|
|
| Forum |
||||||
|
Colonialism and western popular culture «I know their game», explained the Ethiopian emperor Tewodros II shortly before he was
In 1800 Europeans controlled 35 percent of the earth surface, in 1878 this had increased to 67 percent and between 1878 and 1914, the period of the “new imperialism”, European control expanded over 84,4 percent of the earth surface. The expansion took place mainly in Africa. So Africa is fresh in Europe's colonial memory. The question which occupies us here is: what light does European popular culture shed on the era of imperialism? Through most of the nineteenth century the general climate of opinion in Europe was anticolonial. Africa could be taken advantage of commercially without conquest and colonization being necessary. On the African coasts European traders made further and further inroads on the trading monopolies of African kings and appealed again and again for military assistance from their home governments. This gunboat diplomacy led to several incidents but not much more than that. There were earlier European excursions into Africa south of the Sahara but the first colonial operations were the French conquests of Gabon (1843-44) and Senegal (1854-65), the British war against the Ashanti (1863-64), and the Abyssinian campaign (1867) which occasioned Tewodros' remark. A combination of circumstances in the 1870s and 1880s however started off a new imperialist era.
Warriors versus soldiers Whatever happens, we have got C is for Colonies In the 1890s imperialism became a popular cause
for the first time in western countries. Before that it had been a state
affair, a matter for elites or colonial interests. Now popular imperialism
(Volksimperialismus) went together with mass-scale patriotic
propaganda and chauvinism. This was brought about to a considerable extent
by propaganda which sought to make nationalism and imperialism popular,
although this period also saw the harvest and culmination of all the prejudices
which the century had accumulated. Take up the White Man's burden
The ignoble savage of colonialism was first of all a warrior. Virtues which earlier determined the image of the “noble savage”, such as proud aggression, were now revaluated to signify cruelty, beastliness. Nudity, earlier a token of purity, now formed part of the profile of primitivism and stood for lack of control. The contrast between the warrior and the soldier, the colonial enemy image and self image, is a version of the rhetorical contrast between savagery and civilization. Soldiers are sometimes referred to as warriors but not the other way around. The stereotype of the warrior is a virtually naked native, ferocious, equipped with archaic arms, more often shown as an individual than in a group (but if a group is shown it is a disorganized group). The soldier on the other hand wears a uniform, belongs to an army and is subject to army discipline. This rhetoric was a misrepresentation because African warriors were not simply acting as individuals or in hordes but operated in organized fashion and in some cases formed armies. A similar and related fiction was that African societies were “stateless” and existed in a state of `natural anarchy'. Nevertheless, several African societies managed to keep European armies at bay for decades and in some cases inflicted costly defeats. The main alibi for European aggression was savagery and the recurrent pretext was human sacrifices. Colonial campaigns were often preceded or accompanied by articles in the illustrated press which dealt extensively with human sacrifices. The Illustrated London News devoted a series of articles to the Ashanti on 26 July and on 8 and 29 November 1873, under the headline “The Gold Coast and Ashantee War”. In word and image sinister witch-doctors and rituals were depicted along with a dark Ju-ju house surrounded by human skulls. A drawing showed a beautiful woman (with virtually western features) tied to a pole on a river shore with a crocodile in the background sloughing towards her. These articles precede the British campaign of 1874 by less than a year. In an article about Dahomey in the same period, 1873, royal human sacrifices were again the main theme and prominently portrayed. ("Victims of the Mem-Hoo-Wo", Dahomey, ILN, 2.viii.1873). Abolishing human sacrifices was the pretext for the British invasion and subjection of Benin in 1897 «Stop African savagery! Abolish human sacrifices!» (Chinweizu 1975, p. 44) - and again the theme of royal human sacrifices was extensively covered in the British press. A sensitive episode in the British expansion was the Zulu war. In January 1879 in the battle at
