Comment (8)
Email
Print
del.icio.us
TechnoratiThe Past in the Present
African traditional life is being steamrollered by globalisation. How should they react?
by Louis J. Munoz | Spectrum Books | Ibadan, Nigeria | 2007
Most Africans are caught between two worlds – the age-old life of the village and the global village of modern ideologies and technology. It’s not unusual for educated Africans to jettison contemptuously all the backward notions they learned from their elders. Nigerians of this stripe refuse to speak their "primitive" mother tongue. They chatter away in received pronunciation English and even poke fun at unrefined American accents.
Attitudes are changing rapidly even towards pillars of traditional life. Not long ago, I was surprised by the public outrage at a "sexist" cell phone ad which depicted a first-time father ringing his mother to tell her that "it’s a boy!". Isn’t a girl good enough nowadays, many people asked. Some Yoruba kids refuse to prostrate themselves while greeting their elders. For older Yorubas, this is the height of insult and lack of manners.
And along with the internet and pop music, Nigeria is importing some destructive habits. Divorce, single-motherhood, and cohabitation are all increasing. The family structure is being globalised, to its detriment. And so are public morals. Corruption is endemic. An Igbo proverb says that ezi afa ka ego, "a good name is worth more than wealth". But today, if you refuse to stick your hand in the public till, you are an efulefu, a ne’er-do-well, a traditional word with a contemporary twist.
Obviously some traditions are bound to die under the pressure of modern life. To be alive means to grow and change. But how can Africans forge a distinctive response to a globalised world without losing what is most precious about their rich and proud heritage?
I found useful answers in a recent book, The Past in the Present: Towards a Rehabilitation of Tradition, by a Nigerian academic at the University of Ibadan. Louis Munoz distinguishes between tradition and traditionalism, between "the living faith of the dead" and "the dead faith of the living". The difference between men and animals is not just rationality but tradition; only human beings treasure traditions and pass them on.
It’s a difficult balance. A society that rushes to embrace any new wave will lose its roots. On the other hand, a society that clings to tradition without opening up to the positive aspects of modernity will become fossilised.
What Nigerians need is more familiarity with the brilliance of their own history. Africa did not spring into existence with the colonial intrusion, which, in the grand march of African history, is only a blink of an eye. The great Yoruba kingdoms of Oyo and Ife had impressive achievements which should not be forgotten. The fact that there may not be a written language does not equate to a lack of history. In this sense, contemporary African societies can learn from other countries. England and Japan have somehow managed to preserve many of their ancient traditions without sacrificing their modernity.
Munoz points out that African traditions have such vitality and resilience that they have been preserved in the New World. Generations after their forebears were sold into slavery and landed on an alien continent empty-handed and destitute, Yoruba and Efik traditions are alive in Cuba. The slaves brought along their languages, customs, beliefs and gods. "Even some of the material ‘seats’ of their gods, like the stones used in Cuban santeria (as the Yoruba cults are known there), were said to have been brought from Africa by the slaves, who concealed them in their stomachs by swallowing them," Munoz observes. The ways of the Ekpe (Leopard) Society, for instance, are substantially the same as the customs of the Calabar in Cross River State in South East Nigeria today. Studies of customs in Brazil, Haiti, Trinidad and other Caribbean Islands have come to similar conclusions.
Throwing traditions overboard is not just a matter of keeping up with the global Joneses. Disdain for tradition and traditional societies is hardwired into the Enlightenment, Munoz argues. The philosophers of the 18th Century rejected the claims of authority and only esteemed the harsh light of autonomous reason. They contemptuously dismissed tradition as sub-rational. But Munoz contends that "traditional knowledge may not be rational knowledge in the sense of ‘knowledge through the conceptual, logical and discursive exercise of reason’ but it is intelligent knowledge, rational in the wider sense of the term; the ‘wisdom without reflection’ of [the British philosopher Edmund] Burke."
Anyone who takes pride in his grandparents should read this wise and inspiring book, which shows that our obsession with novelty and change is shamefully blinkered. "We have been spellbound by the false principle that the categories of before and after are not only temporal adverbs and chronological criteria but also criteria of validity," writes Munoz. "This has led scholars to be much too concerned with the mythical future to which societies seem to be tending without an adequate appreciation of the origins from which all societies depart".
Nwachukwu Egbunike is a book editor in Ibadan, Nigeria.
What do you think? Sound off! Our guidelines: be concise; stay on-topic; and don't lose your temper! Comments close after 2 weeks. So far there have been 8 comments
I think such an article clearly serves to expose African's who are simply African by ancestry and their name (yet strangely still take it upon themselves to opine on a continent which they clearly feel is inferior in comparison to Europe and no longer declare their home) and those who value and practice cultural values which are still relevant to this day. I personally don't think much attention should be paid to African's who are of the former as I don't regard them as my brothers or sisters nor do I think other Africans should. Interestingly, it is Nigerians of *particular* tribes who seem to possess an inferiority complex in respect to the west and unsurprisingly are adopting much of the decadence present in the west. As I’m a believer in the fall of particular groups serving as an example to other groups as how not to live, I do welcome the slaughter of societal cohesion within these *particular* tribes so to serve as a warning to other tribes on the price to be paid for moral decadence.
