The Humanities, Gender and the Pan-African Ideal: at the doorstep of Deglobalisation

-Pinkie Mekgwe

From the perspective of any given power-centre, when its system of power relationships changes, the world in which it exists undergoes a corresponding

alteration of character Introduction Two centuries since the first call for a United Africa in the face of Imperialism – a

precursor to global capitalism - the idea of a United states of Africa has one again been

mooted. This at a time that some writers have posited is the onset of deglobalisation. The

initial call sprung from a wave of Pan-Africanism. Is the likely shift in global power base

likely to result in the alteration of the character of Africa and towards the fruition of the

Pan-African ideal? What is the place of Gender and the Humanities in the formulation,

negotiation, and reconfiguration of a Pan African project?

The Pan-African Humanities Base

It was almost natural that in the drive towards Pan Africanism and against the colonization

of the continent, the craftsmen of the Pan African ideal would turn to literature, and to

poetry, much more specifically:

Look upon the blackness of my woman and be filled with the delight of it her blackness a beacon among the insipid faces around her proudly she walks, a sensuous black lily swaying in the wind This daughter of Sheba...

my woman wears her blackness like a queen1 and

Ah, My black one Thou art not luminous Yet an altar of jewels, An altar of shimmering jewels, Would pale in the light Of Thy darkness Pale in the light Of thy nightness.2

This ‘purging’ of the ugly with sermons of beauty is almost natural within a context where

African culture and the recovery of its past were primary; where beauty is traditionally

poetically woven into a landscape of pain as attested to by the two ‘pictures’ that follow,

drawn from oral traditions:

In the first one, informed by Setswana oral traditions, a woman is bent over, a child

strapped to her back. She is clasping a hoe with both hands, a hoe that she swings

regularly as she digs and digs away at the field in measured movements: hoe up, swing

down, pause, move, hoe up; and the baby’s head bobs up and down. She meanwhile is

singing: ‘grasshopper, protect my child’, she sings. ‘I am ploughing/ I am ploughing alone/

you can see me/ I am ploughing/ I am ploughing alone.’

The second snippet is taken from South African author Zakes Mda’s work, The Heart of

Redness. In this particular scene, he paints a picture of the performance of beautiful pain

or rather, the beautiful performance of pain. The elders, sad at the calamity that has

befallen their land; disturbed at the divisions that have taken root within their society, take

1James Matthews, in V. A. February, Mind Your Colour, (London and Boston: Kegan Paul International, 1981) p.172. 2Langston Hughes, ibid.

to dancing – in a circular formation, they dance slowly, rhythmically. It is a painful dance,

we are told. A dance, to, and for the ancestors. A dance then, through which

reconnections are made across the boundaries of the living and the dead; the old and

young; the past and present; pain and joy. The dancers ‘present a wonderful spectacle of

suffering’ that ends cathartically in an orgasmic display of pleasure.

The two performances speak to the inter-wovenness of being. While the woman certainly

toils away in difficult circumstances, there is much more to the picture. Her song, for

instance, is an outlet that beautifully verbalizes her experience; and puts paid to any

notion of powerlessness. Here we also find romance: she speaks directly to the

grasshopper – a suggestion perhaps that she is at one with nature; a gesture, certainly, of

boundary rupture. The rhythm of the song is measured; the tone soulful. It energizes the

worker, gives pleasure to the listener, and soothes the baby. Similarly, the dance of the

elders performs and erodes suffering, as it were. In all this, we are also presented with

the power - transformative or otherwise - of performance. And so we begin to ponder

the possibilities- transformative, developmental- the alternatives that Africa’s cultural

representation offers. And with that come questions of interpretation. Critical

interpretation that recognizes that ‘underlying [any text] are ideological structures that

mediate the transformation of social structures into the thematic preoccupations as well as

into the aesthetic structures and styles of [such] texts’ (JanMohamed).

The questions that such critical interpretation demands of us include: locating such within

historical and cultural contexts with a bid to making connections; exploring and

interrogating meaning; as well as uncovering contradictions. More specifically, we might

ask how the texts offer an avenue for the recovery of African beauty, if at all?

It is also almost natural that Pan Africanists would have turned to the humanities both as

field of knowledge, and as a mode of recovery. Knowledge is intricately linked to global

power play. Knowledge and skill are at the core of societal development. History has

amply shown how social change has been influenced by the accumulation of ideas, and

their application and diffusion. The litterae humaniores, the humane letters, also known as

the humanities, studia humanitatis, or humane studies, we are reminded, begun as a

movement and study of the human as differentiated from a study of the divine, and

associated with the focus of Renaissance education on classical culture.3 Its all-

encompassing nature, however, was to be lost once the university became its host, and the

humanities became closely intertwined with textual scholarship. In the tradition of

