Politikon, (December 2009), 36(3), 423443

Post-Colonialism, Memory and the Remaking of African Identity

IDOWU WILLIAM

ABSTRACT Recent post-colonial discourses are replete with controversies over the nature of African identity. This paper argues that, though identity is an endangered concept, the particularity of African identity can still be salvaged. The paper further discusses some conceptual approaches to the nature of African identity and discovers that the nature of African identity can be discerned in the terse but profound statement: Inmemor(Iam) i.e., in memory, I am. The paper contends that identity transcends the realm of the thinking to the realm of recollection where what enables each person to share in a general identity with others is their collective memory. The paper concludes that the constituent of memory is a potentiality, i.e., is still evolving, not an actuality. To comprehend the idea of memory in the construction and reconstruction of African identity is to see the relations that exist between that which supposedly occurred in the past and what is happening now.

Introduction Post-colonial Africa, today, is confronted with a difcult but very important quest: what Wiredu calls post-colonial soul-searching (2004, p. 1) or what Baaz calls the preoccupation with, and predilection for, tradition and authenticity (2001, p. 5). This search is situated within the context of the difculty in conceptualizing what is actually meant when the word African is mentioned, especially in relation to cultural issues such as identity, music, religion, arts, morality, and cinematography. For example, what makes a lm or music an African lm or music? The difculty in dening what actually is meant by African lm was evident, for instance, in a course in 1998 on Black Africa Cinema at the National Film and Television Institute, Accra, Ghana, when students and lecturer were simply not able to arrive at a consensual characterization of what makes a lm an African lm. In the end, we have to agree with Anne Jrgensen (2001, p. 119) that African lm is a complex eld of study in which narrative models, popular issues and modes of production vary and change. As a matter of fact, no other subject matter in contemporary studies on Africa parallels the spate of discussions on what is African identity. It is in this sense that
ISSN 0258-9346 print; 1470-1014 online/09/030423 21 DOI: 10.1080/02589341003600221 # 2009 South African Association of Political Studies

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we must understand Kirkegaards (2002, p. 9) submission that in recent years the discourse over identity has increased . . . and the general concern for understanding and dening how borders between the us and the them are established, has been at the fore in many writings and current debates (see, for examples, Diemer, 1985; Appiah, 1992; Gilroy, 1993; Mudimbe, 1994; Stuart, 1996; Baaz, 2001; William, 2003). Signicantly, questions about identity are problematic in nature and are likely to envelope varying and diverse issues. Granted this postulate, the nature of African identity then begs for more intellectual attention and raises questions of critical interest. Such interrogations are suspected to involve a troubling panorama. Within this purview, it is then possible to ask, what is meant by the appellation African identity? Can identity be contextualized? What context explains African identity? What is really African in any identity? Is the word Africa itself subject to conceptualization? In what do we situate African identity? Is African identity always the same, changing or becoming? To whom is the conceptualization of African identity important and signicant? Is it to the African or non-African? But then, why would a conceptualization of the nature of African identity be important to the African himself or to those who are not? What is the source of the importance and the quest for African identity? These questions and many more provide the philosophical, cultural and intellectual situations around which the quest for African identity in the post-colonial era must be understood. But then, the post-colonial era is not all that there is in this quest for the nature of African identity. According to K.A. Appiah (1992, p. 71), a specically African identity began as the product of a European gaze, meaning that outside the frame of Western European colonization of Africa, it is impossible to arrive at the nature of African identity. The truth of this proposition can be accepted, I suppose, only in the presence of a qualier. This is it: the intellectual platform on which to appraise African identity in the era of colonialism is meaningless if that which precedes it, i.e., the pre-colonial, is jettisoned. Unfortunately, as we shall soon demonstrate, the pre-colonial is always portrayed in the language of mythical meaninglessness. But then, it still behoves us to contend that the intellectual extension of the background of postcolonial African identity to the era of colonialism and pre-colonialism provides the three contexts in which the nature of African identity is to be explored. This paper aims at a modest, but revised, examination of the relevance and signicance of memory theory in the contextual search and quest for the nature of African identity. It posits that if the concept of identity is itself problematic and transient, and the qualier African is changing and slippery, it engulfs the nature of African identity in an engaging process of re-invention: African identity is no more than a potentiality, not an actuality. But what exactly do we mean by memory theory in the rebranding and remaking of African identity? Memory theory is a philosophical theory grounded in metaphysics. It states that the phenomenology of the nature of identity is and can be sourced in an essence, which is memory. As a metaphysical thesis, therefore, memory theory postulates that identity is rst, an existent possibility encoded in being regardless of physical 424

