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The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa, by Célestin Monga, translated by Linda L. Fleck and Célestin Monga
4. The Emergence of New Patterns of Free Expression
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Je suis un homme de forêt et de haute savane. Je suis donc quelque peu étranger à la ligne droite. Dans la forêt, on ne peut pas se déplacer en ligne droite. Je soupçonne la ligne droite d’avoir un côté censure par rapport à l’existence. |
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| I am a man of the forest and the savanna. So straight lines are somewhat foreign to me. In the forest, it is impossible to move in a straight line. I suspect that, with respect to existence, straight lines have a censuring aspect. |
| Sony Labou Tansi, Congo |
In nearly four decades of independence, numerous unsuccessful attempts have been made to graft Western political systems onto African nations. Yet alongside these failures, new ways of structuring and negotiating reality have emerged, and hitherto unknown expressions of identity are taking shape. This important phenomenon has largely gone unnoticed by Africans, who have not made the necessary shift to another social frame of reference, one that would allow them to perceive the originality of this new mind-set.
If, on the scale of brutality, African autocrats have been unable to “elevate” themselves to the level of their cohorts in pre-Gorbachev Eastern Europe or in Latin America during the Pinochet era, it is not only because they are “apprentice dictators,” to borrow Mongo Beti’s pithy phrase, but also, and especially, because African peoples, despite rampant injustice, intellectual bankruptcy, economic illiteracy, and cultural erosion, have invented numerous forms of passive resistance. 1 In the process, and through their daily behavior, African peoples have likewise expressed the desire to affirm their specificity and to create a different way of life. They have invented veritable modes of democratic production, developed new forms of critical thinking, and ceaselessly endeavored to change the logic governing their relation to all types of power (especially political and traditional authorities). Surreptitiously, in the small events, gestures, words, and actions of daily life, there has evolved a true ethos of resistance, a subtle sort of civil disobedience that cannot be described in the language to which we are accustomed.
This life(saving) strategy of resistance, whose form and content I will later define, is turning social relations upside down in certain countries. Slowly but surely, a model of subservience to power is giving way to a confrontational one, which has, of course, profoundly altered social relations. Sites of protest are being formed, new languages formulated, original discourses affirmed; they have their secret codes and keys, their meanderings and mysteries.
Misled by what Balandier (1971) has called “the illusion of the durability of societies,” few Western analysts have discerned this movement. Even the most critically minded African sociologists and political scientists do not appear to have noticed the development of these new strategies of popular insubordination—with the exception of Mbembe (1988). One would think that Africa’s failed efforts to adopt Western models of government would suggest to these scientists the possibility that democratic notions are being articulated differently on the continent and that they have given rise to new types of behavior. Instead, researchers have been content to watch the failure of numerous efforts to establish different forms of government: presidential, semipresidential, parliamentary, and so forth. In the guise of explanation, they have trotted out the usual dichotomies—tradition versus modernity, center versus periphery, equilibrium versus disequilibrium—rather than observing and analyzing the reality of daily life. Nonetheless, it has become increasingly clear that the failure to construct democratic institutions in all of sub-Saharan Africa has contributed to the emergence of other modes of attaining liberty.
As a result, and in the light of a sociological grammar subtended by a macroscopic vision of things, it seems useful to try to reformulate the political syntax of those countries. This point of view is as yet poorly defined, and it requires the adoption of a tentative, multifaceted approach. I am keenly aware that any effort to define and evaluate new and revealing elements of social reality runs the risk of ambiguity. The temptation is great to compile a heterogeneous inventory of “sociologized” epiphenomena simply because they produce syncretic combinations. I am nevertheless convinced that by using de Certeau’s approach (1984), it is possible to trace the outline of a space of expression hidden behind the unsaid and to decipher its language. For if African peoples are adroit with words, they are also quite skilled in the use of silence and other means of expression to convey their defiance of political authorities, who are themselves subject to what Fabien Eboussi Boulaga has called “functional illiteracy” and who appear incapable of comprehending the possibility of dissent. 2
The first section of this chapter presents some general guidelines to approaching the banal in everyday African life. The second section explores the meaning of disorder by looking at the way political changes are conceived in the imagination of African leaders. The third section focuses on informal and unusual forms of reappropriation of freedom, through sexuality, body expression, or music. The fourth section concludes with the need to integrate the psychoaffective dimension into social and political analysis.
