Popular Culture Studies in Postcolonial African Academia and their Public Practices
Paper Prepared for CODESRIA’s 10TH General Assembly on "Africa in the New Millennium", Kampala, Uganda, 8-12 December 2002.
Okello Ogwang
Department of Literature
Makerere University
P.O. Box 7062
Kampala
Uganda.
okellogwang@yahoo.com
Abstract
In this proposed paper I will make a critical overview and assess the field commonly designated as Popular culture. I will make an attempt to examine the problematic generated by its nomenclature. I will further attempt to locate and explore why and how it rather uneasily perches on the African academic and sociocultural nationscapes. I will examine its manifestations in the media, museum studies, art galleries, monuments, and theater. My objective is to map out its varied and chequered fields, and trajectories. I will also examine its nature, forms, and statuses. In relation to this, I will explore the nature and forms of its practitioners, critics, and consumers. I begin by tracing how popular culture and its discourses have emerged, in different settings, as critiques of the assumptions of traditional academic fields such as English, Comparative Literature, Art History, Music etc. In both the institutional academic settings, and the public discourses on popular cultural forms has been gaining momentum. One reason for its lackluster start was that popular cultural studies in most African academia and its discourse was due to discipline building and protectionism. The result was that the study of popular cultural forms was eclectic and variegated. In the humanities for instance, one sees two general thrusts: the liberal and the conservative. The liberal trend made several attempts to give chance to “non-traditional” areas of studies, such as oral Literature, art and craft studies, ethnomusicology, or popular theater. For all this development, the situation was largely marked by an agonizing theoretical paucity, if not an outright hostility to theory, with a few exceptional sets of cases. The other informing variable was the functionalism in academia, in which the rhetoric of development that has peopled the discourses of the state, and shaped the funding of academic and research programmes.
For the traditional social scientists, it can be said Popular Cultural Studies is, or has perhaps even been further the issues of the day. Ultimately though, what might have passed under the rubric of popular cultural Studies was peripheral. And donor policies in funding higher educational training and research agenda have not really helped matters in the shaping of popular cultural studies as a site of critical practices and inquiry. What will be fate of popular cultural studies in the new millennium? Only time can tell. For now though, one can only hope for a more well-thought out programme for its study, documentation, and discussion, in relation to the lived lifes of its different practitioners.This paper is a reflection on the state of cultural studies in African academia. In a sense it is also a reflection of the impact of discipline-building on cultural studies, especially the positivistic nature of intellectual inquiry. In one respect the paper is an examination of the ways in which postcolonial African academia replicates colonial modes of knowledge-production insofar as it valorizes the status of disciplines and compartmentalizes knowledge production and dissemination. At another level, the paper is a survey of the issues pertinent to the field of cultural studies. In a sense too, the paper seeks to define and examine cultural studies within the framework of postcolonial studies, while at the same time extending the notion of the ‘postcolonial’ beyond its usual attention to the 19th and 20th centuries. But a few observations seem in order here. First is that Africa is not homogeneous and the state of cultural studies in the different places is not uniform too. Secondly, depending on the different histories of the different societies on the African continent, the state of cultural studies are variegated.
While, as the title of this paper suggests, I discuss the status of cultural studies and popular culture in African academia and in public practice, its potential flaw is that it creates a totalizing perception of Africa, and of African academia, as if these were singular and uniform categories. Breckenridge and van der Veer (1993: 1-2) argue that to refer to the second half of the 20th century as ‘postcolonial’ is to call for a reappraisal of the way in which we frame contemporary world history. Secondly, they point out, it emphasizes "the rupture in national and global relations created by the urge to forge independent nation-states…." Thirdly, they argue, the power of colonial knowledge is often matched by a mood of impotence and sparse reflections on the postcolonial predicament, and the scarcity of the reflexive voice among social scientists. Not the least of these is that nationalism is not the only successor of colonialism, especially in view of the interface between nationalism and transnational processes.
In this paper I mainly survey and reflect on the practices and the discourses that inform the field of popular culture and cultural studies in and outside the academia in Africa, including its problematic nomenclature. I alos consider, locate, and explore why uneasily perches on the African academic and sociocultural nationscapes, using examples from the media, museum studies, art galleries, monuments, and theater, and the like. A key objective of the paper is to map out its varied and checkered fields and trajectories, by paying attention to its nature, forms, and statuses. I also give attention to the formation and dispositions of its practitioners, critics, and consumers. I trace how popular culture and the discourses of cultural studies emerged in different settings, especially as forms of critique of the assumptions of traditional academic fields, be it English, Comparative Literature, Art History, Music, and the like. I set this against the fact that in both the institutional academic and non-academic settings, the cultural studies discourses have gained momentum.
