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Third Text, Vol. 19, Issue 4, July, 2005, 419–426

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TaylorCTTE112370.sgm10.1080/09528820500123877Third0000-0000Original2005194000000JulyRasheedAraeen12044thirdtext@kalapress.freeserve.co.uk (0)20 Greencroft Text and& Article7372 Francis (print)/0000-0000Francis 2005 0826 GardensLondonUK Group Ltd Ltd (online) to be done than simply shouting at the Europeans The True Location of about their Eurocentricity. But he ends up recom- mending that we preoccupy ourselves with pointing Ernest Mancoba’s out the inhumanity of Eurocentrism, which brings everyone back to the same thing; preoccupation with Modernism Eurocentrism. That is the problem with the contest for modernism; it is a contest for a place in Europe’s narrative of the world, a mere ‘We were there, too’. Olu Oguibe Of course we were, but then what? My own work on modernity and modernism in Africa, which Araeen helped me tremendously in clarifying, was to propose that in order properly to Rasheed Araeen has raised issues that require further locate colonial and postcolonial achievements, we and deeper thought, as well as responses, especially must begin to force a wedge between modernity and from Africans. The problem with Africa is that there modernism rather than continue to treat both as seems to be little truly great thinking on the level of synonyms. Mancoba’s achievement was not that he Fanon and Nkrumah going on at the moment, or, if was part of a modernist movement that erased him there is, some of us are certainly not aware of it. If from its history (as it was bound to), but that he my reading of the situation is correct, then obviously helped define African modernity. I illustrate that in something has to change. my paper1 by showing the turning points in his work I would make two further observations that are and tracing what I understand to be the sensibilities linked. One is that there is indeed some assessment underlying those turns: from a concern for the mere of the importance of Mancoba that does not simply liturgical within the European tradition to an inter- locate him within a supposedly important European est in the mechanics and syntax of African sculpture, movement. My assessment of Mancoba in fact pays and eventually a personal resolution of the divergent little attention to his membership or affiliation with historical trajectories that constitute a colonial or CoBrA. That affiliation has its significance, magni- postcolonial modernity, including expatriation and fied by its exorcism from the history of the move- nostalgia, Mancoba arrives at a stage of resolution ment. However, as Araeen argues, it is far from the analogous to the emergence of modern individualism most significant of Mancoba’s achievements. From in African consciousness. where I stand at the moment, it is in fact far from When we direct our energies to this kind of read- significant. So he was affiliated to CoBrA through ing and enquiry, we overcome ‘shouting’ at Europe his wife. So he associated with an avant-garde move- for its Eurocentrism, and begin to ask the right ques- Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 ment in Europe. So they all stole ideas from him and tions related to Africa or Asia or wherever our then even have denied him. So what? As Araeen also concerns lie. With frames such as these, we may rightly points out, that is the norm, not an excep- begin to ask: how did Uzo Egonu’s work relate to tion. Nothing new there unless one wants to Mancoba’s? How does Emmanuel Jegede’s? How do continue preoccupying oneself with the story of Chinua Achebe’s and Ngugi wa Thio’ngo’s writing, Eurocentric erasure. It is time to move on. Araeen Frantz Fanon’s analyses, Amílcar Cabral’s polemics, makes that point, too. And that brings me to the Ousmane Sembene’s cinema all relate to that art and second observation. What is the merit of preoccupa- the project of forging an African modernity? What tion with the contest for modernism? I believe that it was apt about these activities? What was historically has its place, but we all ought to go beyond it. faulty? Where were the philosophical rifts and short- There is the irony in Araeen’s call. He uses the comings that would eventually produce the present wrong illustration and thus leads back to the very postcolonial predicament? point he wishes us to depart from in order to proceed. The contest for acknowledgment in modernist He begins by rightly pointing out that there is more narratives is a no-brainer and a no-winner. Shouting

Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online © 2005 Kala Press/Black Umbrella http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09528820500123877