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characteristics. Secondly, that identity is rooted, by virtue of its connectedness to being, in spatio-temporal territoriality. Thirdly, that it is activated in and expressed through consciousness such as what Paul Connerton (1985) calls social memory or what Frederic Bartlett (1967) calls (collective unconscious). And fourthly, identity is expressed in hermeneutical possibilities. This is what we have simply dened to mean that identity is INMEMORIAM. It is all these attributes taken together that contemplatively explain, describe and point to what we mean by the basic thesis of African identity. Invariably, one would have to contend at the outset that, reectively, memory theory as used here consists of both objective and subjective conditions. The rst two conditions or features above are, to me, objective, while the last two are actually subjective; what the constituents and contents of historical memory, consciousness and even hermeneutical, interpretive activities are basically within the domain of subjectivism. Thomas Butler (1989, p. 5), for instance, classied the contents of social memory to include cultural ideas such as oral history, folklore, myth and tradition. On his part, Peter Burke (1989) sees history as nothing other than social memory. The inevitable conclusion is that social memory and history are reected altogether in these cultural images and ideas. The argument then is that the history of each and every society seems different and subjectively true to them. It thus follow that their identity is ingrained, partly, in these subjective conditions where it is clear, additionally, that identity cannot be painted without the objective conditions earlier mentioned. Thus, memory theory as used in this paper postulates the combination of both objective and subjective conditions or features as the hallmark of identity, especially in a post-colonial construction of African identity. In most cases, scholars who are successful in establishing the connection between identity and memory have emphasized the third condition. While this is not in doubt, it is to be argued that the rst two conditions are also integral and germane to the thesis of memory theory, especially as a response to the quest to understand African identity. INMEMORIAM is, rst, simply a metaphysical thesis, and, secondly, an ideologization of the thinking self. In other words, in memory, I am, is an ideological summation of a metaphysical reality, the existing thinking self. Identity thus transcends the realm of thinking to the realm of recollection where what enables each person to share in a general identity with others is their collective memory. This is exactly what the ancients had in mind when they contended that each culture or group have a metaphysical essence, a spirit or an arche that explains their totality. Thus, memory theory overlaps with Connertons social or collective sens historical memory (2005), and Ursula van Beek memory (1985), Jorn Ru and Bernard Lategans historical consciousness (2005), but it is not exactly the same thinking that is reected in their thinking. The emphasis in their doctrine is more anthropological than metaphysical. And, except for some minute details which I have tried to argue, their work is complementary and corroborative rather than contradictory. Memory theory as defended here is conceptually ingrained in the metaphysics of groups and persons rather than physical representations, even though it often 425

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derives ample demonstration in terms of historical consciousness, social memory and recollection. While each of these attributes may nd relevance in explaining the identity of people in general, the particularity of African identity, using memory theory, is singled out by the fact that the memory that the African has of his identity is rooted not just in this being, an existent possibility, but a fact equally rooted in the unique reective and conscious possibilities that he carries and which explains his essence. It is the un-sharability of this essence that provides a means of asserting a sense of distinction. It is this thesis that I hope to explore, as a possibility, in underpinning the attempts at remaking and rebranding the nature of African identity. Identity: an endangered concept? A critical look at the word identity shows that it is an endangered concept. This can be attributed to the following reasons: one, what it tends to examine, i.e., what the indices of identity are, is encoded in a very precarious standing. Two, the multifarious use to which it is exposed contributes to the danger in which it is ensconced. In the process, abuse and misuse are likely candidates in its trail for self-denition. Three, of all issues concerning the cultural make-up of Africa, identity is about the most controversial to dene, especially in relation to things one can easily point to. To this end, a shift can be witnessed from identity in the substance and anatomy of studies and discussions on Africa, to more practical and metaphysically less abstruse concepts such as music, art, and cinematography. Yet, identity is the terra rma that denes and explains what African music is or what African art is. And what is more, identity seems to be engaged in an interconnected set of dilemmas. These dilemmas have a reinstating and reiterating frame in the fact that identity is never static, just as culture, the normative shell room for identity, is itself never static. Last, but not the least, the existence and demands of a globalizing world order makes identity a precarious and an endangered concept. In the world today, it is less fashionable to talk of identity but rather identities, since an individual is not and cannot be known only by reference to one point of entry. Multiplicity denes each person in the world today. This is why Appiah (2004) wrote that limiting the conguration of identity of an individual to one set of factors such as race, gender, religion, and culture is to create ways in and through which the identity of such individuals is eventually restricted. Curiously, therefore, individuals have a wide range of possible identities. Corroborated by Appiah (2004), Laitin (1998) contended that individuals can and do have racial or ethnic identities, national or religious identities, or even hometown identities. It shows that identity is dynamic and responsive to changing conditions. Discoveries and research in the eld of cultural anthropology have necessitated the development of other ideas on the notion of identity. One such idea is what Benedict Anderson (1983) calls imagined community, meaning the sense of belonging to a community regardless of distance and space. Andersons theory of imagined community does not seem to be theoretically far 426

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from what Stuart Hall (1990) regarded as cultural identity. In other words, cultural identity is explained as a sense of belonging to a community. But then, what makes one a member of a community? For Hall, the contestable nature of cultural identity can be seen in two perspectives: puritanism or essentialism, and contextualism or non-essentialism. The former refers to shared cultural afnity, an essence which denes belongingness or exclusion regardless of time, space, and which can be brought to life despite the supercial vicissitudes of our actual history (1990, p. 223). The latter is conceived in apposite ideas, with terms of reference dened not by an essence nor by what already or actually exists but by what history has done to us, what we have become and what the narratives of the past have done to our becomingness. The controversy between essentialism and non-essentialism introduces into cultural anthropology the relevance of philosophy. Initiating the quest Geographically, Africa is a vast continent consisting, presently, of 54 countries with an estimated 1000 2000 languages. The population is said to be over 800 million. Displaying an immense world of cultural variation, the customs and habits from Lagos to Lusaka, Dakar to Dar-es-Salaam, from Cairo to Cape Town differ signicantly. Africa is embedded in deep religious devotions, feelings and sentiments. The aesthetic fervour and rhythmic ritual performance that accompanies such feelings can be described as second to none. The above categorization presents not only an interesting spectacle but makes the talk of an African identity not only controversial but also, on the whole, interesting and worthy of academic pursuit. The search for an identity, peculiarly, has a source. The source consists of the moral quest to counter the depersonalization and dehumanization to which so many Africans were subjected to in the past and are experiencing presently. The problem of the twentieth century, as William DuBois conceives it is the problem of the colour line the relation of the darker to the lighter races of man in Asia and Africa, in America and the Islands of the Sea (Morton, 2002, p. 1). Of the problems that beset the African continent, the problem of racism has been, no doubt, the most persistent and obviously controversial. Modern expressions of racism present, to the dismay of the average African, a pestilential breath. There are, it seems, divergent discourses on the nature of African identity. The rst consists in dissecting and critically unpacking what is meant by the designation Africa. Very early in its contact with Africa, Europe and its intellectuals saw in Africa the arch-enemy of Christianity (Hrbek, 1992, p. 9). Religion thus formed the basis for the colonization of Africa and the negative images constructed then. In fact, according to Ruth Benedict, racism during the time of colonialism was dened and construed along religious lines. According to her, natives were outside the pale of humanity not because of skin difference but on account of the fact that they were not Christians (1983, p. 107). However, science and anthropology constituted the initial frame through which racism was conceived. With 427