A Different Understanding of the Banal
A striking aspect of African peoples’ struggle for political recognition is that they have developed an impressive set of informal frameworks to conceptualize their propensity to create counternarratives against the prevailing official discourse. Their quest for dignity—as Cornel West defines this notion; that is, self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem (1990:27)—has occurred on unusual social and cultural terrains. Authoritarian uses of culture to prevent people from discovering the charms of liberty have required persistent popular techniques to hold pessimism and self-contempt at bay. Thus, selective appropriation and reinterpretation of official ideologies including linguistic innovation in rhetorical practices and stylizations of body forms (hair styles, ways of walking, standing, talking, singing, working, etc.), have been some of the strategies employed, transforming public discourse into new, silent yet powerful vectors for collective insubordination.
I shall begin with a few preliminary remarks about the informal systems of resistance that African peoples have developed and their ability to carve out spaces of individual and collective freedom. I shall then emphasize the power of language, question the validity of the assumptions of African hedonism, and examine certain a priori notions that are often used by social scientists to analyze the so-called African mentality.
Study What Lies Beyond Language
The problem began the moment sociologists and anthropologists forgot one of the fundamental principles of the social sciences: the existence of a dimension beyond words. Though this important sphere of communication should not have been neglected, most Africanists who studied urban language, for example, confined themselves to an analysis of the language per se and failed to examine the ineffable dimension of the words. But ever since linguists discovered functions of language beyond its “referential” or “propositional” aspects (Crystal 1987:10–13), and since Klossowski (1969) lent philosophical dignity to the simulacrum, we have known that words have only figurative meanings. Mired in their desire to be at the forefront, most researchers have been blinded by their conviction that each word is univocal. Unable to see anything beyond the obvious, they can interpret neither what is suggested by verbal dynamics nor what lies beyond the words themselves.
Of course, the axiom that Africans, like all human beings, are defined above all by their language allows one to stop at appearances and to view as useless—or insane—the conception of another frame of reference for thought. But this axiom cannot stand up to the very definition of language, that is, the conceptualization of a vehicle allowing access to reality, in all its complexity and most ephemeral nuances. If one accepts, therefore, that the essence of a message is not reducible to the word, then it is necessary to elucidate to the extent possible the element of mystery that is consubstantial with all language; and this so as to be able to grasp its precise truth (Martin 1988; Chomsky 1987; Hagège 1985; Fontanier 1968). Such an effort must be made by anyone wishing to penetrate the complex souls of African peoples, whose psychological habits must be read at several levels.
One way of pursuing meaning behind popular forms of discourse is to pay close attention to new languages. Following numerous philosophers as widely separated by doctrine as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein, or Quine, all of whom were able to pursue metaphysics in the general structure of language, Davidson concludes: “In sharing a language, in whatever sense this is required for communication, we share a picture of the world that must, in its large features, be true. It follows that in making manifest the large features of our language, we make manifest the large features of reality” (1977:244). When studying African political realities today, it is therefore necessary to accept the existence of a dimension beyond language, even more pronounced in Africa than elsewhere.
Take the example of the Zairean civil servant, caught red-handed in an act of corruption, who calmly responds that he is only applying “Article 15,” an imaginary article of the constitution stipulating: “Do whatever it takes to get by!” (Péan 1988). It is necessary to go beyond mockery and analyze the multiple dimensions of language at work here. Or take the example of the Douala taxi driver who replies, after you have offered to pay him FCFA 125 (the ordinary fare) to take you to a location that strikes him as far away: “I didn’t hear a word you said. Speak up!” He is telling you to up the price, to offer him something extra, give him a “reason” for going out of his way. The fact that he claims not to have heard really means that you are supposed to agree with him that the posted fare is out of line with the actual distance involved. And his “Speak up!” translates his willingness to let you take the initiative in negotiating the new fare. One can easily imagine how devastating these techniques would be when used by actors in local political markets, and how misleading language can be to those researchers who limit their surveys to superficial analyses of words they hear in the streets of Dakar or Harare.
African Hedonism, an Imported “Value”
Next, one must rid oneself of widely circulated clichés. As Owomoyela puts it, “Even within the discipline of African studies scholars continue to propagate and popularize concepts of Africa and Africanity that are hardly distinguishable from those of Joseph de Gobineau or Captain Nolan” (1994:78). For example, building upon the ludicrous idea that the search for pleasure is a notion perpetually in vogue in certain cultures, some researchers have concluded that eudaemonism is a typical trait of Africans (White 1988; Robertson and Klein 1983; Naipaul 1980, 1984). Roughly speaking, one could say that in the past few years, this pseudoaesthetics has been the characteristic feature of the literary and philosophical school developed by most commentators. Worse yet, other researchers have used it to elevate hedonism to the level of a basic precept of a supposed African political philosophy. Expanding Senghor’s famous maxim, “I dance, therefore I am,” they have made the desire for pleasure part of the definition of the African political personality. This is how one must read their commentaries on the so-called African imagination—which is sometimes nothing more than their own exotic vision of the continent.
