This piece is from a school assignment, submitted in response to the essay topic:

[I]nsofar as the academic discourse of history – that is, ‘history’ produced in the institutional site of the university – is concerned, Europe remains the sovereign theoretical subject of all histories, including the ones we call ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Kenyan’, and so. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called ‘the history of Europe’. (Dipesh Chakrabarty, p.1). Using the readings in this section of the course, examine and critique this statement in relation to African history.

AXL5202F, Problematising the Study of Africa, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town

Abstract

African history has prompted foundational questions on the nature of history and the relevance of the discipline. In so far as African history is concerned, the essay hopes to unpack some of the contradictions and limitations in Chakrabarty’s idea of a history which will embody a politics of despair because of Europe being the sovereign theoretical subject of all histories. In so doing, the essay explores the role of the nation state and modernity as powerful formations which form their own discourse, thereby allowing them to have power over history. Part 1 of the essay demonstrates how this in turn secures the West’s dominance over world history, making it the referent point for all other non-Western histories. The second part of the essay constitutes a critical review of Chakrabarty’s contention of the subalternity of non-Western histories. The essay specifically focuses on the limitations inherent in Chakrabarty’s formulation which prioritises the university and the discipline of history, thus making the proposed solution of provincializing Europe, subject to the trapping of ahistorical history due to the centring of Europe. As such, the essay concludes by looking at an alternative to doing European history differently by turning towards a practice of history anchored in concrete politics.

Introduction

A history that embodies a politics of despair (Chakrabarty, 1992:23), is Chakrabarty’s urging towards the end of his paper Postocoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for Indian Pasts? There is perhaps no clearer sign of the anguish facing historians of Africa, academics, and by extension: a student with a task of writing this essay as part of a module assessment.

The central aim of this essay is twofold. First, the essay will provide a rough overview of the formation of history as a discourse (Foucault, 2002; Mudimbe, 1988) by looking at imperial history (Ekeh, 1997) and its transportation to the modern African university, with the aim of showing the harm of disciplinarity and its power over history in so far as African history is concerned (Trouillot, 1995). This is important, because central to Chakrabarty’s contention that Europe is the sovereign theoretical subject of all histories, is the university as an institutional site of producing history (Chakrabarty, 1992:1). Consequently, history must then be understood and interpreted as an academic discipline which brings the might of archival power with its own orders determining what counts and does not count as history (Trouillot, 1995:103).

In illustrating this discursive formation in relation to African history being a variant of European history, the essay will follow the site of the African university (Ekeh, 1997), particularly at the advent of flag independence from erstwhile colonial powers and the early attempts of African historians to demonstrate modernity’s links to European colonialism, racism and slavery (Cooper, 2005) and how the ideal vision of liberalism was propagated at a time of violent colonial expansion and slavery (Sheth, 2009).  Here, the essay will touch on the tactics of silencing the past which were used to erase African history precisely because it did not count as European history, whilst drawing the limitations of African history given its directional focus towards Europe and the acceptance of the nation-state, resulting in what Ekeh (1997) has called imperial history; Dipesh condemns non-Western histories to a knowing of “Europe as the original home of the modern” (Chakrabarty, 1992:19), the significance of that lies in the acceptance of the nation state by African liberation movements as the vehicle to usher in freedom. In so doing, African history was thus caught within the web of liberalism’s march of progress, whose pinnacle is the nation state as the bringer of modernity (Chatterjee, 2014). By way of logical extension to Chakrabarty’s argument, African history was thus subsumed in European history under liberalism’s universalising and “historically inevitable” march of progress.