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against Eurocentrism is a been-there, done-that. discourse which begins to show appreciation of his What is required now is that we read within the seminal role. Dialogue was central in Mancoba’s frames of a larger historical moment than modern- world-view. ism ever was, namely the struggles of colonised First let me reassure those who are interested peoples to contest their predicament and forge their that a project is already under way which will allow modernity, as well as subsequent complications and us to revisit and appraise Mancoba’s legacy. I am reconfigurations of that predicament and their part of an organisation called ‘Art and Ubuntu’ meaning and implications in the postcolonial milieu. which has been established to explore the aesthetics I have been planning to iron out the ideas I have for and philosophy of Mancoba’s work and generate a a new book called The Postcolonial Predicament, discourse in South African society about it. but I do not really have the privilege of support to This process was begun by art devote myself to useful philosophical inquiry. historian Elza Miles whose role in bringing I think that Araeen’s call is pertinent, but it ends Mancoba and his work back to in by suggesting the wrong preoccupation. We cannot 1994, after 56 years away, laid the foundation for afford to stay with the question of Eurocentrism and any future work on his legacy. It was through her its discontents. We must return to the more pertinent book Lifeline Out of Africa and the exhibition question of where the rain began to beat us, as ‘Hand in Hand’ that South Africans came to meet Achebe suggested long ago, what some of us have Mancoba again. done to help avert it, and where we go from here. ‘Art and Ubuntu’ are picking up this baton and We must locate artists like Mancoba within this working to widen the discussion on Mancoba by larger frame and not dwell on whether or not preparing an exhibition for SANG (South Africa Europe cares about him. National Gallery) in 2006, and also a film, a book, and a series of art-making and art-educational work- shops. We will continue to explore Mancoba’s Notes aesthetics and philosophy and leading South African intellectuals and artists will contribute to this 1. See Olu Oguibe, ‘Reverse Appropriation as Nationalism in process. Elza Miles’s intimate knowledge of Early Modern African Art’, Third Text, 16:3, September 2002, Mancoba’s life and work will inform us as our work pp 243–59. unfolds, as will Wonga Mancoba, the artist’s son. Although Ernest Mancoba’s work towers inter- nationally, he is by no means well known in South Africa, so let me share some background on his South African roots as our work is intended to explore exactly this. Ernest Mancoba left South Africa for in 1938. He was 34, a mature adult, and had already The African Spiritual made a huge impact on his generation as a thinker. He had been the Chairperson of the Fort Hare Expression of Ernest debating society when a student there and had influ- enced the thought of some of our most significant Mancoba leaders including Govan Mbeki who became the Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 leading ANC intellectual in subsequent decades and father to the current South African president Thabo Bridget Thompson Mbeki. Mancoba’s peer group included A C Jordan, a writer and thinker whose work in the 1930s antici- pated Ngugi’ wa Thiongo’s in its evaluation of I thank Rasheed Araeen for the beautiful apprecia- indigenous languages. He is sometimes better known tion he showed of Ernest Mancoba in his open letter. as the father of our current Minister of Culture, Since his intent was to initiate public discussion, I Pallo Jordan. am sharing some thoughts on Mancoba in this Mancoba was also friendly with Thomas public forum. It is interesting that this discussion Masekela, father of Hugh (the famous jazz musi- should have been generated in August 2004, for it cian) and Barbara (cultural activist and diplomat). was exactly one hundred years ago, in August 1904, He was also a friend of Nimrod Ndebele, father of that Ernest Mancoba was born. I wondered for some Njabulo (writer and theorist). He was closely associ- time how this centenary would be commemorated. It ated with Eddie Roux, author of Time longer than seems apt that this should occur through a public Rope, and a communist activist Jane and Goolam