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time, especially in the absence of veriable scientic evidences, an ideological splint was concocted to support this stereotype of African image. Echoing the pulse of this heartbeat, Edward Said (1994) contended that no European intellectual at the time of the European partition of Africa could be said to be free of what he calls intellectual imperialism. Hegel and Hume (1978) are notorious examples. Their views about Africa and Africans are still as damaging as ever. The damaging details are still with us and the average European reader still nds those details convenient sources of information. Philosophy, history and literature are among the most prominent intellectual disciplines for legitimizing this image of Africa. The tendency sometimes is to see in the word Africa something more than mere geography. But is Africa more than a mere geographical unit? Answers to this depend on the concepts that are available in conducting our interrogations. Some scholars are quick in saying that the concept Africa is an ideological construct brewed in Europe and as old as European penetration and exploitation of Africa (see Appiah, 1992; Mudimbe, 1996). Again, others conceive of Africa as one type of society and one type of people synonymous with development problems. The worst of the conceptualization of Africa is the view that it represents an indefatigable though passive object without any capacity to take her own initiatives. The feminization of Africa is also rife in some poetic and cinematographic discourses. At the very outset, however, the idea of what Africa means is generally traced to belongingness to the ve groups enunciated by Mortimer Wheeler. According to Wheeler (1973, p. 5)
there are ve main groups of Africans. First there are the so-called aboriginal bushmen of the Kalahari region, Hottentots of the south-west, and Pygmies of the Congo forests . . . Secondly, there are the so-called true Negroes of west Africa. Thirdly, there are the so-called Bantu-Negroes who occupy most of Africa south of the Equator . . . Fourthly, there are the diverse Hamitic-Negroes of north-eastern and east-central Africa . . . Fifthly, there are the non-Negroid inhabitants of North Africa, including Hamites and Arabs.

It is evident that Wheelers categorization is imbued with one element or the other of the controversy in both philosophical and cultural anthropology between puritanism or essentialism and contextualism and non-essentialism. Whether this holds true or not is part of what the present endeavour is about to navigate. Images of Africa In the literature on cultural history and anthropology, negative images abound concerning the nature of African identity. At best, much of these perceptions can be branded as political and ideological propaganda meant to denigrate and desecrate the essence of the African. In fact, the problematic of African identity stems from these varied and varying perceptions concocted in some western traditions in the bid to project the superiority of the west. 428

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The relevance and signicance of memory theory in the light of the problematic of African identity will have more meaning and carry more conviction if undertaken in the light of and against the background of circumstances and environment which stimulated or inspired the need for the reconstruction of African history. In fact, memory theory as presented here is an attempt to construct a philosophical anthropology of contemporary Africa on rmer historical foundations. Such historical foundation anchors on the uid interplay between the philosophy and anthropology of Africa. The idea of memory, awareness and the innate ability to remember presupposes a sense of history. Conjectures about memory are historical conjectures. The conation of identity in the light of memory and reective consciousness are best understood in the light of historical consciousness and awareness. If personal identity consists in reective consciousness of ones past, awareness and memory i.e., ability to remember and the idea of memory suggest a sense of history, then, it is conclusive to state that an interrogation of African identity will cluster around its history. But then what memory has the African of his/her history and his/her past? The memory of the African, in a major sense, is the memory of distinct episodes of racism and imperialism, which still hunt the African. The African predicament is based on the perception that Africans have no history and are, consequently, outside the pale of humanity. Mai Palmerg (2001b, p. 206) has argued that when history is cut, the rst victim has always been that of pre-colonial Africa. In a similar vein, Marxs materialist interpretation of history excludes, in terms of class-consciousness and conict, pre-colonial Africa. Thus, it is essentially a popular ideology and theory in the west that Africans have no past. The denial of an African past is intricately connected to the development of racism and racist thought in the west. Moreover, racist tendency also explain the many-sidedness of several interpolating images conjured in the west concerning Africa. How then do we conceive racism? Racism, interestingly, is a shifting spectacle in describing Africa. It envelops a family of forms based on scientic generalizations, ideological rationalization, anthropological observations and religious bigotry. The anatomy of racism is to be seen in the delicate but curious projection of one form of superiority or the other purportedly said to have its origin in and support from the ndings of science. In the words of Palmerg, racism is the quasi-scientic doctrine which categorizes people into inferior and superior races on the basis of inherited biological traits (2001a, p. 107). Thus, doctrines supporting racism were rst conceived to be scientic in nature. When Bracken (1973, pp. 91 96) postulated the view that there are several theses that separate human lines of creation and/or evolution with Caucasians being the best, he sought a number of scientic and anthropological theories to make racism scientically respectable. Before Bracken, Gobineau and Chamberlain had written, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, about the debate and rivalry between the French and the Germans over claims of biological superiority. The absence of scientic evidences to justify the claim lay to rest the assertion of superiority/inferiority between these two European powers. A similar debate concerning superiority by the English, 429