Yet despite Chakrabarty’s other urging to do away with the nation state and liberalism, postcolonial studies have been accused of ahistorical history (Cooper, 2005) in their attempts to respond to both imperial history and globally dominant narrative of modernity which gives the west power over history (Trouillot, 1995). This presents a conundrum for the task of provincializing Europe (Chakrabarty, 1992) for it raises the question: how does one bring to the fore histories which have been erased and silenced by imperialism in a manner which would as Cooper (2005) said, really provincialize Europe? To do so, in sharp contrast to Chakrabarty, will not necessarily mean returning to Europe as the home of the modern. Rather, as Feierman (1993) argues, to do so would be to reflect Europe and Africa as part of “general history” (Feierman, 1993:182) and wherein the history of the West is told in a manner that brings forward the perspective of the world (Trouillot, 1995:107).

More than that, there is a broader critique of Chakrabarty’s position in his formulation of the crisis. This lies fundamentally in the prominence given both to the university and the disciplinary power of history. This is particularly important in relation to African history whose very existence troubles the discipline (Feierman, 1993:184). Especially because, as Trouillot (1995: 71) points out, we all need histories that no history book can tell.  Consequently, the second aim of the essay hopes to unpack some of the contradictions and limitations in the idea of a history which will embody the politics of despair given the dominance of global narrative of modernity and Europe as the centre of history.

The essay will be split in two parts and structured around the aims as outlined above.

Part I. Imperial History and Power over History: Modernity and the Nation State in Africa

Power of discourse

At the formation of a discourse, Foucault (2002: xiv) argues that there are rules that come into play in the very existence of such a discourse. Importantly for our purposes, it is worth noting that the primary consideration was not that these rules or conditions were there to make the discourse itself true and coherent; rather, the rules exist to give it “value and application as scientific discourse” (Foucault, 2002). To illustrate Chakrabarty’s point of how African history becomes a variant of European history, I want to turn to Mudimbe’s formulation of methods and modulations of colonial organisation, one of whose strategies was the integration of local economic histories into the Western perspective (Mudimbe, 1988:2).

The modern is a history, or perhaps more accurately – a promise, of progress. From backwardness of old traditional life, to the conveniences of industry, technology (Diawara, 1998) and urbanisation (Mudimbe, 1988:4), it is projected as a history of overcoming intolerance and ignorance with the promise, almost inevitable guarantee, of progress (Chakrabarty, 1992:22). One way of integrating local economic histories into the Western perspective is through creating “paradigmatic oppositions”: a dichotomising system between traditional and modern whereby African history is narrated as a move from one to the other (Mudimbe, 1988:4).

However, to think the modern, as Chakrabarty (1992) said, is to think a history whose theoretical subject is Europe. As such, African history is not only measured against the yardstick of European standards – it uses a structural mode inherited from colonialism. This is particularly illustrated in the developmental efforts of African states post flag independence, and the metrics used to assess progress, growth and development (Diawara, 1998:119). Using these narrow measures, such as the gross domestic product, exchange rates, and balance of trade directions, the history of Africa has been locked into a cannon which establishes Europe as the norm and reference point of progress (Chatterjee, 2014), and therefore, history. In this respect, Europe is the only sovereign theoretical subject of history, for its history is not defined in relation to any other history except its own. For African history, its theoretical sovereignty as a subject of history as per Chakrabarty’s position, is echoed by Said (1978) arguing that because of Orientalism’s power as a discourse, the Orient “was not and is not a free subject” (Said, 1978:4). Dipesh therefore contends that because of this fact of Europe being the home of the modern, all other histories operating within the discourse of “history” are condemned to subalternity, because:

• it is not possible to walk out of the deep collusion between “history” and the modernizing narratives of citizenship, bourgeois public and private, and the nation state (Chakrabarty, 1992:19)

Modernity and the nation state

With reference to dismantling European imperialism and its acquisition of the adjective ‘modern’ for itself, Chakrabarty makes a most incisive observation which points out that the work of equating a certain version of Europe with modernity is not the work of Europeans alone (Chakrabarty, 1992:20): “third world nationalisms, as modernizing partners par excellence, have been equal partners in the process”. In Africa, examples of such endeavours are abound from South Africa and Malawi’s former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Hastings Banda; each with the African Renaissance[1] and Kamuzu Academy project respectively. The former project is generally well known. With the latter, Malawian children were taught Latin and Greek by expatriate teachers, and disciplined if they were caugt speaking the local language Chichewa[2].

