As Africa is ‘prehistorical’ in Hegel’s mind, doesn’t that still mean it’s a part of the world’s history? Even if the entire continent is filled with naïve ‘children,’ they contributed something. Even if Africa’s the infantile state of the world, doesn’t it at the very least show the beginnings of the world? I mean, Europe had to develop from something, right? Probably from a similar state he claims Africa to be in. Something cannot just spring up out of nothing. It takes time for nations - let alone an entirely integrated, codependent set of countries - to form.
Okay, so Africa’s not Europe. Doesn’t mean it’s any less a part of the world: it cannot physically be denied. Although culturally/socially, Europe ignored Africa and decided that there was nothing worthwhile it or its people had to offer. one people demonized, the one people Europe decided not to take influence from. So that makes it irrelevant?
Hegel writes in 1830, well into the developing stage of the Americas, at a time in which the Atlantic Slave Trade was whittled down to a profession. Who cleared the land? Raised the crops? Practically single handedly built the US? Yeah, African slaves. Again, whether or not you regard Africans as impotent, did they not directly have a hand in the US’s development? How can you blatantly deny Africa’s relevancy to World History when there is so much physical evidence proving otherwise?
Granted Hegel probably had no idea about the future, but in US society, we cannot deny the relevancy of Africa or African-American peoples. Indeed, the historical effects of our slavery are so great that there is no realm that goes untouched: political campaigns, legislature, education, economics, state and local law enforcement… I may be of the minority when I say this, but I think about everything in the terms of race. There is no way for me to disconnect the world today and the effects of slavery. Yet Africa and its people have no influence?
Final thought, and probably the most bothersome: Hegel might be somewhat correct. Honestly reflect on how much you know about slavery, the various African cultures, the continent’s contemporary issues. Now, reflect on how much is openly published in magazines, newspapers; reported on the nightly news. How much you were taught in school? And I mean high school, private or public, not Rhodes college. How much *honest* (and that being the key word) information is printed in state-issued textbooks? I think on how much more the US denied, misrepresented, and altogether omitted from my education, and it’s disgusting. I can remember spending maybe 4-5 chapters total on slavery, revolution, emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement.
If we continue to deny Africa’s influence and continue to denigrate its people, is Hegel really that wrong in saying Africa is irrelevant?
Seriously the last paragraph had me like "WOW!" and then proceeded to leave me speechless. But a more formal response to this...
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. If we continue to omit the full stories of various contributions of so called minority races then we simply prove Hegel right in that their contributions really don't hold any weight in the progression of human history. The thing that baffles me the most is that a good portion of the western world (including all of the Americas and a few western European countries)has a lot to thank Africans and the African diaspora for. An important way to begin to resolve this issue is by having people and descendants of the African diaspora take ownership of their history and write their own narrative. The power lies in the pen and with those who assume the role and responsibility of recording history.
For so long the African diaspora has been plagued with the tragic tale of European colonialism and slavery. There is a continual perpetuation of perceived shame. While those events occurred, there is more to this tale of epic proportions. Once again there is no mention that the culture of the western world was very much so shaped by the presence of various African ethnic traditions. There is no mention that wherever a first or second generation child is in the world they harbor strong ties to the country they have never visited and the tribal group they know only within the context of their foreign place of residence. The fact that so many retain various ethnic and tribal identities despite being so far removed speaks volumes. This is not only the story of the African diaspora but it is the story of multiple diasporas. Conquest of the world may not have happened as a result of domination, but conquest occurred by taking and building up what so many recognize as the vibrant, charismatic cultures of our global community. There is no mention of this. Yet, from what I can see, there is plenty to reclaim and take pride in.
In McKinney's African American Activism coures (took it last semester), we learned about counter-narratives and the Polotics of Respecability. The problem to be faced, however much counter-narratives are written and publicized is that they are exactly that: 'counter-narratives,' meaning they intrinsically oppose the popular view, making them the road less taken, and for whatever reason a weaker argument and less likely to be heard/publicized/believed. Maybe this is my own hang up, but language can influence the way we percieve things; i would like to call it something else, but i don't know what...
DeleteI don't think that the counter narrative is a "weaker argument". The counter narrative may be an opposing view, but I think the overall end goal is to shed light on the lesser known facts that bring the third dimension to whatever story in turn creating a fuller picture of what has occurred.
DeleteMaybe what I am really trying to get at is that the illumination of the whole truth has the potential to bring cultural pride to racial minorities. It is important for a people to know, or at least have it recorded, the entirety of their history and their contributions to society. We tend to teach a reduced and diluted history - granted this makes it easier to teach younger, undeveloped minds. Nonetheless, the learning curve needs to be shortened where all students are not reaching the depths of history only when, and if, they make it to college/university.
I don't actually believe that counter-narratives are weaker than the traditional narratives, it's just a thought. If anything, they weaken the master narrative, as they are designed to do, because they offer the notion that some details are altered. And if some details are found to be right by the counter-narrative, what else is the master narrative lying about?
DeleteAnd I agree completely that the whole truth would add to cultural pride. I would even go so far as to say it may incite bonds between cultures. And to have a *real* history would be awesome. But we (in the broadest sense) can't seem to get past the political power of recorded history. Granted writing stuff down is largely a Western ideal (oral histories are all but ignored), but it would be great to see the different aspects of history compiled into a volume. Or at least not diluted.
To tag onto the dilution-because-its-children statement: As a culture, I don't think we give children their proper due. Yes, they aren't as developed, but I still don't believe they're incompetent. They may not understand the larger social ramifications of learning about race relations/cultural influences/factual history, but I doubt it would hurt them to hear the *real* story, the *whole* story. I think censorship of our history is a disservice, and *almost* a blatant lie.
Well, then it becomes an argument of 'What d'ya mean "real" story?' History is never unbiased. What gets recorded is what the winners/most dominant people say it is. And this is the unfortunate element to our constructed narrative. As much as I disagree with it, I cannot come to any conclusion on how to write an objective narrative. Can we all as individual nations get together and agree, and then have our national historians convene by a campfire and agree to stop leavin stuff out? Even the bad stuff. ESPECiALLY the bad stuff. How are we to learn from our mistakes if we pretend like we've never made the mistakes? I know genocide sucks, but the US did it just as Germany did, and as they're trying to forget about it, we hang it over their heads so as to distract ourselves from what we've done. ugh.
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' - a senior adviser to George W. Bush
ReplyDeleteThe above quote was stated to journalist Ron Suskind in 2004, and it's indicative of a lot of things. Including, in this case, the view from the master's seat. There is a sense in which the authors of the master narrative do not see history as a collaborative process, and I don't think, for the masters, that the question of bias ever enters the picture. Their narrative is the only narrative that matters, because it is the only one that is real in the sense of being the one that is enacted. All the mechanisms of a society act towards the ends of the empire. -They- are the makers of history, and all that the historians do is interpret what they do. I think that's what Hegel means, when he says that Europe is the creator of history. History in the sense of an enacted reality.
What's also worrying, with this interpretation, is that any counter-narrative is proved ultimately invalid by the master's reality. The tales of slaves are not false, simply tangential to the ultimate end of history. In a sense, they do not matter, just as Africa does not matter and will never matter in any way other than as Europe's, and now, perhaps, America's plaything. Going off the comment of American genocides, one could argue (and I've heard it argued, sadly) that the death of the American natives is proved justified by the rise of the United States as a world power and, ultimately, one might claim, as the master who directs the process of unfolding history.
This is unquestionably troubling, and morally abhorrent. What's worse? It may be reasonably contended that our empire still operates under the assumptions of such a view...