Making flattering remarks about African mentality and turning this imagination into a potential model for understanding the world changes nothing at bottom (Barley 1983, for instance). Filmmakers (for example, Sydney Pollack, the director of Out of Africa) who celebrate the sensuousness of an Africa at once romantic, cozy, and radiating an atmosphere of naive joviality think they are putting up a good show when they argue that Africa represents for them a lost paradise, a land of smiling men, mythical women, and fauna found nowhere else in the world. The reasoning is simplistic, and the racism all the more subtle in that it is inverted, presented in the form of a false compliment. Several excellent studies have shown that the hedonist label some would like to stick on black peoples is either a characteristic imposed upon Africa through rhetoric or an imported “value,” created in order to validate the idea of the exotic “other”—“closer to nature” (removed from intelligence and control), as West puts it, and “more prone to be guided by base pleasures and biological impulses” (1993:88). 3
Refuting Certain A Priori Conceptual Notions
If Western social scientists seeking to analyze African reality had understood, as did Kant, that the power of knowledge is limited to the form it takes and that the only accessible objects of knowledge are phenomena shaped by the structure of the observer’s mind, then the ethnocentrism of their studies would have had a certain charm. The possibility of conceptualizing other forms of “Africanness” was even more difficult for them given their underestimation of Africans’ refusal to be mere instruments of reason. Immersed in spirituality, imbued with an active and inventive vitality, Africans have had a tendency to free themselves of the tutelage of the god of reason, which has not only been forced upon them for the past four hundred years, but which feels like a girdle that fits too tight. The logic of this presupposition has led Africans to reaffirm and rehabilitate the concept of contradiction. A substratum of dialectics, the foundation of thought, contradiction is above all the condition sine qua non for the development of a personal sense of freedom. This, in turn, allows one to conceive of other freedoms and to survive (1) the hardships and cruelties of everyday life, (2) the totalitarianism of political power, (3) the theological deliriums of fundamentalists attached to a traditional culture little adapted to the times, and (4) the yoke of the family—obsolete but still very much present. In this regard, one cannot overestimate the necessity of updating some rituals, which would allow the continent to soften the sociopolitical and financial burden of the ceremonial structure around which African life is organized: marriage, baptism, mourning, funeral rites (Monga 1994b).
How can we reaffirm and rehabilitate contradiction to the prevailing philosophic discourse on Africa? By stripping immutable rituals of their apparent attributes. By blowing up the conceptual principles that have shaped thought on the behavior of Africans. By ceaselessly inventing new frames of reference so that the deep significance and meaning of events might be properly evaluated. In other words—and beyond the inevitability of entropy—it is a matter of dominating and negotiating the crisis of the African Man, the Muntu (Eboussi Boulaga 1976), so as to perceive the sparks of positivity within the most anodyne daily actions, so as to capture the spirit lurking in the shadows of the most ordinary words, so as to discern the beginnings of a new way of seeing and living. In sum, it is a matter of finding the flowers the manure has produced.
Without falling into the exuberant but dubious determinism of some neo-Africanists, I will discuss several aspects of the new forms of dissent—which constitute, above all, a subversive and silent approach to the world. First, I wish to reconsider, in a positive light, the intensity of the confrontational relationship between African civil society and the various powers it must face daily. Ever since Hegel demonstrated that consciousness does not involve a passive apprehension of reality but rather a struggle between two opposed figures, two beings seeking to annihilate the other in order to gain respect, the idea of a master-slave dialectic has been accepted. In the African version of this dialectic the lower rungs of society, considered to be dominated and miserable, are sometimes cast in the role of active social agents, capable of playing an important part in the debate, taking the reins, detailing their complaints, and turning in their favor the various discourses and resolutions. In short, they would be a force to contend with—a far cry from the widely held view of the passivity of Africa’s peoples.
Next, I wish to suggest that these microattitudes should be judged positively. African peoples’ mental outlooks—if I may use this phrase without overgeneralizing—indicate that they have been able to conceptualize, if not freedom, then at least insubordination and indocility, notable and noble signs of the desire for democracy. The reality of daily life indicates the existence of micropowers arranged in a complex strategy and disseminated throughout the entire social body. The sense of anxiety one might feel toward the future of societies that are imploding, losing their traditions, and witnessing the disruption of a long-established hierarchy must not allow one to lose sight of the permanence of equilibrium, subtended by new combinations of the elements. That is why the images filmmaker Wim Wenders shows of a city like Berlin or Los Angeles allow us to perceive an interesting economy in the permanent social intimacy of these cities, where the squeamish see only chaos and the destruction of the old order. Similarly, Jean Rouch’s remarkable films, notably those dealing with everyday life in Abidjan, have brought to light the ways in which people actually conduct their lives and have uncovered the harmony of existence that injustice and cruelty hide from view. Could not sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and philosophers also begin to see the realities filmmakers have perceived?
