Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously

Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò is one of those catchy, polemical books that points out the several flaws in a certain type of decolonisation. Critiquing Wiredu, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and other like-minded proponents influenced by them, Táíwo illustrates how their understanding of African agency, history, and languages suffers from a variety of flaws. One of their major flaws is equating modernity with colonialism or Westernization, a perspective that ignores the plethora of ways in which European colonialism in Africa actually preempted or prevented modernity through the imposition of a government without the consent of the governed and an extractive regime based on the utter exploitation and abuse of indigenous or local populations. 

Táíwò is basically saying those who ignore the ways in which liberal representative democracy has been engaged with, accepted, and appropriated by Africans to create modern societies are actually guilty of a misunderstanding of decolonisation (in the original sense of a formal end to European colonialism) and do not seriously engage with African intellectuals and politicians like Nkrumah, Senghor, Nyerere, or Cabral who saw value and utility in liberal democracy and other ideas, political philosophies, and customs of European origin. The obsession with African languages, defining and delimiting "African" in atavistic or retrograde fashions, and rejecting something of European origin because it may have entered a place like Nigeria through missionaries or even the colonial state does a disservice to the nuances of African intellectual history and the challenges people across the continent are engaged in to ensure a freer, more democratic government. 

Something of European or other external origins can be debated, analyzed, and perhaps adapted instead of blindly emulated or copied, but calling it "decolonizing" does not facilitate our understanding and may further obfuscate a deeper engagement with the full array of African intellectual production. Even the chronologies we use, like "precolonial" or terms like "traditional African religion" have to be rethought or reconsidered for what it suggests about the history of the continent and the impact of European colonialism. And trying to use decolonizing as a method of resurrecting "traditional" or ancient African monarchies, communalism, or spiritual practices is dangerous and does not help in the struggle to end customs like child marriages, ritual killings, or genital mutilation. I am sure most reasonable writers and activists who speak of decolonisation do not really want a return to the political or social order of "precolonial" Africa. Moreover, no one who has read Fanon or Cabral or, dare I say it, Haitian intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries, would see a return to premodern civilization as the basis for building a postcolonial state. 

Although ostensibly about Africa, much of what Táíwò discusses is also relevant to Haiti and the Caribbean. In "Haitian Studies" one can also find similar rhetoric of "decolonizing" or "decoloniality" (although perhaps closer in spirit to Latin American forms) that often cloud deeper understanding or analysis of Haiti's political, linguistic, and intellectual debates. In the Haitian case, I see it more often around the question of religion and language. According to some, language in Haiti needs to be decolonised by favoring education and literature in Haitian Creole, the only language spoken fluently by all Haitians. Instead of privileging French, Haitian Creole should be promoted to complete the mental decolonisation of Haitians. The linguistic realities of Haiti are of course more complicated than this kind of Manichaean worldview allows. I also wonder how anyone can only see the French language as colonial force in Haiti when the vast majority of Haitian literature has been composed in that language and French has been owned, claimed, and mastered by Haitians for two centuries. As for Creole in Haiti's schools, we have yet to truly see the basic reforms necessary to improve and update Haitian education or properly prepare curriculum and materials for Creole instruction. The situation is more difficult than proponents of Creole recognize or admit, and the relationship between French and Creole is not so black and white. 

As for religion and spiritual practices, I also wonder if Haitians could learn from Táíwò. Instead of assuming that the Vodou religion offers practical or useful ways of rethinking or reconsidering liberal democracy or that it could even offer a template of an alternative democracy because of the faith's alleged democratic or imaginary spirit, perhaps Haitian intellectuals would do better to dwell on Haitian engagement with liberalism, the legacy of 1804 (and 1789), and repeated attempts to build a representative democracy that respects and protects the individual with independent judiciaries and rights for women and sexual minorities. I see some parallels between Africa and Haiti in the dangers of "atavistic impulses" and exclusionary conceptualizations of Haitian identity that have been tried or toyed with in the past, with the usual disastrous results one can see in 20th century Haitian politics. And this is in a context where Haitian intellectuals have been working with allegedly "Western" values for over 200 years. I don't see how or why some Haitians think the "real" culture of Haiti is to be found in some resistant culture of Vodou and Creole that is the "real" Haiti (a breached citadel) and will be the foundation for another political system that better matches the Haitian's true nature or culture.

In short, everyone with time should read Against Decolonisation. It beats a dead horse occasionally, but at least forces us to remember that Africans (and people of African descent) have agency and we should take their histories and thinkers seriously instead of relegating them to the status of children or objects of a "colonial" history. We should also reject simple-minded or kneejerk reactions that hide or ignore history, deny or minimize cultural and intellectual exchange, or evince a lack of engagement with the languages we seek to promote as "authentic" or "decolonized" in Africa (or the Caribbean). There is no "authentic" or "pure" African (or Haitian) tradition or civilization that has not been shaped by the interaction with others, before and after formal colonialism, and we should not reduce local agency in the choices and practices made by African governments in the postcolonial era. Haitians should pay attention to this and try to take their history seriously.