By
Obododimma Oha
African Studies research, like any area
studies, grants us the opportunity of
suggesting that we are some kind of knowers
or authorities on the defined territories. Or, rather, we are invited to
pontificate on Africa as knowers of the territory defined. But the reality is
that these authorities on the territories are just learners. They need to be
humble enough to acknowledge that they are learners. First of all, Africa is not
the palm of one’s hand. One cannot even know the palm of one’s hand so well
enough. Does one even know the lines running through it? But we claim to know
the areas on which we base our research and guard it jealously. Territories
have to be policed and protected. We believe we have an obligation to do that,
the weight of our research behind us.
Such emotional attachment is understandable in expertise. Perhaps,
this has something to do with teaching, mentoring, and the emergence of
“followers’ clubs” in modern scholarship. Of course, one encounters commendable boundary crossing once in a while in African studies, as in the essays of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju. But this short piece is
encouraging us to move beyond those cultural territories,
some of which we have inherited as citizens or insiders.
The insiders have some good reasons for
restricting their research in African studies to a culture or ethnic group.
One of the following could be a good point:
· -- The promotion of the culture or
presencing of the culture in the international ilo of knowers;
· --The reinforcement of own side in the
on-going cultural competition at the continental or post- colonial nation-state,
a continuation of the politics of otherness in the post-colonial ilo;
· -- The promotion of every thing in the
culture as worth knowing to others;
· -- The exploration of only what one
knows or the self that one knows;
· -- The restriction of things worth
knowing as things culturally related to self.
We can add
other justifications to these. But consider the first. There is something about
emotional involvement about it. These days that we speak about the control of
the centre with great emotion, is it not more entertaining to see how the
periphery wrestles with the centre angel
in the global ilo until dawn?
Cultures need
to show their presence at the global ilo
and also show what they have brought or what they can boast of. It is a kind of performance in the ilo and one cannot afford to disappoint
one’s culture. Are we not cultural ambassadors, representatives of our cultures,
after all?
So, it is a cultural contest and one has to
reinforce one’s own side in this
competition. In every competition, there has to be a winner aand there has to be the loser. Shame
on losers; I hope they have come to the competition with baskets -- ụnụ bukwara ekete bịa – to carry home
their losses.
It is even
worse when one is in a deeply divided postcolonial country where each group has
to politick with knowledge and prove itself to be a champion-in-the-waiting. So,
one’s little research in an aspect of the culture of the group is a
contribution to the much-needed visibility.
In the light
of the above, is war, culture war, not a continuation of politics by other
means? Every thing in the culture is worth studying, more so, when one is able
to show that one is the first to talk about it. But every thing in the cultural
life of the other is diabolical and should be discouraged. Mention shrine, and
think of “Okija Shrine,” even if there is no specific thing called “Okija
Shrine” in Okija. One’s own cultural practices are heavenly; that of the
cultural other devilish. One has to fight to get a local festival recognised by
UNESCO, therefore. But the divinities of the other are agents of Lucifer, if
not manifestations of Lucifer.
Then, of
course, there is the justification that one is only studying the very thing
that one knows. One does not want to
probe unknown territories. What one knows is what one is an authority on, no
more. One cannot speak authoritatively about an unknown territory. It is even
too risky to want to venture into strange territories or cultures. But if one
only studies what one knows (assuming that one knows it), what is the point studying what is known and knowable?
Is it not better to embark on an adventure going to where one does not know?
Was it not even European missionaries and
explorers (who, working from zero-antecedents) developed orthographies for your
local languages (even though to make the mastery of you easier)? Were your
ancestors not busy making writing secret and cultic? Today, even when Europeans
come as tourists, they make sure that the clutch their cameras and photograph
every passing lizard, such that the mastery of
the lizard in Africa comes in unsuspecting ways, making the so-called
insider-knower a simpleton and an ignoramus. Have we not even come to know that
the insider may not really be a knower, or may know nothing except how to
promote backwardness? The centres for the rigorous studies of African affairs
are all out there – in Germany, Britain, USA, Japan, France, Canada, etc.
There is a
fair ground to sympathize with those who think that things worth knowing or
worth studying are those related to self. Only the self matters. The other that
really needs to be studied does not have to be studied, otherwise, we would be
seen to be helping the cultural dominance of the other. Is it not when we are
confronted by the languages and cultures we do not understand that we are
really forced to know? In such situations, we may be forced to employ research
assistants and become humble enough to learn from them and through them.
If one is
Hausa, no one says that one’s African studies research has to be only on Hausa
affairs only. Same for Igbo. So, after
writing about Achebe and Adichie and the the researcher who is Igbo writes
about Igbo marriage laws, it is finished? The fellow cannot even compare the
situation with Yoruba marriage laws, not to talk of writing on Yoruba marriage
laws!
Gradually,
African studies shrinks to become the palms of our hands. This not to say that
some are not courageously crossing boundaries in their research. One is only
raising an objection to scholarship in African studies defined only as the
study “of what one knows.”
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