Having examined the spiritual framework that governs the collective will to resist and to live otherwise, I wish to stress the necessity of relativizing certain historical notions such as decline or decadence. Though we have yet to develop a way to measure gross domestic happiness, as Imbert (1984) has advised, we can nevertheless remain skeptical about speculations on the idea of decadence. Aron (1973) was rightly wary of the term, which he judged more appropriate for social studies than for dry statistical analysis, and preferred to use “lowering” (abaissement). One inevitably strays unless one gets past the political meaning of decadence—the cultural influence and the historical vitality of African civilizations can be grasped in other ways. The best proof of this is that the “collapse” so often evoked in no way corresponds to Plato’s famous equation, which political scientists still insist on using in order to explain decline. 4
In Africa’s large metropolitan areas, the methods of insubordination are so sophisticated that in certain areas one occasionally stumbles upon veritable laboratories of philosophy. Since the publication of Yambo Ouologuem’s famous novel Le Devoir de violence (The Duty of Violence, translated into English as Bound to Violence), we have known about African peoples’ thirst for disorder, which is intimately linked to their desire to surpass and organize this disorder. We also know that nihilism is a viewpoint prevalent in the tropics. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Cioran have their counterparts and followers in every neighborhood in Dakar or Abidjan. They are street vendors, sidewalk painters, and popular singers. Nihilism is on the rise and is given expression in the smallest acts, as well as in art and literature. Whereas the heirs of a rigged decolonialism, now managing an as yet undigested independence, continue to tear apart Africa’s societies, increasing the risk of their South Americanization, the attitude of the new nihilists holds out a hope—the will to resist the aftermath of the yoke. That is why the African imagination is, above all, a survivalist one.
Topography of the Survivalist Imagination
It is useful to approach African peoples’ informal strategies of political resistance by looking at both the way they permanently try to optimize disorder in their behavior and the conceptual structure of their imagination.
Optimal Anarchy and the Aesthetics of Disorder
It all begins with the refusal to conform to what is seen as the established disorder, the old, unbearable order (compare Balandier 1988). Realistically, African peoples are in a position of weakness, hence resistance must take a subtle form. Frontal assaults are avoided. Suicidal methods that might reveal the collective strategy are proscribed. Instead, a more insidious approach is adopted, one that slowly but surely saps the foundations of the system and that may take the form of a play on words, a theory of derision, a deformation of the established rules, a refusal to follow instructions, or an irreverent attitude toward the hierarchy in place.
The other rule that African peoples follow is to avoid falling into a state of anarchy. Aware long before Proudhon of the oppressive nature of all forms of government, they part company with anarchists when it comes to formulating a strategy of insubordination. Anarchy is a sort of asymptote that they approach but never reach. Africans are well aware of the consequences of crossing the line: The resulting disorder sanctions a brutal swing of the pendulum. In other words, their common sense tells them that the absence of authority benefits only the most conservative interest groups, or the most frivolous political leaders. 5 This was one of the lessons learned from the Biafra War, which degenerated into a tragedy for the Ibo people the day that extremists believed they were strong enough to defeat the military government in Lagos. The sociopolitical use of disorder is therefore a matter of dosage, of optimal anarchy.
This technique of provoking disorder within, well, disorder, without provoking at the same time a collapse of authority, is sometimes exploited by political entrepreneurs seeking to prop up an unpopular government being pressured to step down. They proceed with subtlety. Keenly attuned to the social tensions in the air, they wait until popular resistance has begun to take on the appearance of anarchy, then they do something likely to cause chaos, which in turn justifies a “salvational” intervention on their part—for the sake of (the old) order and “peace.” One such incident occurred in Madagascar in 1972, when a group of young officers led by Didier Ratsiraka interceded in political events on the pretext of maintaining the peace and preserving the unity of the country. Another occurred in Congo in 1977, when a group of officers, led by Yombi Opango and Denis Sassou Nguesso, used an “attempted coup d’état” and a political shambles to rationalize the restoration of their political authority, which was threatening to slip away. The recent, violent events in Liberia bear witness to the evolution of this technique of provocation: small, radical groups attempt to increase internal social tensions whenever they believe the political authorities have failed to redress situations in which they perceive signs of a dangerous instability, a pernicious disorder.
Aware of the dangers of derailment, African peoples have learned to play with their limited freedoms. Like certain soccer players who like to play on the touchline, where the opponent’s nerves are most on edge, African peoples play with the wording of laws and rules. Official bywords, slogans, speeches, leaders’ verbal tics—in short, the entire vocabulary of domination—is mimicked and mocked with a rare creativity (Toulabor 1981; Mbembe 1989).
