African Characters Research Articles

Beyond democratic consolidation in Kenya: ethnicity, leadership and ‘unbounded politics’

This article examines the African character of the democratic form of politics that has evolved in the East African country of Kenya. The core features of African politics that lead to this African construct of democracy are highlighted including the critical place of ethnicity and ethnic ties. Two major political earthquakes are analysed to illustrate this African form of democracy, the 2002 elections and the constitutional referendum of 2005.

The Gold Standard of Racial Identity in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing

Gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold?... Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant. --Shakespeare, Timon of Athens 4.3 He's got a five-dollar gold piece for a stickpin and he got a ten- dollar gold piece on his watch chain and his mouf is jes' crammed full of gold teethes. Sho wisht it wuz mine. --Zora Neale Hurston, Gilded Six-Bits (1014) In 1920s, many black writers established African American identity as one of most significant issues to be addressed in post-World War I period. Figures as diverse as W E. B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and Jesse Fauset sought to define a black identity that had appeared on scene. They claimed that this New belonged to a modern generation of black shaped by great events of teens and twenties, from Great Migration North, World War I, industrialism, urbanism, and nationalist liberation movements to growth of internationalism following Bolshevik Revolution. To be sure, black writers and activists were often at odds over just who New was. Garvey, for example, championed what he saw as African character of New Negro, while Randolph welcomed arrival of a left-leaning, working-class New Negro. More often than not, however, definitions of New asserted that black belonged to a unique race of human beings whose ancestry imparted a distinctive and invaluable racial identity and culture. The New Negro, it was claimed, had thrown off yoke of racial prejudice that equated blackness with barbarism and was proud of his or her race and heritage. Many writers also believed that New Negro's racial revaluation would help to produce a friendly revaluation of black by white America. Writers heralded arrival of New as beginning of a phase of American history in which production of black culture would assist African in winning respect long overdue in US and abroad. At heart of New discourses of 1920s lies a crucial contradiction, one with important implications for discussions of black identity today. Writers claimed that New was shaped by modernity yet retained in some way a racial essence or character that preceded modernity. The New was as old as Africa but as contemporary as a jazz club in urban Harlem; his racial was as ancient as Hughes's dusky rivers (Voices 155) yet as modern as Garvey's Black Star Line ships ready to take black diasporic masses back home to Africa. The New had the instinctive gift of folk spirit (Locke, Youth 51), which did not preclude his evolution into a type of ... a city Negro (Johnson 285). In a word, new black identity also retained a good amount of an old, premodern racial self. Granted, not all Renaissance writers asserted that New was both premodern and modern. Exceptions stand out, such black socialists who, for a time, rejected racial categories out of hand, and George Schuyler, who called New Renaissance Negro-Art Hokum for claiming that black are a distinct race somehow unaffected by the same economic and social forces that mold actions and thoughts of white Americans (1173). (1) But taken as a whole, New discourses are caught between two poles: a notion of a premodern racial identity whose origins lie in ancient Africa and a concept of a modern self not exclusive to black Americans. A number of current literary studies of New have all but laid to rest racial essentialism predicated on concepts of a universal black soul or blood transmuted generationally. These critiques show how such essentialism reproduces fallacious premises integral to scientific racism dating back to period of slavery as well as to antiracist writers who problematically borrowed from these pseudoscientific discourses to argue against racism. …

Conflict and the Interpretation of Palmares, a Brazilian Runaway Polity

In recent years, historical archaeologists have become increasingly interested in exploring how to use material culture to study conflict and how the interpretation of their sites is affected by modern perception. Grounded in a dialectical epistemology, the experience of past peoples is considered part of an ongoing social confrontation between social actors. Archaeologists tend to consider cultures as neatly bounded homogeneous entities. The holistic, monolithic nature of cultures has been put into question by several empirical and theoretical studies. In northeastern Brazil, a large maroon kingdom called Palmares developed in the 17th century, and people have often interpreted it in two ways. Some prefer to stress the African character of the polity, while others emphasize the diversity within the community. Archaeological research at Palmares produced evidence of a heterogeneous society, an interpretive model that does not follow dominant epistemological schemes and prejudices.

