Shadle on Garvey's 400 Millions

Professor Shadle's presenting about Garvey

The power of unity!

Video Clip: 400 Millions of Africans

Download his PPT here.

Arbor Day(s) or Combite 2013

Today (April 20-2013) we began with 2013 Arbor Day activities. The first group of students from this year’s class (Issues in World History: African Diaspora) planted the first trees along Willard Dr. SE– about 40 of them. We ended our planting with a celebratory trip to Carole Lee Donuts!  The Blacksburg Town‘s office of recreation makes this possible.

This link for last year’s Arbor Day activities.

As with other years, I offered students a rationale for their involvement.

The objective is to give back to the community at large as an enjoyable and practical way of learning about World History and the African Diaspora.

This hands-on instruction intends to engage students’ learning with some of the industrialization’s unintended effects: its impact on the forests (why most trees around are young?), and the spark of the (romantic) movement for reforestation on industrializing nations (i.e., National Parks).

Yet, the most important goal is to get students involved in local communities as a historical lesson that highlights the ethos of many Black communities across the diaspora, and help them appreciate the differences and similarities between our present experience and the way people thought and lived in the past.

The assumption is that our present-day attitudes toward community differ substantially from that of many people in the past (and from people living in other parts of the contemporary world).  Western World’s main cultural currents emphasize individual needs rather than community cooperation. But the historical record seems to show that most people in the past view their existences in more fragile terms, and thus relied on a more collective ethos for survival (networks are more powerful than individuals). Several scholars, including Patrick Manning, have suggested that the African Diaspora have broadly shared a spirit of cooperation, collectivity, and equality. These traits are evident in the performance of Afro-Diasporans cultural events, early political organizations, and even on its commonly simple (if any) social hierarchy.

A good example of this collective ethos is the combite (convite in Spanish), dokpwe or fagina. These terms refer to communal and reciprocal forms of labor. The first term is still common in Haiti (in the D.R. It has taken a more festive meaning); the second in West Africa; and the third among Central American Mayans. These traditions have often brought all able-persons to work on a job that would eventually benefit the entire community. Workers would often perform their work, not in isolation but in groups or gangs. The Haitian combite has a reputation for its feast-like nature marked by upbeat singing as men would work the land for cultivation and women would prepare food for many. At the conclusion of a day’s work in a combite people would join in a party of celebration. As with the dokpwe and fagina, Haitians in these communities would derive a powerful sense of belonging through this type of collaboration.

Maureen Warner Lewis tells us about the combite:

Maureen Warner-Lewis, Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Kingston: Univ. of the West Indies Press, 2003), 65.

Walter Goldschmidt provides this explanation about the Dahomey society and the dokpwe:

Walter Goldschmidt, Exploring the Ways of Mankind (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 197), 313.

So, by planting trees for the Blacksburg community without expecting a direct compensation, I aim for students to appreciate these traditional practices in the African Diaspora. Understanding the ethos of cooperation underlying these practices also helps to perceive the historically persistent call for Pan-Africanism, or cooperation among Afro-Diasporans across national boundaries (i.e., W.E.B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey).

This concept of society is perhaps similar to the way we understand the ecosystem in the natural world–of a society built on broad dynamic cooperation and reciprocity rather than on defining limits of freedom. Our Arbor Day activity, then, endeavors to bring students closer to appreciating the historical and cultural gap that separates us from the people we are studying, and perhaps, fit them with the necessary critical-thinking tools to become independent thinkers in the society in which they now lives.

Fanon on National Consciousness

The purpose of this entry is to help you navigate through FrantzFanon’s chapter on National Consciousness and help you get ready for classroom discussion.

Fanon wrote this book in the three-year period in which he helped lead the psychiatric hospital in colonial Algiers, and as he wrote articles for revolutionary papers, and collaborated with the Algerian resistance. He did not have the assistance of an editor, the service of a computer or the disposal of a vast library (or the Internet for that matter). He engendered this work while he slept about four hours a day, hardly ate, and was under constant surveillance.

This is a work of painstaking pondering that comes from the meeting of considerable intellectual sweat, and hardcore, real-life political experience. At its heart, this chapter is a poignant demonstration of profound compassion for the unprivileged.

As an intellectual that trusted the people, Fanon main interest was to share with the Africans, who were on the brink of catapulting from colonialism, what he already knew about being a postcolonial, and what he thought will happen in the near future; all through the eyes of history. In fact, the Latin American past hanged predominately in Fanon’s head. Most Spanish America had over a century of postcolonial experience already, and Fanon wanted all Africans to avoid the pitfalls rendered clear through Western Hemisphere’s history.