Bipolarity of the Imagination
The African imagination in which this strategy of derision unfolds is bipolar. On the one hand, it develops a sense of self-awareness and specificity, crucial if one is to avoid unwelcome surprises in the world. On the other hand, it plants the seeds of protest linked to this awareness of the self.
By becoming conscious of who and what they are, through the exploration of the movements of the soul and the process of self-discovery, Africans weigh the infinite possibilities of resistance and their capacity to oppose, for example, political authority—notorious for its violence and injustice. Although this government of the self allows them to impress their personalities on the environment, it carries with it the risk of optical illusion and self-delusion. It can, in other words, lead to an overly rigid affirmation of identity, an insularity of consciousness that may inhibit their ability to integrate themselves into the world. Inasmuch as consciousness of Africanness stems from the desire to get even with history, it is easy to understand why it has occasionally given rise to serious crises (Bouzar 1984; Coquery-Vidrovitch 1985). More than a possible inferiority complex with regard to other peoples, this delusion best explains why Africans have had such difficulty integrating themselves into modernity.
The other pole of the African imagination today is the ever-present will to undermine the social codes promulgated by all those who claim to incarnate power in its “oldest” and hence most “legitimate” form. This explains in part why young people in sub-Saharan Africa have rejected “tradition” and have adopted a defiant attitude toward the “traditional” and administrative authorities who proudly assert that they represent the legacy of the past. In fact, this seed of protest, welling up from the very bottom of the soul, is found not only among the governed but also among the governors. Thus, as soon as Abdou Diouf came to power in Senegal, he spoke of “de-Senghorizing” the state and official ideology. In Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré expressed the need to “rectify” the “revolution” of his “dear friend” and predecessor Thomas Sankara. In Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso felt the need to humiliate his predecessor, Yombi Opango, by accusing him of having gotten rich off public funds. In Cameroon, Paul Biya felt obligated to make a radical break with the old order, to “de-Ahidjoize” the nation (at least at the level of discourse) at the price of a bitter fight to the death with the shadow of his predecessor. These new leaders challenged their predecessors not only for the purpose of affirming their originality and establishing the direction of their political existence but also out of a sense of loyalty to a new philosophico-cultural constant—challenging the past. Even if the desire to overthrow the old order and to destroy the image of a burdensome predecessor stems from an egocentricity, rejection itself always involves ethical principles. We throw out the theories and methods of our predecessors because we wish to do good and do better. Of course, the imperative of change, found everywhere in official discourse, does not prohibit one from returning later to the old methods, apparatus, and system.
The governed and the governors do not express the bipolarity of the African imagination in the same way. Among the people, who are not fooled by the get-even schemes and other tricks of those in power, the bipolarity is expressed through an intense need for subversion. In the West, imagination is a process in which one first denies reality, then detaches oneself from it, and finally takes flight into the unreal in order to escape the confines of existence (Sartre 1940). In Africa, it is a matter of mocking reality, of at once appropriating and subverting it so as to be able to support its crushing weight. Human consciousness does not introduce negativity into different forms of ideology in order to bracket them; instead, it pretends to accept them so as to thwart and conquer them. The “negation” is thus positive and deliberate, in the sense that it seeks in every decision pronounced by the authorities the threshold of derision at which humor may begin to work its undermining effects upon the oppressive system.
Defined above all by the effusiveness of his emotions (laughter, dance, pleasure), the Senghorian Negro gave naive minds the justification they were seeking to label all Africans hedonists. However, laughter, dance, and even to some extent pleasure are the expressions of a state of mind that refuses to be duped by the authorities. In short, they are vehicles of dissent and insubordination.
Aspects of Downright Insubordination
Let us examine, for example, African libido. The prevailing myth of African sexuality is frequently cited as proof of “structural” inability to conceptualize freedom, said to subtend Africans’ vision of the world (compare Ombolo 1991). Some authors even insinuate that there is a historical background to sexual activism in sub-Saharan Africa: Robertson and Klein assert that even during the slave trade, “male slaves often preferred the acquisition of a slave or a second wife to the purchase of their freedom” (1983:6). These myths are superficial nonsense. Indeed, the way most Africans tend to approach sexuality, at least today, has nothing to do with hedonism and very little with the victimization of women so pervasive in the feminist discourse. Let us look at what I call the popular politics of sexuality, the body, and music.