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who claimed that the measurement of their skulls showed superiority over the Swedish, was also regarded as unscientic. This was the rst lap of the origin of the idea of racism in the West. What is, however, surprising is how these theories and postulations were accepted as scientic and plausible grounds to justify claims of superiority of whites over blacks. Since there was no scientic support for the superiority of some biological traits, the boundary of racism shifted from science to ideology. Thus, Linnaeuss (1806) contention that the mental and moral capacity of nonwhites differ markedly from whites can only be regarded as ideological in nature rather than the product or conclusion of science. In the same vein, Commander Andrew H. Footes address of 1854 to the American Colonization Society that if all that Negroes of all generations have ever done were to be obliterated from recollection for ever the world would lose no great truth no protable art, no exemplary form of life (1854, p. 207) is at best ideological. Footes statement that the loss of all that is African would offer no memorable deduction from anything but earths black catalogue of crimes was a search for justication and queer conscience-silencing theorization that could serve as basis for explorative exploitation and colonial domination. Barely three decades after the naval ofcers assertion, Africa was partitioned by European powers. Colonialism is not and never based on any scientically true theory or postulation. Justications for colonialism were entirely ideological. This includes religious reasons that are not always conclusive in nature simply because, most of the times, they depend on models of interpretations and who is doing the interpretation. It has not been factually, scientically, physically or mentally demonstrated that one particular race is, in terms of biological characteristics and properties, superior to other races. Ideological orientations, based on such mindsets as this, are contaminated at root and genetically awed because they are based on self-deception on the part of those who subscribe to it. The origin of such ideas comes from a mindset and not from what is factually true. The origin of such construct is positional, in the words of Jonathan Friedman (1992, p. 194), because it is dependent upon where one is located in social reality, within society, and within global process. Subsequent writers in this tradition tended to portray the colonial interlude as essentially an age of liberation and enlightenment for Africans. In their view, the memory of any past to the African should, of necessity, be the history of the colonial masters in Africa. Hence, in Western construction and understanding, colonialism is like a saving grace to African history. But the end of colonialism is that of cultural, mental and psychological dislocation. Cultural dislocation as dened by Uroh refers to:
a disorientation or better still, a delinking of a people from their heritage in arts, sciences, politics, social norms, religion and so on. Such culturally dislocated person nds it difcult to have a full grasp of the social realities around him or her. To lose ones culture is therefore like losing memory. This is the situation, which most Africans nd themselves today. . . the African today is caught between a past s/he cannot recall, a present s/he is ill-equipped to understand and a future, s/he cannot contemplate. (Uroh, 1998, pp. 97 98)

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This dislocation is occasioned by Africas chequered history; a history of slavery and the devaluation of the African personality; of migration and the severance of link with cultural roots; of colonization and the displacement of the Africas traditional values; and above all, of the delegitimation of the Africas traditional institutions and the attendant cultural amnesia. In memor(iam) Milan Kunderas celebrated work The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1996) pungently drives home a point about the meaning of the above title. According to the author, the struggle of man against power is the struggle of the memory against forgetting (cited in Vera, 2001, p. 116). It is generally opined that much of a persons sense of self is related to that persons biological sex and to the sex roles assigned by society. A member of a primitive clan might express his/her identity in the formula I am we; he/she cannot conceive of himself/ herself, in the Cartesian sense of the cogito, as an individual, existing apart from his/her group. When the feudal system broke down in medieval Europe, his/her sense of identity was shaken and the acute question who am I arose. Streeter (1926, p. 36) says that what a person knows of the inner quality of life depends primarily on the following three things: rst, the depth and the range of his/her own personal experience [memory]; secondly, how far he/she has the imaginative sympathy to penetrate into the inner experience of others [solipsism]; thirdly, the extent to which he/she has reected on the material so presented [contemplation]. Thus, in Streeters metaphysical worldview, memory, introspection and contemplation are veritable qualities in understanding the meaning of the self. John Locke provided the intellectual foundation for memory theory. The memory theory of identity is to be distinguished from the bodily theory. The bodily theory simply states that an individual x is identiable with itself just in case the bodily qualities of x are the same or appears to be the same In asserting the identity of x, using the bodily theory, other physical tests can be used apart from physical appearance. Examples of such physical tests are collection and examination of blood samples, ngerprints, photographs, a given tribal mark, some natural marks on the body. However, the weaknesses of the bodily theory are obvious: Michael Jackson, who died some few months back, in terms of bodily characteristics, is not the same as he was 30 years ago. Plastic surgery, blood transfusion and strange DNA manifestations, as witnessed nowadays, constitute some of the several means by which the adequacy and plausibility of the bodily theory can be called into question. The possibility of cloning the human body through technological innovation provides a basis for rejecting the bodily theory of identity. Even though memory theory is strongly defended through the unequivocal reference to the concept of reective consciousness, it does not follow that it is still not open to some probing defects such as, for example, the possibility of lobotomy as carried out by Hitler on the Jews before and during the Second World War. Despite this possible defect in memory theory, it is still a better theory in the metaphysical list of possible clues to resolving the question of 431

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identity. It places strong and unwavering emphasis on the several ways by which memory and consciousness can be understood and why its constituents serve as a very good approach in constructing, reconstructing or deconstructing the nature of identity. Locke denes a person as a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking. According to Locke, this self-consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, constitutes the essence of personality. Consequently, for Locke, the identity of a person is to be found in the cognitive signicance of the act of consciousness. In his words,
since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity i.e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reects on it, that that action was done. (1980, p. 253)

It is clear from the above that Lockes understanding of personal identity entails reective consciousness. To be identied and identiable with oneself is to possess the ability to be conscious of ones past. This borders on awareness and memory. An individual who is not conscious of his/her past cannot be said to be the same person he/she claims to be. The unwavering detail is brought out in the following:
For, it being the same consciousness that makes a man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be continued in a succession of several substances. For as far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at rst, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come. (1980, p. 254)

In summary, Lockes treatment of the problem of personal identity leads to the obvious conclusion that memory, i.e., reective consciousness, is the sole criterion of personal identity. For him, the necessary and sufcient condition of personal identity is a persons awareness and memory. Memory, consciousness, awareness and remembering all seem to have a sense of internal unity of meaning that brings us to the very centre of Lockes thought on what denes and explains identity. The memory criterion for personal identity suffered a setback arising from Lockes treatment. Other philosophers have made the attempt to salvage the memory criterion. One is Sydney Shoemaker. According to Shoemaker, memory provides a criterion of personal identity (2008, p. 119). In defence of the memory criterion, Shoemaker provides logical implausibility of arguing that bodily characteristic provides criterion of personal identity. According to Shoemaker, 432