Africans states themselves, have positioned and situated their histories within the gaze of European history. Citing the West African traditional markets as an example, Diawara (1998:122) shows how the states in Africa opted for Euro-modernism in their chastisement of these markets as tribalistic, uncivilised and chaotic, incoherent precapitalistic modes of exchange. The refusal to incorporate the ‘informal’ economy in Africa into the national account statistics is consistent with silences in world history described by Trouillot, whereby the joint effect of political motives (Trouillot, 1995:106) – which in West Africa coincided with structural adjustment programs and currency devaluation (Diawara, 1998) – and banalisation of facts (Trouillot, 1995:96) results in a powerful silencing of that history and its political significance. Consequently, the discourse of modernity orders what does not count as history in relation to Europe and the larger narrative of modernity which enjoys global domination. Yet ironically, this silencing itself is part of the history of the west (Trouillot, 1995:107). Chakrabarty’s contention therefore seems to be supported on two levels.

Within the discipline of history, an illustration of this phenomenon has been demonstrated by Peter Ekeh in his study of the Ibadan School of History in Nigeria.  In responding to the ideological formations of imperialism, the school according to Ekeh opted to work with the methodology of imperial history, but to reject its conclusions (Ekeh, 1997:27). Such methodologies included the acceptance of the nation-state as the vehicle of progress, a history of kingdoms, conquest and aristocrats. The school effectively substituted African characters for European ones, to illustrate that Africa had a history too. In sum, this was a form of history which Chakrabarty (1992:18), citing Homi Bhabha, would describe as mimetic of European history and thus making African history subalternate to the master narrative.

Moreover, a critique that Peter makes, echoed by Cooper, is on the Ibadan School of History’s fixation on European colonisation in Africa, which played into the stereotype that Africa has no history unless it is the history of Europeans in Africa (Ekeh, 1997:6). This ideological formation of imperialism, which was part of the nexus of imperial history, was inadvertently encouraged by African historians who were preoccupied by 19^th-20^th century European presence in Africa. This in turn dismissed earlier encounters between Africa and Europe before European colonisation in Africa. The result from the Ibadan school of history, was an attainment of the colonial standard for Nigerian nationalism.

In so doing, it would therefore appear that the inheritance of these methods of historiography made Nigerian history both subaltern to European history due to its mimetic nature of European historiography and the nation state as the logical sequence of historical development.

Part II. The conundrum of Postcolonial Studies for African History

Alternatives readings of European history

• To hold modernity responsible for racial and class hierarchy, offers little account of the responsibility of elites for their words and actions, and little insights into how people facing the possibilities and constraints of particular colonial situations acted… We lose the power of their example to remind us that our own moral and political choices, made in the face of ambivalences and complications of our present situation, will have consequences in the future. (Cooper, 2005)

If, according to Chakrabarty, all we do is European history – or variants of it – then the question we are faced with is: what is the relevance of history as a discipline? And why practice historical scholarship at all if the best that we can hope for is a provincialized history of Europe? It seems as if this formulation severely limits our political imaginaries.

Perhaps more importantly, in critiquing Chakrabarty’s formulation of the subalternity of non-Western histories, the question to ask has been already posed in relation to the Haitian revolution, which was a “non-event” for European historical purposes: can historical narratives convey plots that are unthinkable in the world within which these narratives take place? (Trouillot, 1995: 73)

To begin this part of the essay which offers a critical review of Chakrabarty’s formulation of the challenge facing non-Western histories, it is important to set up the conundrum of postcolonial studies. On the one hand, this field responds to the history of reason and progress as beacons of humanity (Cooper, 2005), their ability to determine the terms of democracy and liberalism seemingly foretold at the founding moment of liberalism (Chatterjee, 2014), whilst ignoring the violence and repression they are birthed in and which is instrumental in the triumph of the modern (Chakrabarty, 1992: 21). Postcolonial theory therefore takes up the critical role of attacking this discursive space, what Chatterjee refers to as the mythical space of normative theory, to expose the connection between violence and the idealism “that lies at the heart of process by which the narratives of citizenship and modernity come to find a natural home in history” (Chakrabarty, 1992:22). The importance of this work regarding how we read European history is already acknowledged (Cooper, 2005).