A Subversive Negotiation of Libido
Literature abounds on the African origin of AIDS. The alarming rate at which it has spread in our countries is used to support the “truth” of this argument. My purpose here is not to discuss the origin of this horrible disease—does it really matter?—but I do think that the attitude of indifference toward this danger, long exhibited by the average African, tells us several things. Beyond the mediocrity of the discourse, which limited the impact of the campaigns for the prevention of AIDS run by the ministries of public health, the instructions given by the government were so weak that few people regarded AIDS as a serious threat. In working-class bars in Douala, for example, I heard people—not all alcoholics—say that “this AIDS thing” was “just one more invention of whites” (those in power are their agents) to keep them from fully enjoying the good things in life. Condoms? Ridiculous objects designed to take all the pleasure out of sex—“fucking without coming.” Another conspiracy theory, in fact.
Of course, no one would seriously endorse this view. I merely wish to observe that the manner in which these people react to information that is supposed to terrify them is proof of their profound desire to free themselves of the dictatorship of the Other, to take responsibility for their own lives, and to affirm, without fear, what they take to be their own paradigm, their own way of life. In my judgment, this predisposition is interesting in and of itself and is indicative of real mental progress being made, however maladroit it may be. Seen as a process of self-affirmation, this attitude lies at the root of democratic production. In fact, people changed their minds very quickly as soon as the message of prevention came from opinion leaders they trusted. In 1987, for instance, the very popular Zairean artist Franco released an album called AIDS, raising public awareness of the scope of the disease and promoting prevention. By any account, his campaign was much more successful in central Africa than all the previous governmental actions in that domain. There is something to be learned here for policymakers who design and implement policy in countries where state officials are mistrusted.
The Body as a Space for the Expression of Freedom
This profound desire for freedom is likewise found in the African approach to the body. Travel journals and ethnological and anthropological studies on Africa often describe the “nonchalance,” the “relaxed attitude,” the “laxity,” and the “passivity” of Africans. But few analysts have seen along with N’diaye the ethical dimension operative in the relationship to the body: “Its image is not appallingly subordinated here to the injustice of passing time,” she writes. “Since the obsession with youth is not eating at one’s mind, the body is at ease; it ages in peace” (1984:30).
Whereas Westerners have a tendency to feel guilty if they have neglected their bodies too long (Fedida 1977; Reichler 1983; Ceronetti 1984), Africans feel comfortable with their bodies. Regardless of its state, the body is never seen as obscene or repugnant. It is neither held in contempt nor exalted; it just is. This attitude of contentment explains why fashion trends, covered in women’s magazines and eternally celebrating the cult of thinness, have never had much of an impact in African countries. Of course, young women (most notably, high school and college students) sometimes buy into the myth of the “perfect figure”—but usually not for long. The influence of this imported aesthetics transmitted through fashion magazines always loses out to the dispositions of the local imagination. In Senegal, N’diaye remarks:
The body is clothed and it moves. Its crumbling, thick, worn flesh becomes almost lascivious beneath the fabric. It is a moving form, beautiful in its slow, forward motion. The fleshiness of the hips is a continuation of the movement, rolling above the step and softening it. The flabbiness of the relaxed flesh is completely transformed into sensuality. It dissipates into languor and forms a sort of alluring aura around this slightly ankylosed corpulence. The well-fed stomach produces a sort of expansiveness and provides a reified image of security (1984:31).
Not surprisingly, a pot belly—an “administrative stomach,”—is perceived as the first criterion of success, desired over other external signs of prosperity (the so-called three Cs: cars, castles, checkbooks). 6 Some of the biggest stars of African music disregard completely the ideology of the “perfect figure,” many falling well short of any official standard of physical beauty. Zairean artists Luambo Makiadi (Franco), Tabu Ley Rochereau, and Abeti Masikini, the famous Ivoirian singer Aïcha Koné, Cameroonian Annie Disco, and many others feel comfortable living with what might be perceived as obesity. In Africa, there has never been a need to develop slogans along the lines of “Men prefer them fat” for women to feel comfortable with a few rolls of fat.
This will to live on one’s own terms underscores the desire to shake up a social order in which one is not at ease, to participate, in other words, in the elaboration of an informal system of resistance. Of this emergence of a mode of democratic production, N’diaye proclaims:
I saw there emaciated, toothless old women cover themselves in gold without shame; I saw withered skin the grain of which caught the light from beneath the powder; women deformed by multiple pregnancies transformed into Black Virgins as soon as they had donned the heavy fabrics they had chosen with care. But I also saw silly, sweet little faces change into Nefertiti through the magic of a hairstyle completed in two or three gestures. Finally, I saw mouths illuminated by a fascinating smile where two incisors of solid gold rested on a lip painted with indelible henna (1984:32–33).
