making afican identity

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Post-Colonialism, Memory and theRemaking of African Identity

IDOWU WILLIAM

ABSTRACT Recent post-colonial discourses are replete with controversies over the

nature of African identity. This paper argues that, though identity is an endangeredconcept, the particularity of African identity can still be salvaged. The paper furtherdiscusses some conceptual approaches to the nature of African identity anddiscovers that the nature of African identity can be discerned in the terse but

profound statement: Inmemor(Iam) i.e., in memory, I am. The paper contends thatidentity transcends the realm of the thinking to the realm of recollection where whatenables each person to share in a general identity with others is their collectivememory. The paper concludes that the constituent of memory is a potentiality, i.e.,is still evolving, not an actuality. To comprehend the idea of memory in theconstruction and reconstruction of African identity is to see the relations that existbetween that which supposedly occurred in the past and what is happening now.

Introduction

Post-colonial Africa, today, is confronted with a difficult but very important quest:what Wiredu calls post-colonial soul-searching (2004, p. 1) or what Baaz callsthe preoccupation with, and predilection for, tradition and authenticity(2001, p. 5). This search is situated within the context of the difficulty in concep-tualizing what is actually meant when the word African is mentioned, especiallyin relation to cultural issues such as identity, music, religion, arts, morality, andcinematography. For example, what makes a film or music an African film ormusic? The difficulty in defining what actually is meant by African film wasevident, for instance, in a course in 1998 on Black Africa Cinema at the NationalFilm and Television Institute, Accra, Ghana, when students and lecturer weresimply not able to arrive at a consensual characterization of what makes a filman African film. In the end, we have to agree with Anne Jrgensen (2001,p. 119) that African film is a complex field of study in which narrative models,popular issues and modes of production vary and change.

As a matter of fact, no other subject matter in contemporary studies on Africa

parallels the spate of discussions on what is African identity. It is in this sense that

Politikon, (December 2009), 36(3), 423443

ISSN 0258-9346 print; 1470-1014 online/09/03042321 # 2009 South African Association of Political StudiesDOI: 10.1080/02589341003600221

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we must understand Kirkegaards (2002, p. 9) submission that in recent years thediscourse over identity has increased. . .and the general concern for understand-ing and defining how borders between the us and the them are established, has

been at the fore in many writings and current debates (see, for examples, Diemer,1985; Appiah, 1992; Gilroy, 1993; Mudimbe, 1994; Stuart, 1996; Baaz, 2001;William, 2003). Significantly, questions about identity are problematic in natureand are likely to envelope varying and diverse issues.

Granted this postulate, the nature of African identity then begs for moreintellectual attention and raises questions of critical interest. Such interrogationsare suspected to involve a troubling panorama. Within this purview, it is then poss-ible to ask, what is meant by the appellation African identity? Can identity becontextualized? What context explains African identity? What is really Africanin any identity? Is the word Africa itself subject to conceptualization? In what

do we situate African identity? Is African identity always the same, changing orbecoming? To whom is the conceptualization of African identity important andsignificant? Is it to the African or non-African? But then, why would a conceptu-alization of the nature of African identity be important to the African himself or tothose who are not? What is the source of the importance and the quest for Africanidentity?

These questions and many more provide the philosophical, cultural and intellec-tual situations around which the quest for African identity in the post-colonial eramust be understood. But then, the post-colonial era is not all that there is in thisquest for the nature of African identity. According to K.A. Appiah (1992,

p. 71), a specifically African identity began as the product of a Europeangaze, meaning that outside the frame of Western European colonization ofAfrica, it is impossible to arrive at the nature of African identity. The truth ofthis proposition can be accepted, I suppose, only in the presence of a qualifier.This is it: the intellectual platform on which to appraise African identity in theera of colonialism is meaningless if that which precedes it, i.e., the pre-colonial,is jettisoned. Unfortunately, as we shall soon demonstrate, the pre-colonial isalways portrayed in the language of mythical meaninglessness. But then, it stillbehoves us to contend that the intellectual extension of the background of post-colonial African identity to the era of colonialism and pre-colonialism providesthe three contexts in which the nature of African identity is to be explored.

This paper aims at a modest, but revised, examination of the relevance and sig-nificance of memory theory in the contextual search and quest for the nature ofAfrican identity. It posits that if the concept of identity is itself problematic andtransient, and the qualifier African is changing and slippery, it engulfs thenature of African identity in an engaging process of re-invention: African identityis no more than a potentiality, not an actuality. But what exactly do we mean bymemory theory in the rebranding and remaking of African identity?

Memory theory is a philosophical theory grounded in metaphysics. It states thatthe phenomenology of the nature of identity is and can be sourced in an essence,which is memory. As a metaphysical thesis, therefore, memory theory postulates

that identity is first, an existent possibility encoded in being regardless of physical

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characteristics. Secondly, that identity is rooted, by virtue of its connectedness tobeing, in spatio-temporal territoriality. Thirdly, that it is activated in and expressedthrough consciousness such as what Paul Connerton (1985) calls social memory or

what Frederic Bartlett (1967) calls (collective unconscious). And fourthly, identityis expressed in hermeneutical possibilities. This is what we have simply defined tomean that identity is INMEMORIAM. It is all these attributes taken together thatcontemplatively explain, describe and point to what we mean by the basic thesis ofAfrican identity.