Fanon objective was clear. He wanted to help deliver the promises of nationalism and avoid the “crude and fragile travesty of what might have been”. He had come to the conclusion that the hope of the postcolonial nation was not foreign investment or better relations with wealthy countries, but the mobilizing of its “revolutionary capital, which is the people”. In other words, the national leaders will achieve true independence only by trusting their own people.

But the main obstacle to the promise of nationalism was in fact the national bourgeoisie. These were the wealthy nationals who wanted to run the country after the exit of the colonial government. The problem was that they could not “rationalize” popular action.

The bourgeoisie has been crippled by colonialism; they had no economic power, no imagination and no political will. They were merely invested in small businesses, agriculture, and the liberal professions. They had neither financiers nor industrial magnates. They were “not engaged in production, nor in invention, nor building, nor labor.” Unfortunately, this caste had become the intermediary for the economic forces of the richest countries, and had neglected their role as national enablers. Thus, they could not deliver real independence, which in turn explains why postcolonial nations remained hanging as colonial drapes.

Read this chapter with these questions in mind:

What was Fanon's problem with producing only raw materials, nationalizing industries, promoting tourism, competition with other poor countries (as opposed to cooperation), chauvinism and tribalism?

Pay close attention at Fanon’s relentless assault on the national bourgeoisie. What was his problem with this “little greedy caste”? On the other hand, what is the responsibility of a strong bourgeoisie?

How do religious revivals may fuel racial rivalries?

What is the meaning of this phrase: “a racism of contempt: it minimizes everything it hates”?

How could African unity be achieved? What are the problems with a single party? What are the (harmful) pillars of regimes in underdeveloped countries?

Explain Fanon’s ideal: intellectuals collaborating with the masses against the national bourgeoisie.

What is the role of political party?

How Brasilia might have been a good example?

Note the industrialization and development against nature.

What was Fanon’s mood towards the plight of the African women?

What was his take regarding obscure language? And what does the unyielding black market said to him?

For Fanon, what produces the wealth of the rich? And what is the role of the education of the masses?

What are the pitfalls of youth’s pastimes, sports and national consciousness, and the quest for heroes?

What can the army bring to the construction of the nation, and what are the dangers of having the army involved in politics?

What do you find useful and revelatory in Fanon’s long essay?

Fanon ended the chapter with something that we may find controversial. He thought that a nation that is just coming out of colonialism should cultivate a sense of strong nationalism before developing social consciousness. In other words, people should feel united and develop a feel for national responsibility before demanding social justice. What do you think of this?

The Great Divide: The first steps in the fabrication of the Eurocentric “me” and the non-White “other.”

It was during the third decade of the 16^th century, in the midst of the European Renaissance and of the religious Schism, which non-Catholics prefer to call The Protestant Reformation. Leo Africanus, a man that toddled the worlds of the Christian West and Africa, who was between Christianity and the Islam, published then the first modern ethnographic work about Africa. Since he knew both Europe and Africa well, and had been both Christian and Muslim, he could interpret both universes fairly well. In his effort to “explain” Africa to the European mind he emphasized the similarities: how both were not that different (though some critics have correctly made him responsible of helping in "creating" the false concept of "Africa" as a particular place).

But as the European world expanded beyond its original physical borders, and Europeans saw themselves masters of the rest, they found Africanus's description of the African person insufficiently disparate. There should be more striking differences between the Christian and the Muslim, between the civilized European and the barbaric African. The African and the European, no matter how pale the former would be, should be fundamentally distinct, different in kind, and altogether entirely dissimilar. Otherwise, how could you justify the swelling number of slaves being transported from Africa to the Americas, and some even taking residence as subservient individuals in marginal sectors of European cities? How can you call yourself a "master of equals"? That title did not ring attractive. Enter the Spanish adventurer and writer, Luis del Mármol Carvajal, with a revised edition of the Description of Africa. The first part came out in 1673 (BTW, there is no entry for Mármol in the English Wikipedia as of today).

Differently from Africanus, Mármol stressed the differences between the African, who is more African as he becomes darker, and the European, who is more European as he is more refined, Christian, and of course, lighter. In a recent article Mar Martínez Góngora tells us that Mármol helped initiate the imperialistic discourse, which Edward Said studied, that consisted in circulating a series of knowledges, real and imaginary, about the “Orient.” In other words, this is arguably our first Orientalist. I am not going to spoil the reading of this article, just to encourage you to read it. It is in Spanish, though, but a very readable one. Let me know if you would like a copy.

Mar Martínez Góngora, “El Discurso Africanista del Renacimiento en La primera parte de la descripción general de África de Luis del Mármol Carvajal,” Hispanic Review (spring 2009): 171-189.