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What Is Postcolonialism and Why Does It Matter: An African
Perspective
The title of our communication is straight forward: What Is
Postcolonialism and Why Does It Matter: An African Perspective. In other
words, J will be talking about this new thing called "postcolonialism" and its
relevance, indeed its necessity, for Africa. What I would add here is that I am
approaching the question from the perspective of Church and theology. In so
doing, I make the case for a new reformation of Church and theology in
Africa. The current context mandates change, and this demand does not spare
the Church of Christ on the African soil. It is a question of to be or not to be.
So, what is postcolonialism? The concept is notoriously difficult to
define. To begin with, "post-colonial" is used as a temporal marker referring
to the period after official decolonization. 1 Yet, although much of what has
come to be qualified as postcolonial does indeed belong to this period,
postcolonialism has very little to do with period marking. Indeed, some of its
most prominent theorists belong to the colonial era.2 It is no wonder then that
in literary studies, postcolonialism has come to mean what used to be
identified as Third World literature. Here the term is used to describe the
conditions of migrant groups within First World states and serves to
emphasize "oppositional reading practices, exposing the power relations
constructing meaning in a given text."3 Over time, the postcolonialism has
moved beyond the confines of both history (as a temporal marker) and
literature (as a substitute for Third Word literature) to become a "general"
theory about what Ania Loomba et al. call "the shifting and often interrelated
forms of dominance and resistance; about the constitution of the colonial
archive; about the interdependent play of race and class; about the
significance of gender and sexuality; about the complex forms in which
subjectivities are experienced and collectivities mobilized; about
representation itself; and about the ethnographic translation of cultures."4
1 Susan Abraham, "What Does Mumbai Have to Do with Rome? Postcolonial Perspectives on
Globalization and Theology," Theological Studies 69 (2008): 376-93.
2 Such is the case with Franz Fanon, who has been co-opted as a postcolonial thinker, Edward
Said, and others.
3 Abraham, "What Does Mumbai Have to Do with Rome," 380.
4 Ania Loomba et al., "Beyond What? An Introduction," in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond,
ed. Ania Loomba et al. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University, 2005) 1-38.
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The current understanding of postcolonialism, which has given rise to an
entire field of studies known as "postcolonial studies," has its distant roots in
the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Two insights from Foucault
have particularly served as cornerstones for postcolonial studies. The first,
insight concerns his assertion that knowledge, whether theoretical or
practical is essentially contextual. Knowledge is always a matter of what he
called episteme, which is the pre-cognitive space that determines "on what
historical a priori, and in the element of what positivity, ideas could appear,
sciences be established, experience be reflected in philosophies, rationalities
be formed, only, perhaps, to dissolve and vanish soon afterwards."5 The
second insight concerns Foucault's other assertion that no knowledge is for
knowledge sake. Knowledge always involves a play of power. A discourse of
knowledge is a discourse of power, for knowledge is an effort not only at
ordering facts, social events and human activities, but also of ordering human
beings according to a given center.6
In 1978, Edward Said published his Orientalism, a work that builds on
Foucault's insights and that has become the reference work for postcolonial
studies. 7 In it, he argues that Orientalism, which is the academic study of,
and discourse, political and literary, about the Arabs, Islam, and the Middle
East that primarily originated in England, France, and then the United States
actually created the Orient to serve in Western imaginary as that colonized
other. That Orient, he argues, does not exist in reality, for, "as a cultural
apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and
knowledge."8 In fact, Said is even sharper in his critique when he says, "My
whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some
Oriental essence — in which I do not for a moment believe — but that it
operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency,
in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting."9
5 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York:
Random House, 1970), xxii.
6 Ibid.
7 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Random House, 1978).
8 Ibid., 204.
9 Ibid, 273.
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Along the same lines, Congolese scholar Valentin Y. Mudimbe published
in 1988 The Invention of Africa.10 He argues that the colonial library, which
is made of those supposedly scientific “discourses on African societies,
cultures, and peoples,” was invented to mark off Africa and the African as the
other of the West and the Westerner. 11 Despite their claim to objectivity,
these discourses served the interest of the Western hegemony, ordering the
world with the West at its center.
If Foucault, Said, and Mudimbe do not use the term postcolonial, they
nonetheless show us what is at stake in postcolonialism. What is at stake is
the fact that knowledge on Africa produced in the West—like any knowledge
produced elsewhere, serves consciously or unconsciously a hegemonic
desire. "During colonialism, a complex science of ordering territories and
peoples was developed. Such ordering included Western education as a
system of ordering minds, bodies, and souls according to the models used in
Europe."12 Especially during the modern era, the ordering according to
Western model(s) went on under the guise of universal reason and universal
truth.
