Category: Culture

Re-Africanization: Two perspectives

Re-Africanization can be thought of as a process of decolonization, wherein people of African descent seek to reconstruct their cultural practice in ways that augments the core elements of traditional culture, deconstructs the vestiges of cultural disruption, and adapts these reconceptualized cultural forms to the modern exigencies of the African world. Discourses of Re-Africanization, whether from continental Africans as Amilcar Cabral, or from diasporan thinkers such as Dr. Maulana Karenga, are focused on the conceptualization of culture as an engine of social transformation. Herein culture is understood as a deterministic structure instrumental in shaping human cognition, actions, and modes of organization. Culture then is conceived as a terrain of struggle, wherein the capacity of the people to extricate themselves from systems of oppression is not only contingent upon victory over structural forms of oppression, but also relies upon the dismantling of those cultural patterns that have been derived from processes of foreign domination, and thus focused on reinforcing the domination of the oppressor. There are generally two perspectives on the process of Re-Africanization: one approach which emphasizes the importance of cultural specificity, and another that advocates the utility of devising a cultural composite.

Advocates of cultural specificity emphasize the importance of our immersing ourselves in the culture of a specific ethnic group (often Ashanti or Yoruba). Emphasis is typically placed on the value of adopting the cultural practices of extant ethnic groups given the relative accessibility of living practitioners. Other advocates of cultural specificity also include Kemet (the ancient Egyptian civilization) as a viable cultural model. Contrary to the notion that Kemet is a dead civilization, proponents for the reconstruction of Kemetic culture argue that the abundance of textual, iconographic, architectural, and other data make Kemet highly accessible for those seeking to fully understand its culture. Moreover, many argue that Kemet’s culture legacy is evident in the language, cosmologies, and other practices of modern African ethnic groups.

Generally, advocates of cultural specificity will adopt the names, spiritual practices, language, dress, family/social structure and other elements of this particular culture. Baba Agyei and Mama Akua Nson Akoto discuss this approach extensively in Sankofa Movement: ReAfrkanization and the Reality of War.

The cultural composite approach emphasizes the importance of us developing a new African culture (though some might say a Pan-culture) that embraces the best elements of traditional and classical African culture, in both its continental and diasporic forms. Thus it advocates that we seek to be critically engaged with African cultural production in its totality, and from this seek to analyze, critique, interpret, and adopt those elements that best informs our attempts to liberate ourselves and to transform the world.

Generally, advocates of the cultural composite approach will draw from a variety of traditions for names, spiritual practices, languages, dress, family/social structure, and other elements. Dr. Maulana Karenga elaborates on this philosophy in his writings on Kawaida Theory, the most comprehensive treatment being his 1980 outline from the Kawaida Institute of Pan-African Studies.

Though these paradigms are presented as binaries, much of the actualization of processes of Re-Africanization reflect varying degrees of both. It should be noted that no culture can be adopted by any group without some degree of transformation and adaption from its original to its new form. Therefore even in contexts of cultural specificity there are composite elements that are inextricable. Furthermore, many proponents of a cultural composite may draw more heavily from one particular cultural context than others, this may even be more salient in specific domains of cultural knowledge and practice, thus producing areas of specificity within a larger composite framework.

Capoeira and mdw nTr (Medew Netcher)

My first Capoeira teacher, Tebogo Schultz,​ once said to me that when practicing and seeking to understand Capoeira, that “You have do Capoeira for its own sake.” I think about this from time to time as learning Capoeira is a lot like learning a language, particularly one that has its own indigenous script. You must learn the script, you must learn vocabulary, you must learn grammar, you must find contexts to apply this knowledge, and you must understand the ontological dynamics of this linguistic system.

This is a lot like Capoiera which consists of a technical repertoire of physical movements, a kinesthetic philosophy which underlie all of this, various contexts of application, songs and instrumentation, a historical narrative, in addition to a rich body of epistemic and ontological knowledge which seek to explicate the “magic” of the art. The art conveys all of this knowledge, in many instances multiple things concurrently. These layers become fuller once decoupled, unpacked, reflected upon, or revisited much in the same way that learning mdw nTr (Medew Netcher), the language of ancient kmt (Kemet) or Egypt illuminates deeper insights upon further reflection and with deeper study.

