I’d like to return to moses’s article, published in the Republic a few days ago. https://www.republic.com.ng/junejuly-2017/where-are-african-victims/
Mine is a simple comment on the points moses made.
To begin, who is the victim of globalization: moses’s claim is that as africans have been made victims of globalization, of neoliberal economics, their plight has been largely ignored, in contrast with that of the white industrial workers cited over and over again as responsible for the election of trump.
Moses argues, not only does this ignore workers outside the u.s. Rustbelt—no surprise, in a world of news reporting where the only place that matters is the american center (I world say, the euro-american center)—it places the blame on the usual suspects, mexico, china, india, etc, for the outsourcing that has resulted from cheap labor, low standards in industrial production, etc.
Moses cites northern nigerian factories that have had to close, not being able to keep up with the neoliberal competition, I.e., competition where africans can’t engage in protectionism. And he states, africans have always had to face these uneven conditions of competition, and those he knows to have been victims of the changed economic circumstances have either languished, suffered or died, or they have had to adapt, find new employment, retraining, etc.
My reflections on this include the Friedman argument that as workers will lose with the elimination of protectionist tariffs, and the global flows, other workers will spring up. moses’s arguments about how africans have had to meet this changed environment might be applied to the silicon valleys, and in fact the new god called “the digital” has resulted, at least in part, in the demine of conventional humanities production but has opened up new fields and new approaches.
One has only to look at nollywood, to see how this new playing field has led to a burgeoning film industry, and how film criticism now concerns itself little with analysis of the content of nollywood films, focusing more on the industry’s production, and especially distribution and exhibition.
What's true of nollywood, for film studies, is true for a very large of film studies in general. Change, death of old approaches, and the jobs that went with them, the educational models based on them; and their replacement or exclusion in new curricula and hires.
I can think, as well, of two african films of note that have focused on these changes. Two of africa’s most prestigious filmmakers have made this change the subject of their films. Sissako’s Bamako and Haroun’s A Screaming Man. In the former, the protagonist Chaka commits suicide, and the entire drama of africa dealing with the world bank economic order, is depicted in terms of loss. No compensating gain is seen, but before dying we see Chaka studying hebrew with the plan of retooling and getting hired by the new israeli embassy.
haroun’s film deals with a hotel in ndjamena that has been bought up by the chinese, leading to the firing or demotion of the older men who had worked there for years, and whose ways of thinking were now seen as outmoded, while at the same time the older champion’s son has risen to take his place at the poolside. The local conflict in chad is inevitably tied to the larger order as haroun brings up the oil trade in his more recent film gris gris. The loss is ultimately what drives the narrative; not the uplift for the sons.
Also, if I wanted to ask how the new order is represented, I’d look at afolayan’s recent films, where the new rising class, trained in this world of globalization is represented, as in phone swap and the figurine. There we have an ambiguity over the conflict between the old (magic) order and the new capitalist one.
Neoliberalism as affording africans new opportunities. Vs. neoliberalism as destroying africa.
Or one could say, china offering africa new opportunities, vs., china as finding ways to exploit africa, in the guise of free business trade and investment.
What moses does in his piece is to say, the major reporting, the major discourses over globalization have focused on everywhere except africa. Where is africa’s voice in all this? Who will make us aware of how africans have been affected, what they are doing about it, what plusses and minuses there are.
I think of akin adesokan’s important book Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics, where he excoriates global neocolonial capitalism, and its impact on the arts as seen in the west and in africa; but more, I also think of the major work (for me) that makes sense of neoliberal gobalization, the Comaroff’s introductory, major essay on globalization in Millenial Capitalism and the culture of Neoliberal.
For myself, I am obsessed by some of the really hurtful results, such as the demolition of the fishing industry, and the associated flood of migrants seeking access to labor in europe, and takng great risks to get there (as is central to Sissako’s Bamako).
I need to remember that new, innovative modes of creation, in african art in particular, have emerged; that the film industries, that had become morabund, are now returning. Not just nigeria or ghana, but kenya, tanzania, ethiopia, north africa, have worked out models for making new kinds of films and competing heavily with old hollywood gangbusters, or with european films. I need to remember than kannywood has taken the indian film industry on, not just in showing bollywood, but transforming their own production, despite boko haram types who wanted to kill it. The same is true of algerian filmmaking, which had had to stop altogether while the religious wars of the 80s and 90s were fought.
I ithink of al anatsui, the global artist, not the local artist, whose works I have seen in london, and which travel travel travel throughout the world of global art. I think of the new tate, which african artists, including julie mehretu, and john akomfrah now grace. I think of how akomfrah has not only represented this new age, in 9 muses, but has demonstrated the adaptation of high culture film to the new age of immigrants.
So much is there; originally a raoul peck film on lumumba, which gave us the old order of colonialism andneocolonialism; and the new order which has to take into account the old words of james baldwin seen in a new age of globalization. Baldwin, having been increasingly forgotten, now revived in the new.
How to put it together? How to accommodate that old order of protest, and its protectionist thinking about values, how we have to remember africa’s place int he global order, and not be ensconced in anti-neocolonial thinking that keeps us from engaging neoliberalism? How to reinvent the impulse to resist when that which we are resisting can no longer be combatted in the old language of freedom struggles.
that’s the challenge that moses’s essay forces us to take up.
I feel, as an oldtimer, the urgency of this challenge, and luckily have new and important voices, like moses ochuno’s, to help me rethink how to address them.
All I come up with is that the older leftism, which is my sentimental home, needs to change, without us losing its moral imperative. I suppose I could say that, too, was the challenge of derrida’s Spectre of Marx, and of course of the oeuvre of spivak. They help me think through values, but not have to accommodate the changes in terms of africa, which is what matters most here for me.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
Michigan State University
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "meochonu@gmail.com" <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, 6 July 2017 at 16:49
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Where are African Victims?
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, 6 July 2017 at 16:49
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Where are African Victims?
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