Fantasies of Death and Violence in the Early Juvenilia of Charlotte Brontë (1829–32)

This article argues that the origins of two themes in Charlotte Brontë's novels, rage and its suppression and race as a way to define rebellion, can be found in her earliest juvenilia. From the ages of thirteen to sixteen, Charlotte Brontë used the juvenilia to explore her traumatic reaction to the deaths of her mother and two sisters. She also used the fantasy writing to repress her rage at so much death. This is important since the symbolic language she used as a thirteen-year-old would reappear, in a much more sophisticated form, in Jane Eyre and Villette. Finally, Charlotte's use of characters with 'black blood' to represent rage originates in the Africans of her juvenilia. This article traces her depictions of Africans and Africa to the original geography books she studied as a child, and makes the link between her African characters and Bertha Rochester.

Pauline Hopkins's "Of One Blood", Africa, and the "Darwinist Trap"

An adventurous novel intermingling [literary] traditions such as historical romance, realism, allegory, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery (Horvitz 246), and also first African American novel featuring an African setting and African characters (Gruesser 77), Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood attempts to counter turn-of-the century racism by looking toward Africa and its with pride. Directed at an African American reading audience--the novel was serialized in Colored American Magazine from November 1902 to November 1903--and pointing to splendors of ancient African civilizations, novel is designed to provide African-Americans with a usable, livable past (Gruesser 75), a meant to support development of a healthy self-image, support struggle for equal rights, and lead to recognition in an environment hostile to or oblivious of and uninterested in accomplishments of Africans and their descendants. By delineating an impressive ancient Meroe, historical center of an ancient Kushite (or Nubian) Of One Blood reverses mainstream racist visions of Africa as representing, to quote Hegel and also to cite nineteenth-century European historians' widespread assessment, the unhistorical and underdeveloped spirit, still involved in conditions of mere nature (qtd. in Magubane 24). But in doing so, Of One Blood runs into a number of problems, most ideologically dangerous of which is what could be named Darwinist trap: Making worth of a people dependent on technological and cultural accomplishments means following same quasi-Darwinian logic that served nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialists to justify their ventures. Darwinist trap, or temptation to make material, technological accomplishments standard by which any people should be measured, allows technology and pseudo-scientific racism to come together as a world view: In middle of nineteenth century, steamers started carrying European cannons deep into interior of Asia and Africa. With that a new epoch in history of imperialism was introduced. This became a new epoch in history of racism. Too many Europeans interpreted military superiority as intellectual and even biological superiority. (Lindqvist 47) Wealth and technological progress served both as means and rationalization of imperialism Europeans and their descendants aggressively pursued in Africa and Asia, as well as within their own territories. In Descent of Man, Charles Darwin reasons that without accumulation of capital arts [meaning chiefly mechanical arts--i.e., technology] could not progress; and it is chiefly through their power that civilised have extended, and are now everywhere extending their range, so as to take place of lower races (135). But as this quote exemplifies, technology, or which in nineteenth-century usage virtually always means Western civilization, did, in Darwin's view, not merely entitle imperialists to territories, but even justified, implicitly, extermination of those unable militarily to resist it. As Darwin claims, The grade of their civilisation seems to be a most important element in success of competing .... It is a ... curious fact ... that savages did not formerly waste away before classical nations, as they do now before modern civilised nations (183). In Exterminate All Brutes, an impressive essay on pervasiveness of such justifications for genocide, Sven Lindqvist traces such sentiments, or at least their expression in natural sciences, back to Robert Knox, who, in his 1850 work Races of Man, announced that he felt disposed to think that there must be a physical and[,] consequently, a psychological inferiority in darker generally (qtd. in Lindqvist 125). Knox did not remain a lone voice for long. …

Black Icons of Colonialism: African Characters in French Children's Comic Strip Literature

Created as an educational supplement, as the French monarchy declined, French children's literature quickly put itself at the service of the nation's dominant colonial policy. If the fabrication of...