I first began learning mdw nTr thirteen years ago and continue to study this language. My continued study has been rewarded in kind with richer insights and a deeper appreciation for this language and the cultural and historical contexts out of which it emerges. Much like my study of Capoeira, it has made everything richer via its contribution to my intellectual growth. Admittedly my focus has vacillated between the general and the specific. Some times I have focused on personal pronouns (mdw nTr has three classes of pronouns). At other times I have sought to memorize the many bi-literals (these are symbols that represent two consonant sounds). On other occasions I have worked on transliterating and translating texts, rich exercise whose frustration inevitably enables growth. One of the most exciting realms of study has been my efforts to integrate the language into my life. The point is that mdw nTr is, in its totality, too vast to approach for the sake of achieving narrow ends. One must simply plunge into its depths, buoyed by the intellectual rewards that it promises.

My Capoeira journey began a decade ago with the goal of learning Capoeria as a combat art. This was and remans necessary, but Capoeria is many things at once. Like Xing Yi Capoeira can serve as a gateway to a more fully integrated self. Like Muay Thai, Capoeira is a tool for physical conditioning. Like Choy Lay Fut Capoeira can be a highly effective fighting art. Like Yoga, Capoeira can build the suppleness of the body. Capoeira is not one thing. It is many things. And like studying mdw nTr, one must plunge fully into its depths, swimming through the waters of renewal, becoming water oneself.

When my daughters go to bed and wake up in the morning we speak mdw nTr to each other. These acts, though short in duration are complex in their layers. When my children and I train Capoeria together, or when I teach a class, these occasions are also multilayered. These knowledges become a part of an integrative toolset, a collection of resources firmly embedded in one’s being. They augment you. I say the mdw nTr and see the words in my mind. I stumble, but never fall because Capoeria teaches you to find balance in the midst of adversity. I find myself translating my thoughts into Kiswahili and mdw nTr as an exercise in multilingualism. I juxtapose defensive tactics for specific attacks between Wing Chun, Choy Lay Fut, and Capoeira. I find innovative ways to use the languages that I study. Capoeira has become central to the curriculum of a rites-of-passage program that I help coordinate, and thus a tool that we are using to build men.

Again these tools, once fully integrated, augment one’s humanity, enabling us to become, day-by-day, a greater expression of our highest selves. This is what it means to “…do Capoeira for its own sake.”

African spirituality and the warrior tradition

After both participating in and observing a dialogue about spirituality and the martial arts, I was compelled to reflect upon the ethical and conceptual modalities informed by African cultural systems, and the ways in which these inform processes of social and personal transformation. These discourses have been situated in a range spaces wherein the combative implications might be explicit or implicit.

Explicit implications pertain to those discourses that explicate the context of war and struggle as reflected in the Odù Ifá, which states, “The constant soldier is never unready, even once.” (Òwónrín Otúrà, 159:1) Elsewhere it emphasizes the necessity of struggle, as a process which refines both one’s character and challenges the world.
“Fighting in front; fighting behind
If it does not lead to one’s death,
It will cause one to become a courageous person…” (Òkrànran Ká, 189:2)
As a sacred text, the Odu Ifa is a replete with references to vigilance, courage, and the importance of battle waged for the greater good.

Similarly we find these ideas expressed in other contexts within the sacred texts that are implicit references to a warrior tradition. One notable, but easily overlooked example is a text from Kemet (ancient Egypt), which the Egyptologists call The Prophesies of Neferti. Wherein it states, “iw mAat r iyt r st.s isft dr.ti r rwty”, which can I have translated as “Maat, in relation to injustice, is in her place. Cast out isfet.” The point here is that the expulsion of isfet, disorder, is not assumed to be beyond the realm of human agency. Quite the contrary, humans as expressions of nTr (phonetically netcher, which can be thought of as totality, which the Egyptologists translate as god or divinity), are charged with the task of restoring order in the wake of its imposition. Thus the maintenance of order (mAat) requires, among other things, vigilance–an implicit appeal to things martial. This becomes more explicit elsewhere in the text where it states “tw r Ssp xaw nw aHA anx tA m shA”, which translated states that people will “take up weapons of war” and that the “the land lives in turmoil”. Again, the martial tradition is invoked, but here in explicit terms, as the people themselves rise up to “Cast out isfet.”

Beyond the combative dimension, one should note that this text seeks to affirm the necessity of the people acting as the stewards of order. This is an extension of what Theophile Obenga states when he writes, “The pharaoh, in his capacity as guarantor of Maât…He was responsible for the maintenance of universal harmony.” Jacob H. Carruthers says something similar where he states, “The Niswt’s overall function, like that of Wosir, is the establishment of Maat in Tawi, i.e., to establish conditions where enlightenment will prevail over ignorance”. Niswt is the the ruler of upper and lower Kemet. Wosir is the nTr that the Greeks referred to as Osiris. Tawi is the united two lands (upper and lower Kemet). In this sense we see a shared social practice in the defense of order (mAat) extending from the highest levels of government to the denizens of the land.

