Perspectives on Ethiopian Modernity

Preface The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) is a German political foundation committed to the values of social democracy. It runs various projects in more than 100 countries, promoting dialogue on democracy and development. To that end, FES supports and organizes public forums, in which prevailing political and societal topics are discussed. FES, in cooperation with Addis Ababa Universitylecture series and organized the Goethe under Institute, the theme has been‘Democracy organizing and thelecture Social series Question’ since ran2005; from the 2005- first 2008 and the contributions to this series were documented in a publication produced in the year 2010. The current series aims at critically exploring different perspectives on Ethiopian modernity. Ethiopia, a country dating back to 3000 BC, endowed with diverse ethnic groups, cultures and resources, has coupled its various traditional norms and practices with modernity. Ethiopia is also on a fast track developmental process, which aspires to give room to individual liberty and prosperity. However, many of these ‘modern practices’ are imported from abroad, forms that atprocess times of challenge modernity and or confront “Zemenawinet”. local contexts and culture. This leads to a specific Ethiopian This publication is one attempt to analyze “Zemenawinet”. FES would like to continue to exchange ideas about these developments with its partnering organizations, the Addis Ababa University and the Goethe Institute, and would like to express its gratitude for including FES in this continued dialog. Arne Schildberg Resident Representative 1 Table of Contents • Introduction 3 • Andreas Eshete: Modernity: Its Title to Uniqueness and its Advent in Ethiopia 10 • Bahru Zewde: Evolution of Professional Historiography in Ethiopia 27 • Baye Yimam: Modernity, Language and Identity 38 • EliasModernity Yitbarek: Reflections on the Urban Changes of Addis Ababa: Slums, Change and49 • Fasil Ghiorgis: Modernity and Change in Addis Ababa 55 • Elizabeth W. Giorgis: The Beginning of Ethiopian Modernism: A Brief Synopsis on the Inception of Ethiopian Visual Modernism (1957-1974) 61 • Katrin Bromber: Improving the Physical Self: Sport Body Politics and Ethiopian Modernity, ca. 1920-1974 77 • Yonas Admassu: What Were They Writing About Anyway? Tradition and Modernization in Amharic Literature 99 • Denis Theulin: The Impact of Development Aid on Modernization in Ethiopia: The EU Perspective 123 2 Introduction The idea of Zemenawinet came from Professor Andreas Eshete, President of Addis Ababa University from 2002-2010. Recognizing that the discourse of Ethiopian modernity largely refrains from discussing the ambivalence and plurality of modernity in terms of Ethiopia’s historical and cultural experiences, Professor Andreas Eshete suggested a lecture series on Zemenawinet to discuss the maze of contestation and opposition within Ethiopian modernist studies. The fourteen lectures conducted from March 2009 to November 2011 are the collaborative efforts of the Goethe Institut Addis Ababa, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Addis Ababa University. Zemenawinet replaced the lecture series entitled Democracy and the Social Question. This series was also organized by the three institutions. Zemenawinet called on a range of interdisciplinary scholars to consider issues of modernity within national and international contexts. A wide range of subjects related to Ethiopian modernity were consequently presented by scholars from all spectrums of Ethiopian intellectual thought. Complex aesthetic, political, and philosophical questions governed the discussions that explored Ethiopia in multiple ways—its history, its language, its literature, its rich cultural heritage, and its patriarchy. In the series’ most theoretical and provocative essay, Modernity: Its Title to Uniqueness and its Advent in Ethiopia, Andreas Eshete issues the philosophical construct of modernity’s uniqueness and explores the disciplinary identity and purpose of modernity as an inquiry of thought. He interrogates the variegated narratives of the experiences of modernity and its intellectual enterprise. Leaving aside worries about the emergence of modernity and its causes, we can arrive at rich characterizations of modernity that people with different historical and ethical perspectives can accept. A special feature and self-image is that modernity is the end, not of course chronologically, but, in the Hegelian sense, categorically and as history defined as the realization of human3 freedom. It is in this respect that modernity is a vindication of the values of the Enlightenment and, more directly, of the ideals of the French revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. Modernity thus marks the decline or end of religious and traditional authority, including the authority of the past. Eshete’s essay principally charts the central values of modernity and, more importantly, the significance of fraternity as one of modernity’s imperative ideals: ‘The public ideals realized in the modern age are ideals for all human beings. In that sense, fraternity is a central idea of modernity. It is undeniable that modernity provides the possibility of shared values, aims and bonds amongst all human beings and peoples and hence the modern form of solidarity I call fraternity. Indeed, it is striking that it is only in the modern age that we are all contemporaries. Modernity is the era where humanity shares a common destiny.’ Inunique the second to Ethiopia, part of and his which essay, heAndreas believes Eshete offers looks highly into vibrant specific contributions contexts that to he the thinks debates are surrounding modernity. In this regard, he invokes the resonance of the Ethiopian Student Movement that he says, not only disrupted the realm of Ethiopian politics in a radical way, but one that also played a critical role in the making of Ethiopian modernity. He looks into recent global anti-capitalist movements that have fundamentally altered the notion that capitalism is the only successful economic system. He says that current inequities of the global capitalist system have given rise to a worldwide popular consciousness against capitalism, henceforth announcing that socialism is undeniably back on the agenda. He evaluates the striking similarities of the radical socialist imaginaries and sensibilities of the Ethiopian Student Movement to contemporary global experiences and states: What is arresting about the anti-capitalist protests is that deep doubts about capitalism itself are now vividly visible in the citadels of capitalism. My immediate motive for 4 invoking the anti-capitalist protests here is to indicate that there may yet be reason to resist the widespread temptation to declare the death of socialism, a leading public ideal of modernity embraced by the Ethiopian Student Movement. Though, I am certain that there is no single explanation for the rise of modernity anywhere, I shall now propose that the Ethiopian Student Movement was a midwife of Ethiopian modernity. On another spectrum, Baye Yimam investigates the overlapping relationship of language, culture and identity and the construction of the ‘modern’ within this framework. Although several studies have been made on language as a central body that constructs identity, little research has been made on the consequence of Ethiopian modernity for language. In his essay Modernity, Language and Identity, Yimam argues that modernity is “a transform of the past”. He adds that “its main characteristic features are partly innovation and partly retention of the distinctive features of the past and the socio-cultural relations therein, through a process of revision and total transformation.” He asserts that if modernity is such that it is “internally motivated or externally induced, or both,” it is imperative to look into “what such changes would mean in the study of language.” Accordingly, he navigates modernity’s discursive effects and implications on language. In What Were They Writing About Anyway? Tradition and Modernization in Amharic Literature, Yonas Admassu examines the intellectual context of the making of Ethiopian modernity as he foregrounds multiple imaginaries about what it meant to be modern for Ethiopian literary intellectuals. Admassu also problematizes the intellectual’s idealized and abstracted conventional preconceptions of modernity, particularly those who set the foundational narrative for the Ethiopian Student Movement, of whom Andreas Eshete referenced to having had played a midwifery role in Ethiopian modernity. While the political economy of modernity which Ethiopian scholars deliberate so much upon is inescapable, the cultural space opened up by this political economy is what Admassu is interested in. He “focused on two generations of writers whose outlooks and points of view, while certainly opposed, nevertheless shared the same concern of seeing ‘their’ Ethiopia wake from its centuries-old slumber and join the 5 community of modernized nations.” Admassu concludes that the distinct role these intellectuals played in the articulation of Ethiopian modernity was very crucial in shaping its evolution. Bahru Zewde, Ethiopia’s prominent historian, focused on historiography. In Evolution of Professional Historiography in Ethiopia, Bahru Zewde gave an account of the Ethiopian historical profession by engaging with historical theory, historical method and professional historiography. His insight into professional historiography bears the following: There are a number of features or characteristics

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