TABLE OF CONTENT
TITLE … … … … … … i
CERTIFICATION … … … … … ii
DEDICATION … … … … … iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT … … … … iv
TABLE OF
CONTENT … … … … vi
GENERAL
INTRODUCTION … … … … viii
Purpose of
Study … … … … … xi
Scope of
Study … … … … … xiii
Methodology … … … … … … xv
CHAPTER ONE
1.0
LITERATURE REVIEW … … … 1
1.1 Ancient View About Africa … … … 2
1.1
Medieval View About Africa … … … 4
1.2 Modern View About Africa … … 6
1.3 Contemporary View About Africa … 9
CHAPTER TWO
2.0
Martin Heidegger: The Question Of Being … 13
2.1
The Fundamental Ontology: Dasein Analytic 17
2.2
His Methodology … … … … … 25
2.3. His Concept of Phenomenology and
Interpretations … 28
CHAPTER
THREE
3.0
African Distorted Images … … … 37
3.1
Some Causes Of African Predicament … 38
3.1.1
Geographico Cause … … 38
3.1.2
Historico Cause … … … 42
3.1.3
Colonialism … … … … 43
3.2
Phenomenological Interpretations Of African
Distorted
Images … … …
48
CHAPTER
FOUR
4.0 Critical Evaluations and Conclusion… … 58
BIBLIOGRAPHY … … … … … 62
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
What do you
expect would come to the minds of many, assuming you stand on Mountain Everest
and shout the word “Africa” to the hearing of all mankind? Arguably, many
(especially Westerners) would immediately succumb to the idea that Africa is a
place of tribal slaughters, massacres, urban slums, skeletal children, people
infested with AIDS; a place where the earth is dry and cracked, a place of
endless stream of refugees without a place to call home, without clothing,
medicine, food or water, plus other images of savagery, inferiority complex and
hunger. According to Ezine Newsletter:
Those are the only images we see in C.N.N during the
nightly news, during times of crisis and then there is nothing until the next
war, skirmish or famine. Limited, selective images that make a continent look
like it is always in upheaval.
But these
images about Africa are not only associated with the C.N.N. nightly news, they
have permeated for hundreds of years in the West’s perception of Africa.
Lending weight to this, the same Ezine Newsletter (African insight) on African
images, opines:
For hundreds of years, Africa was a blank spot on
Western maps, a place that did not exist and then during the Middle Ages it
became a dark spot. It was referred to as the “dark continent”, where primitive
people without history and civilization dwelled. Where chaos was the norm, even
the capacity for an African to love was questioned since a savage being was not
capable of love or Christian charity.
In
concrete, Africans, especially Blacks, having been besmirched with these
subhuman statuses, it was as easy as rolling off a log to take this Dark
continent filled with savages and ship them to ends of the earth as slaves.
This explains the 16th Century African Slave trade, when Bartoleme
de Las Casas (Bishop of Chiapas) threw off Christian anthropology aboard and
made a clarion call for African slaves, who would replace the emaciated Indians
in Hispaniola, Spain, 1517. It was also easy to plunder the riches of Africa,
its people and resources, and to colonize them under the guise of bringing
civilization and Christianity. No wonder, Jomo Kenyatta opined in his book,
‘Facing Mount Kenya’:
The missionaries came with the Bible in their hand and
we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed, and then when we
opened them we had the Bible in our hand, and they had the land.
But a
critical mind would ask, why was it Europe, rather than Africa that conquered
and plundered? This, I shall briefly explain in chapter three of this project,
while focusing on the main point of my
project.
Today, we
could see the same tune played and danced according to the old methods. We
could see veiled distorted images of African continent and “neo-asphyxiating
colonialism”4 in the relations of Africa
with the West. These we see in most actions of U.N, G-8 club, C.N.N news and
other Western means.