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One is inclined to suppose that the real criteria of personal identity must be criteria that one uses in making statements about ones own identity. And since it appears that one can make such statements, and know them to be true, without rst knowing the facts that would justify an assertion about the identity of ones body, the conclusion would seem to be that bodily identity cannot be criterion of personal identity. (2008, p. 123)

How does, in Shoemakers view, the memory establish personal identity? For Shoemaker, the memory criterion establishes personal identity because of the logical relationship or truth entailed therein. For Shoemaker, it is a logical truth . . . that if a person remembers a past event then that same person, must have been a witness to the event, i.e. must have been present when it occurred and in a position to know of its occurrence (2008, p. 125). Shoemakers argument seems to be this: Locke ran into problems by concluding that memory is the sole criterion of personal identity. Memory, according to Shoemaker, is not the sole criterion of personal identity just as bodily identity is not the sole criterion of personal identity. But that memory, though not the sole criterion, is one of the criteria, and that in an important sense. But then what is this important sense? The important sense, according to Shoemaker, is that memory claims are generally true because it is a logical fact. In his words,
It is, I should like to say, part of the concept of a person that persons are capable of making memory statements about their own pasts. Since it is a conceptual truth that memory statements are generally true, it is a conceptual truth that persons are capable of knowing their own pasts in a special way, a way that does not involve the use of criteria of personal identity, and it is a conceptual truth (or a logical fact) that the memory claims that a person makes can be used by others as grounds for statements about the past history of that person. This, I think, is the kernel of truth that is embodied in the view that personal identity can be dened in terms of memory. (2008, pp. 133 134)

I have set out the foregoing in the belief that the characteristics of the African identity in the state of analyses and the nature of African identity to be explored in the light of memory theory will be better evaluated. One prominent idea in projecting the African identity is the recourse to the idea of African personality. In the largest sense, the African personality is the cultural expression of what is common to all peoples whose home is on the continent of Africa, a personality which embraces the qualities of man both as citizen of Africa and as a member of the human race (Quaison-Sackey, 1963, pp. 36 37). But then one could ask what is it that is common to all people whose home is on the continent of Africa? Does being an African entail merely a geographical delineation such that everyone who is born there or resides there is simply African? In that case, all sorts of folk irrespective of colour, and historical roots would lay claim to sharing identity with others. But then, it seems identity has more of a metaphysical essence, an ontological garb rather than mere accidental properties. For many Africans, a very good way of looking at the idea of African identity clusters around the readiness to defend willingly African values and African 433

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culture in a world that is reeling under the inuence of globalization and modernization. One way of interpreting this view is that the common trait postulation extends, it is said, to the defence of the common cultural heritage in, concerning, around, about and of Africa. This reasoning is, however, fallacious since it denies the validity of empirical truth. The empirical truth is that In terms of culture writes Busia (1962, p. 73; see also Abraham, 1962, p. 115) there is not one social tradition; there are different social traditions and . . . different nationalities. Wheelers categorization reveals a glaring distinction with respect to issues of culture. To this end, talk of African identity in terms of culture is at best precarious and bound to be short-lived. Another way of interpreting this suggested view is that Africanness is not only a defence of African culture but a defence against modernism. Even though the idea of modernism is subject to many interpretations, one implication of this view is that to be an African is to be anti-modern. In other words, it means that modernity and Africanness constitute a negation of each other. This interpretation may not be sustainable and is bound to lead us to certain conclusions about the nature of African identity that are not worth defending. It is often accepted that modernism, itself, is a questionable and sometimes dubious characterization of history and as such should be taken with a pinch of salt in painting what the nature of African identity is. The above tallies with the innocuous but dangerous description of Africathat which captures the essence of primitivism. On a critical note, primitivism has a peculiar double meaning. The conception of primitivism in one sense is innocent: Africa is primitive because it is the land of genuine beings, unspoiled, original, unadulterated and close to life. But the other aspect of the meaning of primitivism is demeaning and self defeating: those held to be genuine are so because they are starkly underdeveloped, and according to Walter Rodney (1972), the underdevelopment of Africa was the other and necessary side of western development into industrial and modern society. Palmergs conclusion on this issue sounds poetic and deserves attention: to her, these two attitudes can be called, one the one hand, the hierarchical and condemning attitude, and on the other, the romanticising and idolising attitude. In the former case, Africa is deplored for what it does not have, in the latter case it is admired for what it has (2001, p. 202). In any case, a dilemma is still involved in this revered opinion which renders, in obfuscating terms, that requires every modicum of clarity we can muster. The idea of colour as the expression of what is common to African identity is given particular attention in the concept of Negritude. Negritude, as developed by Senghor and others, points to the existence of common psychic traits possessed by the Negro African. In Senghors words, it is the sum of the cultural values of the black world (1964). This psychic trait refers to his heightened sensibility and his strong emotional quality. Negritude, in short, is both an acceptance and afrmation of the quality of blackness. Blackness, in Negritudinal afrmation, refers to intuitive or tactile spontaneous reason, sensation, sensuousness, instinct, feeling, rhythm, emotions, creativity, imagination, and immediacy. As 434