On the other hand, in so doing, one finds that European history itself is occluded, thus resulting in ahistorical history, by portraying it as a determinist, historically inevitable process (Cooper, 2005). Whilst this essay does not discuss these various forms of ahistorical history as outlined by Cooper: leap frogging (Mamdani), time flattening (Chakrabarty) and story plucking (Mignolo) – it is important to keep in mind that the importance of the work of the postcolonial theorists is acknowledged. The dilemma thus is how that work can be carried out without carrying the charge of imperial or ahistorical history. This alternative reading of European history, however, is not the object of critique. What is under scrutiny is the site of that history, namely, Europe, and the disciplinary mode within which this history is carried out.

The first point of critique is in relation to Chakrabarty’s – and by extension postcolonial studies’, is the centring of Europe as the driver of history in a manner which is counterintuitive to the goal of provincializing Europe. This is further compounded by non-Western histories’ location of the university as a site of producing knowledge for the discipline of history. Chakrabarty is not unaware of the fact that the modern university and disciplinarity were both transplanted across the global south in the wake of European imperialism. To still therefore, assign weight and merit in the discipline of history – to charge it with the task of looking “towards its own death by tracing that which resists and escapes the best human efforts at translation” (Chakrabarty, 1992:23) seems both overly idealistic and ignorant of the political reality. Indeed, Cooper cautions of the danger of history which encourages an apolitical politics, and in this respect Chakrabrty seems to ignore the power of the discipline within a modern African university and the limits it poses for the task he sets out for it in seeking its own death.

The historical scholarship approach to African history which thus far operates in a subalternity whereby Europe is the reference point, with no expectation of European historians to reciprocate the gesture in relation to Africa history (Chakrabarty, 1992), severely undermines the possibility of retelling European history as just a part of world history (Feierman, 1993) in which European history is provincialized.

Moreover, there is the question of the discipline of history itself, whose intellectual origins in the university are largely Eurocentric: if the charge, as Cooper cited Nandy, of history itself being inseparable from its imperialist origins, holds to be true, then this indictment questions the very study of history. This is particularly important seeing as African history troubles the academic discipline of history (Feierman, 1993). That is more pronounced given the fact that for example, African history has different forms of archives which are not always written, different methodologies sometimes rooted in rituals, traditional ceremonies and dance, as well as operating on different ontological planes in so far as Western history is concerned. African worldviews do not subscribe to linear notions of time, but rather adopt a cyclical perspective. The binaries which saturate Western historiography, and the tendency of ‘othering’ differences to an absolute point, are all markers absent in African history.

Chakrabarty’s shortcoming is in the contradiction whereby he is sympathetic to such a position whilst simultaneously advocating for the death of historiographical methodologies in a manner he admits is impossible (Chakrabarty, 1992:22). His formulation of the university as the site of producing history creates the condition of this impossibility by allowing the construction of this dichotomy (Cooper, 2005). One must be able to look beyond the university and the historiographical methods of the discipline of history.

Freeing the political imaginaries of historical practise

By condemning all non-Western histories to subalternity, bound to follow the “hyperreal Europe”, Chakrabarty indeed takes us to a history that embodies this politics of despair. It is demonstrably, arguably, also an ahistorical history (Cooper, 2005), which stifles the potential not so much to learn from history, but to “think through a historical process to observe the relationship of action and its consequences” (Cooper, 2005). This perhaps offers a better alternative to Chakrabarty’s depressing outcome. Yet, although arguably realistic, it is ironically premised in an idealism with a unidirectional movement of history with Europe at its core. On the other hand, Cooper’s argument, echoed by the likes of Suren Pillay closer to home, considers the role of concrete politics (Pillay, 2018) in responding to Eurocentrism.

