African Culture and Lang Lecture 1

What does popular music do?

• Documents a people’s history

How can we define and approach culture in Africa?

• Culture as a whole way of life (Raymond Williams)=lived culture, recorded culture, culture of selective tradition

• Stuart Hall (identity)=Enlightenment subject (centinner core), Sociological subject (inner core is affected by interactions with others), Postmodern subject (decentered, anti-essentialism, fragmented and shifting)

What are all of culture’s components according to Raymond Williams?

• Institutions (record companies and advertising)

• Formations (hip hop and rap)

• Modes of production (studio recording, capitalism)

• Identifications (social groups)

• Reproduction (historical values)

• Organization (selective tradition)

What was V.Y. Mudimbe’s argument about what “Africa” is in his 1988 book “The Invention of Africa”?

• Discursive invention

• Instead of being based on an “objective African reality”, the knowledge we have about Africa is based on social constructs

What was Chielozona Eze’s argument about what constitutes African identity in 2014?

• Oppositional in the past: meaning through contrast against European people, defined by geography and blood, fixed

• Relational now: post-Cold War globalization, defined by contact with others from different backgrounds, fluid, fragmented and shifting

What was Chinua Achebe’s argument about Africa identity?

• African identity is still in the making

What was Achille Mbembe’s argument about African identity?

• African identity is a social construct

• Postmodern subject: fluid, fragmented and shifting, sometimes contradictory

What is language used for in communication?

• Cultural exchanges

• Identity

• Worldviews

How is language used for cultural exchanges?

• Indigenous knowledge systems transmit knowledge of the skills and tools to deal with a certain environment

• Words for customs and traditions regulate ethnic interactions

How is language used to express one’s identity?

• gender identity: Kisukuma language in Tanzania uses different speech forms to indicate gender roles (Woman: Naa-ka-subala form, Man: Naa-ka-tundaga form)

• urban youth languages

• in-law avoidance languages

• Religious languages

• Regional variations: Zanzibar (mchanga=sand), Mombasa (mtanga=sand)

How is language used to express one’s world view?

• Kinship terms: Zulu in South Africa: ubaba=father, patrilineal

• Fulfulde language of the Fulbe people in West Africa: cattle herding as an ideal way of living is reflected by cattle terms, colour terms based on the colours of cow skin and lots of proverbs with cow metaphors

When did Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea-Bissau gain independence?

• Kenya: 1963

• DRC: 1960

• Guinea-Bissau: 1973

What is the difference between a nation and a nation state according to Maurits Berger?

• Nation: people who don’t know each other but have a shared culture and language, identification with the nation’s symbols

• Nation-state: a nation that has its own territory and political organization

What was Angolan historian and poet Ana Paual Tavares’ argument about how nations are constructed?

• Constructing a nation isn’t just about becoming independent and having a constitution, it is a slow and complex process of making the citizens of the nation identify with the idea, social construct of the nation

What was Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation?

• Artificial, social construct and discourse

• Constantly contested and negotiated idea

• Imagined (imagery, symbols, myths, rituals)

• Political community (horizontal comradeship based on common interests, desires)

• Limited (finite boundaries, borders)

• Sovereign (state as an entity of its own, rather than being tied to dynastic or religious authority)

What is national identity according to Benedict Anderson?

• The way we culturally, socially and psychologically relate to the nation-state

What does Benedict Anderson mean by the “horizontal comradeship” which helps construct a nation?

• Relating to other citizens rather than just the ruler

• a conception of the “meanwhile”: notion of simultaneous action with others creates the sense of a national community (ex: listening to the same anthem)

Why did the idea of the modern nation emerge according to Benedict Anderson?

• Rejection of latin’s prestige and rise of vernacular languages in print (spoken by ordinary people in everyday life)

• Rejection of hierarchical and centralized societies and rise of the authority of the nation as a bureaucratic system

• Rejection of simultaneity based on God’s plan and rise of the idea of simultaneity based on “empty time” based on clocks and calendars

What is nationalism as an ideology?

• Emerged in Europe during the 19th century and became a global trend

• Idea of having a single shared language and culture

• Shared sense of unity and belonging to a country

• (Similarity to religious and hereditary rule) Binding people together via national rituals, symbols and loyalty to the nation rather than a religious leader or a royal dynasty

• (Reaction against religious and hereditary rule) Independence movements associated identified with and were loyal to lived experinces within territorial boundaries rather than hereditary rule

How did the rulers of European Empires use official nationalisms to create a sense of unity and maintain their authorities?

• Official languages

• Standardized education

• Flags and museums

Why does Patrick Chabal critique the application of Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” in post-colonial Africa?

• Nation-states aren’t monolithic: African nation-states experienced the constructions of their nations in a different way compared to Europeans

• Teleology: National unity within a one-party state model doesn’t automatically lead to Western modernity and economic development

• Modernity must be imagined differently in Africa considering Africa’s anti-colonial struggle to construct nation-states

Who was Amilcar Cabral and what was his argument about culture and colonialism?

• Founder of PAIGC independence movement for Guinea Bissau and Cabo Verde against Portuguese colonization

• Maintaining authority isn’t just about economic exploitation or military coercion, it is also about the “organized repression of cultural life”

What is Pan-Africanism?

• Africa and its diaspora promote African cultures

• Struggle against oppression, racism and colonialism

• Independence leaders: Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Haile Selassie (Ethiopia)

How was culture used in Africa to support its independence struggle?

• Music, literature and film

• Critique colonial powers

• Explore postcolonial African identities

What happened in the 2024-25 Kenyan Finance Bill Protests?

• Mass protests against proposed tax increases

• Youth organized on social media

• Protesters stormed Parliament buildings

How did the Angukao Nayo song support the Kenyan protests against proposed tax increases and function as a form of resistance?

• Wadagliz’ viral hit became an anthem

• Youth attributed a political meaning to party song “Drop with it”, Bricolage: Reordering and recontextualization to create fresh meanings

• President Ruto told to “Drop with it” and resign