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afrmations of blackness, these characteristics express what Serequeberhan (1994) calls aesthetic of feelings and images impregnated with rhythm. That the concept of Negritude is inadequate is obvious. Negritude, the way it is described, appears complex in character. In one sense, it has no geographical boundaries as such. Apart from this, Wheelers categorization includes Arabs, who are strictly speaking, non-blacks, and yet by dint of geographical delineation are referred to as Africans. But more precisely, scholars such as Wiredu (1980), Soyinka (1976), Fanon (1952) and Appiah (1992) have criticized the concept of Negritude as enveloping a world of contradiction. According to Fanon, Negritude fails to deliver the African from the problem of racist stereotypes because regardless of Negritude the white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black in his blackness (1952, p. 11). In their estimation, assertion of black peoples sensuality and intuitive, mystic and spontaneous reason was not strong enough to challenge racist assertions of blacks as unable to think rationally, as childish, immature and with uninhibited sexuality. For these scholars, what Negritude has done instead is to conrm these racist stereotypes, upholding thereby an unequal power relation between whites and blacks. Explaining African identity using theories of African personality and Negritude discloses that they both have a close connection with the ideology of Pan-Africanism. This is basically a political movement aimed at fostering the realization and recreation of the integral African character through a programme of political ideas, actions and agitation. Pan-Africanism, though nationalistic in nature, ended as a cultural construction. Writers such as Blyden and Du Bois saw in Pan-Africanism the idea of racial unity implying that people of Africa have a common destiny because they belong to a specic race. The problem with Pan-Africanism is how to transcend the sphere of the political into that which is metaphysical. A philosophical interrogation should emphasize an ontological basis for determining and describing Africanness. Besides, the same problem that weakened the force of Negritude is equally relevant in the critique of Pan-Africanism. According to Appiah (1992, p. 62), the cultural nationalism of Pan-Africanism is an outgrowth of European racialism which makes the course of cultural nationalism in Africa position as real the imaginary identities to which Europe has subjected Africa and Africans. The limitations inherent in Negritude and Pan-Africanism led to the development of the concept of unanimism by Paulin Hountondji (1983). Paulins unanimism refers to the idea that there is some central body of ideas that is shared by black Africans generally. That the concept is not normally quoted and discussed any longer shows that the idea did not really receive much intellectual support or circulation. For one thing, it limited the nature of identity to the idea of blackness but, more importantly, it limited, in a way, African identity to something intellectual and not metaphysical or ontological. In other words, being at the level of idea, it would easily be sharable, in an academic and intellectual sense, thereby losing the string of importance it tried to create and has created in the rst place. Besides, Hountondjis silence over what unanimism means shows the concept is, perhaps, stillborn. 435

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In recent times, the nature of African identity has been embedded in the idea of difference. Mudimbes work (1994) is replete with this understanding of African identity. For him, deviation or absolute difference is the best symbol of the idea of Africa in the West. The Enlightenment period and the rise of the sciences in the West contributed to the concept of otherness by which Africa has generally been characterized from the eighteenth century onwards. Otherness is thus an embodiment, denition and demonstration of difference. The specicity of Africa, for Mudimbe, is an invention. Generally, we do not usually ask for the problem of identity except there are confusions surrounding the subject. Post-colonialism entails, in a practical way, series of intermingling dilemmas with respect to the quest and nature of African identity. Entailed in post-colonial construction of African identity is the normativity of change. This is understandable since the post-colonial is begotten of the colonial, thus making a critical account of the notion of change a necessary feature of post-colonial construction of identity. Endorsing change and its inevitability is thus one of the several challenges of identity in post-colonial discourses on identity. But then, a lot depends on what is meant by the post-colonial and the concept of change. Change is never a signier of a break or discontinuance; it only suggests a transformation from one level of event to another level that often incorporates and entails each other. In this sense, the identity of a substance or subject with itself, as enunciated in the monism of Milesianism (the Milesians were early Greek philosophers historically regarded to be the rst philosophers in the western tradition), is still appropriated in a signicant way. One of the problems of post-colonial conguration of identity is to assume the deadness of the earlier while celebrating the birth of the now. Post-colonialism is trenchantly an engagement or exercise in extension. As Simon Gikandi (1996, p. 15) puts it, post-colonialism is one way of recognising how decolonised situations are marked by the trace of the imperial pasts they try to disavow . . . a code for the state of undecidability in which the culture of colonialism continues to resonate in what was supposed to be its negation. Given this post-colonial postulate, an African can be compared to the idea of the common man, who is representative of the African. In this, it is taken as given that one is never fully so. A person makes himself through the process of living. In this light, we must then have various things to look for at different times, that is, from the pre to the post, in the task of identication. Different categories of things, including wo/man, have different modes of identication at different times and for different purposes. The question then is what criteria of sameness are we to appeal to in classifying things? The question of identity goes beyond persons. An African is more than what he is as a person. In a way, the problematic of an African identity is indeed an ideological thing. However, we can use memory theory in constructing, reconstructing or even deconstructing the African identity in a positive way. Even though memory theory is a metaphysical theory to unravel the aching question of personal identity, it is still a truism that memory theory affords and articulates a cultural critique of the predicament of what African identity means. We are never fully 436