One must not read these remarks as a mere celebration of the aesthetics of sensuality. One must also grasp within the attitude governing this behavior the desire of Africans to free themselves of the established discourse on beauty and choose their own look, as well as the tenacious survival of a pride demanding legitimate recognition and a better reception in the social order. In these cases, the more one’s dress is nonconformist, the more one’s attitude toward the body departs from the commonly accepted norms, the more one’s sense of freedom and power is affirmed. The tremendous popular success of the Zairean singing duo Pépé Kallé and Emoro is largely due to the fact that one is huge and the other is tiny. Obesity and dwarfism come together here, shake up the (supposed) dogmas of the social order, and express new forms of harmony, freedom, and originality.
Music as a Vehicle for Greater Mental Welfare
One could cite endless instances of insubordination hidden behind everyday actions in black Africa. Take the example of Cameroonian soccer player Roger Milla. In the middle of the 1990 World Cup games, he executed a few dance steps after scoring the decisive goals that advanced the Cameroonian national team to a round of competition never before reached by an African team. Many commentators saw this as a typical outburst of instinctive African “emotion”—expressive gestures of pleasure, as it were, against a makossa backdrop (Delbourg 1991). But it ought to be seen as a noble affirmation of his dignity (Monga 1990b).
There is also the example of such singers as Nigerian Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Cameroonian Lapiro de Mbanga, who use music “as a weapon” to denounce political and social injustice. The reaction of the international media to their songs has been to regard the singers’ eccentricity as nothing but showbiz, part of their image. As for social scientists, either they know nothing of this phenomenon or they perform superficial readings of the musical structure and the lyrics, lamenting all the while its hybrid modernity so little in keeping with the long and rich history of African music. It was only when Fela Anikulapo Kuti was imprisoned by the Nigerian government on the false pretext of currency smuggling that the research community began to take an interest in his work. 7 Likewise, Western musicologists began to analyze Lapiro de Mbanga’s music only after he came out publicly against the government during a political trial. 8 As if the ethics of their message and the aesthetics of their music were not enough to stir up any enthusiasm for their work.
It is self-deluding to ignore the new ontology to which these artists subscribe simply because they have departed from tradition and the usual framework of exotic song. On the one hand, song in Africa has always been a vehicle of access to reality and a medium for the celebration of the possibility of a greater mental welfare. On the other, and even if one accepts the hypothetical existence of an intact cultural heritage from which each artist is to draw his authenticity, no one lives on memory alone. History is not univocal; thus, it is erroneous to believe that one can classify into neat, historically dated strata all the inspirations and tendencies that belong to the history of music. As the musicologist Haim has written: “By defining his own memory, the composer withdraws from tradition in general, before redefining himself in terms of it, before confusing it with that which it must become. It is in this sense that the composer invents his life even as his language pokes holes in the past, pierces it, selects it from the memory he has of it, from the historical unsaid that he brings up to date, the new writing he elaborates” (1990:4). The principle stated here has been applied in the West and has allowed for the sociopolitical validation of the most original forms of music. Unfortunately, those who have taken an interest in the emergence of new artistic trends in Africa’s countries have failed to give it serious consideration. The evolutionist viewpoint, which holds that African music must develop in the “right direction,” must be abandoned in favor of a less authoritarian type of analysis, for henceforth it is a matter of understanding what is being expressed by art’s diversity and integrating the questions it raises into the general framework of society’s present needs and demands.
Problematic Mixes and the Threshold of Effective Disorder
If it is true that the establishment in sub-Saharan Africa of democracy, whose minimal legal principles are far from being accepted by those in power (Toulabor 1991), cannot be limited to a simple improvement in the technical mechanisms involved in the alternation of power—a multiparty system, free elections, separation of powers, etc.—it is nevertheless necessary to point out that the emergence of modes of democratic production by way of everyday acts in everyday life is not a guarantee of their quality. In fact, it is necessary to reflect seriously on the ways and means to deal with these resistance techniques once a democratic system has been established. Policymakers must, therefore, anticipate the issue of disenchantment by both integrating the psychoaffective dimension in their strategies and adopting a dual approach to the design of the new political technology that is needed in Africa.
Integrating the Psychoaffective Dimension
The various methods of civil disobedience described earlier are effective and useful as long as authoritarian regimes are in place; however, when a democratic regime takes over, and when the time comes for people to regain the “normal” patterns of civic life, the transition to a democratic behavior might be difficult. In countries such as Mali, Niger, Benin, Congo, or Zambia, people were used to “disorder”; they enjoyed doing only what they wanted, and reluctantly agreed to return to a “regular” citizenship, that is, showing respect for the state and the democratically elected officials, complying with laws, rules, and regulations, paying their taxes, and taking care of public goods.
In Africa, more than elsewhere, it is necessary to include in the democratization process people’s propensity to use the imagination for the invention of methods of resistance. There is always the risk that extremist groups, hoping to see the liberation process fail, will succeed in derailing the system. In such a case, the asymptote, the threshold of effectiveness where popular resistance takes on the appearance of anarchy, has been crossed and the mechanisms stemming from the collective will to subvert reality give way to uncontrollable disorder.