Indeed, taking stock with the colonial order and its deconstruction
(disordering) has become the essence of postcolonialism. As Suzan Abraham
points out, "the linking of imperial identities to colonized ones led to creative
strategies for pointing out and addressing the limitations of universalizing
modes of . . . thought."13
In the 1930s, some African students and their friends of the African
Diaspora launched in Paris a movement they called "Negritude." Negritude is
an example of these creative strategies for pointing out and addressing the
limitations of universalizing modes of thought. It does not simply provide a
critique of Enlightenment reason for it also provides an alternative discourse
of legitimation. At the core of its program it postulates a distinct African
episteme as the unifying factor in the linguistic, literary, and cultural
expression of people of African descent. As Leopold Senghor, one of the
founding fathers of the movement, explains, "Under what circumstances did
Aimé Césaire and I launch the movement of Negritude? We were students of
10 Valentin Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of
Knowledge (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1988).
11 Y. V. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988, ix.
12 Mario I. Aguilar, "Postcolonial African Theology in Kabasele Lumbala," Theological
Studies 62 (202): 302-23.
13 Suzan Abraham, "What Does Mumbai Have to Do with Rome," 376-7
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the Paris of nineteen thirties. We were at an impasse. We had no perspective
in sight. Indeed, our colonizers were legitimating our political and economic
dependence by appealing to a theory of tabula rasa. They claimed that people
of African descent had invented nothing, created nothing, written nothing,
painted nothing, sung nothing, etc."14 To counter the colonial agenda,
Negritude took it upon itself to recover the traditional African episteme.
Senghor himself says it best: "In order to ground an effective revolution, our
revolution, we had to rid ourselves of our borrowed clothes—those clothes of
assimilation—and affirm our own identity, which is our Negritude."15
The hegemonic attitude that Senghor so vigorously denounces and from
which Negritude sought to liberate people of African descent is well
illustrated in the Eurocentric philosophies of both Immanuel Kant and
Friedrich Hegel. As Aguilar reminds us, for Hegel, world history is the selfrealization of God (a theodicy), reason, and freedom, a process toward
enlightenment, "the development of the consciousness that the Spirit has of
its freedom and also the evolution of the understanding that the Spirit obtains
through such consciousness."16 Thus, for Hegel, development (Entwicklung)
determines the movement of a concept (Begriff) into an idea. However,
universal history moves from East to West, so that "Europe is the absolute
end of Universal History."17
The same Aguilar goes on to say that the influence of Hegel and Kant
cannot be overlooked. Thus, Hegel's assessment of Africa's development in
history and the realities of the Spirit among Africans does come as a shock to
contemporary readers. Take this for instance: "Africa is in general a closed
land, and this maintains its fundamental character." And further, "The realm
of the Absolute Spirit is so impoverished among them [the Africans] and the
natural Spirit so intense that any representation which they are inculcated
with suffices to impel them to respect nothing, to destroy everything. Africa
does not have history as such. Consequently we abandon Africa, to never
14L. S. Senghor, Rapport sur la doctrine et la propagande du parti, quoted by Lilyan Kestelot
in Philosophie africaine: textes choisis, 2 vols, éd. A. J. Smet (Kinshasa: Presses
Universitaires du Zaïre, 1975), I: 12 [Our translation].
15Ibid.
16 Enrique Dussel, "Eurocentnsm and Modernity," in The Postmodernism Debate in Latin
America, ed John Beverley, Jose Oviedo and Michael Aronna (Durham, Ν C Duke University,
1995) 65-76.
17 G W F Hegel, Sämtliche Werke, ed J Hoffmeister (Hamburg F Meiner, 1955) 167.
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mention it again. It is not part of the historical world, it does not evidence
historical movement or development."18
As a result of such writings, oral African histories and any African past
were overruled by European social mores and their primacy, while Christian
attitudes conflicted enormously with localized African customs and beliefs
about the world and the action of God in the world. The colonization of
African minds was at the center of the educational system and with few
exceptions newly converted African Christians were expected to think
differently than other Africans and to behave m different cultural ways.
So, Aguilar concludes,
The absence of history assigned to Africa by Europeans tried to erase the longstanding process of African gnosis, in order to replace cosmological systems of
social and religious knowledge with a European episteme Christianity in its
European cultural form produced a religious discourse that followed an
epistemological fallacy. Such a fallacy, that the continent of Africa had not
encountered or responded to Christianity in the past, could not be sustained
historically. The history of Africa included the presence of Tertulhan, Cyprian, and
Augustine in North Africa and the rapid development and establishment of
Christianity in Ethiopia.19
Postcolonialism translates a deep concern for the perspective of persons
from regions and groups outside the hegemonic power structure. That is, its
interest is in the oppressed minority groups whose presence is not only
crucial to the self-definition of the majority group, but also critical, placing
the subaltern group in a position to subvert the authority of those who have
hegemonic power.20 It is no wonder then that postcolonial studies have come
to be identified with "subaltern studies."