In conclusion, I concur, African spirituality is replete with appeals to a warrior tradition. In fact, one might argue that spirituality is sufficiently diffuse in form as to represent a totalizing element of the culture, and that this is synergistically linked to an insistence upon vigilance, lest the structures which sustain order and the good condition be lost.

Here I offer some thoughts on what one such idea, mAat, means as a form of liberatory praxis:

Dr. Josef Ben Levi on language and epistemology

Yesterday during the ASCAC Midwest Region Medew Netcher class, Dr. Josef Ben Levi offered an interesting discussion of this statement Dr nbw, which can be transliterated as “Dr nbw” or written phonetically as “Djer nebew”. Dr is a complex term which refers limits as well as to the expansive bounds of the universe–quite simply, the all. nbw is a plural of the word nb, which the Egyptologists typically translate as “lord”. This begs the question of whether such an idea is indigenous to ancient Kemet, and whether such an idea is resonate with the use of nb in the written texts. Baba Bonotchi Montgomery, in his insightful book “All the Transformations of Ra” refers to nb as “possessor”.

In his class yesterday, Dr. Ben Levi stated that this term (Dr nbw) could be translated as “‘lord’ of all”, but more accurately it refers to “The force that conveys everything seen and unseen in the universe and beyond”. Again a very interesting idea that is quite resonate with Baba Bonotchi’s points from his talk “There are no gods in Kemet”, in addition to Prof. Rkhty Amen’s discourse on the nature of netcher (nTr). What I most appreciated about this, though little time was spent on it, is that it seeks to push us beyond the false notion of equivalency when dealing with cultural notions, and the need to deal with language as a medium for understanding them.

Rhythm and the synergistic flow of time

“What is called the spirit of an age is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. Though one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of five thousand years ago or more, it cannot be done. Therefore we must make the best out of every generation.”
-Wayne B. Chandler​, quoting an ancient proverb

Transmission and the crisis of traditional cultures in the west

It is exceedingly difficult for traditional cultures to survive in the western context. This is due to three factors. First is the culture of mass-consumption, which seeks to reconstruct all cultural expressions into commodified form. Herein the extractive value of cultural practices is paramount, meaning how much profit can this practice deliver for its purveyors. This is a problem in a number of respects. First is that many traditional cultural practices did not evolve within a monetized context. Thus exchange mediums for their transfer did not exist. This means that often these cultural forms were a part of people’s lives. They were not something that was offered in exchange for something else. These exchanges, if they occurred at all were often indirect wherein a cultural practice was transmitted, and the instructors would be provided with needed resources so as to support their work. This is not necessarily compensation. It is more akin to to provisions for the continuation of a necessary element of life being provided.

The second problem is that many cultures do not possess within their asili (essence, ethos) existing conceptual or structural frameworks to maximize their exploitative capacity. In fact the very notion of exploitation, even in its most benign form, is not necessarily a cultural constant. Thus in cultures that do not possess such an asili, the commodification of cultural practice may not be a conceivable possibility. This is in part why Europeans have taken a primary role in the commodification and expropriation of cultural practices, lands, bodies, ideas of non-Western cultures. In many respects, these cultures did not traditionally possess a paradigm of exploitation against which they could both perceive their practices and themselves, which would serve as a first line of demarcation and defense against the predations of the west.

The second factor militating against the survival of traditional cultural forms is private property. This may seem trivial, but the allocation of land in western societies on the basis of private ownership undermines the communal basis of much of cultural life in many societies. This pertains to land, practices, and people–they were not owned by individuals, but rather fall within the purview of the collective in the most expansive terms conceivable–entailing the ancestors, the living, and the yet unborn. Thus land use was a collective endeavor, right, and obligation. Whether we are considering food production, housing, combative traditions, or so on, collective land provided the spatial context in which these practices evolved, were sustained, and were transmitted.

The transition to the western context occasions a number of challenges for practices that were devised in such a context. This entails problems of land access and land use. It also poses challenges with regards to the establishment of traditions that are linked to space. Here the issue of movement, land sales, land loss, failed transmission, and so forth constrains the emergence of true cultural centers enshrining transmission over dozens of generations as we would find in many non-Western contexts.