Thus, in
chapter one of this project, I will expose the views or distorted images about
Africans starting from the Ancient to the Contemporary period. Chapter two of
this project will navigate on Martin Heidegger’s task in his “Being and Time”,
his idea of the fundamental ontology and his concept of phenomenology, which I
will use to interpret these African experiences. Chapter three will dwell on
African distorted images vis-à-vis the causes of African predicament. Later, I
will use Martin Heidegger’s concept of phenomenology to interpret these
distorted images. Chapter four will be on critical evaluation and conclusion.
PURPOSE OF STUDY
My purpose
of this project is to showcase and bring to “more” conscious awareness the
varied distorted images with which Africans are labeled. These distorted
images, though as old as the continent itself, have continued to form ominous
clouds of hatred in the mental skies of most Westerners. The notion that
Africans, especially Black Africans, are inferior has implicitly continued to
petrify in the African relationship with the West. For instance, “eighty five
years after the witch hunt against the African soldiers in Liverpool, Anthony
Walker, a promising young black student from Liverpool was viciously murdered
with an axe on 29 June, 2005 by white youths who were angered by the fact that
Walker had a white girlfriend”.5 Imagine
this.
To hedge
West’s sheer and implicit distortion of Africans as inferior, Africans
themselves have unconsciously submerged themselves to this status–quo. Very
soon, they will become “untouchables”.
As a result
of the above, this project is not only aimed at show-casing, but is also geared
towards salvaging the tainted images of the Africans. It is aimed at
confronting Euro centric superiority by asserting the fact that “we are all
humans, irrespective of color, skin and race. Again, my intent is that there is
more to complexification (coming together) than there is to particularization.
Pierre Telhard de Chardin hit the truth when he remarked:
It is precisely this state of isolation that will end
if we begin to discover in each other not merely the elements of one and the
same thing but of a single spirit in search of itself.
Again, like
every other project on African experience, this project is an attempt to unmask
the “un-freedom” of Africans hobbled by many “positive” and ‘’negative’’
elements (slavery, colonialism et cetera) as a result of the sub-human status
created for them.
I shall interpret these images about African
continent, using Martin Heidegger’s concept of phenomenology in his “Being and
Time”. Remember, I am not using this concept as benchmark to African situation;
instead, I am only interpreting his concept of phenomenology and situating it
to African situation. Again, I shall not relegate to the limbo his question of
the meaning of being by which he arrived at the fundamental ontology:
‘’Dasein’’-man. Thus “Dasein” is the gateway to other ontologies. It is because
of the centrality of Dasein with its existentials that this project focuses on
the distortions of African “Being ness”.
THE SCOPE OF STUDY
The scope
of this project covers the whole of African continent, especially the black
Africans, bearing in mind that some Africans like Egyptians are white in
complexion. It covers the whole of African continent, because the word “Africa”
already connotes negative undertones for most Western minds. Hear what was
written on “milestones”, December 26, 2005 ‘Time magazine’, vol 166 no.25,
captioned “The persons of the year”, with reports by Illa Garger, about Africa
13 years ago:
Africa has become the basket case of the planet, the
“third world of the third world’’, a vast continent in free fall…. Africa has a
genius for extremes, for the beginning and the end. It seems simultaneously
connected to some memory of Eden and to some foretaste of apocalypse. Nowhere
is day more vivid or night darker. Nowhere are forests more luxuriant. Nowhere
is there a continent more miserable. Africa-sub-Saharan Africa, at least – has
begun to look like an immense illustration of chaos theory, although some hope
is forming on the margins. Much of the continent has turned into a battleground
of contending doom . . .
Even
though, the reporter might have some reservations (Egypt or some nations of
North Africa), he painted the whole continent black. Therefore the scope of
this project is the African continent. But distinctions will be made when
necessary.