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Gool and IB Tabata, founders of the Non-European wife and lifelong artistic comrade. He was interned Unity Movement. He participated in the All African by the Nazis during the Second World War, convention in 1935, a gathering of significant black narrowly missed being sent to a concentration camp, organisations opposed to the Herzog bills which married Sonja, and after the War was unable to were designed to further extend the 1913 Native return to South Africa with a European wife. Land Act and dispossess the black majority of more In Europe he could live together with his wife land and rights. He encouraged the and child, which would not have been possible in painter, who later followed him to Paris. South Africa. But he remained a black man in a When one assesses who Mancoba’s close friends Europe slowly and reluctantly decolonising (and were before leaving South Africa and traces their that probably still has not decolonised mentally) and heirs in terms of South African politics, literature, continuing on a path he had already set before and art, it is possible to see that he was part of the leaving South Africa. The philosophical and core group of leading thinkers in South Africa aesthetic premises of his work are entirely consistent during the 1930s. His memory and clarity of vision throughout his life. Naturally, over the course of were cherished by his friends decades after he left time, his expression, technique, and medium South Africa and their destinies were separated by evolved, and the milieu in Europe before and after the maelstrom of the Second World War in Ernest’s the Nazi internment was a slightly more encouraging case and the South African liberation struggle in the one for the practice of art than in South Africa. case of his friends. He could be described as a leader Therefore I cannot entirely agree with Araeen’s amongst leaders, and one wonders what role he assertion that being in Europe ( and Denmark) would have played had he stayed on in South Africa. was definitive in Mancoba’s new expression in paint- Yet, whilst profoundly respecting the values and ing and drawing. It was indeed a more conducive activities of his friends, he eschewed the material environment for him to exist in as an artist, but his discourse of politics in favour of a search for the path had already been decided a long time before, and integration of the spiritual with the material. This indeed very consciously and deliberately by drawing was his destiny as an artist and was premised on the on the best of South African and African philosophy African philosophical teachings of his mother. and aesthetics. What interests me more is the idea When Mancoba left South Africa he had already that in Europe, so far away from South Africa, he been working as a sculptor for many years doing distilled an essence of this knowledge that he carried commissions and achieving recognition within the with him. limits of a racially divided and white-dominated The message he conveys to me is rooted in the society. Symbolising the way African art was viewed fully conscious human being who carried the values by the dominant forces in South African society at of ubuntu, and much more besides, with him when that time, he had been offered a position producing he left South Africa. I feel that our work in deepen- curios for the Department of Native Affairs (one ing our understanding of Mancoba’s oeuvre is wonders how many other potentially great South revealing an aesthetic so profoundly rooted in South African artists are still sidelined into craft and curio), African pre-industrial art forms that one almost but Mancoba had committed himself to the full-time weeps at the realisation of what he was doing. practice of art and had a deeper sense of the artist’s All along, his work has only been appreciated role than that of simple diversion. He had already by a few far-sighted individuals, and it is encourag- established his philosophical and aesthetic approach ing that a new generation of ‘Third World origin’ Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 but needed more communion with fellow artists. Europeans is embracing Mancoba. However, as He was inspired by news (through discussions Araeen correctly points out, he could not be fully with artists Lippy Lipschitz and Elza Diomba) of the embraced in Europe because his work was implic- art world in Paris at that time. In particular he was itly a critique of the Western tradition including, interested to hear that there was a discourse about quite centrally, one that plundered the forms of African art in Paris, which was certainly not the case African art without addressing the spiritual content. in South Africa at the time, and he was very keen to Mancoba’s work is premised on his understand- explore this and indeed to view the great work from ing of art as taught to him by his mother, a traditional the rest of the continent that was stacking up in potter, who explained the role of art in pre-industrial European anthropological collections as part of the African society: the imbongi or praise poet was an colonial conquest. He was also keen to make contact artist whose role was to speak the unspeakable and with important thinkers from the diaspora such as C say the unsayable. It was this idea of the duty of L R James, whom he attempted to meet in London artists towards society that laid the firm foundation en route to Paris. for Mancoba’s sense of his role and purpose. Shortly after arriving in Paris he met Sonja The notion of ubuntu, which can be traced Verlov, the Danish sculptor who was to become his aesthetically in pre-industrial South African art

