Film Review: "Origin" by Ava Duvernay
I watched Ava Duvernay's "Origin" on a plane. My thoughts would no doubt be better having read the source material book for the movie, but here is my take.
An Online Zine of Africa and the Indian Ocean World
I watched Ava Duvernay's "Origin" on a plane. My thoughts would no doubt be better having read the source material book for the movie, but here is my take.
There are a number of people in the US who, discontented with their childhood religious indoctrination as well as the seeming soulless and anti-human character of our technocratic society, imagine if we only could remove Christianity conditioning of our consciousness, we could get back to some primordial pro-human reality in which indigenous spiritual tradition would provide a basis for new human flourishing, removing things like shame, guilt, and other “foreign” ideas.
Notably, a methodology for this recovery is rarely proposed or specified, so it typically takes a very idiosyncratic form and is often draped in a naive nostalgia, uninformed by history.
A scientific way to study the viability of such assertions would be to look at a contemporary society where rejection of Christianity and Islam in favor of some other religion are actually in ascendancy today and study the practical significance of such views.
India is an ideal case study: the current government’s legitimacy rests on an assertive Hinduism, which is contrasted with foreign ideologies of Christianity and Islam. Elements within government and civil society assert that these foreign ideologies have had Indians in a mental chokehold for millennia and that only a return to a primordial idea of religious coexistence under Hinduism can revitalise society. Essentially the government is advocating a return to what Christians and Muslims would understand as neo-paganism, only this time with modern characteristics.
I really wish more critics of Christianity in the west, especially those in the wellness industry, would pay much closer attention to the practical consequences of the realization of the idea they cherish in Indian society. If they did, I think they would see there that an assertive and victorious non-monotheism has produced as dangerous a fundamentalist reaction as any monotheistic faith, complete with lynching, widespread religious persecution of minorities, and a thorough-going purity culture as virulent as anything produced in Christianity and Islam. One cannot really avoid the conclusion that the assertion and attempted implementation of Hinduism as the indigenous tradition of India has resulted in many of the worst dynamics present in Christian fundamentalism, and even the resurgence of several anti-human dynamics that Christianity as a belief system had attempted to eliminate or reform.
Unfortunately global dynamics militate against westerners developing a more critical understanding. The dynamic of muscular Hinduism in Indian society is obscured by the rebranding of Hinduism in the US as a tolerant New Age belief system, flattering the sensibilities of the many post-Christians and other lost souls who migrate to the wellness industry in search of meaning. Our New Age wellness advisors have fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. But they are not the only ones misled. Put in terms familiar to decolonial scholars, modern Hinduism exemplifies the "coloniality of power", but absent any of the ideological geneaologies decolonial scholars impute to coloniality's origins. A similar geneaology of power's coloniality could be revealed in many to most non-western religions, suggesting in turn that decolonial scholars have fundamentally misread the historical situation, and that coloniality is not a historically specific situation but a perennial human dynamic inherent to our attempts to build social groups and create collective meaning. It might also be said to be an artifact of the development of consciousness in our species, inherent in our evolutionary descent from our nearest non-human ancestors. This is something our decolonial scholars could profitably examine, if they were able to break from the romantic mental shackles imposed by the idea of 1492 and Descartes "cogito ergo sum" as epistemological ruptures producing the ideology of coloniality.
My personal belief is that most such projects of ideological “return”, not only Hinduism, are doomed to produce these types of dystopian outcomes. I believe the way is not to return to a past that only exists as an imaginary construct, but to look boldly forward and define the customs and values worth preserving from our various traditions and try to live by them. Tolerance will play a huge role here. However I will die on the hill that there is nothing inherently tolerant or utopian about pre-monotheistic traditions; their appeal to ex-Christians in the west says more about the psycho-dynamics of romanticism in our secular US society than it does about the practical consequences of reanimating the ethics of those belief systems. I think the decolonial turn is the academic version of these psycho-dynamics. We need a much more sophisticated approach.
