The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena
What exactly must be done with words and ideas that promote racism and the domination of one people by another in the world?
Words and ideas are more serious that hate speech because they are powerful ideas that make sense even if it is evil sense, philosophy of evil.
Decolonial scholars and activists frequently debate the subject of how knowledge, in form of books, essays, fiction and other publications, produced by western scholars should be handled. This may be extended to refer to artefacts of western culture such as music, film and fashion. These might be objects but they embody knowledge and sensibility.
Not out of any mistake but pure ignorance and contempt most black and white Eurocentric scholars that oppose and resist decoloniality often fabricate the myth that decoloniality advocates for total rejection of western knowledge. This rejectionist myth is used to reduce decoloniality to a Boko Haram and fundamentalist philosophy. It is for that reason that decoloniality should be judged by its contents not what slogans and buzzwords are circulated by its pretenders and wannabe advocates. Even as it is a philosophy of liberation decoloniality has not been insulated from abuse by propagandists of
Empire and mandarins of Third World fundamentalism that use its name in defence of tyrannies and other oppressive system.
Perhaps Nelson Maldonado-Torres summarised the truth when he said a decolonial thinker reads everything but always does so with a critical decolonial attitude that separates clearly that which is decolonial from that which perpetuates coloniality.
Decoloniality mainly refers to the thoughts and activities that are made for purposes of unmasking and undoing coloniality as a world systemic form of political, social and spiritual domination.
If decolonial scholars and activists stopped reading and studying Euro-American books how at the end would they undo what they are ignorant of, is a question to ask. From the works of Albert Memmi, Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon and even Jean Paul Sartre decolonial thinkers and activists learn how important it is for victims of coloniality to understand the system of colonialism and its accompaniment of imperialism.
Cesaire famously asked: What fundamentally is colonialism? Signaling that decolonial thinkers should not only understand coloniality but must grasp its fundaments. Albert Memmi, for instance clarified how colonialism was a system that produced new identities, that divided people into colonisers and the colonised, and also created new sensibilities and experiences.
In the words of Chinua Achebe, colonialism “changed the world.” The change that colonialism made in the world is celebrated by its perpetrators and beneficiaries and mourned by its victims, mainly the peoples of the Global South that continue to suffer systemic and structural colonisation to this day. Decoloniality is mainly a philosophical and political awakening to the fact that the present world is a false and unequal world that was made so by the Euro-American Empire from conquest to colonial encounters and to the present era of the Decolonial Turn.
Things cannot continue the way they are, is a loose slogan that is used by decolonial thinkers in Africa and Latin America. The monstrosity of coloniality and the monsters that created it, that is the philosophers who conceptualised domination, the Empire builders who carried out conquest, and some missionaries and merchants that became accessories to coloniality and its beneficiaries.
Portrait of a Monster
Empire builders were, in the main, hoodlums and hooligans such as Cecil John Rhodes that were thirsty for wealth and power, and were intoxicated with jingoist Eurocentricism. In doing their violent work they relied on ideas of racism and white supremacy that had been produced by generation of western philosophers and scientists.
A not so ancient example of these monstrous philosophers who produced ideas that justified conquest, rationalised colonialism and defended racism would be the German nihilist philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Besides the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Nietzsche’s ideas are the favourite among white supremacists and right wingers throughout the world. Nietzsche claimed that in the world there is a “master race” that must prevail always and by all means over other races.
In 1886, Nietzsche published one of his classics, Beyond Good and Evil, a book in which he insulted the idea of ethics and morals as stupid and a waste of time because the world should be run under the constitution that: “might is right.”
In other words those who have the power have the right, which is a truly right wing idea. The whole idea of “morality” Nietzsche said is “the herd instinct” among people who like animals in the forest just follow the crowd without thinking for themselves.
More prominent than, but also related to his idea that morals are bad is the philosophy of the “Will to Power” that Nietzsche fashioned. “The world itself” he thought “is the will to power” and for that reason, the master race and superior people of the world should seek power at all costs and dominate the planet for their benefit and that of none. True to the sentiment of the Will to Power, Nietzsche thought that war should be permanent and peace temporary in the world if civilisation and modernity should be realised.
Such philosophers as Friedrich Nietzsche, who was also a philologist, cultural critic, music composer and poet, were true evil geniuses. Intellectually Nietzsche was not a push over but a true monster who produced world changing, although evil, ideas. In awareness of the power of his ideas Nietzsche boasted that “I philosophise with a hammer” that hammers the world into any shape that he wanted. “What does not kill” even if it kills something or somebody else “makes you stronger” is one Nietzschean aphorism that has found itself in world popular culture, never mind that the aphorism has deep nihilist undertones. Racists, colonisers and enslavers find much comfort and empowerment from the ideas of Nietzsche and other philosophers of domination.
The question that dogs this article is, should philosophers of liberation in the decoloniality movement therefore advocate for a total rejection of the work of philosophers of domination that enjoys hegemony in the world academy today? Nihilism, for instance, is found embedded in the global media, in the movies and the entertainment industry, and most of it is even more dangerous because it is rendered in connotations and innuendos and can therefore not be easily dictated.
Gravitas: The Lesson from the Monsters
A rigorous decolonial and critical attitude should equip decolonial scholars and activists with the intellectual resources to detect and decipher coloniality on sight. For that reason, the ideas of Eurocentric monsters should not be simplistically dismissed and boycotted but should be critically engaged and deconstructed, their crimes made bare.
I think it would be careless to live in a world where we don’t know what the colonial monsters were thinking and are thinking now. Once again, as in the famous language debate in Africa, I think Chinua Achebe said it wisely enough and it is fair enough to let him speak: “The missionary who left the comforts of Europe to wander through my primeval forest was extremely earnest.
He had to be; he came to change my world. The builders of empire who turned me into “a British protected person” knew the importance of being earnest; they had that quality of mind which imperial Rome before them understood so well: gravitas.
Now, it seems to me pretty obvious that if I desire to change the role and identity fashioned for me by those earnest agents of colonialism I will need to borrow some of their resolve.
Certainly, I could not hope to do it through “self-indulgent levity.” Besides reading the colonial monsters for spying into their evil minds and designs and for purposes of deconstructing their work, the decolonial thinker can learn a lot from the imperial nihilists.
Their gravitas, monstrous and passionate energy in the agenda of changing the world is a big lesson. Decoloniality, if it is to liberate the world and change it for the better, it has to be given some gravitas and monstrous energy of its own.
There is no doubt that the classic western thinkers that produced ideas which empowered Empire were geniuses, even if they were evil geniuses. Not only that they were gifted thinkers, they were also industrious, they worked hard on their thoughts and did a lot to give it currency and purchase in the world.
The intellectual work of the imperial monsters enjoys systemic epistemic privilege in the world, the ancient books are being reprinted and promoted through universities and the media landscape, and some books are adapted into movies and documentaries. Shakespeare for instance, is the Coca-Cola of literature; his books are found in every corner of the world and in every language.
For decoloniality to overcome coloniality it needs its own monsters and not just lazy boycotters and rejectionists. Protest can disrupt domination but what will stop it is engaged critical action in the education systems, media landscapes and public spheres of the Global South.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Cape Town, South Africa: [email protected]