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forms, can equally be traced in Mancoba’s work. It is this African humanism, which allows his work to African Art History transcend the banalities of work located in binary oppositions, that shows the way forward for the world, not just for Africa. Frank Ugiomoh Mancoba’s work is firmly rooted in African concepts and perhaps leads the way, but he was utterly conscious and respectful of the importance of all ancient ancestral art. Like his comrades in I have read Rasheed Araeen’s thought-provoking CoBrA, he appreciated art that preceded the ‘prob- contribution on the African condition, which I lem of perspective’. Totems, runic scripts, Danish would like to place here within macro-cultural fresco paintings were all given their due. One history. I hold my own positions regarding his genu- wonders to what extent the ‘problem of perspective’ ine concerns. What do we then do? The concluding that he and Sonja had discussed so intently can be sections of an article I am about to send to Art traced directly to the rise to dominance of a Western History point to an aspect of the problem: rational society? The same society that industrialised and conquered the rest of the world quite brutally Is there, however, an end in sight for refocusing and today threatens the very existence of the Earth attempts at a contingent construction of historical as it rampages through ancient societies destroying meaning in African art? The prospect appears a long one with a preponderance of anthropologi- people and artefacts of ancient civilisations alike. cally inspired data that currently dominate the As Mancoba said, this world, this humanity, is subject of African art history. And where also the too beautiful to be destroyed and the only way we poststructalist creed concedes to the notion of can save it is if man can meet man equally. That he intracultural origins of historical endeavours and then expressed this simple yet profound message in despite current revaluations of multiculturalism astonishingly beautiful paintings and sculptures within the ambiences of the politics of recognition, allows us to engage with the spirit of his message and it does appear that the definition of history for take a second look at the sources of his inspiration. African art will remain problematic for a while. ‘Art and Ubuntu’ is now preparing an exhibition Edward Said’s paradox of the interlocutor, who as called ‘In The Name Of All Humanity: The African a non-anthropologist practising art history in Africa and an African, can be lost to the ideality of Spiritual Expression of Ernest Mancoba’. It is the subject of his/her discourse: in not digesting the intended to explore the South African and African tropic figurations and emplotment strategies from roots of Mancoba’s aesthetic. It will find the points where the ailing discipline of anthropology is of connection between the philosophy and aesthetic emerging and to have continued to adopt and that Mancoba took with him into exile and then uphold its epistemological strategies and the ideol- distilled in his work, and has its roots and continued ogies they serve in what ought to be an art history. existence here. At least many art history departments in Nigeria are locked in this debacle of interlocutorship.

This is a conclusion to a paper entitled, ‘Frank Notes Willett Versus Werner Gillon on African Art History: A Critical Exposition’.

Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 Bridget Thompson came to know about Ernest Mancoba What inspired the paper is the claim that Gillon’s through discussions with Govan Mbeki and Jane Gool Tabata in the early 1990s. She was introduced to Ernest Mancoba by A Short History of African Art is not a history text Elza Miles and had the privilege of meeting him in Paris in but a series of unconnected stories. The unfortunate 1994 and then subsequently a few more times in South Africa fact in reviewing the works of Willett and Gillon has and Paris. She made a film, Ernest Mancoba at Home, and been that they both pander to reductionist as well as began an exploration of his philosophy and aesthetic based on discussions with him. Her own rural Eastern Cape childhood grave uncertainties about the future of African art inspired an ongoing exploration of the expression of African history. cultural values within South African society.

