Introduction: Rethinking the African Diaspora Judith Byfield, special issue editor

The idea of one Africa to unite the thoughts and ideals of all native peo­ ples of the dark continent belongs to the twentieth century and stems nat­ urally from the West Indies and the United States. Here various groups of Africans, quite separate in origin, became so united in experience and so exposed to the impact of new cultures that they began to think of Africa as one idea and one land. —W.E.B. Du Bois

This special issue of the ASR devoted to the African diaspora grew out of conversations at several African Studies Association meetings. In both for­ mal and informal settings, participants made note of the recent tidal wave of scholarly, funding, and political interest in the African diaspora. It is clear that the African diaspora will belong to the twenty-first century as much as it belongs to the twentieth. Yet despite the exciting conferences and the new journals, many Africanists remain concerned about the way Africa and even the diaspora have been constructed in the discussion. Geo­ graphically, the African diaspora has been conceived in very narrow terms. With a focus primarily on African descendants in western Europe and the Americas, African migration across the Indian Ocean often was over­ looked. Attention to Africa itself has been problematic. In some instances, Africa was elided from the discussion (Cooper 1996); while in others, the generalizations about Africa reflected an unawareness of the tremendous

African Studies Review, Volume 43, Number 1 (April 2000), pp. 1-9 Judith Byfield is an associate professor of history at Dartmouth College where she teaches African and Caribbean history. Her main research interests are women's social and economic history in Nigeria. Her publications include "Innovation and Conflict: Cloth Dyers and the Interwar Depression in Western Nigeria" (Journal of African History 38 [1]) and "Pawns and Politics: The Pawnship Debate in Western Nigeria," in Toyin Falola and Paul Lovejoy, eds. Pawnship in Africa: Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective (1993). Herbook, The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Indigo Dyers in Abeokuta (Western Nigeria), 1850-1940 is forthcoming from Heinemann Press.

1 2 African Studies Review

quantity of outstanding research that now exists on multiple aspects of African societies (Lovejoy 1997; Gomez 1998). In order to more deeply engage scholars writing on the African dias­ pora, the Pan-African Caucus sponsored a roundtable on the topic at the 1998 ASA conference in Chicago. There, Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. Kelley presented a draft of their paper that attempted both to cri­ tique and to further the analysis of the African diaspora.2 The enthusiastic response at that session demonstrated the strong interest and reservations many Africanists share about this new generation of scholarship on the diaspora. This special issue builds upon that response and incorporates a broader range of perspectives on the diaspora. It presents a revised version of the Patterson and Kelley paper, commentaries on it from Africanists and non-Africanists, and articles from eight additional scholars. The articles and commentaries reflect the geographical, and to a lesser degree, the dis­ ciplinary breadth of diasporan scholarship. The articles in this volume accomplish several critical tasks. Collective­ ly they provide a provocative and stimulating critique of scholarship on the African diaspora. While the authors acknowledge limitations within a dias- poric framework, they nonetheless demonstrate that a diasporan perspec­ tive can refine our understanding of local, regional, and world histories. In addition, they identify critical theoretical and methodological issues that will influence research agendas of the twenty-first century.