The rather lackluster state of cultural studies in African academia is a result, in part, of the legacy of elitism, as much as of the excesses of discipline building, and its concomitant compartmentalization of fields of knowledge. Because cultural studies as a field of inquiry is necessarily transdisciplinary, and the field that it studies straddles many disciplines, its concerns has more often than not, fallen through the disciplinary cracks. The outcome is its eclectic treatment, as can be seen in the relatively scholarly disinterest in the "non-traditional" fields of studies such as popular cultural forms.
Equally important is the theoretical paucity with which cultural studies has often found itself, or a thinly veiled hostility to theory. Informing the poverty of theory arising from the nature of colonial, and subsequently postcolonial meaning-making and knowledge production. One aspect of this can be seen in the way the discourses of the academia is the regime of control that is so often couched in the rhetoric of ‘development.’ This rhetoric and the approaches to issues in the academia are crucially informed by the positivistic selectivity of research funding in academia, quite often at the expense of cultural studies, the latter which is quite often seen as irrelevant to issues of a parochially defined notion of ‘development.’ But I run the risk of overgeneralization given that quite often too, colonial forms of knowledge-production often touts the notion of culture as a means of controlling people, entrenching notions of ethnicity, through forms of bantustaninization of culture. In such instances, culture is reified and treated as fixed in time and place, and linked to a group, as a way of keeping groups at a distance from the site of power. And so, on the one hand we have the marginal status of cultural studies in the humanities and social sciences as a product of highbrow academic elitism, while on the other hand we may find culture being promoted as a way of othering the citizenry from accessibility of forms of power. Here too we find a distinction between the humanities and the social sciences. For the humanities, the neglect of cultural studies is often a product of elitism, while for the social sciences it is more an outcome of positivism, the neglect of the question of subjectivity. Either way, in many fields of knowledge production, donor policies play a key role in shaping of higher educational training and research agenda, quite often at the expense of cultural studies as one site of critical inquiry. As such, one is forced to ask about the future of cultural studies. Of course there have been significant shifts and breakthroughs. One can only hope though for an approach to cultural studies that takes into account the relationship between it and the lived life of its practitioners.
My perception of cultural studies is in key respects informed by David Whisnant’s (1995: 2-4) description of culture as not just esthetic expression or authenticated canonical forms of practice, but an entire way of life. This asks that we pay attention to the question of the hegemonic patterns of cultural domination, and the link between it and other modes of domination, such as colonial occupation and subjection, and the processes of cultural legitimation and delegitimation. I also draw from Whisnant’s argumentation to the effect that there are key ways in which elite control of cultural policy and institutions entail the use of culture to justify policies such as economic development, or to rationalize forms of exploitation. Tied to all this is the complex interchange between elite or popular mass mediated cultural forms, and the traditional, vernacular, or marginalized culture, and not the least of these, the question of forms of cultural genocide and forced acculturation.
My purpose in this paper is to set the discussion against the broader theories, issues, and movements that have, and still do shape the field of cultural studies. In addition, I hope to locate and engage with the issues that that have shaped the field. As per Simon During, editor of The Cultural Studies Reader (1993:1), "cultural studies is not an academic discipline quite like others," because, he argues, "It possesses neither a well-defined methodology nor clearly demarcated fields for investigation." During further draws attention to the key markers of cultural studies, one of which is that it is the study of contemporary culture. This is a delineation that I accept, albeit with some theoretical hesitation. Secondly, he argues, cultural studies is concerned with subjectivity, that is, its objects of study are studied in relation to the actual lived lives, and life practices, of people. I share this view insofar as I perceive it as breaking with the tired positivism of the traditional social sciences. During illuminates how cultural studies was formed through, and advocates, engaged analysis. This is in marked contrast to the cultural and literary criticism associated with the literary critic Leavis, often called Leavisism, and its parochial advocacy for the "great tradition," a restricted canon in the school curriculum for instance, and abhorrence of "mass culture." This is a perspective I embrace and run with in this paper, and beyond. Equally important is the way in which cultural studies has called attention to subcultures.