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But this mode of entering into modernity not on The Abortion of Africa’s own terms has, according to him, created ‘a fundamental problem of a philosophical nature’ vis- Africa’s Modernity à-vis ‘Africa’s aspiration to its own political identity, its own world view and modern vision’. One such problem is the difficulty in unbundling Africa’s Denis Ekpo conception, practice, and appropriation of modernity from some of the bad ideas and bad habits ‘imported along with the means and expertise of modernisation from the West’. As a result, Africa’s position within Rasheed Araeen’s fresh and freshly illuminating modernity has been marked by, among other things, diagnosis of the maladies and impasses of modern- the emergence of mangled subjects whose trapped ism/modernity in African art practices and theories, vision and warped desires, driven by a self-hypno- philosophy, developmental practices, economic tised psycho-dependency on the West, have rendered habits etc, may just end up as the voice of one crying them incapable of rising ‘above the limits that this in the wilderness. The reason for this has nothing to [neo-colonial] dependency puts on its subjects’.2 A do with the voice, or the one, but with the desert telling symptom of the pathological dependencies of environment itself, especially its proverbial unrecep- Africa’s modernity is that it continues to breed disori- tiveness to fertilising treatments. For indeed Araeen’s ented subjects who desire and consume mostly what current bold intervention into the modernity debate they cannot produce and produce mostly that which enunciated in a series of recent papers1 – including they do not really desire, namely, violence, instability, an open letter to African thinkers, theorists, and art corruption, and underdevelopment. historians – can be said to point the way to such a Needless to say, this warped and barren condi- fertility-favouring alternative to the current reactive tion, as Araeen correctly infers, cannot be conducive barrenness that passes for African modernism in art to genuine, home-grown art, theory or creativity in and literary theories, art history, philosophy, and general, although it serves as a good breeding ideological debates. How does Araeen apprehend ground for all kinds of intellectual and artistic the trouble with Africa’s current mis-location not mendaciousness, including and above all shameless just within artistic and cultural modernism but also mimicries: within the global framework of a socioeconomic and technological modernity/modernisation? If the dominant sociocultural milieu of society does not represent its unique values, but is something First, there is the bold acknowledgement of the which has been imported or imposed upon it from paucity of Africa’s real contribution to artistic outside it is hard for the artist to escape from it. modernism. Second, even when such contributions exist, he opines, there is no compelling body of By this, Araeen means to say that the highly knowledge, no serious theories generated by Africans impaired, merely derivative postcolonial life-world to codify, ratify, celebrate, and market their art/ in which the artist operates has become a kind of modernistic significance. To illustrate this he refers to poisoned well from which no genuine, original, and the case of the South African, Ernest Mancoba, truly liberating art and cultural modernism could be whose early modernist artistic achievement has drawn. remained largely unrecognised and uncelebrated. He Of course Araeen is not unmindful of both the Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 blames this lack of recognition on an African inhibiting colonial legacies and the home-grown discourse of modernism which has remained stuck at inadequacies that continue to make things difficult a primal stage of endless complaints and accusations for the African artist: on the one hand, the ingrained against the West. Why has Africa’s practice and denigrating, primitivising proclivities of the Western discourse of artistic modernism stagnated at this reac- critic, on the other hand, the drastic lack of modern tive self-pitying discourse of resentment? Araeen then support structures and institutions at home. One provides a historical-genealogical contextualisation consequence of the difficulty of developing such of the current predicament of Africa’s location in modern support structures at home, together with modernism/modernity. the West-facing tropism of the artists themselves, is In his account, Africa’s entry into modernity came that African modernism in art practice, theory, and about historically as the paradoxical, unintended history has been delivered over to a recognition effect of what he considers the overturning of neurosis and a mimicry syndrome vis-à-vis the West. the ruses and the ‘crude ambition of colonial power’. Not only is the artist ‘in a constant struggle to catch The coloniser wanted servile human tools and in the up with whatever is happening in the West … but process of manufacturing these, the door of modern Africa has to constantly look toward the West for consciousness was inadvertently half-open to them. the recognition and legitimisation of whatever its