Black Icons of Colonialism: African Characters in French Children's Comic Strip Literature

Black Icons of Colonialism: African Characters in French Children's Comic Strip Literature

Democratic transition in African politics: The case of Kenya

The splintered, struggling Africa of today cannot afford the luxury of multiple parties, independent presses and honest debate. In countries where national goals are not clearly defined, such freedoms enable the various factions to fight for self‐interest at the expense of majority concerns. National institutions are not strong enough to withstand these pressures, and governments are not cohesive enough to endure forces motivated by anything less than nationalistic concerns. At this stage most African countries are best served by benign dictators. Democracy can come later, if it is to come at all. But for now democracy is no more a panacea for African ills than is communism. What Africa needs to develop is an African political system, imported from neither East nor West, that combines elements of capitalism and socialism, both of which are inherent in the African character. It should include two concepts that Africans today mistakenly view as contradictory—economic incentive and social justice (Lamb 1987,...

AFRICAN IDENTITY European Invention or Genuine African Character?

AFRICAN IDENTITY European Invention or Genuine African Character?

Africanisms in American Culture.

Introduction, Joseph E. Holloway1. The Origins of African-American Culture, Joseph E. Holloway 2. What Africa Has Given America: African Continuities in the North American Diaspora, Joseph E. Holloway 3. African Elements in African-American Culture, Molefi Kete Asante 4. Africanisms in African American Names in the United States, Joseph E. Holloway 5. The Case of Voodoo in New Orleans, Jessie Gaston Mulira 6. Gullah Attitudes toward Life and Death, Margaret Washington Creel 7. The Sacred World of the Gullahs, Joseph E. Holloway 8. African Religious Retentions in Florida, Robert L. Hall 9 Sacrificial Practices in Santeria, an African-Cuban Religion in the United States, George Brandon 10. Kongo influences on African American Artistic Culture, Robert Farris Thompson 11. Africanisms in African-American Music, Portia K. Maultsby 12. Africanisms and the Study of Folklore, Beverly J. Robinson 13. The African Heritage of White America, John Edward Philips 14. The African Character of African American Language: Insights from the Creole Connection, Selase W. Williams

Cerámicas comunes altomedievales: contribución al estudio del tránsito de la antigüedad al mundo paleoislámico en las comarcas meridionales del País Valenciano

En el presente artículo estudiamos un conjunto de cerámicas comunes propias de los primeros siglos de ocupación islámica (siglos VII-X). Nos interesa especialmente el problema de su origen y su relación con el mundo tardorromano, por lo que estudiamos paralelamente la cerámica común modelada a mano de época tardorromana, propia de los contextos en los que ya no aparecen cerámicas finas africanas (siglos VI-VII). Presentamos una clasificación tipológica previa de ambas producciones y proponemos la definición de un nuevo horizonte cultural de época emiral, relativamente homogéneo para el sureste peninsular, cuyos precedentes parecen encontrarse en la fuerte pervivencia de las tradiciones tardorromanas de carácter norteafricano.

Rhythm and Narrative Method in Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"