The British admired the Zulu impis for their martial character, their disciplined organization and methods of war, but while the conflict lasted the propaganda element predominated and produced enemy images of degenerate, bedeviled Zulus. Cetshwayo kaMpande, king of the Zulus since 1873, was caricatured in beastly images as long as the war lasted. Only when the war was over and the Zulus defeated did “normal“ portraits of Cetshwayo appear again in British media, so incisive was the psychology of antagonism. European images of African warriors reflect the dominant rural and pastoral image of Africa. European depictions usually show martial types whose technological equipment is unimpressive. After many African peoples had been equipped with fire arms for several centuries, in Europe they were still portrayed, as on the chromos of the soup manufacturer Liebig, for the instruction of the youth, with rustic and archaic weapons. Fetishism was one of the classic ingredients of the enemy image of Africans, but the way European protagonists were represented often displayed European fetishism. John Hobson saw this mentality in England during the Anglo-Boer War: Jingoism in his view was the “quintessence of savagery”. Fetishism took the form of a «reversion to belief in England's God, a barbarian tribal deity who fights with and for our big batallions» (Hobson, 1901). H.G. Wells observed this disposition in the worship of Brittania as one of England's “tribal gods” (Wells, 1961; cf. Raskin, 1967, p. 126). In popular imperial iconography Brittania often stands in for the English self image. European national hero worship moved from the explorers, led by Livingstone and Stanley, to the generals and commanders – Gordon, Wolseley and Lord Kitchener for England, Marchand and Bugeaud for France - and empire builders like Cecil Rhodes and Lord Cromer. They were the European counterparts to the caricatured African leaders like Cetswayo, king Ja-Ja of Opobo, Menelik II and Mohammed Bin Abdullah Hassan alias the Mad Mullah of Somaliland. They, and figures such as Brittania, graphically represented reality in the iconography of empire, uncaricatured and therefore “true”. The deployment of machine guns decided matters in Africa. Gatlings played a key part in the battle for Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt in 1882, although this does not come out in the drawings and paintings of the battle. The most significant, devastating turning point was the battle at Omdourman (1884) in which 28 British and 20 others on the British side fell as against 11,000 dead Derwishes, mowed down by the Maxims. Africans were usually not afraid of the European rifles but the machine gun changed the situation. A Matabele reacted thus to the conquest of Matabeleland: And the white man had come again with his guns that spat bullets as the heavens sometimes spit hail, and who were the naked Matabele to stand up against these guns? A Fulani in the battle for Hausaland in 1903 described it
as follows: «It was sunday when they came. The guns fired "bap-bap-bap"
and many hundreds were killed» (Ellis 1975, p. 97). Ethnic soldiers are a familiar phenomenon from the imperial chronicles of antiquity as well as modern times. The “Gurkha syndrome”, or joining the conqueror's army, is a classic form of ethnic political adaptation (Enloe, 1980). In the annals of European imperialism ethnic soldiers play an important part. What is more economical than recruiting men from a colonized people to deploy them against the next target and to suppress revolts? This is how a young officer in the King's African Rifles, Richard Meinertzhagen, based in Kikuyu land in 1903, described the situation: «Here we are, three white men in the heart of Africa with twenty nigger soldiers and fifty nigger police ... administering a district inhabited by half a million well armed savages who have only recently come in touch with the white man. The position is most humorous» (Pakenham, 1985, p. 201). In the colonies all European powers used native
soldiers. «Old servitudes had simply acquired a new form»,
as Basil Davidson has remarked. In West Africa the British
recruited 25,000 troops many of whom were deployed in the war against
the Germans in East Africa. Here the German forces in Tanganyika at the
end of the First World War consisted of 3000 Europeans and 11,000 Africans
(Davidson, 1978, pp. 84-8, 114-5; Debrunner, 1979, pp. 343-4; Farwell,
1987). But to deploy African soldiers in Europe was another matter.