Invariably, one would have to contend at the outset that, reflectively, memorytheory as used here consists of both objective and subjective conditions. Thefirst two conditions or features above are, to me, objective, while the last twoare actually subjective; what the constituents and contents of historical memory,consciousness and even hermeneutical, interpretive activities are basically

within the domain of subjectivism. Thomas Butler (1989, p. 5), for instance,classified the contents of social memory to include cultural ideas such as oralhistory, folklore, myth and tradition. On his part, Peter Burke (1989) seeshistory as nothing other than social memory. The inevitable conclusion is thatsocial memory and history are reflected altogether in these cultural images andideas. The argument then is that the history of each and every society seems differ-ent and subjectively true to them. It thus follow that their identity is ingrained,partly, in these subjective conditions where it is clear, additionally, that identitycannot be painted without the objective conditions earlier mentioned.

Thus, memory theory as used in this paper postulates the combination of

both objective and subjective conditions or features as the hallmark of identity,especially in a post-colonial construction of African identity. In most cases, scholarswho are successful in establishing the connection between identity and memoryhave emphasized the third condition. While this is not in doubt, it is to be arguedthat the first two conditions are also integral and germane to the thesis ofmemory theory, especially as a response to the quest to understand African identity.

INMEMORIAM is, first, simply a metaphysical thesis, and, secondly, an ideo-logization of the thinking self. In other words, in memory, I am, is an ideologicalsummation of a metaphysical reality, the existing thinking self. Identity thustranscends the realm of thinking to the realm of recollection where what enableseach person to share in a general identity with others is their collective memory.This is exactly what the ancients had in mind when they contended that eachculture or group have a metaphysical essence, a spirit or an arche that explainstheir totality. Thus, memory theory overlaps with Connertons social or collectivememory (1985), Jorn Rusens historical memory (2005), and Ursula van Beekand Bernard Lategans historical consciousness (2005), but it is not exactly thesame thinking that is reflected in their thinking. The emphasis in their doctrine ismore anthropological than metaphysical. And, except for some minute detailswhich I have tried to argue, their work is complementary and corroborative ratherthan contradictory.

Memory theory as defended here is conceptually ingrained in the metaphysics

of groups and persons rather than physical representations, even though it often

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derives ample demonstration in terms of historical consciousness, social memoryand recollection. While each of these attributes may find relevance in explainingthe identity of people in general, the particularity of African identity, using

memory theory, is singled out by the fact that the memory that the African hasof his identity is rooted not just in this being, an existent possibility, but a factequally rooted in the unique reflective and conscious possibilities that he carriesand which explains his essence. It is the un-sharability of this essence that providesa means of asserting a sense of distinction. It is this thesis that I hope to explore,as a possibility, in underpinning the attempts at remaking and rebranding thenature of African identity.

Identity: an endangered concept?

A critical look at the word identity shows that it is an endangered concept. Thiscan be attributed to the following reasons: one, what it tends to examine, i.e., whatthe indices of identity are, is encoded in a very precarious standing. Two, themultifarious use to which it is exposed contributes to the danger in which it isensconced. In the process, abuse and misuse are likely candidates in its trail forself-definition. Three, of all issues concerning the cultural make-up of Africa,identity is about the most controversial to define, especially in relation to thingsone can easily point to. To this end, a shift can be witnessed from identity inthe substance and anatomy of studies and discussions on Africa, to more practicaland metaphysically less abstruse concepts such as music, art, and cinematography.

Yet, identity is the terra firma that defines and explains what African music is orwhat African art is.And what is more, identity seems to be engaged in an interconnected set of

dilemmas. These dilemmas have a reinstating and reiterating frame in the factthat identity is never static, just as culture, the normative shell room for identity,is itself never static. Last, but not the least, the existence and demands of a globa-lizing world order makes identity a precarious and an endangered concept. In theworld today, it is less fashionable to talk of identity but rather identities, since anindividual is not and cannot be known only by reference to one point of entry.Multiplicity defines each person in the world today. This is why Appiah (2004)wrote that limiting the configuration of identity of an individual to one set offactors such as race, gender, religion, and culture is to create ways in andthrough which the identity of such individuals is eventually restricted.

Curiously, therefore, individuals have a wide range of possible identities.Corroborated by Appiah (2004), Laitin (1998) contended that individuals canand do have racial or ethnic identities, national or religious identities, or evenhometown identities. It shows that identity is dynamic and responsive to changingconditions. Discoveries and research in the field of cultural anthropology havenecessitated the development of other ideas on the notion of identity. One suchidea is what Benedict Anderson (1983) calls imagined community, meaningthe sense of belonging to a community regardless of distance and space. Ander-

sons theory of imagined community does not seem to be theoretically far

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from what Stuart Hall (1990) regarded as cultural identity. In other words, culturalidentity is explained as a sense of belonging to a community. But then, what makesone a member of a community?

For Hall, the contestable nature of cultural identity can be seen in two perspec-tives: puritanism or essentialism, and contextualism or non-essentialism. Theformer refers to shared cultural affinity, an essence which defines belongingnessor exclusion regardless of time, space, and which can be brought to life despitethe superficial vicissitudes of our actual history (1990, p. 223). The latter is con-ceived in apposite ideas, with terms of reference defined not by an essence nor bywhat already or actually exists but by what history has done to us, what we havebecome and what the narratives of the past have done to our becomingness. Thecontroversy between essentialism and non-essentialism introduces into culturalanthropology the relevance of philosophy.

Initiating the quest

Geographically, Africa is a vast continent consisting, presently, of 54 countrieswith an estimated 10002000 languages. The population is said to be over 800million. Displaying an immense world of cultural variation, the customs andhabits from Lagos to Lusaka, Dakar to Dar-es-Salaam, from Cairo to CapeTown differ significantly. Africa is embedded in deep religious devotions, feelingsand sentiments. The aesthetic fervour and rhythmic ritual performance thataccompanies such feelings can be described as second to none. The above categ-

orization presents not only an interesting spectacle but makes the talk of anAfrican identity not only controversial but also, on the whole, interesting andworthy of academic pursuit.