Before publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in 1958 public awareness in West of fiction from Africa was confined chiefly to white writers such Doris Lessing, Alan Paton, or Nadine Gordimer. Thus Achebe's first novel, written in English, though he is himself a Nigerian of Igbo people, was a notable event. More noteworthy was fact that it was a very good novel and has become over years probably most widely read and talked about African novel, overshadowing efforts of other West African novelists well those of East and South Africa. Its reputation began high and has remained so, stimulating critical analysis in hundreds of articles, many books, and dissertations. Its story describes, whatever one may expect from its Yeatsian title, life of a traditional Igbo rural village and rise of one of its gifted leaders, Okonkwo, before colonization, and then observes consequences for village and hero they confront beginnings of colonial process. Achebe's subsequent three novels, more or less related but not sequential, No Longer At Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), and Man of People (1966), though all respected, have not matched its success. Achebe's fiction established firmly that there is an African prose literature-poetry had probably been well known since Senghor in 1940s-even when written in English. Not that there has not been debate over and criticism of Things Fall Apart, and from Achebe's standpoint a good deal of misunderstanding through refusal of readers to take its African character seriously; but a recent study confirms he continues to be the most widely read of contemporary African writers. 1 His first novel has been as big a factor in formation of a young West African's picture of his past, and of his relation to it, any of still rather distorted teachings of pulpit and primary school, 2 and of course he has influenced his fellow writers just significantly in finding their own subject matter and voice. When beginning Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, readers are often struck by simple mode of narration and equally simple prose style, which critics have seen Achebe's desire to achieve an . . . colored to reflect African verbal style [with] stresses and emphases that would be eccentric and unexpected in British or American speech. He reshapes English in order

Genetic polymorphisms among Bukharan and Georgian Jews in Israel.

Bukharan and Georgian Jews have lived in central Asia for many centuries. Approximately 30,000 Bukharan and 37,000 Georgian Jews lived in their respective countries within the USSR between 1920 and 1960. Genetic markers of blood--blood groups, isoenzymes, HLA antigens, and gamma and kappa chain allotypes--were tested in blood samples from 113 Bukharan and 134 Georgian Jews living in Israel. Estimates of inbreeding were low: alpha = 0.0088 for Bukharan and alpha = 0.0011 for Georgian Jews. G6PD deficiency was relatively rare in Bukharan (2.2%) and in Georgian Jews (6.0%), when compared to other Jews in the area. Both populations showed frequencies of some markers similar to that of other Jewish populations, but frequencies of several markers were extremely high or low. Bukharan Jews showed very high frequencies of B(0.243), cDe (0.122), JkA (0.705), HLA-A29 (0.167), A30 (0.116) and B7 (0.124), and AcPA (0.451) and very low ones of O(0.518), CDe(0.422), AcPB (0.513) and GLO1 (0.140). Very high frequencies in Georgian Jews were observed for cDE (0.189), HLA-A3 (0.194), Bw35 (0.300) and GLO1 (0.367). Yet the greatest difference between both populations was in African characters. While in Bukharan Jews Fy was very frequent (0.146) and cDe was the highest observed among Jews (0.122), neither of these markers was detected among the Georgian Jews tested. Yet, another African character, the Gm1,5,10,11,13,14,17,26 haplotype, occurred in both populations (0.028 and 0.042 in Bukharan and Georgian Jews, respectively). Distance measures for Bukharan, Georgian, Iranian, Cochin, and Libyan Jews based on 13 polymorphic loci showed the greatest distance between Cochin Jews and the other populations and the smallest distance between the Georgian and Iranian Jews.

Eastern Mediterranean: Geophysical results and implications

The latest geophysical results in the Eastern Mediterranean are briefly reviewed and discussed. Apart from the Levantine Sea (results not yet available), the gravity anomalies south of the Alpine folded area are wide and smooth (African character), and the magnetic field indicates the absence of lineations and of any other relevant magnetic anomaly. The deep reflection seismics indicate compressional characters and overthrust mainly for the areas connected with the frontal parts of the Alpine orogenic arcs; the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean is the platform-type continuation of the African sedimentary series, intensely faulted, at least from the Upper Cretaceous, with also very thick sedimentary layers in which the evaporites of the Upper Miocene are almost everywhere present, sometimes with great thickness. The depth thickness of these sedimentary layers generally increases northwards. The existence of a thick sedimentary series is confirmed by the very low heat-flow values everywhere observed, and by the (scarce) deep refraction seismic results, which also indicate the possible existence of a granitic layer and a (minimum) thickness of 26–27 km for the crust. All the northern boundary area of the Eastern Mediterranean was submitted to intense deformation (folding, faulting and overthrusting) during the Tertiary Alpine orogenesis, with subsequent spreading and sinking. The rest of the Eastern Mediterranean is tectonically characterized by sinking and faulting, mainly through vertical sub-parallel and submeridian deep lineaments in the post-orogenic phase and often very recent; this area represents the submerged marginal zone of the African craton, whose northern part was submitted recently to compressional actions and consequent overthrusts towards the south.