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artists do’. This dependency, according to Araeen, is This is the crux of the matter and the meaning of the bane of Africa’s ‘artistic vision which is unique the self-imposed burdens that Africa’s so-called artis- and its own’. tic-cultural modernisers drag about in every facet of But the kernel of Araeen’s contribution to the their depressive commerce with modernity/modern- modernity/modernism debate in Africa is his prag- ism. But I want to add that a hypertrophy, especially matist overturning of the politics of the prevailing at the foundational moments, of this aesthetico-ideo- accusatory, conspiratorial discourse and practice of logical misapprehension of modernity ended up modernism in Africa. Taking the Mancoba case as sowing the seeds of some malignant ideas, attitudes, an example, Araeen makes a strong case for us to and reflexes that contributed to the abortion of quit the stage of complaints and accusations in order Africa’s normal entry into socioeconomic/technolog- to build an Africa-originated socioeconomic as well ical modernisation. Consequently, I want to extrapo- as theoretical framework that will facilitate the late from the kernel of Araeen’s unassailable critique, apprehension, recognition, rehabilitation, and to some other consequences and linkages that inhere promotion of the modernist achievements and in the pathologies of African modernisms as contributions of original African artists like diagnosed by him. For instance, I would like to probe Mancoba and a few others. Why should we blame further the hitherto uninvestigated part the rhetoric the West for ignoring Africa’s artistic contributions and practice of African modernisms in art, literature, to modernism or for not doing what we Africans and ideology may have played in muddling, delaying, were supposed to do in the first place? or scuttling modernisation thinking and achieve- ments in Africa. Why do we expect the West to recognise Araeen uses the example of Mancoba, a visual Mancoba’s – and for that matter any other African artist, to provide the contextualisation of the debate artists’ – achievement? Is it not logical or rational on the predicament of Africa’s modernism/moderni- for the Western institution, given the fact that sation. This is indeed very appropriate for the reason Eurocentricity is fundamental to the West’s continuing vision based on its presumed supremacy that Africa’s self-consciousness of modernity first over others, to act as shield to any threat to this dawned in the realm of arts, especially written litera- vision? ture. It was largely in the aesthetico-cultural context of Africa’s initial native literary and artistic responses This to me is a direct blow to – indeed a complete to the shock of colonial conquest and domination pulling down of – the wailing walls, the signature that modernity first impinged itself on the conscious- code, of Africa’s anti-West, anti-Eurocentric ness of the acculturated Africans as a theme and a discourse of artistic modernism. And for a final problem. Accordingly, it can de said that the meta- levelling of the site of such perpetual complaints and codes including the psycho-cultural reflexes, the endless jeremiads, Araeen adds what I consider the ethos and ideals of Africa’s subsequent understand- founding questions of Africa’s pragmatist retreat ing and conception of modernity were first worked from wasteful and senseless anti-imperialism: out and put in place in the sphere of an essentially aesthetic apprehension of Africa’s encounter with But why is the West expected to do what it is not modernity via colonisation. Although Araeen rightly in its own interest, which is against its continuing talks of the paucity of Africa’s real contributions to ambitions and needs to perpetuate its dominance? artistic modernism, I think that such paucity is … Are Africans not wasting their creative adequately compensated for by the abundance of

Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 resources in what has now become a facile discourse of complaints and rhetoric against the Africa’s contribution to literary modernism. World- West? renowned masterpieces have come out of the pens of some African literary artists to articulate honour and What he is telling us is that the discourse of complaints celebrate Africa’s contributions. Consequently, I and blame is first an easy non-way out, second a need- think that the debate on Africa’s modernism/moder- less squandering of intellectual and creative energies nity could easily draw on some materials from the and above all mere shadow boxing – for it has abso- literary arts to complement and even enrich those lutely no effect on its target. Unless African artists, from the visual arts. Indeed some hidden, genealogi- critics, ideologues etc, grasp the cogency of this point cal dimensions of the modernity impasse may even be by coming to terms with the bio-cultural necessity for better elucidated from the angle of Africa’s literary Europe to be always Eurocentric in whatever it does modernism. As Dewey once said: ‘The [communica- or says (even when it say it is not), then we shall tive] force of arts, common to all the arts, is most continue, in endless orgies of rhetoric and impotent forcefully manifested in literature.’4 Accordingly, in gesticulations, to masochistically misunderstand the order to elucidate the full import and consequences West and modernity and to squander away otherwise of some of the aesthetically derived foundational useful modernity-learning/creating energies.3 impulses and ethos of Africa’s modernity conscious-

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ness, I want to expand the scope of Araeen’s artistic heroically. But in their very success were laid the modernism by bringing to bear on the debate the seeds of future bad influences. Although the artists crucial contributions of Africa’s first literary were pursuing their own aesthetic designs, yet the modernists such as Léopold Sédar Senghor, Chinua inevitable politico-ideological contours that the anti- Achebe, Tutuola Cheikh, Hamidou Kane, and Ngugi imperialist zeitgeist gave to such designs turned their wa Thiong’o. These pioneer writers-poets, novelists, artistic interventions into a vehicle for the promo- and ideologues in several ways succeeded in influen- tion and legitimisation of an essentially narcissistic tially disseminating through their literary artefacts Afrocentric and narrowly anti-imperialist path to the tropes and motifs of a specific African self-aware- modernity and modernisation. They did this mostly ness of modernity and these tropes and motifs were through the compelling pictures, intoxicating imag- enthusiastically accepted and internalised as part of eries, tropes and other aesthetic formulae (most of the founding norms of a fledging African socio- them purloined from European books) which they cultural modernity consciousness. conjured up in their literary artefacts. Now at those Here I am trying to speculate on the possible link- foundational times these were not just aesthetic ages between Africa’s many false steps and the essen- imageries, or well-turned-out phrases, but powerful tially depressive self-images of Africa and misleading emotional pictures held before the minds of the pictures of Europe and modernity deposited in our acculturated Africans to inspire and direct. Under modern self-consciousness mostly by the aesthetic the grip of such pictures (eg, things fall apart, reason romanticism of the pioneers. One is not trying to is Hellenist, emotion is black) the African elite suggest that the burden of Africa’s underdevelop- worked out a self-understanding of modernity that ment should be laid on the shoulders of her artists, or was founded upon a negritudist and nostalgic view that their aesthetic ideas and fantasies of modernity, of Africa and a conspiratorial and adversarial view either precipitating via colonialism the falling apart of Europe and modernity. The point I am trying to of things or unravelling the existence of a beautiful make here is that most of the attributes and compel- black soul untainted by Cartesian rationality, auto- ling metaphors by which we still compulsively matically aborted Africa’s modernisation process. describe and represent both Africa and Europe were What I am saying is that in a continent where condi- not found in Africa and Europe but were given to tions for modernisation were either almost absent or Africa and Europe precisely by some of these found- existed in unfavourable combinations, the artist/ ing pictures. In other words, the hidden influences ideologues’ highly influential but ill-fated tropes of on our modernity thinking and attitudes, especially Africa’s self-recognition in modern history on the the impulse to mischaracterise Africa and misunder- one hand and of a conspiratorial adversarial appre- stand the West and modernity and the inclination to hension of Europe and modernity on the other could operate on the basis of misleading analogies or not but constitute an added psycho-cultural disad- mimicries, all seem to come from the initial aesthet- vantage. At best these were extra intercultural loads ico-ideological models, pictures, and slogans made unnecessarily and uneconomically heaped upon the available by the pioneer mediators. Africans, psyche of already seriously disadvantaged latecomers especially of the anti-colonial