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any one thing. A person is always becoming and never fully is, until the end. In the light of memory theory, the African can remember his/her past no matter how confused or problematic or even undened that past may be. Even though the predicament of the African identity is an ideological one, it is still true that memory theory provides a positive platform on which African identity can be discussed. Even if Africans have split identities or crises of identity, or that our identity is of a confused people, it is still a truism that we can use several features to denote that identity, and since identity is becoming, we can then have a clearer and more gloried identity. It is the power to remember that is crucial to restoring or remaking African identity. As Yvonne Vera (2001, p. 116) says, it is an understanding of what has happened, in knowing where the rain began to beat us that we begin to nd again our autonomy. Autonomy therefore is crucial to understanding identity. In other words, no knowledge of the nature of the self can exist without understanding the meaning of self-autonomy and the role of autonomy in regaining the self. Every narrative recollecting the past is an attempt in the painstaking process of regaining the autonomy of the self. The concept of autonomy is thus a critical signicant idea that shows as rewarding the assignment of remaking and reconstructing African identity in the post-colonial sense. It is entailed in the fact that the searching, inquisitive self is an autonomous being. The African of today is the African of the past in the sense that we can discern sameness in the reective consciousness, memory, awareness and remembering of the past. A conscious cognitive continuity can be perceived as a phenomenological possibility in describing existence in relation to Africa. The little the African can remember of his past is worth remembering. A worthless past can still be remembered no matter how clumsy. This is why Thomas Butler (1989, p. 5) dened remembering as encompassing not only events recalled from personal experience but also those inherited recollections that prompt feelings of collective shame, pride or resentment on behalf of our real or metaphorical ancestors. The legacy of memory theory in the construction of African identity consist in the view that the African has a conscious memory of his/her past with which he/she looks forward to in constructing and projecting a better future. In other words, the identity of the African can be located signicantly in his/her ability to engage in a positive reective consciousness of his/her past. This memory, of course, would be of a member of an exploited race. But curiously, this is not peculiar to this race alone. Other races have also constructed a unique identity out of a similar story of exploitation. Paul Connertons idea of social or collective memory in his book How Societies Remember (1985) represents a classic example of what is hinted at here even though the conclusion he arrived at is not shared by me. According to Connerton, memory, apart from being individual, can also be collective or social. Writing on the salience of memory for the group, Connerton contended that it is an implicit rule that participants in any social order must presuppose a shared memory. To the extent that their memories of a societys past diverge, to that extent its members can share neither experiences nor assumptions. The effect is seen perhaps most 437

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obviously when communication across generations is impeded by different sets of memories (1989, p. 3). One initial problem with Connertons idea is that collective memory as used here was not shown to have a strong connection with the task of proving and demonstrating the nature of identity. In other words, while it is true that societies often remember by resorting to collective or shared memory, it does not follow from his analysis whether it is an indicator of identity. One possible explanation on behalf of Connerton is that identity was not his major objective; his objective was to show that memory can be social, not just individual, and that such social memory are discoverable in commemorative ceremonies which are performative in character and, to that extent, they are bodily. Since his arguments are not to prove the nature of identity, it may not be necessary to belabour the point. Nevertheless, it can still be argued that social memories are not necessarily commemorative or performative. Jewish collective memory of Hitlers holocaust is not essentially commemorative. The same is true of the reective, conscious understanding of colonialism in Africa. In my view Connerton has taken and dened the idea of social memory only from one perspective: social memory as ceremonialization of a groups social past. In the end, we could talk of the possibility of social collective memory as a metaphysical, intellectual and spatio-temporal resource. It is this possibility, if successful, that is reiterated here in underpinning the nature of African identity. Thus, while ceremony may be bodily, the intellectual and metaphysical reality behind that collective or group memory is what provides the basic nutrients of a peoples identity. As suggested in memory theory, the idea of memory, awareness and the innate ability to remember presupposes a sense of history. Conjectures about memory are historical conjectures. The conation of identity in the light of memory and reective consciousness are best understood in the light of historical consciousness and awareness. If identity consists in reective consciousness of ones past, as highlighted in memory theory, and the idea of memory suggests a sense of history, then it is conclusive that the identity of the African clusters around his history. In the signicant sense this history or memory is the memory of distinct episodes of racism and imperialism which still haunts the African in the present. It is important to understand the importance of history and historical reconstruction in identity construction, reconstruction and deconstruction as a post-colonial engagement. While some scholars have shown the independent nature of historical reconstruction as an evolving discipline, for his part, Connerton attempted to demonstrate the distinction between social memory and historical reconstruction. For Connerton, historical reconstruction is not dependent on social memory; the historian is imbued with a sense of autonomy as a practitioner. But then, social memories do receive a boost through/from historical reconstruction. From this it follows that history, its reconstruction and collective memory are important elements in a post-colonial attempt at remaking and rebranding African identity. The memory of the African transcends the era of imperialism. This is because, like all other peoples of the world, the African is inseparable from his history and culture. His history is the record of what he did and thought and said. Again, his 438

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culture derives from the totality of ideas, concepts and values that characterize the society in which he found himself. This could be one of the reasons why Lemon (1995, p. 144) describes the essence of history as consisting of the manner in which historians account for occurrences in terms of the reasons individuals have for their conduct i.e., history can be legitimately dened as the narrative interpretation and explanation of human agency and intention or, as put by Collingwood (1994, p. 302), the object of historical knowledge is experience. History is therefore about translating experience into evidence or facts. The problematic of African identity stems from the age-long view that Africans have no identity, in as much as it is believed that Africa had no history except the history of Europe in Africa. Today, the task of constructing African identity through history is not only challenging but made more intellectually stimulating given the wealth of analysis afforded by a growing community of scholars in unearthing facts about the African past. In most cases, the wrong perception concerning African identity stems from a deliberate neglect and misunderstanding of the symbolic and practical logic of a community viewed from the normative perspective of the community concerned. Much of this trend has characterized the heart of anthropological opinions emanating from the West. In a nutshell, memory theory, as a philosophical response to the problem of identity, has afforded a critical study of African identity in the light of memory, reective consciousness of the past, awareness and history. In its epistemological import, memory theory has shed more light on African identity in the sense that, from that theoretical standpoint, if the African is said to lack a history, i.e., a memory, how come we can recount or recollect them now? Sigmund Freuds psychoanalytic contention that only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past is highly relevant in understanding why the past is signicant in coherently and correctly understanding the nature of African identity. If we take Lowenthals (1985) analysis as exhaustive and thoroughgoing, memory and history as means by which we venture into the past and they work together in dening what the identity of a set of people is. Preserving history is akin to preserving ones identity. It is for this reason that institutions, traditions and cultural practices are accorded and embodied a symbolic signicance, a fact which Connerton argues to be a performative and bodily means by which we situate identity and connect ourselves to the past. According to Collingwood (1926, p. 150), thinking historically is what takes us back to the realm of the past and, as argued by Lowenthal (1985, p. 186), what the conscious past contains, why it is dwelt upon, how much and in what ways it is felt to be a realm apartthese matters vary from culture to culture, from person to person, and from day to day. Each cultural group, therefore, in its own way, struggles to retain its past, rst, as a way of preserving its identity, and secondly, perhaps, as a way of working out possibilities for the future and survival of the group. One way by which the past is retained is what Frederic Bartlett (1967, pp. 281 292), in his own wisdom, tags the collective unconscious. Central to Bartletts explanation of this phenomenal dimension of social group identity is what he calls a groups expression of active tendencies. In his words, when a 439