Mapping the African Diaspora in Thought and Space

The geographical regions represented in this issue remind us that the dis­ persal of African populations was vast. Nonetheless, dispersal, as Patterson and Kelley point out, does not constitute a diaspora. According to Patter­ son and Kelley, the creation of a diaspora is in large measure contingent on a diasporic identity that links the constituent parts of that diaspora to a homeland. Contrary to Du Bois's suggestion, the notion of an African dias­ pora for which Africa was the homeland was not a natural development. It had to be socially and historically constituted, reconstituted, and repro­ duced. This is most apparent when one contrasts the development of a diasporic identity among African descendants on the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, and in the Americas. The crystallization of diasporic thought began very early in the history of African descended populations in North and South America. The major­ ity of these peoples were brought to the American shores as a consequence of the slave trade. As early as the eighteenth century, writers like Equiano helped establish a literary tradition that recalled Africa as a homeland. Equiano was certainly not alone. In Latin America, it can be argued that the writings of Juan Latino in the sixteenth century represented an even Rethinking the African Diaspora 3 earlier generation of diasporic thought (Patterson and Kelley 1998). Voluntary as well as enforced migration of Africans to the Arabian Peninsula and South Asia have a much longer history than the migration to the Americas, but as Ned Alpers argues in this volume, an equally well- articulated diasporic consciousness did not develop in these regions. The emphasis here is on articulation, for Alpers also demonstrates that although a literary tradition did not develop among African descendants across the Indian Ocean, one can still identify a number of cultural artifacts through which Africa was recalled. In parts of Oman, for example, Swahili still has currency, while in Gujarat, Indian sociologists have identified clan names that reveal African origin. Although the dispersal of Africans to these regions did not produce a comparable historical record of diasporic ruminations, conditions in the twentieth century have. Vijay Prashad shows that efforts to forge a diasporic consciousness and literature in India have taken a significant leap forward since the 1970s. Dalits, formerly called "untouchables," have forged a nationalist movement that links itself with the struggles of black peoples around the world and African Americans in particular. While Afro-Dalit scholars argue that Africans and Indians came from common ancestors, the recent development of this scholarship reinforces Patterson and Kel- ley's suggestion that we have to explore how a diasporic consciousness gets constructed and the historical, economic, and social factors that condition its development. In this case, African descent is only one factor of Dalit and African American common experience; they share histories of domination and resistance. They also share the temporal space of the late twentieth century in which advances in print, the internet, and other forms of com­ munication and travel allow greater access to each other and their respec­ tive constituencies. Consequently, Dalit construction of a diasporic identity has been more interdependent than that of previous generations. The rapid pace of technological change also facilitates greater inter­ dependence in refashioning diasporic cultural forms. In The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy illustrates how the evolution of the 1960s American hit "I'm So Proud" into the 1990 British reggae hit "Proud of Mandela" wove Africa, America, Europe, and the Caribbean together seamlessly. This song, which originated in the musical styles and experiences of black Chicagoans, was reformatted through Jamaican sensibilities and "produced in Britain by the children of Caribbean and African settlers to pay tribute to a South African hero" (1993:94-95). The particular sites of the diaspora that were foregrounded in the story of "I'm So Proud" also have a language in common English. Ivor Miller's contribution to this volume illuminates another genre of diasporic music. In Cuba, the Abakua society, a male secret society that derived principally from male leopard societies in the Cross River region of southeastern Nige­ ria, had a tremendous influence on popular music. Abakua words, chants, 4 African Studies Review and rhythms were incorporated into mambos and rumbas by musicians, many of whom belonged to Abakua societies. The popularity of Afro- Cuban jazz beyond the island's borders has taken these Abakua elements into Latin America, the United States, Japan, Europe, and multiple parts of Africa, especially Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This music is helping to fashion a diasporic consciousness that overrides the lan­ guage barriers created in part by former imperial borders. The distances traveled by these musical forms remind us that the relationship between Africa and the diaspora is not unidirectional. Abakua-inspired Afro-Cuban music also illuminates the dynamic rela­ tionship between expressive culture and politics as well as the complex nature of politics in the diaspora. Miller suggests that Cuba's Abakua prac­ titioners no longer look to Africa as the homeland. This music, whose his­ tory reflects the creativity and vitality of enslaved Africans, now stands as a symbol of Cuban identity and vitality despite the American embargo. As such it is part of the larger discourse that is not only a counterpoint but also a challenge and critique of capitalism and Euro-American hegemony, glob­ al forces that shaped the modern world.

Culture and Resistance

Capitalism and the rise of European hegemony gave the greatest stimulus to the dispersal of African populations around the world and helped to cre­ ate similar sets of experiences for African descendants around the globe. Whether based in Brazil, the United States, Haiti, or Mauritius, the major­ ity of black men and women experienced the rigors of plantation slavery. They also experienced similar struggles to gain full membership in their societies after abolition. Kim Butler demonstrates that we can achieve greater refinement in our analysis of race, identity, and politics in postabolition societies if we uti­ lize a diasporan framework and look beyond the national (Brazilian) or regional (Latin American) level. This framework offers new methodologi­ cal insights in part because it forces us to ask different research questions. A diasporic framework will allow us to explore the phenomenon of dias­ pora and to examine different diasporas in relation to each other. Her dis­ cussion of postabolition Afro-Atlantic societies illustrates the rich possibili­ ties of her argument. Butler shows that the construction of blackness in the United States was not universally shared around the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. In fact, a spectrum of strategies from separatist to integrationist existed, and the strategy pursued by any community of African descent was in part shaped by the basis on which they were excluded within their society. Thus in Sal­ vador, the capital of Bahia, the strong emphasis on the practice of Yoruba- Rethinking the African Diaspora 5 based religion and a corresponding weak history of black political advoca­ cy reflected the fact that discrimination occurred most notably along cul­ tural lines. Butler's work challenges us to move beyond linguistic borders and demonstrates the sociopolitical and cultural factors that shaped the particular meaning of blackness and its praxis in specific settings. In Salvador the construction of "blackness" drew heavily from African cultural and philosophical resources, but throughout the diaspora Africa was not the only resource, as Amanda Kemp and Robert Vinson demon­ strate. For black South Africans, like James Thaele, black Americans from the U.S. and the Caribbean provided rich cultural and philosophical per­ spectives that were incorporated into their struggle to attain full citizenship rights in the increasingly segregated South Africa of the 1920s. As segrega­ tionist legislation made the distinction between "civilized" modernist whites and "uncivilized native" subjects, many black South Africans were compelled to argue and demonstrate that modernity and its complement of full citizenship rights could be attained by blacks. Black American achievement became "proof of African capacities to successfully traverse modern society" (Kemp and Vinson). In the nineteenth century, the A.M.E church and the McAdoo Jubilee Singers were the models of black Ameri­ can achievement (Campbell 1998), but for Thaele in the 1920s Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association was the primary model of black modernity. Thaele also supported workers' rights. He was a promi­ nent member of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union, the mili­ tant black trade union, many of whose members also belonged to the Com­ munist Party. Thus Thaele's construction of the "modern Negro" did not draw exclusively from Garvey's pan-African politics; he also was in the swell of other international social movements.