France, with the longest colonial history in Africa, led the
way. In the Crimean war (1854-56) 40 percent of the French forces were
Africans; Africans fought in the French army in Mexico in the 1860s and
in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. During the First World War France
deployed 211,000 African troops (including North Africans). Blaise Diagne,
the député from Senegal in the National Assembly, served
as a mediator in this recruitment and justified this with the argument,
which never amounted to anything, that if Africans fought in the war they
would have a say in the peace. 170,000 African soldiers were deployed
at the deadly western front where in the end 24,762 were reported killed
(and yet others missing). In 1920-22 France deployed African soldiers
in the occupation of the Rhineland. The scramble for Africa The scramble for Africa, the race of European states to acquire territories in Africa between
Rivalries among European states with Africa as the main arena were the key issue, according to a tendency in the literature which emphasizes this interpretation of the new imperialism (Doyle, 1986). The cartoons and caricatures of this period (after 1885), which invariably put a greater emphasis on the diplomatic conflicts between European states than on the colonial expansion itself, confirm this. They graphically show the projection of the European balance of power on the map of Africa. In popular imagery the diplomatic conflicts among the European states weighed more heavily than the confrontation with the African population. While the colonialism of one's own country was generally, aside from mild satire, depicted in patriotic colours, the colonialism of other states was viewed critically. That the French press mocked German colonialism, and the Germans and French criticized the British, and so forth, was itself a reflection of European rivalries. What the place of Africa was in all this was not always clear. «Like a succubus Africa weighs on Europe's rest.» In this print in Le Rire (18.iv.1896), Europe is represented as a young woman asleep (the print has been copied from the Lustige Blätter; it is a pastiche of the painting Le Cauchemar by Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1741-1825; Starobinski, 1987, pp. 82, 76). A peculiarity is, in parentheses, that the caption erroneously mentions a succubus, i.e. a female demon supposed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping men (Oxford English Dictionary), whereas the figure depicted is an incubus, a male demon, in conformity with the conventions of the genre, in which the figures represented are always cross-gender). The caption speaks of «One of the numerous malaises (but perhaps the heaviest) which now burden the old continent. Each European power has here its obstacle or hornets' nest». The representation is peculiar. If the continent is old then why is it represented as a young woman? Why is Europe represented in human form and female, and Africa as a demon and male? And above all, when Africa is the victim of European aggression, why is it represented as the aggressor, as the nightmare of swooning Europe? It's the world upside down: blaming the victim. As an image of Africa it harks back to the gargoyle of the early Middle Ages. Under the influence of the Boer War the popular enthusiasm for imperialism and racial patriotism was waning. The British Empire, which some European countries had implicitly supported and identified with earlier in the nineteenth century, lost prestige and credibility through the bloody war against the Boers. Barbarian methods of warfare applied against a white people in Africa created aversion in Europe and in England itself. In the early years of the twentieth century the imperial mission looked too much like “British bullying of smaller nations”. Besides, there was the problem of the Congo. The most infamous of all European regimes in Africa was King Leopold's Congo Free State. It inspired Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) and Mark Twain's sardonic King Leopold's Soliloquy (1907). The state established in 1885 under King Leopold's personal rule was set up as a financial and economic enterprise rather than a political entity. The state claimed the land that was not effectively cultivated and prohibited the population from starting new cultivation, while imposing heavy taxes and labour services. According to a popular image the savages were only good for work. King Leopold had invested most of his personal fortune in developing his African empire which, however, lacked exportable commodities, apart from ivory and wild rubber. Large companies were given concessions over huge areas and faced with increasing world demand for rubber after 1895; they imposed forced labor and quotas upon the population to harvest rubber. If the quotas were not met cruel punishments ensued, to the point of chopping off hands and feet. The result was a reign of terror. After 1900 more and more reports about the “Congo atrocities” by Protestant missionaries and by the British consul Roger Casement filtered through. The campaign against the abuses in the Congo was a humanitarian campaign, but it also argued that the Congo gave European colonialism a bad name. This argument was reminiscent of the earlier criticisms of abuses and maltreatment in slavery, which implied that slavery itself was acceptable. On behalf of the Congo Reform Association E.D. Morel and Harry Johnston published Red Rubber (1906), a book in which they warned that in the absence of reforms in the Congo African resistance against European hegemony in Africa would increase (Rich, 1986, p. 36). In response to mounting public pressure sovereignty over the Congo was transferred from King Leopold to the Belgian state in 1908. (Belgian sources on the Congo include Delathuy, 1989 and as regards popular images and propaganda, Zaire 1885-1985, 1985 and Vints, 1984. Cf Taussig, 1984; Breman, 1990.)