‘disciplining’ knowledge, the study of humanity was to be parceled out in narrow

packages and came to be understood as ‘a twentieth century term of convenience for

those disciplines excluded from the natural and social sciences. The other modern

humanities emerged first in the form of classical philology, which produced history, modern

languages, and even art history as descendants.’4 Zeleza argues that ‘this academic

division of labour spread from Europe to several parts of the world on the back of

European Imperialism.’5

But beyond the poetry, dance, literature, music and song, which are but the few that I cite

in the instances above, the humanities is that constellation of subjects that pose life’s broad

questions – social, moral, aesthetic – ‘cultivate human values and a moral sensibility

towards self-awareness, self-reflection, and civic responsibility.’ The humanities is also one

of the few arenas of knowledge that offer pleasure in and by itself. In textual terms, the

3 J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, p120; Jonathan Ree and J.O Urmson, eds., The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy Third Edition, p.168 4 Shumway and Messer-Davidow 1991;204 cited in Zeleza, ‘The Disciplining of Africa’ in Zeleza, P. ed., The Study of Africa, Vol 1: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters, Dakar: CODESRIA, p.5 5 Ibid p.5

humanities lend themselves to an interdisciplinary bent across literature, history,

philosophy, art, music, religion while Women and Gender Studies are at the forefront of

the interdisciplinary movement (Zeleza;p.23). It would seem almost natural that a

knowledge base offering inclusivity, flexibility, and multiple perspectives would have been

central to the project of Pan-Africanism.

The Pan-Africanists were interested in promoting the well-being of African people and

people of African descent throughout the world.6 Freedom of the colonies, national

independence and the eventual unification of Africa were the main concerns of the Pan-

Africanist movement. One of the main factors that brought the Pan-Africanists together

was, according to Kwame Nkrumah(1974)7, 'a one-ness; a deep-rooted unity that can

only be called Africanness'(132).

Janheiz Jahn(1961)8 explains this 'one-ness' by reference to African philosophy and in

particular, to the concept of muntu. Jahn unearths four categories of African philosophy,

all of which have the prefix -ntu in common. Jahn points out that the unity expressed by

the inclusive concept of muntu is a characteristic of the African culture. He concludes that,

African culture, therefore, expresses itself as a spiritual phenomenon.

For Senghor, this spiritual phenomenon could be explained as 'Francophonie': a mode of

thought and action; a certain way of addressing problems and seeking their solutions. It

was Francophonie that prompted Senghor, Aime Cesaire and Leon Damas to come up with

6This was defined as the aim of the Pan-African federation at its fourth conference in New York in 1927. Pan-Africanism and African nationalism took concrete expression with the clearer delineation of its goals at the fifth Pan-Africanist congress held in Manchester in 1945. 7Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, (London: Panof Books, 1974) 8Janheiz Jahn, Muntu: An Outline of Neo-African Culture, (trans) Marjorie Greene, (London: Faber and Faber, 1961).

the ideology of 'Negritude', a concept that Senghor(1970) defines as a confirmation of

one's being; the African personality; the sum of the cultural values of the black world; an

active presence in the universe; morality in action9.

Gender and the Knowledge Project

The concept of polarization is one of the major theoretical contributions of the twentieth

century derived from Gender discourse. Feminists argued against divisions and inequality

between males and females. As a critical tool, the self/other dichotomy was to find

application in other spheres of society such as colonizer/colonized; the west/Africa.

What is remarkable about the Negritudinists’ poetry that I invoke above however, is its

centralization of the woman as ‘subject’ –even, as others have argued, ‘object’ of the

nationalist tradition and anti-imperialist project. Negritudinism, it may be argued, formed

part of the ‘third wave’ of Pan-Africaninsm, the first being the anti-slavery sentiment, while

the second the formalization of the Pan-Africanist Movement. It is however, the third wave

that takes expression in the arena of knowledge production in Africa. The first African

Publishing house, Presence Africaine begins to publish African history, poetry, and

literature. The scholarly knowledge production was to reflect the contradictions within the

Pan Africanist project. While women had actively worked alongside men in the struggle

for Pan African unity, the women experienced hostility and resistance from the male-

dominated leadership. Ensuing publications were to make little if any mention of them

even though many of them held leadership positions (lady chapter presidents). Women

such as Amy Ashwood (Marcus Garvey’s first wife and co-founder of the Movement in

9Leopold Sedar Senghor, "Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century". In Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial and Post-Colonial Theory, A Reader, (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994) pp.27-35.