METHODOLOGY
The method of
this project is expository, analytical and hermeneutical. By expository and
analytical method, I will carefully expose the varied distorted images of
Africans, starting from the ancient period to the contemporary period, with
analysis when necessary. And by the method of hermeneutics, I will
interpretatively unmask these distorted images of Africans using Martin
Heidegger’s concept of “phenomenology” in order to see what lies behind
them.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 LITERATURE REVIEW
The vastness and
diversity of Africa has made it difficult to determine whom we do refer when we
talk of “the distorted images of African continent”. This is not unconnected
with the fact that there are some African countries like Egypt, which because
of their complexion a times are erased off from the Traitor’s book.
Nevertheless, according to Joseph Harris in his book “Africans and their
history”:
The history of African is relevant to the history of
Black people throughout the world, and partly because of the general derogatory
image “Africans” and Black people everywhere have inherited from Western
history.
Upon scientific evidence, the concept of Black
inferiority and racism continues to thrive in many minds. It is appropriate
that this project should present an analysis of the effects of historical myths
and stereotypes, views and literatures about racial Africa before delving into
the main corpus of the work.
1.1 ANCIENT VIEW ABOUT AFRICA
In examining
ancient characterizations, we shall see how the roots of racial prejudice
became interwoven in Western culture, which internationalized the concept of
black inferiority and colonized Africa’s history. Joseph Harris appropriately
hedge to the last sentence when he said:
The denigration of Africans can be traced back beyond
the Christian era into antiquity, and in later times anyone who wished to
employ degrading stereotypes about black people could easily establish
reference points in classical times when outstanding scholars and writers
described Africans as strange and primitive creatures. Many of those
descriptions have remained with us and have contributed immeasurably to the
perpetuation of denigratory myths about Africans, and black people generally.
Joseph Harris, foremost in exposing
ancient “distorted” views about Africa, went further to pull the bull by the
horns:
Although the father of History, Herodotus, made
significant contributions towards the evolution of history as a field of study,
in attempting to describe African culture which was so different from his own,
sowed seeds of racial prejudice that shaped black–white images for centuries to
come. He frequently referred to Africans as “barbarians” and characterized the
people of Libya by saying “their speech resembles the shrieking of a Bat rather
than the language of men.
He went further to say of another ancient writer:
Pliny the elder discussed of Africans who by report
“have no heads but mouth and eyes both in their breast”, and others, who
crawled instead of walking.
A most decisive derogatory racial
tradition stems from the biblical interpretation of Africa. Some of this went
back to the biblical interpretation of Noah’s curse on Ham. We find this in
Thomas F. Gossett’s book “Race: The
history of an Idea in America”, where a collection of Jewish oral traditions in
the Babylonian Talmud from the second to the sixth century A.D, holds that:
“The descendants of Ham were cursed by being black”5 Robert Graves and Raphael Patai also report in
their book titled ‘Hebrew Myths”:
It must be Canaan, your firstborn, whom they enslaved
- - - - - Canaan’s children shall be born ugly and Black! Your grand children’s
hair shall be twisted into kinks - - - (their lips) shall “swell”. Men of this
race are called Negroes; their forefather Canaan commanded them to love theft
and fornication, to be banded together in hatred of their masters and never to
tell the truth
The itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela
by Robert Hess reports:
There are a people - - - who like animals, eat of the
herbs that grow on the banks of the Nile and in the fields. They go about naked
and have not the intelligence of ordinary men. They co-habit with their sisters
and anyone they find …these sons of Ham are black slaves
In Greco-Roman Times,
Harris made one allusion, concerning their distinction of colors and race. It
is, he said in reference to Ethiopia: “to wash Ethiopia white” 8
Most of these descriptions and stereotypes
are myths, and by critical analysis may not hold water. Again, how come they
(the ancients) were able to distort African image, since according to Modern
History, Black Africa was discovered in 16th century, perhaps after
the great leaps made by Christopher Columbus, Francis Pizzaro and other great
explorers?