The search for an identity, peculiarly, has a source. The source consists of themoral quest to counter the depersonalization and dehumanization to which somany Africans were subjected to in the past and are experiencing presently.The problem of the twentieth century, as William DuBois conceives it is theproblem of the colour line the relation of the darker to the lighter races of manin Asia and Africa, in America and the Islands of the Sea (Morton, 2002, p. 1).Of the problems that beset the African continent, the problem of racism has been,no doubt, the most persistent and obviously controversial. Modern expressions ofracism present, to the dismay of the average African, a pestilential breath.

There are, it seems, divergent discourses on the nature of African identity. Thefirst consists in dissecting and critically unpacking what is meant by the desig-nation Africa. Very early in its contact with Africa, Europe and its intellectualssaw in Africa the arch-enemy of Christianity (Hrbek, 1992, p. 9). Religion thusformed the basis for the colonization of Africa and the negative images con-structed then. In fact, according to Ruth Benedict, racism during the time of colo-nialism was defined and construed along religious lines. According to her, nativeswere outside the pale of humanity not because of skin difference but on account ofthe fact that they were not Christians (1983, p. 107). However, science and anthro-

pology constituted the initial frame through which racism was conceived. With


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time, especially in the absence of verifiable scientific evidences, an ideologicalsplint was concocted to support this stereotype of African image.

Echoing the pulse of this heartbeat, Edward Said (1994) contended that no

European intellectual at the time of the European partition of Africa could besaid to be free of what he calls intellectual imperialism. Hegel and Hume(1978) are notorious examples. Their views about Africa and Africans are stillas damaging as ever. The damaging details are still with us and the averageEuropean reader still finds those details convenient sources of information.Philosophy, history and literature are among the most prominent intellectualdisciplines for legitimizing this image of Africa.

The tendency sometimes is to see in the word Africa something more thanmere geography. But is Africa more than a mere geographical unit? Answers tothis depend on the concepts that are available in conducting our interrogations.

Some scholars are quick in saying that the concept Africa is an ideological con-struct brewed in Europe and as old as European penetration and exploitation ofAfrica (see Appiah, 1992; Mudimbe, 1996). Again, others conceive of Africa asone type of society and one type of people synonymous with developmentproblems. The worst of the conceptualization of Africa is the view that itrepresents an indefatigable though passive object without any capacity to takeher own initiatives. The feminization of Africa is also rife in some poetic andcinematographic discourses.

At the very outset, however, the idea of what Africa means is generally traced tobelongingness to the five groups enunciated by Mortimer Wheeler. According to

Wheeler (1973, p. 5)there are five main groups of Africans. First there are the so-called aboriginal bushmen of

the Kalahari region, Hottentots of the south-west, and Pygmies of the Congo forests . . .Sec-

ondly, there are the so-called true Negroes of west Africa. Thirdly, there are the so-called

Bantu-Negroes who occupy most of Africa south of the Equator. . .Fourthly, there are the

diverse Hamitic-Negroes of north-eastern and east-central Africa . . .Fifthly, there are the

non-Negroid inhabitants of North Africa, including Hamites and Arabs.

It is evident that Wheelers categorization is imbued with one element or theother of the controversy in both philosophical and cultural anthropologybetween puritanism or essentialism and contextualism and non-essentialism.

Whether this holds true or not is part of what the present endeavour is about tonavigate.

Images of Africa

In the literature on cultural history and anthropology, negative images aboundconcerning the nature of African identity. At best, much of these perceptionscan be branded as political and ideological propaganda meant to denigrate anddesecrate the essence of the African. In fact, the problematic of African identitystems from these varied and varying perceptions concocted in some western

traditions in the bid to project the superiority of the west.

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The relevance and significance of memory theory in the light of the problematicof African identity will have more meaning and carry more conviction if under-taken in the light of and against the background of circumstances and environment

which stimulated or inspired the need for the reconstruction of African history. Infact, memory theory as presented here is an attempt to construct a philosophicalanthropology of contemporary Africa on firmer historical foundations. Suchhistorical foundation anchors on the fluid interplay between the philosophy andanthropology of Africa.

The idea of memory, awareness and the innate ability to remember presupposesa sense of history. Conjectures about memory are historical conjectures. The con-flation of identity in the light of memory and reflective consciousness are bestunderstood in the light of historical consciousness and awareness. If personal iden-tity consists in reflective consciousness of ones past, awareness and memory i.e.,

ability to remember and the idea of memory suggest a sense of history, then, it isconclusive to state that an interrogation of African identity will cluster around itshistory. But then what memory has the African of his/her history and his/herpast? The memory of the African, in a major sense, is the memory of distinctepisodes of racism and imperialism, which still hunt the African.

The African predicament is based on the perception that Africans have nohistory and are, consequently, outside the pale of humanity. Mai Palmerg(2001b, p. 206) has argued that when history is cut, the first victim has alwaysbeen that of pre-colonial Africa. In a similar vein, Marxs materialist interpretationof history excludes, in terms of class-consciousness and conflict, pre-colonial

Africa. Thus, it is essentially a popular ideology and theory in the west thatAfricans have no past. The denial of an African past is intricately connected tothe development of racism and racist thought in the west. Moreover, racisttendency also explain the many-sidedness of several interpolating images con-jured in the west concerning Africa. How then do we conceive racism?