After the gunpowder smoke lifted and the colonial situation
stabilized the colonial imagery shifted from the enemy image to the colonial
psychology of superiority and inferiority. The colonial superiority
complex was a political and psychological necessity to enable a tiny minority
of foreigners to control the local majority. «It is suicidal for
Europeans», noted an English observer, «to admit that natives
can do anything better than themselves. They should claim to be superior
in anything and only allow natives to take a secondary or subordinate
part» (Symonds, 1966, p. 76; cf. Memmi, 1957/1965.). Prestige, intimidation,
show of power were the cornerstones of imperial psychology. This came
with definite views on those who were no longer enemies but subjects.
Thus the image of the savage warrior made place for the stereotype of the African as a child: the miraculous metamorphosis of the ferocious savage to the child/savage. North American society where social relations were in some respects comparable to colonial Africa produced a similar image of the black child/savage). (Takaki, 1970). Colonial paternalism engendered the infantilism of the colonized as its counterpart. A Belgian colonial novel of 1896 described the metamorphosis thus: «Once he [the negro] comes in touch with the white man, he loses his barbarian character and only retains the childlike qualities of the inhabitants of the forest.» (Danco, 1896; Vints, 1984, p. 23). Surinamese Creoles on display at the Colonial Exhibit in Amsterdam in 1883 were described in the same terms: «The appearance of these groups of Creoles has something kind and childlike, that is naturally appealing; real children of tropical nature, carefree, enjoying life without worries, restless, keen on movement, noise, colour, light, but also kind and sweet» (Eigen Haard, 1883, p. 405, in Oostindie en Maduro, 1986, p. 24). Meanwhile the stereotype of the ferocious savage did not simply vanish but was relegated a subsidiary role – that of the rebel, Simba, or later, the Mau Mau terrorist. Among the primal scenes of colonialism are scenes of subjection – native dignitaries throwing themselves in the dust before the representatives of European authority. Or, in a system of indirect rule through the local elite, the rituals of the official state visit and the displays of elite pomposity. Attractive to Europeans and psychologically reassuring in what back in Europe was a time of social insubordination and transformation, was the tight social hierarchy inherent in colonialism. It was a hierarchy based on the colonial color bar, but other distinctions such as between European and native dress counted as well. Personal service by natives forms an essential component of the colonial ambience which is also psychologically satisfying. Being carried by natives sums up the symbolism as well as the reality of European hegemony. The tipoye, the carrying hammock or seat, is one of the basic relics of colonialism. Nevertheless, an image that gained currency in the colonial situation was that of the lazy native. Early in the nineteenth century the profile of the simple good savage out of the repertory of the Romantics still ran as follows: Gifted with a carelessness which is totally unique, with an extreme agility, indolence, sloth and great sobriety, the negro exists on his native soil, in the sweetest apathy, unconscious of want or pain or privation, tormented neither with the cares of ambition, nor with the devouring ardor of desire. To him the necessary and indispensable articles of life are reduced to a very small number; and those endless wants, which torment Europeans are not known amongst the negroes or Africa (Golbéry, 1803). The poet J. Montgomery mused in 1807: Is the Negro blest? His generous soil The very qualities which at the start of the century evoked
images of paradise were revaluated by the latter part of the century,
in conjunction with industrialization, neo-Puritanism and the Protestant
ethic in Europe, and colonialism in Africa, to give rise to the image
of the lazy native, indolent and without ambition in the midst
of tropical plenty. Emptiness had become a curse. That these images were
both devoid of reality is not the issue here: they served as echoes of
alternate desires and strivings of occidental culture. They helped shape
Europe's regime of truth. The stereotype of the lazy
native was inherent in colonialism and not specific to Africa. American
images were the lazy Injun and the slumbering Mexican. Surinamese Bushnegroes
were described thus in 1883: «In general they are inert and lazy
and onk when they are compelled by necessity...» (Oostindie en Maduro,
1986, p. 23. Cf. Alatas, The myth of the lazy native, 1977).
The stereotype of the lazy native correlated with the expansion
of capitalism, served as an alibi for forced labour and exploitation,
and thus formed a lucrative component of the civilizing mission. Marx
referred to the creation of “universal industriousness” as
one aspect of “the great civilizing influence of capital”
(Marx, Grundrisse, 1973, pp. 325-6, 409-10). The formulation
is also a reaction, not without irony, to the complaint of a Jamaican
planter, in the vein of Carlyle's Nigger Question.