I do think however modern and pragmatic method needs to be explored to help African's in the west who value holding onto cultural values which are undeniably a part of natural law, so as to help them circumvent falling into the trap that westerners have brought upon themselves, such as divorce, cohabitation, inhospitality and illegitimate children and thus the crime wave sweeping some developed countries.
However Poles, rather than shut this devastation in the past, resolved to re-build every single building and monument. Every drop of sweat, toil of muscle and gold – trinkets, wedding rings, etc used to re-ornament a great part of the King’s palace, were contributed by Poles, voluntarily.
Today, as I witnessed, generations of Polish children can tour this sites to re-live their history. This keen sense of cultural identity is recognised has the sole reason for Poland’s survival as a country.
Ironically, the partitioning of Poland that wiped it off the world map for 123 years, the Nazi promise of a new breed of ‘supermen’ and the Communist guarantee of a new ‘Jerusalem’: promises of a better future, could not expunge Poland’s culture and tradition.
I am in a more difficult position than Nietszche, say. I cannot simply swat the fly of tradition, it will certainly reawaken, find its way into one of my ears and buzz everlastingly - which is what I think the fly of tradition has been doing for as long as I can remember. Nevertheless, my other ear is open and receptive to other things, undisturbed by the tinnitus of tradition. And that is my point.
In spite of what someone like the ultra-traditionalist British historian Trevor-Roper might say, we Africans did not arrive where we are now historyless. But then I refuse to be on the defensive. Prof Munoz's effort is commendable, as an academic he has simply done what he should be doing. I have no problem with the didacticism of any work that calls on us to re-embrace tradition, it is how pragmatic that call is that needs debating.
Egbunike's review of the book is fair, he's done as best justice to the book as possible.
In other words, neither past nor future are inherently fantastic in themselves independently of their content. We need to analyse the content in order to find a balance: neither to scorn the past a priori, nor to be infatuated with the (often foreign) present irrespective of its content.
It is possible that I have simply interpeted the author in terms of my own inclinations, but I believe he is saying that we seem to discountenance the past and the African too easily, and to fawn over the 'present' that comes from abroad too readily. I subscribe to the notion of balance: what should I be proud of in my past that helps to give me a distinct identity, and sheds a deeper light on the present? What do I feel is great and useful in the present that I should adopt, and what do I judge as harmful that comes from outside which I should skip in my adoption? Having lived abroad for many years I subscribe to a nuanced view. I don't think everything here is fantastic or that everything is terrible. Just a mix of the two. Many things to learn from. Very many things to omit!
So far I think the book is excellent, and I recommend it to anyone with a stomach for the intellectual, although it is not very 'professorial' (as in boring lecture). Quite readable. I definitely don't think he is the kind of die-hard traditionalist you fear. We are so rooted in the today that is presented to us that I always find it refreshing to read ENLIGHTENED analyses of the past.
Good book so far!
I have been brought up in a world dominated by western thought and i know it has its good sides. but it also has its bad, which is now beginning to dominate.
is it a waste of time for us to showcase our traditions and values? only time will tell, as it has for western thought and culture. but what we need to do, and what i think Mr Nwachukwu is espousing, is that we have to find that middle way between western culture and our own. we can't jsut be accepting ther own and not giving something back. we can't allow them to keep pushing us to the corner. we must push back until an equilibrium is reached. we do have something to offer.
there are elements of our traiditons that are archaic, but there r others that are as relevant today as they were 1000 yrs ago.
As the writer says, what we need is a familiarity with our own history beyond the age of colonialism. i might add that what we need is true familiarity, because i happen to know of those who spread the petty ones (like an ethiopan king being the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba or that Cleopatra was a black african) which in my opinion have dampened peoples' interest in the topic.
we as africans really need to sit down and research and write down our history ourselves. This is required if we must build up in our people a sense of pride and dignity, for we have achieved much, even though it is all unwritten.
I think Mr Amechi might have made a stronger point if he had not dropped the professorial names.
In so far as it is inevitably meshed with the past, with bygone attidudes and imperatives, tradition - especially in its most puritan form - will always be problematic. In every moment of every day, a good number of things, extraneous and inbred, conspire to compromise tradition...
Of course I'd like to read this book, but even after reading my views might still not chime with the Professor's.
"...I am moved not only to congratulate Prof. Munoz for a remarkable pedagogical achievement, but also to remark upon the good fortune of students who have been exposed to his teaching over the years." - F. Abiola Irele (Professor of African, French and Comparative Literature, Harvard).
"Readers will have to wait a while to find within one cover, a study of tradition that is wide-ranging and presents its case with such simplicity and subtlety."- Dan Izevbaye (Professor of English, former President of Nigeria Academy of Arts)
Rather strange that Mr Adebowale Oriku who has not even read it, thinks that:"its argument is likely to be a forlorn-hope."
Page 1 of 1 :