‘I, Too, Am An African’

Historically, from the fact of its colonization by white men from the sea, Southern Africa has been linked in men's minds rather with Europe than with the rest of the African continent, and the truly African character of its inhabitants, even of the Whites, has been too easily forgotten, in spite of the use of the name Afrikaner (meaning merely African). In recent years, however, largely owing to the war and consequent movements of troops and population, the average white inhabitant of Southern Africa has become much more conscious of his relationships with the rest of the continent and with its aboriginal inhabitants, and aware of his responsibilities and the opportunity there is for him to play a decisive part in the future of Africa south of the Sahara, now in a state of rapid social, economic, religious and political development. This new awareness, long latent in the land-consciousness of the Afrikaans-speaking population, and now making itself felt among all sections of the people, is given utterance in the words of Field-Marshal Smuts used as a title to this article, and may be traced in many recent items of news from South Africa.It is necessary, in order to avoid misconceptions, to preface a few statements of fact about the area of which we are speaking. Southern Africa differs from the rest of Black Africa in being the only part in which a people of European origin have made a home, though it can be doubted whether this colonization will be permanently successful much further north than Pretoria or Durban or in the arid western parts of the region.

Societies and Academies

LONDON.Zoological Society, November 3.—Prof. W. H. Flower, F.R.S., President, in the chair.—The Secretary read a report on the additions that had been made to the Society's Menagerie during the months of June, July, August, and September, 1891, and called attention to certain interesting accessions which had been received during that period.—The following objects were exhibited:—(l) On behalf of Mr. F. E. Blaauw, a stuffed specimen of a young Wondrous Grass-Finch (Poephila mirabilis), bred in captivity at his house in Holland; (2) on behalf of Prof. E. C. Stirling, a water-colour drawing of the new Australian Mammal Notaryctes typhlops; (3) by Mr. G. A. Boulenger, an Iguana with the tail reproduced; (4) by Mr. R. Gordon Wickham, a very fine pair of horns of the Gemsbok (Oryx gazella) from Port Elizabeth, South Africa; and (5) by Dr. Edward Hamilton, a photograph of an example of the Siberian Crane (Grus leucogeranus), shot on the i-land of Barra, Oater Hebrides, in August last.—Mr. R. Lydekker gave a description of some Pleistocene Bird-remains from the Sardinian and Corsican Islands. These belonged mostly to recent forms, but to genera and species which in several instances had not been found fossil. They showed rather more of an African character than the present avifauna of these islands.—Mr. R. Lydekker also read some notes on the remains of a large Stork from the Allier Miocene. These remains were referred to the genus, closely allied to Ciconia, lately named Pelargopsis, but which (that term being preoccupied) it was now proposed to rename Pelargoides.—Mr. R. Lydekker also exhibited and made remarks on the leg-bones of an extinct Dinornithine Bird from New Zealand, upon which he proposed to base a new species allied to Pachyornis elephantopus (Owen), and to call it, after the owner of the specimens, Pachyornis rothschildi.—Dr. A. Gunther, F.R.S., read a description of a remarkable new Fish from Mauritius belonging to the genus Scorpæna, which he proposed to call Scorpæna frondosa.—A communication was read from Mr. Roland Trimen, containing an account of the occurrence of a specimen of the scarce Fish Lophotes cepedianus, Giorna, at the Cape of Good Hope.—A communication was read from the Hon. L. W. Rothschild, giving a description of a little-known species of Papilio from the Island of Lifu, Loyalty Group.—Mr. R. J. Lechmere Guppy read some remarks on a fine specimen of Pleurotomaria from the island of Tobago.—A communication was read from Mr. L. Péringuey, giving an account of a series of Beetles collected in Tropical Southwestern Africa by Mr. A. W. Eriksson.