Racism, interestingly, is a shifting spectacle in describing Africa. It envelops afamily of forms based on scientific generalizations, ideological rationalization,anthropological observations and religious bigotry. The anatomy of racism isto be seen in the delicate but curious projection of one form of superiority orthe other purportedly said to have its origin in and support from the findings ofscience. In the words of Palmerg, racism is the quasi-scientific doctrine whichcategorizes people into inferior and superior races on the basis of inheritedbiological traits (2001a, p. 107). Thus, doctrines supporting racism were firstconceived to be scientific in nature. When Bracken (1973, pp. 9196) postulatedthe view that there are several theses that separate human lines of creation and/orevolution with Caucasians being the best, he sought a number of scientific andanthropological theories to make racism scientifically respectable.

Before Bracken, Gobineau and Chamberlain had written, in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries, about the debate and rivalry between the French and theGermans over claims of biological superiority. The absence of scientific evidencesto justify the claim lay to rest the assertion of superiority/inferiority between thesetwo European powers. A similar debate concerning superiority by the English,


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who claimed that the measurement of their skulls showed superiority over theSwedish, was also regarded as unscientific. This was the first lap of the originof the idea of racism in the West.

What is, however, surprising is how these theories and postulations wereaccepted as scientific and plausible grounds to justify claims of superiority ofwhites over blacks. Since there was no scientific support for the superiority ofsome biological traits, the boundary of racism shifted from science to ideology.Thus, Linnaeuss (1806) contention that the mental and moral capacity of non-whites differ markedly from whites can only be regarded as ideological innature rather than the product or conclusion of science. In the same vein,Commander Andrew H. Footes address of 1854 to the American ColonizationSociety that if all that Negroes of all generations have ever done were to beobliterated from recollection for ever the world would lose no great truth no

profitable art, no exemplary form of life (1854, p. 207) is at best ideological.Footes statement that the loss of all that is African would offer no memorable

deduction from anything but earths black catalogue of crimes was a search forjustification and queer conscience-silencing theorization that could serve as basisfor explorative exploitation and colonial domination. Barely three decades afterthe naval officers assertion, Africa was partitioned by European powers. Coloni-alism is not and never based on any scientifically true theory or postulation.Justifications for colonialism were entirely ideological. This includes religiousreasons that are not always conclusive in nature simply because, most of thetimes, they depend on models of interpretations and who is doing the interpret-

ation. It has not been factually, scientifically, physically or mentally demonstratedthat one particular race is, in terms of biological characteristics and properties,superior to other races. Ideological orientations, based on such mindsets asthis, are contaminated at root and genetically flawed because they are based onself-deception on the part of those who subscribe to it. The origin of suchideas comes from a mindset and not from what is factually true. The origin ofsuch construct is positional, in the words of Jonathan Friedman (1992, p. 194),because it is dependent upon where one is located in social reality, withinsociety, and within global process.

Subsequent writers in this tradition tended to portray the colonial interlude asessentially an age of liberation and enlightenment for Africans. In their view,the memory of any past to the African should, of necessity, be the history ofthe colonial masters in Africa. Hence, in Western construction and understanding,colonialism is like a saving grace to African history. But the end of colonialism isthat of cultural, mental and psychological dislocation. Cultural dislocation asdefined by Uroh refers to:

a disorientation or better still, a delinking of a people from their heritage in arts, sciences,

politics, social norms, religion and so on. Such culturally dislocated person finds it difficult

to have a full grasp of the social realities around him or her. To lose ones culture is therefore

like losing memory. This is the situation, which most Africans find themselves today. . .the

African today is caught between a past s/he cannot recall, a present s/he is ill-equipped tounderstand and a future, s/he cannot contemplate. (Uroh, 1998, pp. 9798)

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This dislocation is occasioned by Africas chequered history; a history ofslavery and thedevaluationof the African personality; of migration and the sever-ance of link with cultural roots; of colonization and the displacement of the

Africas traditional values; and above all, of the delegitimation of the Africastraditional institutions and the attendant cultural amnesia.

In memor(iam)

Milan Kunderas celebrated workThe Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1996)pungently drives home a point about the meaning of the above title. Accordingto the author, the struggle of man against power is the struggle of the memoryagainst forgetting (cited in Vera, 2001, p. 116). It is generally opined thatmuch of a persons sense of self is related to that persons biological sex and to

the sex roles assigned by society. A member of a primitive clan might expresshis/her identity in the formula I am we; he/she cannot conceive of himself/herself, in the Cartesian sense of the cogito, as an individual, existing apartfrom his/her group. When the feudal system broke down in medieval Europe,his/her sense of identity was shaken and the acute question who am I arose.Streeter (1926, p. 36) says that what a person knows of the inner quality of lifedepends primarily on the following three things: first, the depth and the range ofhis/her own personal experience [memory]; secondly, how far he/she has theimaginative sympathy to penetrate into the inner experience of others [solipsism];thirdly, the extent to which he/she has reflected on the material so presented [con-

templation]. Thus, in Streeters metaphysical worldview, memory, introspectionand contemplation are veritable qualities in understanding the meaning of the self.John Locke provided the intellectual foundation for memory theory. The memory

theory of identity is to be distinguished from the bodily theory. The bodily theorysimply states that an individual x is identifiable with itself just in case the bodilyqualities of x are the same or appears to be the same In asserting the identity of x,using the bodily theory, other physical tests can be used apart from physicalappearance. Examples of such physical tests are collection and examination ofblood samples, fingerprints, photographs, a given tribal mark, some natural markson the body. However, the weaknesses of the bodily theory are obvious: MichaelJackson, who died some few months back, in terms of bodily characteristics, isnot the same as he was 30 years ago. Plastic surgery, blood transfusion andstrange DNA manifestations, as witnessed nowadays, constitute some of theseveral means by which the adequacy and plausibility of the bodily theory can becalled into question. The possibility of cloning the human body through techno-logical innovation provides a basis for rejecting the bodily theory of identity.