This approach to historical practice is thus embedded in practice (Pillay, 2018:32). In so doing, there is the chance that Chakrabarty’s hyperreal Europe is not always reified as the constant referent in African history – the norm upon which African experiences are to be interpreted. A history such as this, rooted in practice, is not bound by the confines of disciplinarity (Cooper, 2005): greater agency is available both to political actors and historians, who account for their own actions and take responsibility for their choices in not only making, but doing history. History therefore as practice anchored in concrete politics, breaks beyond the boundaries of the discipline, and by extension, how we think about the state from Africa (Pillay, 2018). Perhaps then, one can begin to speak of African History, as it begins to move away from the orders and discipline of an imperial and Eurocentric design.

Conclusion

This essay has sought to achieve the twofold aim of illustrating the harm of disciplinarity and its power over history in so far as African history is concerned and unpacking some of the contradictions and limitations in the idea of a history which will embody the politics of despair. In so doing, it paid attention to the role of the nation state and modernity as powerful formations which form their own discourse, thereby allowing them to hold power over history. Part 1 of the essay demonstrated how this in turn secures the West’s dominance over world history, making it the referent point for all other non-Western histories. Drawing from the Ibadan School of History and the West African traditional markets, it was illustrated how the role of modernity and the nation state have trapped African history within the lexicon of European history. The second part of the essay constituted a critical review of Chakrabarty’s contention of the subalternity of non-Western histories. The essay specifically focused on the limitations inherent in Chakrabarty’s formation which prioritises the university and the discipline of history, thus making the proposed solution of provincializing Europe, subject to the trapping of ahistorical history due to its centring of Europe. As such, the essay concluded by looking at an alternative to doing “European history” differently by looking towards a practice of history anchored in politics.

References

Chakrabarty, D. (1992). Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for Indian Pasts? Representations, 1-26.

Chatterjee, P. (2014). Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cooper, F. (2005). Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History. In F. Cooper, Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (pp. 401-422). Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Diawara, M. (1998). Towards a Regional Imaginary in Africa. In F. Jameson, & M. (. Miyoshi, The Cultures of Globalisation (pp. 103-124). Durham: Duke University Press.

Ekeh, P. (1997). European Imperialism and the Ibadan School of History. In P. Ekeh, Problematising History and Agency: From Nation to Subalternity (pp. 401-422). Buffalo: State University of New York.

Feierman, S. (1993). African History and the Dissolution of World History. In V. Y. Mudimbe, R. Bates, & J. F. O’Barr, Africa and the Disciplines (pp. 167-212). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. (2002). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London & New York: Routledge.

Mudimbe, V. (1988). The Invention of Africa. North America: Indiana U Press.

Nabudere, D. W. (2001). The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization. African Journal of Political Science, 6(2), 11-27. Retrieved 4 8, 2019, from http://archive.lib.msu.edu/dmc/african journals/pdfs/political science/volume6n2/ajps006002003.pdf

Pillay, S. (2018). Thinking the state from Africa: Political theory, eurocentrism and concrete politics. Politikon, 45(1), 32-47.

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Peregrine Books.

Sheth, F. A. (2009). Towards a Political Philosophy of Race. New York: State University of New York Press.

Trouillot, M.-R. (1995). An Unthinkable History: The Haition Revolution as a Non Event. In M.-R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past (pp. 70-107). Boston: Beacon.

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[1] Nabudere, D. W. (2001). The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization. African Journal of Political Science

[2]  Education, Democracy, and Political Development in Africa, Clive Harber, Sussex Academic Press, 1997, page 9