From a theoretical perspective, cultural studies as a field of inquiry, and the questions it asks make it possible to treat subjects as diverse as cultural productivity versus poverty, wars, political instability, or what Appiah (1992: 157) calls the refusal by Africans to perceive themselves as the "other." The field of inquiry has made it possible to identify and pay attention to the question of the agency of the actors. For too long cultural productivity has been rather marginal in African Studies, failing to pay attention to hybridity, and the polyglot nature of culture. This is why Karin Barber (1997:1) argues that culture has for long tended to be treated as a residual category in African scholarship. And yet cultural studies tends to stand on its head the dichotomy between the traditional and the modern, competence and performance, langue and parole, mind and body, or orality and literacy. This is why its proponents are as much at home studying popular music (see Erlmann 1995, Watermann 1995) theater (Bjorkman 1995) popular fiction, peri-urban art, local histories, name it. To address the questions raised by cultural studies, I examine some of its theoretical lacunae, and why it so uneasily perches on the academic and social nationscape in relation to its discourses, using examples from the media, museum, art, theater, etc. I examine it in relation to the loves of its practitioners, critics, and consumers. Popular cultural forms are neither wholly traditional, indigenous, nor coming from pre-colonial past. At the same time it is not entirely modern or Western. In a sense, it is defined by its proximity to metropolitan centers, and by its occupation of the zone between these two poles.
A prevalent aspect of the cultural studies is seen in the dominance of two categories: the traditional and the elite. However, it should be stated that whatever the utility, this mode of categorization is overused. For example, African popular music is appreciated across the divide. This comes after decades of ethnological snubbing of the ‘contamination’ of ‘authentic’ traditional sounds as a result of its infusion with Western rhythms, melodies, and technologies. In the verbal and plastic arts too, Africa has been perceived in terms of the traditional versus elite categories. Western perceptions of African culture in visual arts and literature is a product of the global capitalism on the one hand, and the assertion of cultural nationalism by African elites. At stake here is the ways in which traditional art was appropriated by western art market (see Appiah 1992; Clifford 1998).
An abiding feature of the discussion of popular cultures is the notion of "authentic" which is often invoked to represent ‘tribal’ cultures as ancient and unchanging, and as detached from its social context of practical and symbolic uses. On the other hand, one also notes how nationalist elites tended to celebrate "traditional" affirmation of the self. This binary paradigm obscures cultural activists, producers, products, of the majority of the people. What we need to take into account is the fact that there is a realize is that there is a vast domain of cultural production which cannot be simply classified as either traditional or elite, oral or literate, or as indigenous or Western in inspiration. This is because such forms of cultural expressions straddle and dissolve these dichotomies, as can be seen in genres such as drama, film, TV, video, which are, by any account, not repositories of past or archaic. This is because cultural studies uses available ‘traditional’ materials to comment on and shape contemporary situations. Neither are they the products of cultural contact with the West, as can be seen in the ways in which works of local producers speaking to local audiences about pertinent issues and experiences undermine the binary paradigm of "African culture." And not the least of these is the fact that the term ‘popular,’ as per Bourdieu (1983), is ambiguous because it is inscribed with history of political and cultural strings. It is also a site of contestation.
Then there is the terminological dilemmas. ‘Folk’ culture tends to suggest community, which is often presumed to be undifferentiated. ‘Popular’ is quite often used to mean belonging to the people, in contrast to elite or high culture. It also tends to suggest mass, commercial, technocrat, and the public. The import of this is that African popular culture its studies is not homogeneous. There is the urban and the rural, industrial, mining, administrative sectors. In addition to this, through the press, school, church, electronic media create new forms of identity and publics in colonial and postcolonial African societies and countries. Through genres like sports, cinema, commercial theaters, new identities emerge and these masses are not anonymous or atomized. There are also the factors of patronage and clientele. Not the least of this is the artisinal, localized methods in painting, theaters, concert parties, protest songs, guitars, etc.
A key question that emerges is, what is the better sociological referent of popular culture and of cultural studies in in Africa? One enduring aspect is the pervasive sense of "us" and "them," even though the boundaries between these categories are porous and ever-shifting. Sometimes though, the sense of us and them are much more specific. For example, in South Africa, there exists a long experience of resistance to apartheid combined with a high degree of industrialization which shaped the outlines of classes, such that the unionized workforce township populations, black middle class, the rural and the poor, each with its cultural features.