Read more...The book's ambition is to weave together a comparative narrative of accelerating relations with a particular emphasis on military and weapon sales between the two nations, alongside chapters exploring Hindutva and Zionism as ideologies of exclusionary ethnic nationalism. The stakes of the ambition to compare state relations and ideology shines through very clearly in a chapter on Kashmir, which compares its struggle not only to Palestine, but also to the Chinese state crackdown in Xinjiang on the Uighur population, as well as Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. The war on terror had the negative effect of causing the misrepresentation of nationalist demands made by Muslims as a form of Islamic extremism.
At a moment when Biden is under heavy pressure from younger Democratic leaning voters to change U.S. policy towards Israel, particularly the disproportionate amount of military aid given towards its war in Gaza, Essa shows the historical background of Israeli and Indian militarization. These questions are particularly acute in both democracies, reflecting the fragility of the democratic idea of consensus in an international order still ruled by the de facto law of power and force.
Both India and the US will hold elections this year, and if Israel held elections, it is likely Netanyahu's government would fall, a not inconsiderable factor in the conduct of the war. The possibility of a second Trump term looms, as both India and Israel have been increasingly emboldened to conduct war near and far--Israel through an illegal bombing campaign, and India through targeted assassination of an Indian citizen in Canada. India has become the most populous nation in the world (In this way, Israel is very dissimilar to India), recently sent an expedition to the moon, and recently recorded fantastic levels of economic growth. It has nuclear weapons (as does Israel). Its government increasingly understands itself as a global superpower.
Another fascinating dimensions of the book is the way it portrays the 'roads not taken' in international statehood. On the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, India opposed the partition of the region between Arab and Jewish national interests and advocated a federal solution. Assuming for a moment that this road had been taken in the 1940s, would the resulting state still be anxiously dominated by a right wing Jewish voting bloc? Could there have been an alliance between progressive parties in both camps that could have aided the integration of newcomers without leading to violent displacement?
I will leave it to those more familiar with Indian politics than I to comment on the practical questions raised by the book on that topic. For me, the book raised the crucial issue of what a federal solution means currently to the issue in Palestine and Israel. This is an urgent issue for global stability, security, and peace, as well as being relevant first to the Palestinians (who have never had a state inclusive of them in their modern history) as well as to the existential identity of the Israeli state.
Why should you as an English language reader from the United States (as a large portion of my friend circle is) choose to read a long(-ish) non-fiction book about two small islands off the coast of East Africa?
"Zanzibar Was a Country explores the transregional impact of the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 through the historical memory of its exiles. Thousands of former citizens of Zanzibar and their offspring live in Oman and are a significant contemporary example of an Arab community that maintains a living connection to Africa in diaspora. These “Zanzibaris” (as they are often known in Oman) speak Swahili, sustain community originally formed in Africa, and continue to remember Zanzibar’s history as an independent country. Drawing on their life histories, their historiography of Zanzibar, and the archival traces of their migrations, Nathaniel Mathews demonstrates how these exiles were important to nation‑building and economic development in Oman."
Andre 3000 had it right, "The game changes everyday so obsolete is the fist and marches. Speeches only reaches those who already know about it..."
The scholar Anibal Quijano defined "coloniality of power" as a new way of organizing reality produced by European colonial expansion from the late 1400s.
I understand the impulse behind it, it is a potent metaphor, and it does offer a few useful insights, but I differ from the decolonial theorists in that I do not consider 'coloniality of power' to have much coherence as a concept, much less to be the sin qua non of 'modernity'. The way it is phrased and used, it is as if violent coercion was invented in 1492, as if before that time, humans were acting and being in ways that eschewed civilizing projects, violent conquest, and permanent antagonism. You have to ignore large swaths of earlier history in order to sustain this idealistic view. Moreover it would seem to also commit one to the view that this mode of power has not fundamentally changed since that time, and that we are still living in it. I find that view a-historical.
In the end, I find the idea of coloniality of power extremely Eurocentric, as if somehow Europe invented a new way to be powerful in the colonial Americas that was distinct from the absolute mess humans had been making of that endeavor since the dawn of complex societies.
Read more...The concept of anti-racism has a much more limited utility than might be suggested by the place it holds today in US liberal discourse. These days it has become something of a moral status game for elites and a lucrative capital accumulation lane for some. I have become increasingly convinced of the inefficacy of many-to-most current approaches.
