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My slightly cynical quote of the day (yeah, a cup of tea or two and some brain stimulating reading required otherwise I don’t get started with this conclusion writing/editing morning over morning):

“Art cannot change the world” are words spoken nonchalantly day in and day out, and the agency of the arts and culture production industry is comfortably reduced to the mere fetishism of a few privileged practitioners. Discussions of the seminal role of funding agendas, curatorial policies both of private and public institutions, production values, etcetera, are simply engulfed by the standardization machinery. And for those not so easy to appease, well they can chat, complain and theorize about “representation,” and there is funding for that too. And of course, the machinery of standardization also provides the margins for this debate: post-colonialism, exoticism, Orientalism, regionalism and so on.

Mai Abu Eldahab (nd?): Global Epidemic Art in the Age of Globalization

And as we’re at it, I really liked Binyavanga Wainaina’ How to Write About Africa. It’s such a useful not-to-do list to double check myself and my writing. Every now and then that’s quite helpful. Not just when writing and/or thinking about ‘Africa’. So, check out How to Write about Africa II: The Revenge:

Novelists, NGO workers, rock musicians, conservationists, students, and travel writers track down my email, asking: Would you please comment on my homework assignment / pamphlet / short story / funding proposal / haiku / adopted child / photograph of genuine African mother-in-law? All of the people who do this are white. Nobody from China asks, nobody from Cuba, nobody black, blackish, brown, beige, coffee, cappuccino, mulatte. I wrote “How to Write about Africa” as a piss-job, a venting of steam; it was never supposed to see the light of day. Now people write to ask me for permission to write about Africa. They want me to tell them what I think, how they did. Be frank, they say, be candid. Tell it like it is. I have considered investing in a rubber stamp.

Continue reading here.

On a completely different note, check out Carmen’s research blog for the latest developments in the Hausa film industry, in particular the conflict between the film makers and the director of the Kano State Censorship Board. She discusses the current court case in Kaduna here.

If you haven’t followed the news, she also provided updates about the recent attacks in the Jos area here and here. She provides several links, among others to a number of Human Rights Watch reports. I got nothing to add to that. I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to say …

Update on why I don't use 'primitive' or 'tribe'/'tribal' when writing about African Arts

Aright, just I case you needed another gross example of (Western, again: how ever you want to define that) mainstream ideas of ‘the tribal’, especially with regard to Africa[1] I'll link you to this rather bad piece of music: Kumbaya by Peaceman (aka Sir Ivan aka Ivan Wilzig).

I’m not going to analyse it for you in any depth but I’ve written a comment elsewhere. And there’s some background and discussion on Stuff White People Do, which btw does quite a good job in a critical analysis of a lot of stuff that could be described as ‘white (popular) culture,’ though I suspect as to yet nobody has yet made a serious effort to define this. But, in a quite cynical kind of way, I’m quite impressed with how the director actually managed to combine two major stereotypes about the continent – primitive, though sexy people engaged in everlasting tribal warfare and it’s oh so stunning wildlife – and the white man to the rescue trope in a music video of only 4:30 mins length. He even managed to squeeze in the stereotype of Africans as overtly sexualised beings. And, all this as background for, as my friend put it, the self-staging of some mediocre (judging by this song) techno singer as do-gooder.

See, and its against this background that I feel uneasy with the use of terms such as ‘primitive’ and ‘tribe/tribal’ in writing about Africa. Conceptualisations in Africa, by scholars, politicians and members of the wider public, might of course not carry such derogative connotations but over here they usually do ...

I'm sure there are more of them out there, but I'll leave it at that. They don't deserve the honour, don't you think? …

P.S. And, before you ask, yes I have since figured how to embed a Youtube video but I can’t be asked to bestow the honour (again, after all I posted it on Facebook to get my friends opinion and wrote a comment elsewhere) on this piece of mediocre music with its racist-sexist visual background.

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[1] Yeah, nobody makes the effort to distinguish different countries on that level of argument. Remember, Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to Write about Africa? That comment about writing about Africa as if it was a country, that was no joke. Its not that uncommon. And even those generally not unfamiliar with moving in the international arena might not always be able to distinguish between Switzterland, Austria, Lichtenstein and Burkina Faso, right Mr. Steinbrück?

Binyavanga Wainana: How to Write About Africa

Alright, I know I’ve read that before or at least bits of it reproduced elsewhere … but check out this article about how to or rather how not to write about Africa. Well, while I don’t think I’m writing about ‘Africa,’ but some specific contexts in northern Nigeria (and as we all know that term alone already gets me into trouble) I do think it’s a good reminder of what not to do, which kind of discourses better not to reproduce:

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

... (read more here)

And now let’s try to make it better … not just in ‘our’ writing about ‘Africa’.