Even though memory theory is strongly defended through the unequivocalreference to the concept of reflective consciousness, it does not follow that it isstill not open to some probing defects such as, for example, the possibility oflobotomy as carried out by Hitler on the Jews before and during the SecondWorld War. Despite this possible defect in memory theory, it is still a better

theory in the metaphysical list of possible clues to resolving the question of


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One is inclined to suppose that the real criteria of personal identity must be criteria that one

uses in making statements about ones own identity. And since it appears that one can make

such statements, and know them to be true, without first knowing the facts that would justify

an assertion about the identity of ones body, the conclusion would seem to be that bodilyidentity cannot be criterion of personal identity. (2008, p. 123)

How does, in Shoemakers view, the memory establish personal identity? ForShoemaker, the memory criterion establishes personal identity because of thelogical relationship or truth entailed therein. For Shoemaker, it is a logicaltruth . . . that if a person remembers a past event then that same person, musthave been a witness to the event, i.e. must have been present when it occurredand in a position to know of its occurrence (2008, p. 125). Shoemakers argumentseems to be this: Locke ran into problems by concluding that memory is the solecriterion of personal identity.

Memory, according to Shoemaker, is not the sole criterion of personal identityjust as bodily identity is not the sole criterion of personal identity. But thatmemory, though not the sole criterion, is one of the criteria, and that in an impor-tant sense. But then what is this important sense? The important sense, accordingto Shoemaker, is that memory claims are generally true because it is a logical fact.In his words,

It is, I should like to say, part of the concept of a person that persons are capable of making

memory statements about their own pasts. Since it is a conceptual truth that memory state-

ments are generally true, it is a conceptual truth that persons are capable of knowing their

own pasts in a special way, a way that does not involve the use of criteria of personal identity,

and it is a conceptual truth (or a logical fact) that the memory claims that a person makes can

be used by others as grounds for statements about the past history of that person. This, I

think, is the kernel of truth that is embodied in the view that personal identity can be

defined in terms of memory. (2008, pp. 133134)

I have set out the foregoing in the belief that the characteristics of the Africanidentity in the state of analyses and the nature of African identity to be explored inthe light of memory theory will be better evaluated. One prominent idea in project-ing the African identity is the recourse to the idea of African personality. In thelargest sense, the African personality is the cultural expression of what iscommon to all peoples whose home is on the continent of Africa, a personalitywhich embraces the qualities of man both as citizen of Africa and as a memberof the human race (Quaison-Sackey, 1963, pp. 3637).

But then one could ask what is it that is common to all people whose home ison the continent of Africa? Does being an African entail merely a geographicaldelineation such that everyone who is born there or resides there is simplyAfrican? In that case, all sorts of folk irrespective of colour, and historicalroots would lay claim to sharing identity with others. But then, it seems identityhas more of a metaphysical essence, an ontological garb rather than mereaccidental properties.

For many Africans, a very good way of looking at the idea of African identity

clusters around the readiness to defend willingly African values and African


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culture in a world that is reeling under the influence of globalization and modern-ization. One way of interpreting this view is that the common trait postulationextends, it is said, to the defence of the common cultural heritage in, concerning,

around, about and of Africa. This reasoning is, however, fallacious since it deniesthe validity of empirical truth. The empirical truth is that In terms of culturewrites Busia (1962, p. 73; see also Abraham, 1962, p. 115) there is not onesocial tradition; there are different social traditions and. . .different nationalities.Wheelers categorization reveals a glaring distinction with respect to issues ofculture. To this end, talk of African identity in terms of culture is at best precariousand bound to be short-lived.

Another way of interpreting this suggested view is that Africanness is not only adefence of African culture but a defence against modernism. Even though the ideaof modernism is subject to many interpretations, one implication of this view is

that to be an African is to be anti-modern. In other words, it means that moder-nity and Africanness constitute a negation of each other. This interpretation maynot be sustainable and is bound to lead us to certain conclusions about the nature ofAfrican identity that are not worth defending. It is often accepted that modernism,itself, is a questionable and sometimes dubious characterization of history and assuch should be taken with a pinch of salt in painting what the nature of Africanidentity is.

The above tallies with the innocuous but dangerous description of Africathatwhich captures the essence of primitivism. On a critical note, primitivism has apeculiar double meaning. The conception of primitivism in one sense is inno-

cent: Africa is primitive because it is the land of genuine beings, unspoiled, orig-inal, unadulterated and close to life. But the other aspect of the meaning ofprimitivism is demeaning and self defeating: those held to be genuine are sobecause they are starkly underdeveloped, and according to Walter Rodney(1972), the underdevelopment of Africa was the other and necessary side ofwestern development into industrial and modern society. Palmergs conclusionon this issue sounds poetic and deserves attention: to her, these two attitudescan be called, one the one hand, the hierarchical and condemning attitude, andon the other, the romanticising and idolising attitude. In the former case, Africais deplored for what it does not have, in the latter case it is admired for what ithas (2001, p. 202). In any case, a dilemma is still involved in this reveredopinion which renders, in obfuscating terms, that requires every modicum ofclarity we can muster.