1.2
MEDIEVAL VIEW ABOUT AFRICA:
“The medieval Age was a humble and
magnanimous age”.9 It was the age when the most
fundamental principle, the universal brotherhood of all men and the fatherhood
of God, was upheld. As such, there were no smears on African image. This was
coupled with the facts that very limited knowledge was had about Africa, except
perhaps North Africa from where St. Augustine came and also the city of
Alexandria, but not sub Saharan Africa. Nevertheless most of the medieval
thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine had some views concerning
slavery, which later burst out in the Missionaries treatment of Africans in the
16th century. Thus, according to J.Obi Oguejiofor in his book”
Philosophy and African predicament”:
Unlike St. Augustine who sees slavery as due to the
evil of the fall (original sin), Thomas Aquinas describes slavery as a positive
institution. For him, it was devised by human reason, along with the convention
of personal possession for the benefit of human life.
As a consequent,
The image of Africans as inferiors was reinforced
further by arguments of several Christian missionaries, ministers, and others
who explained that an African was better off a slave in a Christian society
than free in “African savagery”. One is reminded that most missionaries or
other Europeans did not visit the greater part of Africa until the later part
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; but all the same Africa was
presumed to be savage.
The Christian missionaries also
argued that the Bible spoke of slavery without condemning it. No doubt these
arguments were convincing rationalizations to many Europeans especially during
the era of slave Trade. Several writers on the slave trade illustrate the trend
that conversion of an African slave did not necessitate manumission and that
Africans are inferior. Hear John Houston in his book “Some New and Accurate
observations of the coast of Guinea”, in which he described Africans thus:
They (Africans) exactly resemble their fellow creatures
and natives, the monkeys.
One is reminded of the note of irony
expressed by the French philosopher, Charles de Montesquieu in 1748:
It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to
be men because allowing them to be men, a suspicion will follow that we
ourselves are not Christians.
1.3
MODERN VIEW ABOUT AFRICA
African or black inferiority as a
concept reached its apex of negativity when it became intellectualized by
philosophers of the Enlightenment Period that incorporates both Rationalists
and empiricists. No wonder in a footnote to his essay entitled “Of National
Character”, which appeared in his article and Treatises (1768), the empiricist
and influential Scot philosopher David Hume wrote:
I am apt to suspect the Negroes… to be naturally
inferior to the white. There never was a civilized nation of any other
complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or
speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.
Hume probably did not realize how
monumental his ignorance was; but it was doubtful that such a philosopher did
not realize his great contribution to the stereotypic image of black people.
Another modern ignominious
pronouncement came from the German philosopher, Georg Hegel in his philosophy
of History. After a cursory discussion of Africa, he noted:
It is manifest that want of self-control distinguishes
the character of the Negroes. This condition is capable of no development or
culture, and as we have seen them at this day, such have they always been . . . At this point we leave Africa not to
mention it again. For it is no historical part of the world; it has no movement
or development to exhibit.
This was Hegel’s remark in trying to
depict the movement of the Absolute spirit in History. Most of these “myths”
were formulated long before anything like serious relationships were
established between Africans and Europeans. One can only surmise the impact of
those “myths” on Europeans’ attitudes toward blacks, and one can imagine what
the early European sailors and explorers thought when they landed in Africa and
saw the objects of those centuries-old stereotypes. Here, are some of the
reports of early Europeans & explorers of Africa.
Sebastine Munster in his “Cosmographia”
witnessed falsely that “the inhabitants of Gulata (the present West African
country of Mauritania) live like animals, have no government, no idea of
agriculture, no one has a wife”16
I.A Corveia in his “Le Sens Moral Chez
Ibos du Nigeria”, admitted that ‘Igbo’s’ have a moral heritage, but reduces it
to “lowest grade of moral consciousness”17.