The third factor, and I believe the most impactful, is the estrangement of the youth from their communities, and with this the process of intergenerational transmission. This means that in many societies youth are estranged from their traditions, as their educations and career pursuits serves to delegitimize their ancestral traditions. The clearest and most devastating aspect of this is the process of brain drain as the intellectual resources of whole societies are siphoned off to fuel the economic engine of the west. While this process is useful for enabling western economies to access a steady stream of highly and semi-skilled labor, this practice also deprives many societies whose economies have been underdeveloped by capitalism to effectively utilize their human capital in their own transformation.

While we are accustomed to thinking about economics in terms of monetized exchanges, economics also consists, more broadly, of the production and distribution of resources. The transmission of knowledge is, in many respects, a form of economic exchange in that it pertains to the production and distribution of one of the most vital resources communities possess. Thus we might consider the economy of a traditional society as having its basis in two distinct domains–the land and its ability to support the life of the community and the people and their ability to work in concert to ensure their survival. the latter is in part a function of transmission, as their capacity to work or live cooperatively is also augmented by worldview and the ideational matrix which it provides. The disruption of processes of transmission is as deadly to a culture as the loss of arable land or water.

In conclusion, when we find traditional cultural practices in the west, they are often confounded by a confluence of these three factors. The monetization of culture optimally positions the consumer class of the west to partake in its dissemination. The inverse is that the diasporic communities connected to that practice often find themselves increasingly unable to participate in it due to the western economic model. The spatial dynamics that frame and enable the survival of cultural traditions is frequently undermined by the inability of diasporic communities to create communal contexts maximally conducive to processes of cultural refinement and transmission. In the absence of this, truncated processes of education are devised, but these are seldom equal to traditional practices. Finally, the youth are most susceptible to the process of westernization and a political-economy that serves to deemphasize the value of non-monetized cultural practices. Further their educations, often regardless of degree of attainment, fails to equip them to see themselves a vital members of collective cultures, nor does it enable them to facilitate a process of economic development germane to their traditional context. In short, their educations often miseducate them about their own realities in the interest of enabling them to serve the interests of the west.

Multidimensionality

Humans are multidimensional beings. We can think of this in several ways. One way that comes to mind is based on Michio Kaku’s theory of Hyperspace, wherein humans inhabit four dimensions of space-time (three spatial and one temporal dimension). From the experiential view, our existence is bound within the dynamics of physical space and the arcs of time through which we traverse. I argue that to actually know the human requires a comprehension of this four-dimensionality, as we are in a constant state of becoming.

We can also look at multidimensionality from the vantage point of African deep thought in two distinct ways. One way is with regards to the human scale, the other is with regards to the scale of the universe. I will offer two examples that address this concept on the human scale, and in a later work will examine this on the cosmic scale.

We can think of the human being as reflecting multiple, coalescing, distinct yet integrated facets. The Swahili and Bakongo concept of moyo illustrates this, as moyo has dual meanings. Its most basic meaning is the heart, while its deeper meaning is the life force or the bio-energetic dimension of the human.

Among the Yoruba we find at least two conceptualizations of multidimensionality. First is with regards to the mind itself, or most specifically the head, which is conceived in its most basic sense as ori. Ori is the head, but more than this, it represents the Yoruba idea of destiny, is the seat of the human personality, the locus of one’s character. Each human is believed to select their own head prior to their journey to Earth. Despite this act of agency, the heads are of varying quality, and the journey to the world reveals the imperfections of each ori. While taken literally this might suggest that humans are bound to a fixed unalterable destiny, however the Yoruba’s deep thought reveals that such is not the case. The Odu Ifa states that “If one’s destiny is unfortunate, perhaps one’s internal wisdom is not sufficient.” This suggests that human fate is malleable. Thus just as one might grow in knowledge, or improve one’s character, so too can one’s destiny be amended.

In addition to its role as a center of human consciousness, ori is also an orisha. If orisha is conceptually identical to nTr (netcher) in the culture of kmt (Kemet), which one might define as the totality of all things, then one’s ori represents both the consubstantiality of the human being–that is that humans are inseparable from the universe, not simply residing in the world, but being a fundamental expression of it. Therein ori also reflects the potential of the human being, one’s capacity, via struggle, to achieve one’s full potential, to fulfill one’s destiny. Thus ori, as orisha, represents one’s highest self. In this way, the Yoruba offer a compelling example of multidimensionality with regards to the human being. The human, or eniyan, is simultaneously corporeal and finite, yet inextricably transcendent. Thus in both the Swahili/Bakonogo concept of moyo, and the Yoruba concept of ori, we see the conceptualization of the corporeal and non-corporeal, the physical and the metaphysical, or perhaps the situatedness of human beings within the world and beyond its spatial bounds as an energetic quality.