The idea of colour as the expression of what is common to African identity isgiven particular attention in the concept of Negritude. Negritude, as developedby Senghor and others, points to the existence of common psychic traits possessedby the Negro African. In Senghors words, it is the sum of the cultural valuesof the black world (1964). This psychic trait refers to his heightened sensibilityand his strong emotional quality. Negritude, in short, is both an acceptance andaffirmation of the quality of blackness. Blackness, in Negritudinal affirmation,refers to intuitive or tactile spontaneous reason, sensation, sensuousness,

instinct, feeling, rhythm, emotions, creativity, imagination, and immediacy. As

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affirmations of blackness, these characteristics express what Serequeberhan (1994)calls aesthetic of feelings and images impregnated with rhythm.

That the concept of Negritude is inadequate is obvious. Negritude, the way it is

described, appears complex in character. In one sense, it has no geographicalboundaries as such. Apart from this, Wheelers categorization includes Arabs,who are strictly speaking, non-blacks, and yet by dint of geographical delineationare referred to as Africans. But more precisely, scholars such as Wiredu (1980),Soyinka (1976), Fanon (1952) and Appiah (1992) have criticized the concept ofNegritude as enveloping a world of contradiction. According to Fanon, Negritudefails to deliver the African from the problem of racist stereotypes because regard-less of Negritude the white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black in his black-ness (1952, p. 11). In their estimation, assertion of black peoples sensuality andintuitive, mystic and spontaneous reason was not strong enough to challenge racist

assertions of blacks as unable to think rationally, as childish, immature and withuninhibited sexuality. For these scholars, what Negritude has done instead is toconfirm these racist stereotypes, upholding thereby an unequal power relationbetween whites and blacks.

Explaining African identity using theories of African personality and Negritudediscloses that they both have a close connection with the ideology of Pan-African-ism. This is basically a political movement aimed at fostering the realization andrecreation of the integral African character through a programme of politicalideas, actions and agitation. Pan-Africanism, though nationalistic in nature,ended as a cultural construction. Writers such as Blyden and Du Bois saw in

Pan-Africanism the idea of racial unity implying that people of Africa have acommon destiny because they belong to a specific race.The problem with Pan-Africanism is how to transcend the sphere of the political

into that which is metaphysical. A philosophical interrogation should emphasizean ontological basis for determining and describing Africanness. Besides, thesame problem that weakened the force of Negritude is equally relevant in thecritique of Pan-Africanism. According to Appiah (1992, p. 62), the cultural nation-alism of Pan-Africanism is an outgrowth of European racialism which makes thecourse of cultural nationalism in Africa position as real the imaginary identities towhich Europe has subjected Africa and Africans.

The limitations inherent in Negritude and Pan-Africanism led to the develop-ment of the concept ofunanimismby Paulin Hountondji (1983). Paulins unani-mism refers to the idea that there is some central body of ideas that is shared byblack Africans generally. That the concept is not normally quoted and discussedany longer shows that the idea did not really receive much intellectual supportor circulation. For one thing, it limited the nature of identity to the idea of black-ness but, more importantly, it limited, in a way, African identity to somethingintellectual and not metaphysical or ontological. In other words, being at thelevel of idea, it would easily be sharable, in an academic and intellectual sense,thereby losing the string of importance it tried to create and has created in thefirst place. Besides, Hountondjis silence over what unanimism means shows

the concept is, perhaps, stillborn.


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In recent times, the nature of African identity has been embedded in the idea ofdifference. Mudimbes work (1994) is replete with this understanding of Africanidentity. For him,deviationor absolute difference is the best symbol of the idea of

Africa in the West. The Enlightenment period and the rise of the sciences in theWest contributed to the concept of otherness by which Africa has generallybeen characterized from the eighteenth century onwards. Otherness is thus anembodiment, definition and demonstration of difference. The specificity ofAfrica, for Mudimbe, is an invention.

Generally, we do not usually ask for the problem of identity except there areconfusions surrounding the subject. Post-colonialism entails, in a practical way,series of intermingling dilemmas with respect to the quest and nature of Africanidentity. Entailed in post-colonial construction of African identity is the normativ-ity of change. This is understandable since the post-colonial is begotten of the

colonial, thus making a critical account of the notion of change a necessaryfeature of post-colonial construction of identity. Endorsing change and its inevit-ability is thus one of the several challenges of identity in post-colonial discourseson identity.

But then, a lot depends on what is meant by the post-colonial and the concept ofchange. Change is never a signifier of a break or discontinuance; it only suggests atransformation from one level of event to another level that often incorporates andentails each other. In this sense, the identity of a substance or subject with itself, asenunciated in the monism of Milesianism (the Milesians were early Greek philoso-phers historically regarded to be the first philosophers in the western tradition), is

still appropriated in a significant way. One of the problems of post-colonial configur-ation of identity is to assume the deadness of the earlier while celebrating the birth ofthe now. Post-colonialism is trenchantly an engagement or exercise in extension. AsSimon Gikandi (1996, p. 15) puts it, post-colonialism is one way of recognisinghow decolonised situations are marked by the trace of the imperial pasts they tryto disavow. . .a code for the state of undecidability in which the culture of coloni-alism continues to resonate in what was supposed to be its negation.

Given this post-colonial postulate, an African can be compared to the idea of thecommon man, who is representative of the African. In this, it is taken as given thatone is never fully so. A person makes himself through the process of living. In thislight, we must then have various things to look for at different times, that is, fromthe pre to the post, in the task of identification. Different categories of things,including wo/man, have different modes of identification at different times andfor different purposes. The question then is what criteria of sameness are we toappeal to in classifying things?

