Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

Aborigines in Australia, indigenous Indian populations have insisted that this is not an academic issue

It is like saying a raped woman gained something from it.

Decolonization is just a new label to describe what has been with us since Moses took the children of Israel  out of Egypt.

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 6:27:47 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

Ken,

That's my point, not Okey's. Okey is arguing the opposite point. 

If African cultural practices, ideas, and knowledges survived and in some cases thrived through 350 years of brutal Atlantic slavery, I don't understand why the idea that colonialism had at best an uneven and shallow impact and that many African thoughts and cultures survived the tragedy strikes some people as implausible.

And what about the appropriation and rechristening of African and Africa-derived ideas and practices as "colonial" by colonizers? What do we make of this? Do we reify this colonial appropriation by calling for the decolonization of those appropriated and colonially rebranded ideas or do we deconstruct their alleged coloniality?

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On Feb 23, 2023, at 5:48 PM, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:



simon gikandi's Slavery and the Culture of Taste is all about the point okey is making about how africans were agents in the production of knowledge, cultures, values, perspectives even when they were enslaved, and especially thereafter including the colonial period.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 3:58 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

"Here's one example of mental slavery that captures the correct and generally accepted definition of the "decolonial perspective."

Okey, 

This quote above is emblematic of the problem. It is precisely what I'm critiquing--the tendency to dismiss, denigrate, and devalue African choices, adaptations, etc without recognizing the agency of Africans in sticking with things associated with colonialism or in modifying or adapting those things to their colonial and postcolonial lives.

Colonialism ended almost 60 years ago in Kenya, and in that period the British have not held a gun to the head of Kenyan lawyers or Nigerian lawyers to compel them to abandon the wig or to prevent them from replacing it with an Africa-originated headgear. You don't think that it's the choice of these Kenyans to retain the wig, that they have self-consciously chosen to keep it, and that they may have their own logic, separate from the original colonial logic of the wig, for keeping it as part of their professional sartorial ensemble?

Isn't this haughty scholarly omniscience--when, instead of humbly studying the logics of cultural adaptation, retention, hybridity, domestication, etc, among our people, we descend into haughty, Manichean devaluation of how some Africans choose or chose to engage colonial cultures, participate in them, or appropriate them?

This is one of the points Olufemi Taiwo makes in his recent book, Against Decolonization. We think we know better than the Africans who were and are prolific participants in, strategic users of, and crafty adapters of colonial influences and ways of knowing and seeing.

As Ken asks, the English language is a legacy of colonialism, but can we honestly still call English a foreign language in Nigeria? Would that not insult the agency of Nigerians, who have domesticated, enriched, and invented new logics, grammars, uses, and instrumentalities for the language?

We cannot valorize one type of African response to colonial influences and colonial taxonomies and epistemic and aesthetic legacies and pass harsh judgment over other types. Did Africans engage colonialism in the same way? Were there not many responses ranging from rejectionism to accommodationism, with other strategies in-between?

Falola himself writes about these varieties of African engagement with colonial influences in his book, Nationalism and African Intellectuals. 

Finally, has it occurred to you that some of the "colonial legacies" you decry were co-created by Africans and Europeans?

On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 6:22 AM Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com> wrote:

The "short interlude" of colonization lasted about 60 years in Kenya! Here's one example of mental slavery that captures the correct and generally accepted definition of the "decolonial perspective," i.e., colonialism did not destroy everything, but its impacts (especially its "epistemic violence") did not end with independence. Its impacts are today actually getting more overwhelming and destructive of the "African agency" or "the African personality" as some used to call it in the 1960s and 1970s. 

In this short video clip, a female Kenyan Senator was walked out of the Senate chambers in 2023 because she wasn't clothed in "the proper" colonial master's garb.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY8R_yjGUdE 

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 4:04 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

The argument is changing a Lillie 

It is not about baseline

Africans have been decolonizing. It is the label that is changing 

Samuel cha gig was decolonizing in the 19..th century; so was decolonizing 

Senghor as decolonizing

African perspective is decolonizing 

WAEc in its exam was decolonizing 

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 3:16:02 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

I am outside waiting for an appointment, so can't write much, but, Oga, my friend, Jacob Dlamini, makes the argument that even apartheid, as brutal as it was, did not and could not taint or occlude the preexisting and evolving flavors and rhythms of African life in the townships and other African spaces. African thought and life persisted stubbornly DESPITE the violence of apartheid. He is a South African and he of course rejects the decolonial valorization and centering of apartheid as the baseline of South African historical inquiry.