Hence, according to J. Ekei, ‘’here
the notion of “hierarchy” of consciousness is introduced, analogous to Levy
Bruhl who spoke of the ‘mentalite primitive prelogique”18
Other European Explorers include,
Jurgen Andersen, Peter Kolb, and E. B. Taylor who called Africans “puerile
minds”, Lord Averbury etc. One need not overlook the remarks of the American
John C. Calhoun who helped stigmatize blacks during the era of slavery in the
United States, and the counter remarks made by Kwame Nkrumah in which he cited
the case of a Columbia University Zulu student’s speech. Calhoun: “If I could
find a black man who could understand Greek syntax, I would consider the Black race
human”. Nkrumah: what might have kindled the Greek syntax in the mind of the
famous southerner, I have so far been unable to discover, but… I could show him
among black men of pure African blood those who could repeat the Koran from
memory, skilled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaic’’19.
1.4 CONTEMPORARY VIEW ABOUT AFRICA
The views of the thinkers and explorers of the
modern period as seen above have been perpetuated in this contemporary time.
These are witnessed in the C.N.N. and
B.B.C news during crisis in Africa, in the actions of U.N; in the deceptive
strategies of the G-8 club, plus other western means.
The C.N.N and B.B.C will not, for
once, tell their public the positive images of Africans. They will continue to
show Africa as a place of AIDS infected people (though Aids developed from
Europe), strife prone continent, a place full of wildlife, where earth is
cracked and dry, plus other negative images. No wonder, Ikhenemho Okomilo
reports on the back page of New Age Newspaper, Tuesday, April 5. 2005 in
his article titled ‘’Love in the climate of half-truths and damned lies’’:
“…the corporation’s (B.B.C) governors are suddenly announcing they will devote
an entire week in July to programmes that would redress its concentration in
the negative aspects of Africa. The aim according to B.B.C Television
controller, Loraine Heggessey, is to prompt viewers to “see the continent in a
different light’’. We will help viewers to discover the real Africa, showing
there is more to it than war, famine and diseases’’. Wonderful!
Speaking on the U.N actions in most
African nations, V.Lenin depicted Africa (the third world) as the “sandbox of
U.N”. The film on Hutu-Tutsi ethnic cleansing of 1994 in Rwanda brings home the
inhuman and malicious actions of the so- called U.N.
Also, these distorted images have
continued to smolder in the way Africans are treated today all over the world.
Commenting on September 2005 Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Howard Dean who
was defeated in 2004 democratic presidential primaries in U.S.A, added:
But we must come to terms with the ugly truth that
skin, colour, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who
did not.
On the other hand most contemporary
writings have discriminatory undertones. Consider when Karen Blixen wrote in
her book “Out of Africa”, during her expeditions in Kenya:
The Somali bring much trouble upon themselves by their
terrible tribal quarrels. In this matter they feel and reason differently from
other people.
But Karen Blixen forgot that ethnic
conflagration cuts across the breadth and length of every continent. Consider
the Holocaust camps of tribal Nazi Germany in the 20th century, the
inhuman treatments meted out to the Kurds in Syria since March 2004, and the
ethnic conflicts in Kosovo, Yugoslavia in the last 20th century.
Keith Reichburg, an African American
writer, wrote in regards to the genocide of Rwanda in his book “A Black man
confronts Africa”:
Fully evolved human Beings in the 20th
century don’t do things like that.
But fully evolved Western human
beings killed 6 million Jews under Hitler. Stalin eliminated 20 million soviets
and the Japanese imperial troops machine-gunned, bayoneted and raped 300,000
Chinese Civilians in the Rape of Nanking.
Examples of contemporary writings on
African image flow like the river Euphrates.
The film, ‘’Gods must be crazy” is even a targeted missile on Africas’ image.
Having exposed the Ancient, medieval,
modern and contemporary views about Africa, I shall now go straight to Martin
Heidegger’s “Being and time” in order to use his concept of “phenomenology” to
interpret these views about Africa since these views hinge on the Beingness of
Africans.
Nevertheless, I am not enthralling
his philosophy, which is not without flaws, but only using his concepts of
“phenomenology” to interpret African situation.
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