Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

Dear Farooq

Wonderful argument. But the simple question, who will educate the educators, remains. Who decides what raising consciousness means? Who determines who knows what serves the interests of the masses?

And finally, are we really talking about where things stand in today's world, are these the right questions?

I can contemplate a situation like that in Burkina where a popular revolt preventing a military regime from stealing the revolution. In Tunisia, where the arab spring began, a compromise between moderate brotherhood and democratic parties obtains. In Rwanda and Burundi, in two different ways, rule has come out of the barrel of the gun.

 

You can debate s Africa, or even Zimbabwe, which was debated so effectively on this list a year or two ago. Or Libya for that matter. I don't see resolution of the tension between a people's perception of their interest and the militant leadership of factions, or especially a govt w guns. The arab spring began as the ideal of a people's movement, but was crushed by guns, in case after case, most recently Syria, where the people were decimated by the horrific guns and bombs of people willing to see everyone day in order to maintain power in this or that hand.

What has the world come to that the whole world has had to witness truly monstrous people destroy at such great lengths. Even in Iraq, the liberation of the isis controlled cities meant destroying them.

 

I don't feel any hope that "vanguardism" is what mass movements need. And I hate to admit it, but I know what I oppose in all these cases, but have no hope in there being a solution available to people of good will.

Perhaps you could offer a glimmer of hope in suggesting where a more positive future might be created.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 18:20
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Even when I used to be a doctrinaire Marxist, I also struggled with the praxis and moral propriety of vanguardism. As you said, a select elite few can't possibly embody and give expression to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Nevertheless, the masses, who are often diffident and fatalistic, need to be prodded to shake up the system. And there lies the tension in Marxian epistemology: the notion of an inexorable, deterministic imperative that will propel the masses to take their destiny into their own hands and the reality that the masses need a vanguard to raise their consciousness and to help them extirpate an oppressive system. This tensile epistemological stress is at the core of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of the "double void" in Marxist thought.

 

But wherever one stands in this debate, it would be escapist to imagine that a leaderless, self-propelled change is possible.

 

Farooq 

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

 

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 4:37 PM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

Well, vanguardism is one approach—lenin over Trotsky, or over the socialists. Me, I favour socialists, or better still the anarchists of the 30s.

I always took it that the vanguardism of the communists was their worst mistake.

Mistake under stalin

mistake under mao

mistake corrected over and over by Gramsci, by Raymond Williams, by some other notion of consciousness besides that of the elite few who claim to know what the masses don't know

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.