Colonial power produces the colonized as a fixed reality which is at once an "other" and yet entirely knowable and visible (Bhabha, 1986, p. 156). Figures of the world's nonwestern peoples: rarely do they have a name, always are they
In various ways the figures depicted were turned into objects. They were isolated from their environment or their environment was presented in a schematic fashion. Placing the figure in the foreground reinforced the observer's sensation of having overview and control over it. “Otherness” had to be conveyed within the framework of Victorian esthetic conventions. Classical examples of antiquity determined the posture and expression with which the natives were represented, while exotic attributes served to convey their “otherness”. Over a hundred years there was not much change - the figures portrayed were not individualized; individuality is an attribute of civilization and a western privilege. But the emphases also in popular representations did shift: the physiognomy alone was no longer sufficient and “typical activities”, like the hunt or food preparation, or “typical attributes”, like tattoos or headgear, were emphasized. The ethnology of the first half of the century was largely racial in conception. The objective was to map races and knowledge, or the illusion of knowledge, was not yet detailed enough to distinguish peoples. And even if this was the case the pretension was often that a certain people stood for a more general type. Colonial ethnography of the latter century surpassed this stage in some respects. From administrative and other points of view it had different knowledge requirements and illusions, as it existed according to a different regime of truth. Knowing the colonized is one of the fundamental forms of control and possession. One of the applications of this knowledge is that the subjected peoples are turned into visual objects. This knowledge circulates by means of images – the availability of ethnological images in scientific, esthetic or popular form is one of the basic features of imperial cultures. Was the first Playmate, after Aphrodite, the Hottentot Venus, the anthropo-erotic sensation of nineteenth-century Europe? Was she a Creole beauty or the Black Venus? In the course of the century, early on in the case of Orientalism, ethnographic images took on the additional function of ersatz-pornography. For many young men in the West pictures of scantily dressed native women, or African women with bare breasts in decorative poses, were the first visual familiarity with female nudity, through magazines such as the National Geographic in the United States, illustrated encyclopedias and postcards (Monti, 1987; Corbey, 1987). The world of colonialism is a men's world. This forms part of the ambivalence in western attitudes vis à vis non-western peoples, the mixture of attraction and repulsion. Part of this is the pattern of attraction by the “feminine”, sensuous, seductive element, and repulsion by the “masculine”, threatening, primitive element. On the one hand the native beauty and on the other the cannibal. The recurring tale of the beauty and the beast.
«Expositions are the timekeepers of progress.» «The web of world exhibitions that
was extended over the economic fault lines of American society between
1876 and 1916», notes Robert Rydell, «reflected the attempts
of America's intellectual, political, and business leaders to forge a
consensus over their priorities and their vision of progress as racial
supremacy and economic growth» (Rydell, 1984, p. 8). The American
exhibits are part of a world wide trend - a measure of western industrial
capability since the London Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 and of western
colonial and racial supremacy since the Paris world fair of 1889, the
first in which African and Asian colonies were noticeably represented.
The colonies were first represented by their products only.
The World Fair of Antwerp in 1894 was the first where Africans were present.
A Congolese village was reconstructed for which 16 Congolese were brought
over, three of whom died during the fair and four fell seriously ill.