One of the major contradictions of anti-racism pedagogy is that on the one hand it is posited that x individual is racist by virtue of their membership in a “dominant” group that “actively benefits” from racism, and on the other hand, the trainings often make asks of that same person to bear the burden of “actively dismantling” the system. If we step back we can see that not only is the term “dismantle” being used in a vague metaphorical manner, but there is a huge contradiction therein: people who actually are oppressors do not dismantle things they actively benefit from. Asking an individual to dismantle that which the group benefits from is thus an impossible (not to mention impossibly vague) “ask”, unless specific policies and laws are actually at stake. Not only that but no “dominated” group ever got free trying to convince the “sympathetic” oppressors to voluntarily dismantle oppression by changing themselves or altering the language they use. The civil rights movement was primarily about enforcing laws in a rights-based society, not moral suasion. Frederick Douglass had it right: Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Anti-racism is effective in a limited set of circumstances: when it can hold a mirror to an individual to show how the “active benefit” they imagine they receive from racism is really an illusion, how it has damaged them spiritually, and how it is in their own self interest to change. Beyond that it is not really worth it (for trainers or participants) to engage in long secular struggle sessions with people to get them to admit their “hidden” racism, or to “perfect” the language they use to discuss these things. Most of that energy ought to be placed into 1) enforcing and protecting the civil rights laws made since the 1950s (which have been and are being eroded by right wing power within the judicial system) and 2) building real economic and political power within groups whose primary obstacle to success remains lack of power.
Recently I had the chance to listen to a very interesting podcast in which Bamba Ndiaye interviewed Fallou Ngom about various aspects of his research. At the end of the conversation the two delved into a controversial and wide-ranging conversation that occurred in 2020 on the Research Africa about anti-black racism in the Arab world. It is evident that the conversation stuck with Ngom, and there is no doubting he is very passionate about this issue, and sensitive to attempts to sidetrack it. Since I was one of those responding to his initial foray, and subsequently wrote a whole piece on the topic, I thought I would respond to Ngom’s characterization of the issues and of the conversation and to expand on why I wrote a piece asking people not to use the terminology of “Arab-Islamic slavery”.
First of all, Ngom and I agree that anti-black racism in the Arab world is an undeniable phenomenon. I have observed it during my research, and I know it to exist. Some US Arab immigrants also perpetuate this racism in their interactions with US Blacks. But Ngom still labors under the impression that those seeking to reframe the conversation are the same as those engaging in apologetics for Arab slavery. I reject that conflation as misguided. There are serious objections to Ngom’s framing, that go well beyond a pedantic debate over terminology or ancillary issues of hurt feelings, but rather strike to the core of how to effectively address a complex issue. Though Ngom might disagree with my conclusions, I hope this will contribute to his stated goal of having the issue addressed more openly.
I will argue that Ngom’s framework, as discussed in his conversation with Ndiaye, will be ineffective in accomplishing what he hopes, because his discourse is largely preaching to a choir of Anglophone western academics interested in inciting discourse around Arab racism. It is there he is guaranteed a sympathetic reading of his project, as a result of the peculiar sensitivity of the US to issues of race, and interest in globalizing the issue. The most likely outcome of Ngom’s interventions, given his own positionality, is that more 'white liberals' and Arabs based in the US will become aware of anti-Arab racism towards Africans. Given the already regnant association between Arabs and slavery among many USians, both right and left, this is hardly a salutary development, and will not contribute meaningfully to Arab reckonings with racism.
First, it is vital to note that in Ngom's opinion, attempts to provide nuance and historical context are unwelcome distractions from the main issue of moral complicity in racism which he characterizes as endemic to the Arab world as a whole. Ngom believes that the nuances of motivation serve as a form of apologetics for racism. At one point he even accuses Arabs who reject blanket explanations for Arab racism as themselves racist: "if they are Arabs they are perpetrators because if not they would denounce it." This is a logical fallacy, and antithetical to a prophetic approach. The accusation of collective complicity itself partakes in the logic of racial thinking that Ngom wishes to fight against. The majority of Arabs throughout history have been non-slaveowners. By making the charge about ethnicity instead of slaveowning, Ngom has shifted the terrain of engagement and committed a tactical error with consequences for addressing actually existing slavery.