This risk exists as a result of the fact that a psychoaffective dimension is present in every social phenomenon and often fuels confusion, especially in an environment as plastic as the one in which African societies are evolving. If we wish to avoid this risk, the emergence of the democratic process must involve simultaneously the establishment of a viable institutional structure and the existence of a well-directed public consciousness. In other words, the informal systems of resistance and the modes of democratic production I have described are in no way a substitute for authentic democratic systems. Even if Africa’s peoples continually invent spaces of freedom in order to arm themselves against the totalitarian impulse of the powers around them, the classical mechanisms for the protection of rights (separation of powers) and the media for the expression of dissent (freedom of the press) must retain their full credibility. Although these informal systems may be effective, they nevertheless remain palliatives of effectiveness, often problematic ones, given that they have yet to be codified and do not always succeed in transcending the emotional register in which they have developed. As Braud has said: “The now little disputed superiority of pluralist democracies over authoritarian and totalitarian regimes is not the result of the triumph of their ideological principles. If there has been an institutional consolidation (it is in fact remarkable), it is because of their superior ability to manage, without stifling them, the emotional energies that run throughout society” (1991:15)
Toward a Dual Approach
The ability of African systems of informal resistance to codify and amalgamate in a positive way the enthusiasm of African peoples—their creativity, emotions, frustrations, fears, and anger—and to generate safety valves so as to consolidate the modes of democratic production found in the microactions of everyday life is still too weak for us to content ourselves with. If we admit the necessity of conceiving democracy’s progression in sub-Saharan Africa as the conceptualization of two parallel phenomena (rationalization of the operation of classical institutions and codification of the modes of informal resistance), the problem that remains to be solved is how to harmonize the aspects of this dual approach. Simultaneous to the construction of a classical democratic framework—a task that can be seriously undertaken only within the context of some kind of national forum, that is, a meeting wherein the main political actors of a country design the rules of the political game and reach a consensus on the balance of power among the main institutions—it is necessary to federate the centrifugal forces now competing in society and transform them into constructive energies.
If Africa wishes to rid itself permanently of unenlightened political systems, to come out from under the yoke of pseudoindependence and reach an optimal social equilibrium, then it will need more than politicians and jurists familiar with the intricacies of parliamentary or presidential governments. It will also require bold theorists of a new sociality capable of evaluating the positivity hidden behind the most anodyne acts and channeling this positivity into a clearly defined goal. It must produce people who will catalyze disorder, who will elaborate concepts incorporating the unsaid of the psychological environment and local culture—at once rich and in a state of ruin. This, of course, is not an easy task, for Africans are gravitating in a sphere of problematic mixes, where the threshold of effective action is particularly unstable. Theory is not linear in Africa, and every hypothesis must be relativized, in time as well as in space.
The idea is far from utopian provided Africans arm themselves with two principles: First, they must free themselves of the paradigm of collapse, which informs most prospective analyses of African societies and falsifies the terms of the debate on the future of democracy on the continent. The theme of Africa’s decadence, which has loomed like a destiny in the Western press over the past few years, feeds upon the stereotypes to which lovers of ideological commodities like to refer. If it is denounced, it will allow Africa’s peoples to become subjects of their own history and no longer the object of other people’s generous and sordid fantasies. Next, one must abandon the intellectual mind-set of “disconnection.” Though some hang on to the illusion that it is possible to “leave the world,” to develop the myth of an insular African consciousness, and to isolate the continent from the rest of the world (Amin 1991), this does not correspond to the reality of the present era. Africa can and must construct its integration into the world, because the world is now a global village.
Endnotes
Note 1: My view of passive resistance is similar to that of Shehadeh (1983), describing certain forms of Palestinian silent resistance in the Middle East in the 1970s and early 1980s. Back.
Note 2: Eboussi Boulaga, interview. Back.
Note 3: See also Snitow et al. (1984) and Roitman (1994). Back.
Note 4: Plato’s equation for political decadence was: Satiety + Immoderation = Disaster. One can hardly use his equation to explain Africa’s problem today, unless we redefine satiety, and we apply it to something other than material welfare. Back.
Note 5: Duval (1985) provides an interesting monography of a specific case of west African traditional conservatism. Back.
Note 6: I borrowed this phrase from the Zairean journalist Ekanga Shungu. Back.
Note 7: See Kpatindé (1990) for a synthetic account of Fela’s struggle with the Nigerian government over foreign exchange issues in the 1980s. Back.
Note 8: On de Mbanga’s role during my trial in Cameroon in 1991, see Chapter 3. Back.
The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa
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