Thus during the heydays of imperialism many exhibits of peoples were organized: against payment the public were shown negroes, Indians, Asians, situated in their own dwellings. In colonial ethnography the colonized were turned into objects of knowledge, in the colonial exhibit they were turned into spectacles. The peoples on display were the trophies of victory. After the battle had been done with the image of the native warrior, prior to that so threatening and repulsive that it had to be exorcized by means of horror stories and gruesome caricatures, became decorative. This is one of the origins of exotism – turquerie was à la mode after the Turks were no longer a threat to Europe; images of Noble Indians decorated shops and advertisements when the Indian Wars were past and they were defeated for good; images of frightful African warriors, with spear or assegai, became ornamental once machine guns had done away with African resistance. Exotism is a luxury of the victors and part of victory's psychological comforts. The Other is not merely to be exploited but also to be enjoyed, enjoyment being a finer form of exploitation (Der Kolonialismus der Jahrhundertwende gibt sich exotisch. DieMannigfaltigkeit der Welt stelt sich ihm als Leckerbissen dar, und man will den anderen nicht nur ausbeuten, sondern ihn so, wie er ist, auch noch geniessen... Die exotische Inspiration und die wissenschaftliche Neugier sind die doppelte Kompensation des Imperialismus Zippelius, 1987, p. 87). Colonial exhibits catered to the voyeurism of the victors of civilization, they were “allegories of European hegemony” and demonstrations of racial supremacy, in which imperialism seemed to be transformed into “natural history” (Goldmann, 1987). Besides, they were “a powerful means of propaganda for national self-elevation” which laid the basis for the rapid development of colonial and ethnographic museums in Europe. The museums themselves became manifestations of colonial power, «in which not the essential value of the collections determined their significance but rather the pompous way in which they managed to express national power» (Pott, 1962, pp. 125-6. Cf Avé, 1980). The Colonial Exhibition in Amsterdam in 1883, which covered a vast terrain of what is now the Museum Square, included in its West Indies section a group of 28 Surinamese who had been told that the king of the Netherlands was giving a party for 'all nations' to which they had been invited. In the Exposition of Paris in 1900 several African villages were rebuilt. Dahomey stole the show with a replica of the tower of sacrifice of Abomey, complete with skulls and gruesome descriptions of the procedures for royal human sacrifices. But the main attraction was the “Ethnographie en nature”, prepared by African soldiers in French colonial service in Porto Novo. Visitors to the fair could let themselves be carriedin a hammock by strong Africans. The carriers did brisk business (Debrunner 1979, p 345). In this way one could get the “colonial feeling” without leaving the metropolis. Merely exhibiting non-western peoples in a reconstructed environment was not interesting enough after a while. Action and drama were needed, especially wild action, like war dances, cannibal dances, battle scenes and so on. Between 1895 and the First World War large-scale spectacles were organized, elaborating on existing clichés. The development of film outflanked this kind of exhibits. Film would be still more effective in reproducing stereotypes and transforming them into spectacle.
Westernization humor came out of the dilemma arising from the gap between colonial ideology and reality. Colonial ideology was about the White Man's Burden and his civilizing mission, but colonial realities were about profit and power. Until after World War Two no more than a tiny percentage of the colonial population had received any western education and then chiefly through mission schools. Colonialism was referred to as a 'School for Democracy', but the colonial system was essentially autocratic. Before 1945 less than 1 percent of the African population had any political and civil rights or access to democratic institutions (Martin and O'Meara, 1986, pp. 128, 131). The ideology of the civilizing mission was not compatible with colonial realities and was contradicted by other European ideologies, in particular racism. The outburst of European imperialism took place on the basis of exaggerated and largely misplaced economic expectations, at a time when the economic advantages of colonial possessions were doubtful. Regularly articles appeared with titles like “Is Central Africa Worth Having?” The propaganda theme of colonies as profitable areas could be realized only after considerable investments in infrastructure and if the colonies would earn their own keep, thus with minimal expenditures on administration and services. This bookkeeping left no place for civilizing labour. JanMohamed argued, in the footsteps of Frantz Fanon, that not ambivalence but manichaeism characterizes western attitudes towards the non-west. The basic structure of colonial literature, then, is the “manichean allegory” according to which the relation between the conqueror and the conquered is an unbridgeable gap between worlds. «If such literature can demonstrate that the barbarism of the native is irrevocable, or at least very deeply ingrained, then the European's attempt to civilize him can continue indefinitely, the exploitation of his resources can proceed without hindrance, and the European can persist in enjoying a position of moral superiority» (JanMohamed, 1986, p. 81). Westernization humor in popular culture functions in a similar way. Among different European fictions and ideologies there are irreconcilable antinomies: How can savages be civilized? Is the gap between nature and civilization not unbridgeable