and immediate postco- to modernity and modernisation. lonial generations formed mostly on a diet of However, it would be wrong to assume that the anti-imperialism and of Negritude, were taught to artists’ bad influences were the result of any pre-reflectively adopt an adversarial stance towards conscious design. The negative fall-out of the the West as well as a West-driven modernity. Conse- Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 aesthetic modernisms of the pioneers were unin- quently, they thought and laboured for many tended consequences that arose in the course of the decades after independence not with but against the artists’ often heroic performance of their historic grain of the psycho-epistemic performatives of role as Africa’s first interlocutors as well as inter- modernity’s successful modes of knowledge and preters and interrogators of modernity. Among the power. historic tasks of the pioneers were, first, to temper In Africa’s modernity thinking and practice, the brutal strangeness of colonial conquest and the most of these battle-tested performatives were uncanny civilisational dislocations it caused by submerged under the self-flattering spell of a negri- trying to make sense of, clarify, and mediate the tude-derived rhetoric of self-reliance. Thus, it makes incongruities that otherwise would have remained to sense at least to say that even if Africa’s artist-ideo- the natives a bewildering source of untameable logues have no direct hand in the bungling of our perplexities. Second, it was they who created or development, Africa’s initial heavy-footedness, found soothing counter-myths to the abrasive, total- gaucheries, false starts etc, in the modernisation ised racialist/cultural pre-disqualification of Africa race, could in part be attributed to the unusually by Europe. Many of these pioneers acquitted them- high concentration of Negritude, cultural and selves of these tasks honourably and sometimes political nationalism, artistic modernism, and

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anti-imperialism in the brain cells of most first- later germinated into some of the malignant incom- generation postcolonial subjects. petences in our modernity/modernisation thinking One major way in which the high concentrations and practices. So sticky have been some of the effects of these emotions have been particularly harmful to of the aesthetico-ideological bad seeds on our our modernity-learning and interpretation capacities discourses that I indeed think that the task of rescu- is in crowding out other, newer, and perhaps more ing Africa’s modernity/modernism from its false fruitful interpretations of our ill-fatedness in moder- leads, misleading adversarialness, and silly narcis- nity. Why does Africa fare so badly in modernity in sisms should start by going back to review the spite of the well-meaning voluntarism of some of its founding pictures and imageries. In other words, historic leaders? Why are we, even after converting rescuing Africa’s modernity/modernism should be from the African bush tract to the liberal highway, viewed as a battle against the bewitchment of the still largely marooned like a whale on the sandy mind of the African by Negritude, Afrocentrism, shores of modernity? The Afrocentric cum anti- anti-imperialism, modernism and postcolonialism. imperialist mindset created out of the pioneers’ founding aesthetico-ideological pictures seems to have succeeded in placing a pre-reflective block on the road to a newer, more probing search for Notes answers. In particular that mindset usually directs us mainly on how to blame the West while keeping 1. See Rasheed Araeen, ‘Modernity, Modernism, and Africa’s Place in the History of Art of Our Age, Third Text, 19:4, July back and doctoring all the unpleasant facts that 2005; and ‘DAK’ART 1992–2000: The Problems of

point to our native failures and weaknesses. This is Representation, Contextualisation, and Critical Evaluation in the real intellectual predicament of Africa’s moder- Contemporary African Art as Presented by the Dakar nity/modernism. Rasheed Araeen’s mega insight into Biennale’, Third Text, 18:1, January 2004. this predicament consists in retracing its artistico- 2. All these and subsequent quotes are from Araeen, ‘Modernity, genealogical roots to the discourse and practice of Modernism…’, ibid. African aesthetic modernism. I have only tried to 3. See Denis Ekpo, ‘How Africa Misunderstood the West: The extrapolate on his insights from the visual arts to Failure of Anti-West Radicalism and “Postmodernity”’, Third literature and ideology in order to provide more Text, no 35, Summer 1996. evidence on how African modernisms in the arts and 4. John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York, Perigee Books, ideology managed to sow some of the bad seeds that 1980, p 224. Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014