According to Ulf Hannez (1997: 12-14), anthropological interest in development and underdevelopment, metropolis and statelite relations, dependency-world systems have been more interested in economic and political anthropology than the anthropology of structures of meanings. This concern has been variously expressed itself in terms of culture as a contrast between the traditional versus the modern, urban, postindustrial, and capitalist. What is lacking, argues Hannez, is the ethnography of the ways in which ‘third’ world people see and perceive themselves and their societies in time and space. At stake here is the need to pay attention to subcultures As for Johannes Fabian (1997: 18) there is need for transdisciplinarity in cultural studies. Short of this, we are bound to end up reproducing the time-tested means of compartmentalization that has been characteristic of the usual academic division of labor. I for one could not agree any less with Hannez’s argument that African scholars are themselves slow to denounce this, as she argues, "out of elitist need to set themselves apart from the loud and colorful burst of creativity in music, or al lore, and the visual art emerging from the masses.
In all this, we also need to take stock of Fabian’s (1997: 18) argument that the term ‘popular’ "has a journalistic currency to it that does not speak in its favor." Fabian proceeds to identify four strands to it. First is the contemporary cultural expressions versus modern elitist, and traditional ‘tribal’ culture. Secondly, he argues, it evokes historical conditions characterized by mass production, participation, and consumption. Thirdly, it implies a challenge to accepted beliefs in superiority of ‘pure’ or high culture and of notions of folklore. Fourthly, potentially it signifies at least processes behind the back of established powers as better approaches to decolonization. Popular culture is found in all sorts of unconventional places, such as the market places, shanty towns, beer halls, etc. I guess I am at home whith Fabian’s argument that culture should be studied not so much in terms of its uniformity, but more in terms of its redistributive features. This is because it calls for diversity, as opposed to ‘standard’ language, art forms, etc. At the same time, it is important to not that popular cultures of the third world are in some ways dependent on international influences; technology, symbolic modalities, genres, that are not entirely indigenous nor ‘high culture’ for or by elites. Popular cultures and their studies should also examine not its materials not just in terms of the breakdown of traditional culture, but also in terms of its relation to state power; is it sheer escapism, and as a critique of state discourses.
The above line of argument suggests that we need to study popular cultures, in tumne with Copland’s (1997; 29-40), argument, in relation to its actors and their interpretations of their own conduct. Copland illustrates how Basotho songs are reflective aesthetically intensified significations of experience. Viewing the songs as expressive action, and of the view from below, he illustrates how Basotho migrant laborers created a new genre, sefela, to express their changing experiences instead of adapting existing praise poetry, as their Xhosa comrades did. Central here is his argument that the changing self perception of migrant labor made them to compose the sefela to reflect on themselves versus the praise poetry genre for chiefs. This coheres with Waterman’s (1997-48-53) that the relationship between performance style and the distribution of power in society needs to be investigated, including the place of syncretic expressive power in the construction of ideologies in local processes of adaption to changes triggered by European colonialism and the incorporation of Africa into the capitalist world system.
In view of Fabian’s (1990: 19) argument that one of the key issues implicated in the study of culture entails a critical thought to the changes from the colonial to the postcolonial relations. This is crucial insofar as Western imperialism now mainly operates as an absentee regime of organization, and which is for most times anonymous to the ruled. This calls into question an examination of the ways in which local governments and regimes that are powerless in global terms compensate for their lack of legitimacy with measures that are oppressive and corrupt. How popular culture serve as the means of preserving self-respect in the face of constant humiliation, and to set the wealth of artistic creativity against an environment of utter poverty. By way of conclusion, even if quite tentatively, a handful of observations are necessary. To begin with, there is need for a through reflection on the issues that are expressed through popular cultural forms, as much as an evaluation of the field of cultural studies. This definitely calls for a transdisciplinary perspective. This calls for a reversal of the compartmentalization of knowledge and knowledge production. Most of all the study of cultural forms needs to reflect on the question of the role of popular cultural forms and the lives of its practitioners.
Selected Bibliography
Barber, Karin.
1997. "Introduction." In Readings in African Popular Culture.
Ed Karin Barber: Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
During, Simon. ed.
1993. The Cultural Studies Reader. London, Routledge.
Fabian, Johannes.
1997. Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures." In Readings in African Popular Culture. Ed. Karin Barber. Bloomington: Indiana Univerity Press.
Hannez, Ulf.
1997. "the World in Crelization" in Readings in African Popular Culture.
Ed K. Barber.
Whisnant, David E.
1995. Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.