Culture is never static or monolithic. This is a disclaimer offered in any discussion around culture these days. But, I am amazed to see how these discussions invariably end up portraying culture in blatantly static and monolithic terms. Is it the fascination for the word 'culture' that invokes sentiments of presenting each and every narrative in a 'good and acceptable' light? And is it the contradiction between what appears and what does not conform to 'good and acceptable' leads us to pit one norm against the other in absolutist, essentialist terms?
The discussions around Chinua Achebe's masterpiece 'Things Fall Apart' offer a similar picture. While it was undoubtedly one of the first non-racialised accounts on Africa that brought forth an African story in African voice, I believe we have moved on from that. I do not discount its contribution to our understanding of Africa, but we now need narratives that talk about 'finer' details.
'Things Fall Apart' subtly rebuked the White man's interpretation of the Dark continent. It told us that the tribes do not grunt and make noise in a language-less world, but possess a vast resource of language and literature preserved in folklores, proverbs, songs that are exchanged in day to day life. It told us that there existed a self-sufficient community with varied problems, consisting of real people with diverse personalities and was not just an untouched landscape waiting to be explored by the colonial settlers. It tells the story of how colonial domination came as a torrent of unstoppable force that swept everything away, the good and bad, leaving the vestiges of what was rich, prosperous and evolved through ages and centuries. We needed this narrative to be empathetic, we needed it to understand certain lives better, to appreciate some valuable stories that were seldom told earlier. However, it is not enough. While all the above is said and done. We now need to find out more stories to fill the gaps this one has created.
No matter how much we resist, but it offers a picture that men beating their wives and children to assert masculinity and power was inherently acceptable by the 'culture'. It makes us believe that religion and culture sanctioned killing twin babies and young boys for various reasons. And this makes us secretly hate the 'culture' itself. We then end up taking either of the following two stances. We either dissociate ourselves from 'them' and from a safe distance celebrate the richness of diversity and respect for 'difference'...Or we hypothesize that the dominant and the more righteous prevailed in the clash of cultures (Christianity could obtain a stronghold because it attacked the 'weaker' links of the previously existed norms, it appealed to the outcasts and the vulnerable ones). While it is difficult to completely refute or invalidate both the stances, the latter undeniably offer a singular interpretation of culture. They overlook the fact that the dominant version of culture might not be the entire truth, it might just be a reflection of existing power equations.
Were there no voices of dissent against what we might term inhuman today? It is inconcievable that the woman who turned to the Church to save her twin children was the first one to try to save her newborns. What happened to the dissenting voices before the Church came into picture? I need stories that talk about them to complete the picture....or perhaps create new gaps! If Chinua Achebe's narrative scoffs at colonial, racial, monolithic accounts of Africa, the alternative stories that talk about dissenting voices within the dominant culture will seal the fact that cultures evolved continuously and could not possibly be fit into a few narratives.
The discussions around Chinua Achebe's masterpiece 'Things Fall Apart' offer a similar picture. While it was undoubtedly one of the first non-racialised accounts on Africa that brought forth an African story in African voice, I believe we have moved on from that. I do not discount its contribution to our understanding of Africa, but we now need narratives that talk about 'finer' details.
'Things Fall Apart' subtly rebuked the White man's interpretation of the Dark continent. It told us that the tribes do not grunt and make noise in a language-less world, but possess a vast resource of language and literature preserved in folklores, proverbs, songs that are exchanged in day to day life. It told us that there existed a self-sufficient community with varied problems, consisting of real people with diverse personalities and was not just an untouched landscape waiting to be explored by the colonial settlers. It tells the story of how colonial domination came as a torrent of unstoppable force that swept everything away, the good and bad, leaving the vestiges of what was rich, prosperous and evolved through ages and centuries. We needed this narrative to be empathetic, we needed it to understand certain lives better, to appreciate some valuable stories that were seldom told earlier. However, it is not enough. While all the above is said and done. We now need to find out more stories to fill the gaps this one has created.
No matter how much we resist, but it offers a picture that men beating their wives and children to assert masculinity and power was inherently acceptable by the 'culture'. It makes us believe that religion and culture sanctioned killing twin babies and young boys for various reasons. And this makes us secretly hate the 'culture' itself. We then end up taking either of the following two stances. We either dissociate ourselves from 'them' and from a safe distance celebrate the richness of diversity and respect for 'difference'...Or we hypothesize that the dominant and the more righteous prevailed in the clash of cultures (Christianity could obtain a stronghold because it attacked the 'weaker' links of the previously existed norms, it appealed to the outcasts and the vulnerable ones). While it is difficult to completely refute or invalidate both the stances, the latter undeniably offer a singular interpretation of culture. They overlook the fact that the dominant version of culture might not be the entire truth, it might just be a reflection of existing power equations.
Were there no voices of dissent against what we might term inhuman today? It is inconcievable that the woman who turned to the Church to save her twin children was the first one to try to save her newborns. What happened to the dissenting voices before the Church came into picture? I need stories that talk about them to complete the picture....or perhaps create new gaps! If Chinua Achebe's narrative scoffs at colonial, racial, monolithic accounts of Africa, the alternative stories that talk about dissenting voices within the dominant culture will seal the fact that cultures evolved continuously and could not possibly be fit into a few narratives.
