African cultural studies, cultural studies in Africa: How to make a useful difference

Abstract

WHILE THE ANTHROPOLOGIST thinks of habits, customs and material technologies of a given community when notion of culture is evoked, ordinary person has in mind education and taste. S/he would consider as cultured someone who appreciates `finer things of life' such as literature, poetry and art. In cultural studies on other hand, culture is said to refer to concrete sets of signifying practices--modes of generating meaning--that create communication orders of one kind or another. According to scholars in cultural studies, since `cultural production' plays an active, constitutive role in creation of forms of social organisation, it is only appropriate that forms of media of communication such as newspapers, novels, scientific treatise, political pamphlets, music, painting, TV, radio, videos, tapes and computer communication systems be analyzed (Polity Press, 1994:1-2). Cultural studies, like most other disciplines or fields of study in academia, has its intellectual roots in West. Its spread to and adoption in other regions of academic world, have usually taken form of canned tuna fish or sardines, meant to be consumed passively with little transformation or reflection. While cultural studies has made significant efforts to bring academic attention to bear on marginalised and often ignored texts, it has done little to free itself of grip of theories and theorists inspired by Western texts and modes of representation, almost wholly to exclusion of others, giving often mistaken impression that Western text and Western ways of making meaning, are universal, and therefore, to be copied by academics world over. Implicit in this argument is assumption of a universal culture--Western in origin and dominance, one and only factory of meaning. The consequence has been suppression or under-representation of texts conceived and produced within other cultural frames. The realities of those sharing other cultures have been victims of intellectual dependency and brainwashing as Western academic cultural frame seeks universal glorification. Scholars of and in Africa have, in main, championed Western intellectual hegemony, instead of restructuring, modifying, enriching and remodelling existing concepts and theories in order to accommodate broader experiences and contextual variations that continent offers (1). If cultural studies is to find suffrage in Africa, it must seek its basis in African realities and not on Western fantasies, prejudices, ideologies or biases on Africa. In other words, it must seek to integrate the experience of rejected forms of wisdom which are not part of structures of political power and scientific knowledge (Mudimbe, 1988:x-xi). But this is easier prescribed than achieved, given very controversy over what constitutes African culture(s) today, and given how enmeshed in Western intellectual tradition African scholars are. Firstly, we cannot begin talking of African cultural studies before we have addressed issue of what constitutes African culture(s). I fear that if this issue is not properly addressed, we risk having, as has been case in other spheres, Western theories and practices simply reproduced unthinkingly in Africa. The result of which would, of course, be cultural studies in Africa and not African cultural studies. For, how can following appreciation of English novel, appealing as it may be, pass for a universal theory of novel? Could African novel, particular circumstances of birth and growth of which are far from similar to those of Western novel, be fully appreciated using same yardsticks employed in text that follows? ... rise of novel ... in eighteenth century coincided with rise of capitalism; ... triumph of novel over all other literary genres in nineteenth century coincided with triumph of capitalism; and . …