Institutions and Identity: Reflecting on Decolonizing Methodologies

I listened to a lecture by Linda Tuhiwai Smith on Decolonizing Methodologies while cleaning the refrigerator. It was rather stimulating. She addressed the ways in which other peoples are grappling with the same issues of identity, political power, cultural reclamation, and survival as are Africans globally. Two points resonated with me most: the imperative of independent institutions and the utility of sub-group identities (so-called “tribes) as units of social organization.

With respect to number one, we have sought to address this since the 17th Century, though I suspect that most of us have greater affinity with and knowledge of how this has played out since the 1960s. This imperative remains. There is no cultural institution (which is any all institutions, since culture is the totality of everything that humans produce) that exists outside of our purview that seeks to restore us as Africans to who and what we were prior to our encounter with Europeans. No matter how well-meaning or “charitable” the stewards of these alien institutions may be, we are culturally colonized. What’s more, most of the institutions under our purview do not see the necessity of our cultural restoration. We (and by “we” I mean those of us who are engaged with this “culture work” or perhaps more appropriately this Sankɔfa process of re-Africanization) are mining for fragments among the ruins and foraging for food in barren lands, while simultaneously seeking to reconstruct ourselves from the best of our collective past. The only effective vehicles for the expansion and intergenerational sustainability of this work however are our own cultural institutions, those institutions that are unambiguously committed to the reclamation of our culture and the restoration of our sovereignty in the world.

With respect to the second point, we spend far too much time seeking to explain ourselves to people who are hostile to our work. While I am all for educating and building bridges to members of the African community who are like-minded or sympathetic, we need not expend precious time or energy trying to convince people who are what Baba Mwalimu Baruti calls “lost souls” of the merit of our project. To use Ayi Kwei Armah’s analogy, no amount of water diverted to the desert will make it a wetland. Such changes are often illusory and short-lived. Our work should be to maximize our structural capacity, building those systems which have the greatest potential to both establish and expand our freedom, but also to educate our people and ourselves in the actual work of nationbuilding. We need a smaller unit of analysis than the approximately 38 million Africans that exist in the U.S. We need to create viable models of what our vision for our people looks like on the scale of dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and so on. We need to cheapen talk by demonstrating in word and deed our execution of our collective charge. We should anticipate an ever-widening circle of affinity, but make no mistake about it, at the center of that circle is the arduous toil of liberatory struggle. No amount of impassioned rhetoric, whether it is delivered oratorically or textually will suffice as a substitute. Those of us who consider ourselves nationalists, Pan-Africanists, socialists, and the like can ill-afford to believe that our works can only manifest themselves once they have gained the assent of the masses. Maroons freed themselves, fought the enemy, and created sovereign communities whilst the masses were in chains. We need to embrace maroonage as a living modality of struggle in situations where we constitute a numeric minority within a larger body. We need to embrace the cunning, work ethic, resolve, and objectives of the maroons–accepting nothing less than unfettered self-determination.

Abibifahodie!

Kheper and Maat: The Kemetic conception of the consubstantiality of the cosmos and humanity (an excerpt)

Yet we are reminded of Dr. Carruthers’s thinking about centrality of Maat as a governing principle in the affairs of humanity. Maat provided the basis for Kemetic governance, established the form and character of Kemetic deep thought, established the conceptual framework from which the Kemetyu (people of Kemet) studied the cosmos, and so on. Thus Maat’s role in the terrestrial (ty gbb or Earthly) sphere, like her role in the celestial, was the establishment of transcendent order. This is even apparent in periods of calamity or social upheaval, where Maat is invoked as the natural condition, which subsequent to the expulsion of isfet (disorder), must be restored. The ontological significance of this point cannot be understated, for while Maat is the antithesis of isfet, Maat is the natural and optimal condition of the world. Isfet is an aberration, one that can only be corrected via Maat’s reascension.

Just as Kheper represents an iterative cycle, this cycle is bound within the ethical and cosmological framework of Maat. And while the disruption of Maat may occasion the dominance of isfet during periods of crisis, isfet was always perceived as an ephemeral condition. This view was based on the worldview of the Kemetyu which viewed time on both the cosmic and social scales, cosmic time pertaining to the grand scale of happenings since the sep tepy, and social time pertaining to the affairs of humanity. These were not opposing temporal frameworks, as the sep tepy was frequently invoked as a standard via which Kemetic society could be measured. This is also evident with the invocation of weheme mesu (the repetition of the birth), which like the invocations of sep tepy called for a restoration of Maat in national life. This circumstance offers the greatest profundity with respect to the significance of these ideals for African people today.