Overlapping Diasporas

At the same time that Africa figured strongly in the cultural, historical, and philosophical matrix of diasporan communities, Africa was not the only diaspora to which African descendants belonged. Herman Bennett argues that African descendants were contributors to and participants in the con­ struction of other diasporas, although many scholars assume that slavery and race are the only nodes around which the lives of Africans and their descendants revolved. Examining the story of Luisa de Abrego, a woman of African descent who lived in Spain and migrated to Mexico in the sixteenth century, Bennett shows that Luisa was very familiar with the modern world of Catholic Spain and contributed to the expansion and transmission of Spanish culture within the "New World." Yet her Africanness marginalized her within analyses of Spain and Mexico, for scholars have failed to per­ ceive her also as a vector of Spanish culture. Bennett also shows us that 6 African Studies Review

Luisa's story could not be explicated by writing a history bounded by national borders, for her life crossed multiple borders and subjectivities, reflecting what die historian Earl Lewis (1995) calls overlapping diasporas. Her experiences also remind us that the construction of an African dias- poric identity does not occur in isolation. It is shaded and nuanced by broader socioeconomic, cultural, and political developments of a given his­ torical moment. In today's jet-powered world where migration has accelerated, more and more people live within and across overlapping diasporas. In the last three decades, for example, economic decline and/or political conflicts have triggered significant movements of African populations within and beyond the continent. New African communities have formed across die United States as well as in Europe. In Italy, Italian-speaking Senegalese migrants are now producing films, novels, and autobiographical works diat incorporate Senegalese oral and literary forms into Italy's narrative tradi­ tions (Parati 1997, 1998). In the United States, cities like New York have become home to significant numbers of Nigerians, Ediiopians, and Sene­ galese as well as Jamaicans, Haitians, and Dominicans. All can be claimed as part of die African diaspora, but their relationship to Africa, to each other, and to black Americans is mediated by national and ethnic identi­ ties, gender, and class. Together diey have forged multinational, multi-eth­ nic urban black communities of overlapping diasporas with both shared and competing interests. The concept of overlapping diasporas also creates analytical space for African migrants who, though resident outside the continent, remain polit­ ically and ideologically connected to and defined by politics within Africa. From his examination of Africans in Britain in the first half of the twenti­ eth century, Hakim Adi argues diat often dieir political identity was sub­ sumed under general pan-Africanism without adequate attention to the distinctive features of their political aims and consciousness. Many organi­ zations formed by Africans were certainly pan-African in character, but their ideology and aims changed over time and those changes were linked with political developments on the continent. The questions Adi raises become even more relevant as we enter the new millennium. Today's African migrants are recreating the political as well as associational life they shared in their countries of origin. Igbo migrants in the U.S., for example, have created village unions which par­ ticipate in projects that are beneficial to their American communities, to the larger Nigerian society in America, as well as to their specific home vil­ lages in Nigeria. Chinwe Ajene learned, for instance, that the Erne Associ­ ation in Fort Worth, Texas, has assisted low-income people in determining if they qualify for the earned income tax credit and also raised funds to ren­ ovate two children's homes in eastern Nigerian, one in Nnewi and the other in Amichi. Meanwhile, the Boston chapter of the Anioma village Rethinking the African Diaspora 7