Ngom constructs Arabs and the Arab world as a monolith in which racism is not specific to one country, but exists among all members of the imagined community due to the legacy of slavery. For Ngom, Libya and its slave markets are archetypes of a racism that can be traced back to this same history of slavery. Few specifics are offered, nor are the issues in Libya fleshed out by Ngom. It is enough, we are told, to break a supposed “taboo” on discussing the issue. There are many people opposed to, and opposing racism in the Arab world, including many Afro-Arabs, who know that world well enough to know that one must be strategic if one is serious about the goals of addressing internalized racism among Arabic speakers. The truth is the vast majority of Arabs are poor and face similar issues to the ‘African’ world related to education, finding a job, and making a living. In fact, many of them have been similarly victimized by human trafficking in places like Libya. If one wants to prevent situations like that which happened in Libya, then one must place one’s focus on strengthening state capacity in Africa. The extremely poor conditions of the average person are what motivate risky and often illegal journeys across state borders, placing them into positions of extreme vulnerability that lead to their immoral trafficking.
Ngom’s perspective will also be ineffective in addressing the issue among any but the true believers because it is low information and engages in conflating issues that ought effectively to be treated as distinct. In the podcast conversation there is a vague mention of fiqh texts, a discussion of a rude Arab who greeted Ngom with his left hand, and a mention of slave markets in Libya, as if these are all symptoms of the same underlying psychic attitudes. But the issues in Libya are separate issues from addressing racism on an interpersonal level among Arabs. This latter project must proceed from a sense of it being in Arab self interest to address racism. What interest has the average poor Arab in an abstract moral conversation by an academic located in a prestigious western institution, that condemns them out of the gate, as an ethno-linguistic group, and assigns to them a collective attitude? Defensiveness is entirely understandable and is not necessarily a symptom of complicity. Any effective anti-racism strategy must take it into account.
Even though the main advocates of ‘Arab slavery’ as a construct are pan-Africanist in orientation, I think the idea of 'Arab slavery' or 'Arab-Islamic slavery' is a very dangerous one for those with pan-Africanist sensibilities to adopt. These rhetorical framings continue to serve as resources for fomenting moralizing rhetoric because they are highly seductive. The attempt to draw a neat line around slavery and ethnic discrimination using the metaphor of an unchanging hostility between two ‘races’ or ‘ethnicities’, African and Arab, will rebound against those using it. It will do so because it relies on metaphors of racecraft that ought to have been left in the dustbin of history. The notion of a free-floating and universal antagonism pitting Arabs against Africans will inevitably be turned against Africans once it is pointed out (and it is and will be pointed out) that for thousands of years “Black” Africans sold other “Black” Africans into slavery. The logic of collective guilt is a double-edged sword. This is also 'taboo' to discuss, depending on who you are talking to. The Wolof rulers were as complicit as any Arab, for perpetuating slave raiding in Senegal. The Asante raided communities now part of the same nation of modern Ghana. Amhara state-builders raided and enslaved Oromos, who also raided and slaved communities in Kenya. Mijikenda engaged in the slave trade even though they were also victimized by coastal traders. Does that mean we need to have a global dialogue about each ethnicity’s racism rooted in a past of some members of them engaging in slaving? Can we really distinguish slaving that proceeds from pragmatic ends from that which proceeds from hatred and racism? Or ought we to junk these projection of ethnic distinctions as an anachronistic exercise in racecraft? Victimhood confers moral privilege in American academic morality but history shows us there are no perfect victims/victors. Ethnicity as shortcut for collective moral complicity is worse than useless for problem solving the issue where it matters, in the realms of law and culture. The point is not that Arabs have a collectively racist mindset, but that anti-black racism is immoral, un-Islamic, and unethical.
I thought I'd offer a few thoughts about history and the historical profession from the vantage point of my own (limited) experience. Maybe it will be beneficial in clarifying what is at stake in the current US debates about "presentism" in history.
Coming from a grassroots activist before I entered a History Ph.D. program, I have been steeped in leftist and activist versions of history as "useable past". The relevant political question was always, "what is to be done?"© Blogger templates The Professional Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008
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