Economics, Politics & Geolinguistic Praxis in Kongo-Ngola
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Beer, Blood & the Bible: Economics, Politics & Geolinguistic Praxis in Kongo-Ngola (Congo-Angola) By Edward C. Davis IV A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in African American Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Sam Mchombo, Chair Professor G. Ugo Nwokeji Professor Laura Nader Spring 2018 Beer, Blood & the Bible: Economics, Politics & Geolinguistic Praxis in Kongo-Ngola (Congo-Angola) © 2018 Edward C. Davis IV ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1 Abstract Beer, Blood & the Bible: Economics, Politics & Geolinguistic Praxis in Kongo-Ngola (Congo-Angola) by Edward C. Davis IV Doctor of Philosophy in African American Studies Professor Sam Mchombo, Chair This dissertation argues that educational praxis rooted in local epistemologies can combat the erosion of ethno-histories and provide quotidian securities for quality, tranquil lives free of war and exploitative practices of extraction and overuse of the land for non-subsistence purposes, which deny basic human life to those on the ground. Colonial ethnocide, linguicide, and epistemicide serve as the central focus of this study, which uses mixed anthropological methods to investigate economic production, political history, and cultural transmission, with the goal of advancing language revitalization efforts concerning native epistemologies within the multidisciplinary fields of Africana, African, Black, African American, and African diaspora studies. This dissertation employs a toolbox of techniques unique to the four fields of anthropology (physical/biological, archaeological, but especially socio-cultural and linguistic anthropology) and the four elements of culture [kinship/gender, economics, politics, and religion]. Three metaphors (Beer, Blood, and Bible) examine scientific agriculturalist economies, local jural-legal systems of governance organized by uterine kinship tied to geospatial terrains by consanguinity, and sociolinguistic worlds of pre-colonial indigenous Kongo-Ngola, which occur contemporaneously alongside post-colonial capitalist, neoliberal geopolitical, and cosmological paradigms in present-day Congo-Angola. As such, geolinguistics, ethno-history, and terroir epistemologies become vital to survival and to the continuity of humanity in peace. By decolonizing science, deconstructing imperialist systems of power-knowledge, and reconfiguring ontologies of production and reproduction, this dissertation revitalizes locally grounded epistemologies which face extinction and extermination due to colonial wars of geological extraction, while recognizing significant depths of indigenous governance within opposing post- colonial structures, with respect to technologies of literacy, cosmological consciousness, and numeracy relevant to generational preservation and perpetuation of heritage into the future. The complexities of global conglomerate beverage (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) production and the consumption of beer music video advertisements in areas of famine, drought, and wars of extraction produce a set of interconnected issues where linguistic transformations have taken place through the transcription and translation of erased indigenous knowledge in favor of 2 rewritten Euro-American metanarratives. The ethical and judicial rhetorical method used in this dissertation examines bloodline uterine kinship and descent in Kongo-Ngola traditional systems of governance in comparison to the present-day Euro-American colonial state apparatus. Finally, using an epideictic logos rhetorical style, the biblical metaphor considers transcribing knowledge across space and time, and simultaneously erasing indigenous epistemologies and cosmologies. A deeper analysis could compare written linguistic religious traditions. Literacies in Euro- American languages ushered in the loss of African cultural practices and systems of knowledge and belief; however, the act of signifyin(g) remains present on both sides of the Atlantic. One must note the era of missionary expansion provided both negative setbacks, and some complicated advancements in the way of education and medical aid, but also forced religious conversions. All the same, indigenous religious beliefs remain present in local languages, where limited mixed-language occurs. Through the preservation of indigenous languages and kinship networks, fragments of local epistemologies remain despite colonialism. Considering the metaphor of the elephant and the blind men, one questions whether global religions, economic infrastructures, and systems of power and thought ever produce universal uniformity and total erasure when merging with local practice. Legacies of the past live on in the people, on the ground. Through practices of remembrance, experts resurrect indigenous bodies of knowledge for future generations. This work becomes significant to African American studies given the historical significance of missionaries educated at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who lived in Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola from the 1880s into the early 1900s, both preserving and changing local culture, following the Conference of Berlin and leading to the independence movements. Their goals of progressive work in the era of Old Jim Crow do not make up the bulk of this dissertation. The chapter entitled Bible uses the legacy of these late nineteenth and early twentieth century Black American diasporic transnational global returnees in order to transpose a practical five-language Swadesh list, where lexicography precedes cultural and linguistic revitalization techniques anthropologists on the ground use to resurrect lost folkloric knowledge linked to local languages. Kongo-Ngola since migrations of Proto-Bantu speaking peoples parallels with Congo-Angola since 1880 as one of many contested sites, from whence to develop multiple comparative analyses of geolinguistic divisions of indigenous ethnic communities. Thus, the Lunda of Congo, Angola, and Zambia, or the BaKongo of DR Congo, Republic of Congo, and Angola, share similar struggles of various ethnolinguistic groups in Africa and around the world divided by Euro-American geopolitical colonial boundaries. The Portuguese spent four centuries extracting millions of Africans to the Americas from the Kongo-Ngola region during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, such that half of the captive Africans taken to the New World arrived in Brazil. Likewise, the Portuguese remained in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola, as well as in Indian Goa and Chinese Macau well into the twentieth century. Thus, within the hegemony of the Anglophone world, one must further problematize narratives of African and world histories of forced migrations with Lusofonia in mind. Analyses in ethnolinguistics prove vital to this study, taking into account lost indigenous scientific knowledge of agriculture related to present-day post-colonial marketing of beer advertisements, followed by the layered political histories of queens and kings who ruled 3 empires in the region before the colonial era. As I map myself within and outside of this text, with elements of autoethnography, reifying my humanity in the tradition of the Negro slave narratives of two centuries ago, I reflect on the role of literacy and pedagogy for colonial subordination and for liberation, coupled with the purpose of retaining ethno-mathematics for not only computational scientific purposes in local education, but also for the philosophical grounds of existence and being linked to Eulerian paths. In order to ascertain solutions to the problems of the politics of extraction and exploitation since the Portuguese arrived in Ceuta on the Mediterranean coast of northwest Africa in 1415— with use of Moorish technologies in cartography, algebra, geography, and languages—one must understand human inequalities that consistently revisit us. In this dissertation, I allude to French oenology and theories of terroir— cultural geoscientific agronomic and mineral richness of the land— in the face of warfare in Africa, for the benefit of improved technological advancements in the rest of the world. Sadly, cobalt and coltan in our cell phones, replicate patterns and paradigms of global rubber exploitation of a century ago, just as cocoa and sugar cane crippled the backs and caused the deaths of millions of colonized, oppressed, and enslaved people around the globe. However, from the ground up, these lost histories can be revived, and resurrected, with meaning for the present, and displayed in libraries and museums in the global South, and in spaces for marginalized Black subjects and diasporic citizens hoping to liberate the minds of their future descendants. Thus, the role of the museum in the South and the North ends this dissertation with the meaning of the Mwana Pwo (Muana Puo) Chokwe mask, exploring the local and global, the rural and urban, diasporas and intersecting geographies within and outside of Africa, within and beyond epistemological and linguistic boundaries, remaining true to holism and balance. This triangular metaphor of Beer, Blood, and the Bible explained above concludes with an analysis of education in multiple spaces such that museums and schools teaching Kongo-Ngola native epistemologies in Congo-Angola, the United States, and Europe in deracinated colonial spaces, as well as in reclaimed territories of indigeneity. Perhaps the solution to colonial erasure and epistemicide rests within local universities