and, according to racial thinking, indeed biologically grounded? The frictions which flow from this self-made European dilemma are resolved in westernization humor. This articulates the Manichean image of irrevocably separate worlds with liberating laughter: at the expense of the natives. Popular cartoons harp on this dilemma and the theme of civilization, reproducing over and over again the incorrigible native and the perennial savage whom no degree of western mannerism can change. Thus a cartoon with the caption «The Benefactions of Civilization» shows elegant African gentlemen in top hats, next to whom a monkey is standing, also in a top hat (Le Rire, 28.vii.1900). And how is the “good old English Christmas” celebrated among the Zulus? With human sacrifices (Punch, xii.1912). So the contradictions between divergent European expectations are short-circuited and resolved in a self-fulfilling colonial fantasy world. In the fifties and sixties cartoons appeared in magazines like Simplicissimus and Paris Match which made fun of the African desire for independence and of postcolonial conditions. The cannibal jokes are part of this. We might call this decolonization humor. A specimen is a cartoon 'Welcome to the USA!', in which ministers of a newly independent African state come to spend a credit of 20 million dollars and show interest in everything except agricultural tools. Of a German politician on a state visit in Africa is observed «How rapidly he has acclimatised»: the cartoon shows him changed into a monkey. The portée of these jokes is that the savages are incorrigible and development aid is a waste of money. Colonial propaganda has matured to neocolonial propaganda. From the standpoint of Africans the manichean schema of savagery versus civilization might look the other way around. Many Africans experienced European imperialism as the destruction of African civilizations and their substitution by western barbarism. «The Christian disaster has come over us/ As a cloud of dust», went a poem from Salaga in northern Ghana, written in Arabic in 1900. African intellectuals who criticized the European clichés in the twenties and thirties made several arguments. (1) European conquest itself was barbaric . There was wide agreement about the barbarism of the “civilizing hordes”, from the West African essayist Tovalou Houénou to Rabindranath Tagore («You build your kingdom on corpses»). (2) The colonial system was dehumanizing. Under the cover of civilization the colonized were reduced to savages. (3) There is no necessary relationship between a people's level of technological development and the level of its civilization. Terms like high and low can be applied to technological and economic development but not to civilization. This is the argument of cultural relativism and a rejection of evolutionism. (4) Africa's modernizing potential has been blocked and sabotaged by European interventions: by the slave trade and by interventions targeted against modernizing forces such as Mohamed Ali in Egypt and Samory Touré in West Africa. (See Hodgkin, 1972; Gordon, 1989; Curtin, ed, 1972.) These arguments have since been elaborated in several directions. In a socialist direction by Kwame Nkrumah, in psychological terms by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi, in terms of political economy by dependency thinkers such as Walter Rodney and Samir Amin, in cultural terms by Claude Ake and Valentin Mudimbe. Their assessments matched those of critical Europeans. There is general agreement about the barbarism of European colonialism if we consult not the colonial propaganda but the documents, reports, letters and diaries of Europeans in the colonies: then it is the savage side of real colonialism which often speaks loudest (e.g. Emery, 1986. Meinertzhagen in Pakenham, 1985, pp. 200-2). Several European witnesses held few illusions about this. Marx remarked: «The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes in the colonies, where it goes naked». Sartre noted: «In the colonies the truth stood naked» Joseph Conrad referred to colonialism as «the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience». Western popular culture, however, has largely followed the pattern of colonial propaganda. In the early 1900s John Hobson and Rosa Luxemburg warned that imperialist militarism and barbarism would come back to Europe like a boomerang. After the trench warfare of 1914-18 the question arose, also in the colonies, what made civilization so appealing. When in the land of “poets and thinkers” six million human sacrifices were made the question arose what made the complacent western jokes at the expense of the colonized peoples so funny. Césaire and Fanon took up where Hobson and Luxemburg had left off and interpreted fascism and Nazism as “imperialism turned inward”. It follows that the western jokes likewise reflect and boomerang on their source. This text is a chapter of the book: J.N. Pieterse, White on Black: images of Africa and blacks in western popular culture, Yale UP, 1992 With the kind permission of the author |
Jan Nederveen Pieterse,
professor of sociology at University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign, specializes
in transnational sociology with research interests in globalization, development
studies and intercultural studies. He taught in the Netherlands, Ghana
and US, as visiting professor in Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka,
and lectured in many countries. He is co-editor of Review of International
Political Economy, associate editor of Futures, European Journal
of Social Theory, Ethnicities, Third Text, and Culture &
Society; and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. J.Nederveen Pieterse Website www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jnp
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