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On Feb 20, 2023, at 2:57 PM, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:



if i may, i disagree with mohammed balugon's claims on some key points/

english is not (any longer) a colonial language; achebe wrote in a language that had an english base, but which he also heard in its modified forms in nigeria.

english was modified everywhere it was spoken and to be really truthful we should say indigenized. the most obvious example is pidgin english, but language changes, evolves, absorbs the local usages, is appropriated by its speakers until it is so distant from the earlier language as to constitute a dialect and eventually a language.

the english, the europeans, have nothing to say about how english is now spoken and understood in nigeria or india or ghana or anywhere.

the nation state is also, has long since been, supplanted by global world forces that long since subdued it into major and minor players. that has nothing whatever to do with colonialism or decoloniality, much less western domination. even saying china and the u.s. and e.u. fails the test; start with microsoft and google and all the global shipping owners, and apple whose IT devices are made in china, and clothing companies and Walmart—all global, not national much less regional.

it isn't that coloniality cannot be extirpated: it is not fixed. we all are constantly changing, and if it isn't simply agency or the will to change, but forces outside our control, it seems to me the evocation of colonialism or coloniality in a global age is way out of step with our current realities.

nigeria is part of the colonial legacy?

isn't every society like language. we learn to speak it, we use it; it uses us; we try a new expression and repeat it and others hear it; with time, it changes.

society is the same, in every respect. some of which we hear comes from this place, some from there. what would you say of rap for instance? now sung everywhere on earth, except north korea.

it aint the bronx that is shaping it now.

france is not shaping africa now.

england has retreated to its little corner

portugal now is poorer than angola.

who is dictating the rules?

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 2:32 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

Here's one contribution by the cerebral Dr. Muhammad Balogun:

Muhammad S Balogun

Moses Ochonu

When I was trying to point out what is really important to us as a developing people, I made the following points on my wall in 2021:

I wonder what Samir Amin (d. 2018) would have been saying these days if he were still alive. Dependency theory still holds true. In Africa, Eurocentrism still reigns. 

Coloniality is our reality and probably cannot be extirpated. 

Can we stop using English to communicate, for instance? 

Can we stop thinking in terms of nation states and national economies? 

Can weak and consumption-based economies take charge of knowledge production? 

What is more demonstrative of coloniality than all these? 

What of the existence of Nigeria itself? It's part of colonial legacy. 

Let the post-colonial theorists continue to write impenetrable prose to elaborate on it and refine our understanding. 

Not that I agree with Chimamanda's crude put-down o! Ehen. Seriously, my take is more nuanced. 

By all means, let decolonial perspectives flourish.

However, it's neo-colonialism that African leaders need to analyze and fully understand, without being paranoid or evasive of their own responsibilities to their people and countries. It's an economic issue.

We, the hoi polloi, while aknowledging neo-colonialism, should hold our own leaders accountable and avoid conspiracy theories and nonsense. 

Our leaders are responsible for developing our countries. 

They must have the vision and the ability. 

Time no too dey.

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 1:30 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

Oga, 

I'll respond to your comments later, but for now, for a fuller context, since this post began life as a Facebook update this morning with several contributions from my interlocutors, here's my additional commentary in response to one of the commenters on my Facebook wall:

[Decolonization] is now the lazy go-to for many people trying to give some "authentic African(ist)" street cred to their work. They want to hitch a ride on the latest theoretical fad in African studies. Nowadays, people don't even stop to think: what or who exactly are we decolonizing? Beginning with this question might jolt some of the decolonial people back to a realization that many Africans were enthusiastic participants in and contributors to colonial modernity and colonial culture writ large and that even today many Africans revere and consider the Western genealogy of modernity to be the aspirational gold standard for their countries. Are we to pretend that these tendencies did not and do not exist? Should we analyze the world as it is or as we wish it to be? Clearly, the decolonial people have chosen the latter path.

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 1:14 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Moses:

Your statement below is over stretched. No scholar has ever said it supplanted everything. The most devastating critique of the episode argument is by Peter Ekeh in his inaugural but he never said that. Both Zaria and Makarere demolished the interlude argument, but they did not say it supplanted everything.

The idea that colonialism, a short interlude, as the Ibadan School of history describes it, overwhelmed and supplanted everything that existed before is untrue and violates the logic of historical change.

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Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 9:54:23 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

By Moses E. Ochonu

Everywhere I turn nowadays it's "decolonizing this, decolonizing that." The decolonial turn or fad is clouding our academic common sense, I must say.

The idea that colonialism, a short interlude, as the Ibadan School of history describes it, overwhelmed and supplanted everything that existed before is untrue and violates the logic of historical change.

I hope we don't commit the error of assuming that everything associated with colonization or colonial culture, colonial epistemology, and even colonial ontology is the sole creation of the white man and thus must be decolonized.

I hope we realize that much of what we designate under the rubric of "colonial," which we claim must be thoroughly excised from the African body politic and African ways of seeing, knowing, and doing, was actually created or co-created by Africans.

I hope we realize that the much maligned colonial library (Mudimbe) and the colonial archive have thousands of African voices and thoughts, which, though largely unacknowledged, define much of the content of these source canons.

Therefore, when we insist that everything with a trace of coloniality, everything with any tentacle in colonialism and colonization, must be banished from African epistemological and programmatic repertoires, I hope we realize the implication of that.

We'd be "decolonizing" away the work, choices, and agency of Africans, who, both in colonial and postcolonial times, chose to participate in the creation of colonial culture or to retain it as one of the components of the world they sought to create for themselves during and after colonization.

I hope that when we say we should transcend the colonial archive, we don't go to the extreme of doubly silencing the hidden African voices in the colonial archive.

P.S: This is a plea for epistemological moderation, not a denial of the imperative of epistemological decolonization where appropriate, or of the merits of decolonial theoretical approaches.

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Recently published:

"A 'fateful compromise'? Transnational religious organizations and regional governance in Africa," Territory, Politics, Governance: A Journal of Regional Studies Association, DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2022.2160371

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