union donated money to the Yoruba Association to ship the body of a deceased member back to Nigeria (Ajene 1998:184—85). These examples are indicative of the complex social realities that scholars of Africa and scholars of the diaspora must address together. The articles in this volume make a very strong case for greater collab­ oration across disciplines and geographical regions. Since the creation of the African diaspora is an ongoing dynamic process, Africanists have a crit­ ical role to play in refining the questions that are asked and the theories that are derived. The recent wave of emigration from the continent, for example, has created ample opportunities for collaborative work on migra­ tion and identity formation. Important scholarship has been written on migration within the continent and these studies should inform the analy­ sis of current emigration (Cohen 1969; Bozzoli 1991; Eades 1994; Manchuelle 1997; Shack & Skinner 1979; Schildkrout 1978). Collaborative projects could reveal distinctive patterns that are continued by African migrants in Europe and the United States today as well as new insights into the consequences of international migration for African rural and urban economies. Africanist scholars also have much to contribute to the discourse on the commodification of culture as African designs and cultural products grace the fashion magazines and the burgeoning home decor market (Quarcoopome 1998). Africa-inspired products are simultaneously part of global processes shaped by a deepening and expanding African diasporic identity, as well as capital's willingness to derive profits even from socially and politically marginalized communities. Yet African producers are not merely victims in this process. Artisans such as Kente weavers, indigo dyers, and mask carvers, and African governments are also active agents in the creation of international markets for their products. Through internation­ al and nationally funded programs and individual initiatives, African arti­ sans are producing an array of items that meet the needs and tastes of for­ eign consumers (Brown 1985; Byfield forthcoming; Steiner 1994). Thus African as well as African American agency in the commodification of African cultural production cannot be ignored. Similarly, scholars of popular culture in Africa have much to contribute to discussions on the globalization of diasporic culture. Rastafarianism originated in Jamaica, but believers are to be found across Europe, as well as in West Africa and Mauritius (Alpers, this volume; Savishinsky 1994). Reggae music which was critical to the popularization of Rastafarianism is extremely popular among young people across the continent. African reg­ gae singers have emerged such as the Nigerian group The Mandators, and Majek Fashek. Following in the paths of Bob Marley and Fela, Fashek uses music to talk about religion, politics, poverty, and internationalism.4 In addition, he has begun the process of indigenizing this musical form, not unlike the founders of Juju music. The pioneers of the musical forms that 8 African Studies Review

merged into Juju music incorporated Afro-Latino instruments and rhythms that had been introduced into nineteenth-century Lagos by repatriated Yorubas from Brazil and Cuba (Waterman 1990:31-42).5 These examples should demonstrate that studying Africa's diasporas, and mapping its geography and its ideological constructions, is not a sim­ ple exercise nor should it be relegated to the wasteland of intellectual fads. A diasporic framework opens up new questions as well as new ways of writ­ ing and understanding African history and world history.

References Ajene, Chinwe. 1998. "Our Culture Is the Tie That Binds the Fabric Together": Igbo Migration and the Creation of Transnational Igbo Communities in the United States." Honors thesis, Department of History, Dartmouth College. Akyeampong, Emmanuel. Forthcoming. "Africans in the Diaspora; The Diaspora and Africa." African Affairs. Bozzoli, Belinda. 1991. Women ofPhokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, andMigrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann. Browne, Angela. 1985. "Rural Industry and Appropriate Technology: The Lessons of Narrow-Loom Ashanti Weaving." African Affairs 82 (326): 29-43. Byfield, Judith. Forthcoming. The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Indi­ go Dyers inAbeokuta (Nigeria), 1850-1940. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann. Campbell, James T. 1998. Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Cohen, Abner. 1969. Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study ofHausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cooper, Frederick. 1996. "Race, Ideology and the Perils of Comparative History." American Historical Review 101 (4): 1122-138. Diouf, Sylvianne A. 1997. Senegalese in New York: A Model Minority? Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Du Bois, W.E.B. [1947] 1985. The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History. New York: International Publishers Co. Eades, J. S. 1994. Strangers and Traders: Yoruba Migrants, Markets and the State in North­ ern Ghana. Trenton: Africa World Press. Fashek, Majek. 1991. "I come from de ghetto." Spirit of Love and the Prisoners of Con­ science. New York: Interscope Records. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity andDouble Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gomez, Michael. 1998. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lewis, Earl. 1995. "'To Turn as on a Pivot': Writing African Americans into a Histo­ ry of Overlapping Diasporas." American Historical Review 100 (3): 765-87. Lovejoy, Paul. 1997. "The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of Ethnicity, Culture and Religion under Slavery." Studies in the World History of Slavery, Abo­ lition and Emancipation 2 (1). Manchuelle, Francois. 1997. Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848-1960. Adiens: Ohio University Press. Rethinking the African Diaspora 9