Jamaica); Amy Jacques (Garvey’s second wife who ran the movement 1925-27 while

Garvey was in prison); Henrietta Vinton Davies (Director of Black Star Lines); Queen

Mother Moore; Laura Kofey (who later began her own movement); Miti Maud Lena

Gordon (also later began her own repatriation movement) and Adelaide Casely Hayford,

one of the most active Feminist Pan Africanists of her time. Jessie Fauset, Helen Curtis, Mrs

I.G. Hunt as well as Addie W. Hunton are all women who lent the Second Pan-African

Congress its radical tone. Yet the Pan African Movement kept a primarily male face,

divisible along the Garvey and Du Bois approach camps respectively, (Garvey’s ‘return to

Africa’ parliaments, inclusive of economic dimension, and Du Bois’s Congresses). Clearly

then, while Pan-Africanism was being moulded as an inclusive project, it was being run on

the wheels of polarity: male/female; Africa/west. Polarisation within the Pan African

Movement extended into the era of independence. While some African leaders, such as

Kwame Nkrumah called for a united Africa, there were yet other leaders who chose to

cleft their post independence policies to those of the colonial powers. Divisions within an

independent Africa soon became clearly demarcated along past colonizer language as

well.

Analysing the contradictions within the PanAfrican movement, Walter Rodney brought to

the fore another one of the ‘divisions’ that had beset the movement: that of ‘discipline’. In

line with the disciplinary divisions of imperial education noted earlier, the Pan African

intellectuals, in his view, delineated Politics and culture from economic issues. The result

was that the economic structures that had ensured inequality between people of African

descent and their colonizers remained intact into the independence period.

Why the Pan-African Ideal and why now?

Deglobalisation is a term recently introduced to describe the current dispensation with

particular reference to the changing global economic machinery. Alongside this change is

a move increasingly towards own territory, and the signaling of the melting of some of the

glue that has held what has been construed as the west. This is a period that is

accompanied by renewed talks of Africa’s unity in the form of a united states of Africa.

What is the place of the formal knowledge-producing fraternity in the possible

reconfiguration of the terms of engagement between African countries, and between

Africa and the West? Primarily, this lies in the recognition of the interwoven nature of

reason and power – a realization that ‘the cognitive process is not [merely] a means of

acquiring ‘knowledge’ but is quite simply a means of gaining power’.10

Deglobalization requires a rethinking of the African logos; a reassessment of Africa’s

conceptualization of the West; and of the ‘other’ in whatever form. I am persuaded by

Denis Ekpo’s argument as it informs PanAfricanism. PanAfricanism was formed largely

‘under the seductive yarn of Afrocentric master narratives’. ‘In the hypostatized

metacodes of the [PanAfrican] ideal, the lived, everyday realities of Africa, including its

irreconcilable […] differences, incompatibilities, and obscurities were magically frozen or

simply palmed.’ What ensued under the shibboleth of African identity as conceived under

the PanAfrican ideal was the seeming ‘erasure’ of difference between one group and

another; one gender and the other’; a putting on hold of such incongruencies as were

deemed not central to the political concerns of the time.

10 R. H. Grimm, New Nietzche’s Theory of Knowledge (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975) cited in Denis Ekpo, ‘Towards a PostAfricanism’

Deglobalisation, whether it be the right term or not, denotes a shift in human development

and human development, ‘if not engendered, is endangered’ (Georgina Wood, chief

Justice, Ghana). The current shift is bound to bring about other shifts in the arena of the

‘ordinary’. The value system, including the notion of work; dignity, respect, all point to the

possibility of a reconfiguration of terms of negotiation. Already a move towards smaller

living spaces; sensitivity to the environment can be evinced in some parts of the

‘developed’ world.

In the knowledge arena, deglobalization offers the opportunity for ‘recovery’ that is

informed, not polarized, and transcends boundaries in the manner of Mda’s dance of

sorrow. An insertion that seeks to explore and cultivate Africa’s power in knowledge

transformational terms to counter the continent’s areas of want, address the ways Africa

relates to Africa, represents Africa to Africa, and seeks true inclusivity. This would entail

being attendant to the co-existence of the incongruent but mutually reinforcing power of

transdisciplinarity in as much as it would require being attendant to the variegated notion

that is Africanness. A Humanities project that is engendered, and doused with the essence

and perfume of Africa.

To conclude:

The PanAfrican ideal presents with cracks in its foundation. The vision of inclusivity did not

define and inform the practice of it. The resort to culture and to African history was

largely a manipulation; a doctoring of texts and testimony. The founding ‘fathers’ path

was two pronged: Du Bois or Garvey. The very difference exhibited with respect to

gender was to be the defining path: us or them; their economic system or ours; their

language or ours; a focus on ills and not on strengths; on ‘politics’ and not on revamping

the traditional economic system – or setting up own – that could and would work for

Africa; an education system based upon difference and differentiation; in disciplinary

terms. The transcendental songs of African culture became just that: songs – not spiritual

expression. Deglobalisation becomes a metaphor for the reversal of the power of one-

ness on the part of the ex-coloniser - a moment of redefinition and possible re-enactment.

What is the place of the humanities in it this time? What the gender principle? Will a path

towards the Pan-African ideal begin to be carved? These are critical questions that

require further treatment.