Olu Oguibe, 'In 'The Heart of Darkness'
In: Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Market Place. Edited by Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1999, pp. 320-327.
I
Prehistory. History. Posthistory. It is evidence of the arrogance of Occidental culture and discourse that even the concept of history should be turned into a colony whose borders, validities, structures and configurations, even life tenure, are solely and entirely decided by the West. This way history is constructed as a validating privilege, which it is the West's to grant, like United Nations' recognition, to sections, nations, moments, discourses, cultures, phenomena, realities, peoples. In the past fifty years, as Occidental individualism has grown with industrial hyperreality, it has become more and more the privilege of individual discourses and schools of thought to grant, deny, concede, and retract the right to history. Time and history, we are instructed, are no longer given. Indeed history is to be distinguished from History, and the latter reserved for free-market civilisation.
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II
Premodernism. Modernism. Postmodernism. For the West erase Premodernism. For the rest replace with Primitivism. It is tempting to dwell on the denial of modernity to Africa or cultures other than the West. The underlying necessity to consign the rest of humanity to antiquity and atrophy so as to cast the West in the light of progress and civilisation has been sufficiently explored by scholars. If not for the continuing and pervading powers and implications of what Edward Said has described as structures of reference, it would be improper to spend time on the question. It is important to understand that while counter-centrist discourse has a responsibility to explore and expose these structures, there is an element of concessionism in tethering all discourse to the role and place of the outside. To perpetually counter a centre is to recognise it. In other words, discourse - our discourse - should begin to move in the direction of dismissing, at least in discursive terms, the concept of a centre, not by moving it, as Ngugi has suggested, [2] but by superseding it. It is in this context that any meaningful discussion of modernity and 'modernism' in Africa must be conducted, not in relation to the idea of an existing centre or a 'modernism' against which we must all find our bearings, but in the recognition of the multiplicity and culture-specificity of modernisms and the plurality of centres.
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III
In light of the above, the concept of an African culture, or an Africanity, which is quite often taken for granted, is equally problematic. It seems to me that we cannot discuss an African modernity or 'modernism' without agreeing first on either the fictiveness of 'Africanity' or the imperative of a plurality of 'modernisms' in Africa.
Of course, one may well be wrong here. Yet it is to be recognised that, like the entity and idea called Europe, the specificities of which are still in the making and the collective history of which dates no earlier than Napoleon - the idea of Rome and Greece is dishonest - Africa is a historical construct rather than a definitive. Many have argued, prominent among them the Afrocentrist school, the antiquity of a Black or African identity, an argument that falls flat upon examination. On the other hand, history reveals the necessity for such unifying narratives in the manufacture of cultures of affirmation and resistance. The danger in not recognising the essential fictiveness of such constructs, however, is that a certain fundamentalism, a mega-nationalism, emerges - all the more dangerous for its vagueness - which excises, elides, confiscates, imposes and distorts.
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VII
To reject the exoticisation of Africa is to destroy an entire world-view, carefully and painstakingly fabricated over several centuries. This is the imperative for any meaningful appreciation of culture in Africa today, and it would be unrealistic to expect it easily from those who invented the old Africa for their convenience. It dismisses an existing discourse and signifies a reclaiming process that leaves history and the discursive territory to those who have the privileged knowledge and understanding of their societies to formulate their own discourse. This not to suggest an exclusionist politic, but to reassert what is taken for granted by the West and terminate the ridiculous notion of the 'intimate outsider' speaking for the native. It recognises that there is always an ongoing discourse and the contemplation of life and its sociocultural manifestations is not dependent on self-appointed outsiders.
Otherisation is unavoidable, and for every One, the Other is the 'Heart of Darkness'. The West is as much the Heart of Darkness to the Rest as the latter is to the West. Invention and contemplation of the Other is a continuous process evident in all cultures and societies. But in contemplating the Other, it is necessary to exhibit modesty and admit relative handicap since the peripheral location of the contemplator precludes a complete understanding. This ineluctability is the Darkness.
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The West may require an originary backwoods, the Heart of Darkness, against which to gauge its progress. Contemporary discourse hardly proves to the contrary. However, such Darkness is only a simulacrum, only a vision through our own dark glasses. In reality, there is always plenty of light in the Heart of Darkness.