what you write has some truth to it, but at the same time it seems really really out of tune and out of touch with the people i met, the students i taught, the country i came to know. it is an absolute statement, whereas the people i met never expressed themselves about their country in such terms.
there is one exception to my statement that i do remember: once i had students over, and we were talking about things like dante, which i believe i was teaching. a student expressed bitterness about how they all had been taught that their ancestors, prior to the coming of the missionaries, were supposedly all burning in hell. they asked me if i thought that was the case.
well, i didn't perhaps go as far as i might in saying that i found the idea of an afterlife ridiculous. for one thing, most people i met, including the students, were believing and practising christians, and i didn't want to insult anyone. but i did say that no one could state with any certainty what was to come after death.
they recognized the perniciousness of a teaching that presented the world in such terms.
it was almost 40 years ago. and i had read mongo beti's Main basse. but the anger beti expressed there did not seem to match the world i encountered for my 2 years in yaounde, and everything since has led me to the same conclusion. on my return
some years ago, i found some changes, but again nothing at all that would correspond to a view of "murderous white terrorism." the exception, of course, was ahidjo's attempt to eradicate the upc, which he did with the french. it was terrorism. but not a white terrorism. i'd call it postcolonial, in the sense of what the postcolonial world has come to embody. your last statement about missionary schools being a propaganda arm of brute violence, all i can say is that i would want to hear from the cameroonians who attended those schools. i had many students from the west, and they were actually proud of their schooling. perhaps the problem i see is that you are conflating time periods too much. my students were all educated after independence; the germans left during world war II. and as for brits slaughtering cameroonian leaders, from what i know i'd say that was truer of the french than the brits.
i'd be curious to know if i am wrong, if cameroonians share your view.
ken
On 1/1/14 11:59 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Cameroon is a good example of why any effort to claim that colonial institutions were "ambiguous" in their outcomes is deeply flawed. To make that argument work, you have to remove missionary schools from the larger project of vicious, bloody, murderous white terrorism. The Germans and Brits slaughtered many Cameroonian leaders whilst destroying or distorting indigenous institutions. Missionaries schools were imposed--the propagandist arm of brute violence (but its important to note that violence as "disciple" was a common feature of the schools).
kzs
On Tuesday, December 31, 2013 3:30:05 PM UTC-5, John Mbaku wrote:Ken:
There is a critical mass of Cameroonians who were educated in Kamerun & Germany (1884-1914) and in Cameroun and France (1916-??) who actually became quite attracted t
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