Matory, J. Lorand. 1999. "The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yoruba Nation." Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1): 72-103. Patterson, Tiffany Ruby, and Robin D. G. Kelley. 1998. "Reflections on the African Diaspora: Context for Historical Explanation." Paper presented at the African Studies Association, Chicago, October 30. Parati, Graziella. Forthcoming. "Black Italy: Representing Immigrants in Contem­ porary Italian Film." Africa Italia. Santarcangelo di Romagna: Fara Editore. . 1997. "Looking through Non-Western Eyes: Immigrant Women's Autobi­ ographical Narratives in Italian." In Writing New Identities: Gender, Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Europe, ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler and Sidonie Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 118-42. Quarcoopome, Nii O. 1998. "Pride and Avarice: Rente and Advertising." In Doran Ross, ed., Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Rente and African American Identity. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Savishinsky, NeilJ. 1994. "Rastafari in the Promised Land: The Spread of ajamaican Socioreligious Movement among the Youth of West Africa." African Studies Review 37 (3): 19-50. Schildkrout, E. 1978. People of the Zongo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shack, W. A., and E. P. Skinner, eds. 1979. Strangers in African Societies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Steiner, Christopher. 1994. African Art in Transit. New York: Cambridge University Press. Waterman, Christopher. 1990. Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Pop­ ular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Deborah King, Carolyn Brown, Ifi and Ehiedu Iweriebor, and the ASR reviewers for their helpful advice and suggestions. I would also like to thank Emmanuel Akyeampong for sharing his forthcoming article with me. 2. Patterson and Kelley began this endeavor separately, before joining forces. Earl Lewis, who has also written on the topic, was to be a third contributor but sub- sequendy had to withdraw. See Lewis (1995). 3. See Diouf (1997) and Akyeampong (fordrcoming) for important discussions on recent African migration to Europe and the U.S. 4. For example, see his song "I come from de ghetto" (Fashek 1991). "If you go to Lagos State Nigeria Afrika, you'll see little children roaming around the street of Lagos. They sell all kinds of food, all these times, all these years. Since the colonial masters gave Afrika leaders Freedom, they still abuse the little chil­ dren. It's a shame to our leaders, for there will be no future for Afrika until they respect the dignity of the little children I come from the ghetto Socrates come from de ghetto. Mandela come from de ghetto. Steve Biko come from de ghetto. Jesus Christ come from de ghetto. Mohammed come from de ghetto " 5. For an important discussion of the influence of the diaspora in the construc­ tion of Yoruba culture and identity, see Matory (1999). SUNJATA KINSHIP BAMBA SUSO A FAMILY'S JOURNEY and BANNA KANUTE. IN AFRICA AND AMERICA Translated and Annotated by Gordon Innes, PHILIPPE WAMBA Edited with an Introduction and Additional "A celebratory, affirmative vision of pan- Notes by Lucy Dur6n and Graham Furniss. African unity...will have broad relevance and This book brings together translations of personal meaning for every student of the live performances by two leading Gambian African Diaspora."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. jalis (or bards). Where Banna Kanute's Plume 400 pp. 0-452-27892-9 $14.00 exciting version is all about violent action, supernatural forces, and the struggle for mastery, Bamba Suso uses far more dia­ logue to reveal his insight into human rela­ LAND OF A THOUSAND HILLS tionships. A map, notes, and lists of the MY LIFE IN RWANDA characters help nonspecialists gain access ROSAMOND HALSEY CARR to one of the major epic oral traditions of with ANN HOWARD HALSEY Africa. "Carr's book is a testament to the courage, Penguin Classics 160 pp. 0-14-044736-9 $11.95 perseverance, and resilience of the land to which she has given her heart."—San Francisco Examiner. mm Plume 256 pp. 0-452-28202-0 $13.00 mmumm FARAN FRAGILE BRANCHES "Startling...passionate. Farah's mas­ TRAVELS THROUGH terpiece."— The New York Times Book Review. The fits* i»v&i in Nuruddin's THE JEWISH DIASPORA Farah's Blood in the Sun trilogy tells JAMES R. ROSS the story of Askar, a man coming of The author offers a new perspective on sjsie ifitisa iurfftof' of modern Africa. ancient questions, thoughts, and rituals m*f. sm-msma-t suae through descriptions of his visits to six ALSO IN PENGUIN: unusual Jewish communities in Peru, Brazil, India, the Amazon, Israel, and GIFTS 256 pp. 0-14-029642-5 613,00 Uganda. He discovers how they have endured and what they can teach us about SECRETS ,.-. 0-14428045-6 $12.95 our own traditions. Riverhead 240 pp. 1-57322-165-1 $23.95

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