The question of identity goes beyond persons. An African is more than what heis as a person. In a way, the problematic of an African identity is indeed an ideo-logical thing. However, we can use memory theory in constructing, reconstructingor even deconstructing the African identity in a positive way. Even thoughmemory theory is a metaphysical theory to unravel the aching question of personalidentity, it is still a truism that memory theory affords and articulates a cultural

critique of the predicament of what African identity means. We are never fully

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any one thing. A person is always becoming and never fully is, until the end. In thelight of memory theory, the African can remember his/her past no matter howconfused or problematic or even undefined that past may be.

Even though the predicament of the African identity is an ideological one, it isstill true that memory theory provides a positive platform on which African iden-tity can be discussed. Even if Africans have split identities or crises of identity, orthat our identity is of a confused people, it is still a truism that we can use severalfeatures to denote that identity, and since identity is becoming, we can then have aclearer and more glorified identity.

It is the power to remember that is crucial to restoring or remaking African iden-tity. As Yvonne Vera (2001, p. 116) says, it is an understanding of what hashappened, in knowing where the rain began to beat us that we begin to findagain our autonomy. Autonomy therefore is crucial to understanding identity.

In other words, no knowledge of the nature of the self can exist without under-standing the meaning of self-autonomy and the role of autonomy in regainingthe self. Every narrative recollecting the past is an attempt in the painstakingprocess of regaining the autonomy of the self. The concept of autonomy is thusa critical significant idea that shows as rewarding the assignment of remakingand reconstructing African identity in the post-colonial sense. It is entailed inthe fact that the searching, inquisitive self is an autonomous being.

The African of today is the African of the past in the sense that we can discernsameness in the reflective consciousness, memory, awareness and remembering ofthe past. A conscious cognitive continuity can be perceived as a phenomenological

possibility in describing existence in relation to Africa. The little the African canremember of his past is worth remembering. A worthless past can still be remem-bered no matter how clumsy. This is why Thomas Butler (1989, p. 5) definedremembering as encompassing not only events recalled from personal experi-ence but also those inherited recollections that prompt feelings of collectiveshame, pride or resentment on behalf of our real or metaphorical ancestors.The legacy of memory theory in the construction of African identity consist inthe view that the African has a conscious memory of his/her past with whichhe/she looks forward to in constructing and projecting a better future. In otherwords, the identity of the African can be located significantly in his/her abilityto engage in a positive reflective consciousness of his

/her past. This memory,

of course, would be of a member of an exploited race. But curiously, this is notpeculiar to this race alone. Other races have also constructed a unique identityout of a similar story of exploitation.

Paul Connertons idea of social or collective memory in his bookHow SocietiesRemember (1985) represents a classic example of what is hinted at here eventhough the conclusion he arrived at is not shared by me. According to Connerton,memory, apart from being individual, can also be collective or social. Writing onthe salience of memory for the group, Connerton contended that it is an implicitrule that participants in any social order must presuppose a shared memory. To theextent that their memories of a societys past diverge, to that extent its members

can share neither experiences nor assumptions. The effect is seen perhaps most


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obviously when communication across generations is impeded by different sets ofmemories (1989, p. 3). One initial problem with Connertons idea is thatcollective memory as used here was not shown to have a strong connection with

the task of proving and demonstrating the nature of identity. In other words,while it is true that societies often remember by resorting to collective or sharedmemory, it does not follow from his analysis whether it is an indicator of identity.

One possible explanation on behalf of Connerton is that identity was not hismajor objective; his objective was to show that memory can be social, not justindividual, and that such social memory are discoverable in commemorativeceremonies which are performative in character and, to that extent, they arebodily. Since his arguments are not to prove the nature of identity, it may notbe necessary to belabour the point. Nevertheless, it can still be argued thatsocial memories are not necessarily commemorative or performative. Jewish

collective memory of Hitlers holocaust is not essentially commemorative. Thesame is true of the reflective, conscious understanding of colonialism in Africa.In my view Connerton has taken and defined the idea of social memory onlyfrom one perspective: social memory as ceremonialization of a groups socialpast. In the end, we could talk of the possibility of social collective memory asa metaphysical, intellectual and spatio-temporal resource. It is this possibility, ifsuccessful, that is reiterated here in underpinning the nature of African identity.Thus, while ceremony may be bodily, the intellectual and metaphysical realitybehind that collective or group memory is what provides the basic nutrients of apeoples identity.

As suggested in memory theory, the idea of memory, awareness and the innateability to remember presupposes a sense of history. Conjectures about memory arehistorical conjectures. The conflation of identity in the light of memory and reflec-tive consciousness are best understood in the light of historical consciousness andawareness. If identity consists in reflective consciousness of ones past, as high-lighted in memory theory, and the idea of memory suggests a sense of history,then it is conclusive that the identity of the African clusters around his history.In the significant sense this history or memory is the memory of distinct episodesof racism and imperialism which still haunts the African in the present.

It is important to understand the importance of history and historical reconstruc-tion in identity construction, reconstruction and deconstruction as a post-colonialengagement. While some scholars have shown the independent nature of historicalreconstruction as an evolving discipline, for his part, Connerton attempted todemonstrate the distinction between social memory and historical reconstruction.For Connerton, historical reconstruction is not dependent on social memory; thehistorian is imbued with a sense of autonomy as a practitioner. But then, socialmemories do receive a boost through/from historical reconstruction. From thisit follows that history, its reconstruction and collective memory are importantelements in a post-colonial attempt at remaking and rebranding African identity.