After this rather long survey, we have now come to the point where we
can address the second question: Why does it matter? Here I will provide
briefly some reasons why it does matter.
First, it matters because it is a matter of one's identity. The colonial
project robs one of what one has of the most precious: one's identity. Eboussi
Boulaga raises an important question in connection with the frantic quest for
an African philosophy (and theology) that went on in the sixties. He says,
18 Ibid., 231.
19 Aguilar, "Postcolonial African Theology in Kabasele Lumbala,"
20 Homi K. Bhabha, "Unsatisfied Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism" in Text and Nation:
Cross Disciplinary Essays on Cultural and National Identities, ed. Laura Garcia Moreno and
Peter P. Pfeiffer (Columbia: Camden House, 1996), 191-207; Gayatri Spivak, "Can the
Subaltern Speak?" in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Cary Nelson and Lawrence
Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313.
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"What hides and reveals at the same time the African quest for philosophy?"
His answer is, the desire to assert an identity that was denied.
Second, postcolonialism matters because Africa has become a
postcolonial space is, which as Achille Mbembe says, made up not of one
coherent 'public space', nor determined by any single organizing principle,
but rather of "a plurality of 'spheres' and arenas, each having its own separate
logic yet nonetheless liable to be entangled with other logics when operating
in certain specific contexts: hence the postcolonial 'subject' has had to learn
to continuously bargain [marchander] and improvise."21
Third, postcolonialism matters because colonialism has morphed into
new forms. 'The mutated forms include domestic nationalistic tyranny
imposed on minority groups, and collusions of nationalistic power with
militarized global economic power spearheaded by the United States. Such
power, they argue, easily co-opted postcolonial theory to ensconce it within
the networks of power."22 The nexus of postcolonial theory and theology
produces an oppositional discourse that challenges theological method in the
Western academy. Such a resolutely critical method does not yield any
unified methodology of application. Since theology produced in the academic
centers of the West is implicated in neocolonial relations between various
geopolitical contexts, the emphasis on culture investigates theological
production as a site tainted by power differentials. The claim of religion and
theology to be sui generis fields requiring protective strategies such as
excluding social, cultural, ethical, theoretical, or political methods to verify
the intelligibility of its assertions is being steadily assailed by globalization
and postcolonial theories. The assault on the self-proclaimed "sui generis"
constitution of the field of religion and theology has resulted in the
paradoxical contention that theology ought to become an integral part of the
study of religion. In other words, religion and theology are disciplines to the
extent that their boundaries are policed by those who consider the
frameworks to be thoroughly distinguishable from each other. Postcolonial
perspectives on globalization that point to the many ways academic
frameworks exacerbate Orientalist perspectives on times, places, and cultures
different from Euro-American Christianity resist and oppose rigid
disciplinary boundaries.
Fourth, postcolonialism matters because it fosters the otherness and
difference, which find their source in the revelation of the Trinity. Indeed, the
deconstruction of inherited Christianity liberates for Africa the resources of
the entire Christian faith. One example would suffice here. It is a well known
21Achille Mbembe, "Provisional Notes on the Postcolony," Africa 62 (1992): 3-37
22 Suzan Abraham, "What Does Mumbai Have to Do with Rome," 379. See also Ania
Loomba et al., "Beyond What? An Introduction."
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fact that when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, the West, following
Augustine, has tended to focus of the oneness of the Trinity, while East,
following the Cappadocian Fathers, focuses on the three-ness within the
Trinity. These two perspectives yield different worldviews. Where the
oneness is emphasized, sameness is fostered as virtue and universality as
ideal. Yet, where three-ness is emphasized, one discovered that the Trinity is
ultimately about being in communion (fellowship). God is one not despite
the fact that there are three persons within the Godhead, but God is one
because there are three persons within the Godhead. Here difference is a
virtue and not a vice because the Father is not the Son, and the Son not the
Holy Spirit. Furthermore, difference does not exclude unity, for the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one. A communal life that is patterned after
the latter understanding of the Trinity is one that fosters difference while at
the same time holding on to unity. Unity where differences are erased is not
Christian unity.
Fifth, postcolonialism matters because it is in keeping with the spirit of
Pentecost. Pentecost is the reversal of Babel. The ideal of Babel of one
language, one thought, and one project echoes the ideal of the project of the
Enlightenment of one humanity adhering to a set of universal truths and
engaged in the one project of technological progress. Babel is the celebration
of unity in diversity, the celebration of ethnicity to the praise of the One God.
Mabiala Justin-Robert Kenzo, Ph.D.
Alliance University College/
Faculté de Théologie Évangélique de Boma
(DR Congo)