Re: SV: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Farooq, Funmi and Yona

Dear olayinka

Yes, it is modernity that was formulated in European thought beginning around the enlightenment, and now encompasses that notion of a contemporary technological world, etc. Modernism, from Baudelaire to hemingway, the literary, artistic, cultural movements which have now become “posted” since the 1960s…

The ideas aren’t all that different, in the end because they share the key notion of the “modern.”

I like the phrase “enter into modernity,” where the concept of a mental framing of self and world is implicated, like entering into language. Your “embracing modernity” is probably about the same; and there are indeed multiple modernities, as you state.

My concerns are twofold: the first, that the idea of the modern was au fond at the core of colonialism and its discourse about modern Europeans and backward Africans; and secondly, that the assumptions of development discourses are also that the Europeans, the western societies, represent the goal which others should aspire to become. This marks everything, from the technological levels to democracy or women’s rights or gay rights, etc.

These concepts, still heavily contested in the west—as is obvious in the fight between Clinton and trump—are often used to denigrate Africans, and used by some in Africa to beat themselves. Development discourse, its language of underdeveloped, entails the same ideological framing.

 

In the end, if we had a more just world order, more just national orders, the cry that development should entail a decent life for everyone would be less anguished, but we are far from that, and development without decency or fairness is like short term profit—or should I say Chinese built roads. They look great for a while, and then it’s back to the usual potholes.  Ferguson talks of development in Africa hopping across the continent. We could say that high up in the skies those potholes become invisible while those flying in private jets can pass from Abuja to Victoria island in comfort. Pieces of modernity here and there. good for whom? And more importantly, validating what claims?

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 Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday 3 November 2016 at 08:37
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SV: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Farooq, Funmi and Yona

 

Ken.
I agree with your implied theory of multiple modernities intoto but you should be careful about the alternate use of modernism and modernity. It think what your pisition seems to be about is modernity and not modernism which is a eurocentric concept.  Yoruba like other world civilizations embrace modernity as 'nkan igbalode' (and is Yoruba among your repertoire of African languages or potential African languages?) a notion that is perennially shifting.

On 3 Nov 2016 10:13, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

This learned thread/ language feud is becoming more interesting by the minute, educative indeed, with the latest contributions of John Edward Philips and Ibrahim Abdullah...

I must confess that I am delighted when Professor Harrow confers yet another meritorious title on journalism professor Kperogi with these memorable words :

“I regard Farooq as an authority on English and on language” (Kenneth Harrow).

Got me going, thinking about Pope's epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton

“Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”

and that acronym for the Nigerian Electrical Power Authority, NEPA being translated as

“never expect power always”

Cornelius Ignoramus' only question is one that some of the brave ones in and out of this forum are probably also wondering about and would like know: Who made Farooq an authority on English and on language? In the name of Ubuntu, who else apart from Harrow made Farooq an authority on English and on language ? And let me hasten to add, that having given Professor Harrow a prior poetic license, I do not regard either statement as a provocation...

Last night on the airport bus from Arlanda to Stockholm, I was joking with my Better Half (Swedish Language pedagogue), quoting Bob Dylan's line

“Steal a little, and they put you in jail.

Steal a lot, and they make you king.”

not in connection with St. Augustine's story of Alexander the Great and the pirate (which I first encountered in Chomsky's “ what we say goes”) as in what Harrow says goes, but with regard to the bard - Nobel Laureate - King Dylan himself who arrived in his Cadillac to receive the Polar Prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf, a couple of years back, him also stealin' my blues, (like B.B. King) you know the song, that begins “Papa knows and mama too , rock and roll is music now “ - “he comes for your gold but watch out for your soul...”

As Oluwatoyin Adepoju says, it's imperial English, the mother of all languages that is keeping Nigeria glued together (some of the Brits that I met at our last hotel in Marrakesh, think that the whole world is still their empire – I myself protested that BBC and CNN had been available in every other hotel in Casablanca, Fes, Meknes, Rabat, but at the Aqua Mirage it was French, French and French, the only news programme in English being France 24 – although Morocco was only a French colony for thirty five years, 1912- 1955 ( whereas Sierra Leone was a British colony for one hundred and fifty years, unlike Nigeria which was a British colony for forty six years, 1914- 1960...

On my way to Nigeria, where I taught English, I took a look at Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the oppressed and The Letters to Guinea-Bissau – was mainly interest in teaching English as a subversive activity and was mostly – at that time , interested in the Liberation of South Africa from the evil apartheid…

Must praise Keprogi with some satire written in various Englishes, later in the day

Moses Ascending

 

Cornelius,

 

We Sweden

On Tuesday, 1 November 2016 17:32:01 UTC+1, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:

I have been updating my travelogue cum my notebook on the two Kperogi language threads and intend to transfer the satirical matter to this forum when next I access a computer keyboard ina Stockholm. For once, my Bettah Half ( a veritable language buff/translator/polygot in her own right - French, German, Italian, Spanish, English, Mother tongue Swedish) has been following the discussion and says that she likes IBK
Excuse  the pomposity, but it also behoves me to defend/exonerate my dear Yoruba mentor, the venerable Ogbeni Kadiri, before insult adds to injury.
In the meantime, here's some passable patois, pidgin, broken, call it what you will, being put to some "literary" use


https://www.google.com/search?q=sam+selvon+%3A+Moses+ascending&oq=Sam+Selvon+%3A+Moses+Ascending&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.2605j0j4&client=tablet-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

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