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number of people are organized into a social group, whether by appetite, instinct, fashion, interest, sentiment, or ideal, this group speedily develops certain characteristics peculiar to itself, which directly constrain the behaviour of its individual members (p. 281). Memory theory emphasizes that identity is not static. An understanding of memory theory compels one to accept the view that every person, including the African, is continuously becoming. For memory theory, each individual should be able to recall his/her past. For the African, the present may truly be confused, and the future may be bleak, but we have a memory of our past just as the West does. It is this constructive understanding of our past now that helps in directing and marshalling a future in which what is critically an African identity appears empowering and manifests a qualifying ego. Signicantly, though, memory theory is meant to apply to individuals, not groups. However, as persons, each African can identify with this theory. Even if it were true that darkness remains the larger percentage of the past of Africans, it is still a fact that darkness is part of history because certain events still constitute part of that darkness. Their contact with the West can also be the basis of his/her emerging identity because, according to memory theory, he/she has a memory, also, of that contact. Assuming the truth of the claims of the West about Africa, Africans still remain identiable as Africans in terms of those very statements. Africans may reject the identity so constructed by the West, based on their own memory perhaps. But as argued, if it is a logical truth and a conceptual truth that memory statements are generally true, then it is the case that the kernel of the truth about the African identity is embodied in the view that the identity of an African can be dened in terms of the distinct episodes and varying patterns of history and the memory s/he has about himself. It is in this sense that African identity can be dened as above: INMEMOR (IAM), i.e., in memory, I am. This does not exactly negate the Cartesian cogito: I think, therefore, I exist. Even though it is an afrmation of the Cartesian cogito, it transcends it. This is because even though existence precedes identity, both existence and identity work together in dening the phenomenology of human existence and identity which, in this case, is the essence of African identity. While Cartesianism heralded the truth of the cogito with a methodological doubt, memory theory, as postulated here, heralds the truth of identity in relation to events. The memory of the African is made up of episodic events which have turned to be the constituents of that identity. One event is produced by the thinking self; the other produced by the self that remembers, that recollects. No identity clue is proven beyond and above this terse but profound phrase: in memory I am. INMEMORIAM, in a nutshell, denes the person, in the primary sense, in terms of memory, a wonderful clue in dening what the human person is that Rene Descartes omitted. Identifying a person in terms of thought is just the beginning of the process; memory explains the basis of human continuity of itself with itself; what ends and denes the celebration of cerebrality, i.e., the thinking thing, is the summation of memory which denes properly that I am. In another sense, INMEMORIAM denes group identity in terms of memory in 440

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which every one in the group nds, most suitably, where each belongs by working on the memory in terms of similarity of history, ideas and experiences. What is simply happening is that we are transcending the realm of the metaphysical to the realm of the ideological when we so contend. INMEMORIAM is, rst, a metaphysical thesis, and, secondly, an ideologization of the thinking self. In other words, in memory, I am, is an ideological summation of a metaphysical reality, the existing thinking self. Identity thus transcends the realm of thinking to the realm of recollection where what makes each identiable with the other is the memory. This is exactly what the ancients had in mind when they contended that each culture or group have a metaphysical essence, a spirit or an arche that explains their totality. Thus, memory theory resembles Connertons social or collective sens historical memory (2005), and Ursula van Beek memory (1985), Jorn Ru and Bernard Lategans historical consciousness (2005), but my own thinking is different from what these scholars had in mind. Memory theory as defended here is conceptually ingrained in the metaphysics of groups and persons rather than physical representations, even though it often derives ample demonstration in terms of historical consciousness, social memory and recollection which, some of these scholars have argued, is bodily in nature. Of course, the content and component memory is still a potentiality, not an actuality since just as the post-colonial is still engaging the colonial in an ongoing, dialogical exchange, the present, in a like manner, engages the past in an ongoing relationship, a continuum. To comprehend memory theory in the construction and reconstruction of African identity is to see the relation that exists between that which supposedly occurred in the past and what is happening now. The difference that the present makes is that it helps us to see the autonomy which the past lacks. As a potentiality, the constituents of memory are far from being conclusive but always translusive, meaning that every memory event entails a conclusion without being itself conclusive. Conclusion The existential and metaphysical truth about African identity is that it is still in a state of potentiality, thus corroborating Achebes view that African identity is still in the making. A potentiality is indenable in the conclusive sense; only an actuality is nal even though potentiality is not inherently limiting. What is quite ennobling about potentiality is that it envelops a world of great possibilities. African identity must, therefore, be understood as a potentiality ensconced in the shell of memory inasmuch as its indenable nature is informed by the interplay of a series of intermingling values. Certain contexts and meanings dene the potentiality in question and the values clustered around it. The values and context are encoded in the memory of the signier. Identity, for the African, does not exist outside memory. The normative constitution of identity, for an African, comes through the process of recollection, in memory I am, in which the constituents of recollection are denable in terms of potentiality, an unfolding, a becoming. 441

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Though endangered in signicant respects, it does not follow that a thesis cannot be maintained and sustained concerning the nature of African identity. Postcolonial engagement, today, on the nature of African identity, may not entirely be about changing the past, as suggested by William Burton (1982, p. 14), but about changing negative images around, concerning, and about, Africa. Note

Department of Philosophy, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Email: idwilly@yahoo.com

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