African_I_Dentity

Angelina Banda Contemporary Political theory Tutorial 3: Critically evaluate the validity and significance of Achille Mbembe's claim that "African identity does not exist as a substance. It is constituted, in varying forms, through a series of practices, notably practices of the self." Since the liberation of African states from colonial rule, African people have had to integrate in the global sphere by establishing their own identity as a race. Mbembe argues that through the process of colonization, slavery and apartheid the African self has become alienated from itself, calling it, self division (Mbembe,241:2002). He argues that this separation is supposed to result in a loss of familiarity with the self, to the point that the subject having become estranged from themselves has been relegated to a lifeless form of identity. He goes on to identify two more canonical meanings of the African people attributed to the process of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. This tutorial will thus discuss these three meanings and their influence on the African people and how they identify themselves notably how they act out practices of the self and if these practices form a an identity of substance. Noting that he believes slavery, colonialism and apartheid have alienated the African from themselves to such a degree that they no longer identify with themselves. He also argues that these events have also led to dispossession, a process in which juridical and economic procedures have led to material expropriation. Historical degradation which he views as having plunged the African subject not only into humiliation, debasement and nameless suffering but also into a zone of nonbeing and social death characterized by the denial of dignity, heavy psychic damage and the torment of exile (Mbembe, 242:2002). It is this clear that Mbembe views the African as a nation of people who are unable to produce their own identity void of their (preodical) history so much so that he could claim that that these peoples identity is formed only as a response to their experience of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. He claims that they no longer understand whom they are void of the imposed identities prescribed to them during these periods such as the formulation of the native that was prescribed to black Africans to distinguish them from the cultured Europeans that settled in Africa. It is important to note that these identities imposed on the African was usually to dehumanize, belittle and marginalize them as a cultural human race with they own practices. The practices of the African were argued to be primitive and uncivilized thus many a time the true history of the African has been lost in the transcripts of history and thus Africans have learned to style themselves according to Mbembe either in a natavist, voluntarism or victim manner which he coins as afro-radicalism. Thus, Mbembe argues that the African narrative is characterised in a mechanistic and reified vision of history causality is attributed to entities that are fictive and wholly invisible, but are nevertheless said to determine ultimately, the subjects life and work. According to this point of view the history of Africa can be reduced to a series of subjugations, narrativized in a seamless continuity (Mbembe, 243:2002). This trivialization of the impact of slavery, colonisation and apartheid on the African people by Mbembe clearly shows how he is unable to relate the facts of history with the reality of the African people. Yes we cannot blame all the suffering of the African nation in the present time on these events but it would be silly to imply that these events did not contribute to the situation Africa finds its self in today. One example is simply the marginalisation from industries in the capitalist system, organizations that never existed before these events Africans have learned to run and even compete globally in order to function as successful governments without prior knowledge. Worst though especially in South Africa is the legacy of education which many black natives were prescribed to be taught an inferior curriculum to their counterparts. These examples clearly state a difference in how different races were conditioned to practice their self the African has always had to assimilate with white culture in order to be viewed as progressive in the world. Nativism has never been viewed as something that could be a universal practice however this does not mean that African identity is unable to exist as a substance. We have come to realise in contemporary times that more and more Africans are amalgamating the traditional acts of self and those of a western culture thus to enable them to participate on a global level with other cultures in this African identity is not derived from the identities prescribed to them by their colonizers but rather the acceptance of old age tradition which indentifies them as individuals. Reference: Mbembe,A. 2002, “African Modes of Self Writing”, Public Culture, vol14,no1