The memory of the African transcends the era of imperialism. This is because,like all other peoples of the world, the African is inseparable from his history and

culture. His history is the record of what he did and thought and said. Again, his

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number of people are organized into a social group, whether by appetite, instinct,fashion, interest, sentiment, or ideal, this group speedily develops certain charac-teristics peculiar to itself, which directly constrain the behaviour of its individual

members (p. 281).Memory theory emphasizes that identity is not static. An understanding of

memory theory compels one to accept the view that every person, including theAfrican, is continuously becoming. For memory theory, each individual shouldbe able to recall his/her past. For the African, the present may truly be confused,and the future may be bleak, but we have a memory of our past just as the Westdoes. It is this constructive understanding of our past now that helps in directingand marshalling a future in which what is critically an African identity appearsempowering and manifests a qualifying ego.

Significantly, though, memory theory is meant to apply to individuals, not

groups. However, as persons, each African can identify with this theory. Evenif it were true that darkness remains the larger percentage of the past of Africans,it is still a fact that darkness is part of history because certain events still constitutepart of that darkness. Their contact with the West can also be the basis of his/heremerging identity because, according to memory theory, he/she has a memory,also, of that contact. Assuming the truth of the claims of the West about Africa,Africans still remain identifiable as Africans in terms of those very statements.Africans may reject the identity so constructed by the West, based on their ownmemory perhaps. But as argued, if it is a logical truth and a conceptual truththat memory statements are generally true, then it is the case that the kernel of

the truth about the African identity is embodied in the view that the identity ofan African can be defined in terms of the distinct episodes and varying patternsof history and the memory s/he has about himself.

It is in this sense that African identity can be defined as above: INMEMOR(IAM), i.e., in memory, I am. This does not exactly negate the Cartesian cogito:I think, therefore, I exist. Even though it is an affirmation of the Cartesiancogito, it transcends it. This is because even though existence precedes identity,both existence and identity work together in defining the phenomenology ofhuman existence and identity which, in this case, is the essence of African identity.While Cartesianism heralded the truth of the cogito with a methodological doubt,memory theory, as postulated here, heralds the truth of identity in relation toevents. The memory of the African is made up of episodic events which haveturned to be the constituents of that identity. One event is produced by the thinkingself; the other produced by the self that remembers, that recollects. No identityclue is proven beyond and above this terse but profound phrase: in memory I am.

INMEMORIAM, in a nutshell, defines the person, in the primary sense, in termsof memory, a wonderful clue in defining what the human person is that ReneDescartes omitted. Identifying a person in terms of thought is just the beginningof the process; memory explains the basis of human continuity of itself withitself; what ends and defines the celebration of cerebrality, i.e., the thinkingthing, is the summation of memory which defines properly that I am. In

another sense, INMEMORIAM defines group identity in terms of memory in

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which every one in the group finds, most suitably, where each belongs by workingon the memory in terms of similarity of history, ideas and experiences. What issimply happening is that we are transcending the realm of the metaphysical to

the realm of the ideological when we so contend. INMEMORIAM is, first, a meta-physical thesis, and, secondly, an ideologization of the thinking self. In otherwords, in memory, I am, is an ideological summation of a metaphysical reality,the existing thinking self. Identity thus transcends the realm of thinking to therealm of recollection where what makes each identifiable with the other is thememory.

This is exactly what the ancients had in mind when they contended that eachculture or group have a metaphysical essence, a spirit or an arche that explainstheir totality. Thus, memory theory resembles Connertons social or collectivememory (1985), Jorn Rusens historical memory (2005), and Ursula van Beek

and Bernard Lategans historical consciousness (2005), but my own thinking isdifferent from what these scholars had in mind. Memory theory as defendedhere is conceptually ingrained in the metaphysics of groups and persons ratherthan physical representations, even though it often derives ample demonstrationin terms of historical consciousness, social memory and recollection which,some of these scholars have argued, is bodily in nature.

Of course, the content and component memory is still a potentiality, not anactuality since just as the post-colonial is still engaging the colonial in anongoing, dialogical exchange, the present, in a like manner, engages the past inan ongoing relationship, a continuum. To comprehend memory theory in the con-

struction and reconstruction of African identity is to see the relation that existsbetween that which supposedly occurred in the past and what is happeningnow. The difference that the present makes is that it helps us to see the autonomywhich the past lacks. As a potentiality, the constituents of memory are far frombeing conclusive but always translusive, meaning that every memory evententails a conclusion without being itself conclusive.

Conclusion

The existential and metaphysical truth about African identity is that it is still in astate of potentiality, thus corroborating Achebes view that African identity is stillin the making. A potentiality is indefinable in the conclusive sense; only an actu-ality is final even though potentiality is not inherently limiting. What is quite enno-bling about potentiality is that it envelops a world of great possibilities. Africanidentity must, therefore, be understood as a potentiality ensconced in the shellof memory inasmuch as its indefinable nature is informed by the interplay of aseries of intermingling values. Certain contexts and meanings define the potenti-ality in question and the values clustered around it. The values and context areencoded in the memory of the signifier. Identity, for the African, does not existoutside memory. The normative constitution of identity, for an African, comesthrough the process of recollection, in memory I am, in which the constituents

of recollection are definable in terms of potentiality, an unfolding, a becoming.


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Though endangered in significant respects, it does not follow that a thesis cannotbe maintained and sustained concerning the nature of African identity. Post-colonial engagement, today, on the nature of African identity, may not entirely

be about changing the past, as suggested by William Burton (1982, p. 14), butabout changing negative images around, concerning, and about, Africa.

NoteDepartment of Philosophy, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Email: [email protected]

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