Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Policy Impact of This Blog

By Biko Agozino

Sometimes the authorities listen to good ideas but the implementation often skews the ideas away from success. Finally, President Buhari has bought the idea that I blogged in April calling for ranches to be set up as a way of modernizing beef and dairy productions while avoiding clashes between herders and farmers. The retired General Buhari has just announced that soldiers would be sent to Argentina to learn ranching and return to set up ranches in Nigeria. Why only soldiers when the army of unemployed youth could be mobilized and empowered by being funded to be trained and enabled to run ranches as cooperatives across the country. Here is my original blog on the issue:


Friday, November 25, 2016

Decolonizing Criminology

By Biko Agozino

Do not let the smiles fool you. Yesterday and today, I have been privileged to see grown men and women shed tears profusely at the University of Wollongong, Australia, during the symposium on Indigenous Perspectives on Decolonising Criminology and Criminal Justice organized by Dr. Juan Tauri and colleagues in the Forum for Indigenous Research Excellence. It is rare to see such raw emotions at a scholarly symposium but this one was not just scholarly, it was a scholar-activism symposium with participants from the community who shared their survival of the dehumanizing effects of imperialistic social control, reflecting my methodology of committed objectivity. 


I am honored to see my own work being affirmed and being extended by colleagues from around the world. I am hopeful that the work we all are doing will result in the deepening of democracy through the pushing back of the legacies of colonialism and the control-freak state to allow more diversity, equality, fraternity, and liberty to the majority of the people suffering the consequences of race-class-gender authoritarian populism. I also shared my own experience as a survivor of genocide in Biafra, a fact that the world was reminded of by Amnesty International on 24 November in a report on the killing of 150 nonviolent Biafra commemorators in Nigeria in 3 months since August 2016. Coincidentally, the AI report was released as I was presenting my plenary on the 'withering away of the law thesis' in which I wondered why the postcolonial states have tended to cling to the genocidal and other repressive fetishes imposed by colonialism rather than continue the push for decolonization to its historic conclusions. But more importantly, why are even critical criminologists and community organizers afraid to demand the further decolonization of civil society for the benefit of all?

Monday, September 19, 2016

'Uninvited' by Kenyetta A.C. Hinckle

By Biko Agozino

On Sunday, 09/19/16, I heard an artist, Kenyetta Hinckle, open her exhibition on Virginia Tech campus with a talk about her reworking of colonial photographs of topless African women in sexualized poses. She gave them suggestive titles like 'Vendetta', 'Reprisal', 'Witness', 'The Sower' and called the entire series, ‘Uninvited’. These titles remind us of the fact dramatized by Fanon in critique of Freud when he suggested that some women invite rape by fantasizing about it whereas rape is by definition, uninvited or non-consensual, just as there is no such thing as colonization by invitation, despite assumptions that we asked for it. She wondered why people called her little African but scratcher as a child.


Kenyetta Hinckle also exhibited paintings of Tituba, the African Caribbean woman who was accused of being responsible for inducting Salem Massachusetts girls into witchcraft. For some reason, her work was displayed along the ‘Corridor Gallery’ and people kept streaming past during her engaging talk, making it look like a street arts performance.

Her work reminded me of attempts to justify the unjustifiable records of the postcolonial genocidal state. Interestingly, she said that when she was in Nigeria as a visiting professor at the University of Lagos, some of her colleagues told her that the topless photographs came from a time before 'civilization'. I told her how apt that was given that Sigmund Freud saw civilization as a violent exercise in the repression of the instinct for love and death, pleasure and pain. She spoke again to my Africana Philosophy of Nonviolence class on 09/19/2016

When I shared the story of her initial talk on Facebook, an art historian and visual artist challenged my Freudian interpretation as follows: ‘You know, of course, that the Nigerians she spoke to had something entirely different in mind. I hope you also pointed out that they are wrong, and they cannot be wrong and right all at once. As an aside, Biko, have you noticed how the vast majority of younger Nigerians who graduate from Nigerian universities have little grasp of grammar in any language?’ I responded as follows:

‘They are obviously wrong as Cheikh Anta Diop proved long ago with Civilization or Barbarism, with Precolonial Black Africa, and with The African Origin of Civilization. But at the unconscious level, they are also right as Freud would argue. The artist understood that they were suggesting barbarism and she said that she was shocked because as an African American woman, she could be seen in the role of neo-Tarzanism given her effort to cover up the innocence or Dadaism of the women with her African fractal patterns of drawings that looked like thin veils. She also reported that on her trips across Europe, white men were frequently flashing their genitals at her under the assumption that she must be a sex worker and when she complained to her white male professor, he asked what she was wearing as if it was her fault. She said that she was appalled to hear in Nigeria that the police routinely shoot non-violent protesters to death but she was told to hush it because that was the order of things under neocolonialism.

‘Regarding the murder of the English language by Nigerian graduates, I will agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that they can serve even if their grammar is ungrammatical. So like Fela Kuti, Naija musicians, and Chief Zeburudaya, let the creative ones go on adding value with the ginger in the swagger of their grammar. The artist noticed the peculiar grammar of our broken English because everyone kept telling her, 'welcome back', when it was only her first visit. Freud also argued that the repressed keeps returning to futilely challenge the patriarchal authority with infantile dreams of killing the father to marry the mother, trying to repress his own instinct to love and death, and seeking to exploit nature. Fanon said that such Oedipal neurosis was not known in the Caribbean, perhaps because female-headed families were more common, but also maybe because the instinct for imperialism is peculiarly European. Thanks for your usual provocation. You should offer VT an exhibition.’

Then, one of my former students from Trinidad and Tobago and now a Lecturer commented as follows: ‘Oh my how I wish I was at VT right now’. I replied as follows: ‘Thanks, I will report on the discussions for the benefit of your … class. But note that Chief LeRoy Clarke and Shawn Peters, among others, have been offering similar 'pain things' (paintings) about the Caribbean crisis of control-freak societies. I hope that your class is watching them and not only the TV.’

Another Facebook friend also commented saying: ‘Interesting perspectives on "civilization" - I was unaware of Freud's comments on the subject. It reminds me of the day, when I was teaching at Ascension High School in Eleme, Nigeria, that one of my students asked about "civilized" countries, making it clear he felt that European countries were civilized and African ones, including Nigeria, of course, were not. I was not terribly surprised by his comments, but disturbed by them, nonetheless. The other students, (5th formers, I believe they were) obviously agreed with him. I began my rebuttal by pointing out the horrors inflicted on others by such Europeans as Hitler and Stalin, people from two of the countries this student thought were civilized. I said that Nigeria was indeed "civilized," that it contained some of the finest (and civilized - in the most positive use of that word) people in the world, and that we have to be careful not to denigrate countries due to a perceived lack of "civilization" nor feel inferior to countries that had no superiority over any African nation.’

And I responded, saying: ‘Thanks for sharing your critical thinking with your Nigerian students. Dr. Assata Zerai also reported that when she was a visiting professor at the University of Ife, undergraduate students kept telling her that we were wicked sinners until the missionaries came to save us. Freud presented his unusual hypotheses in Civilization and its Discontents and also in Moses and Monotheism. But the hypotheses run through his body of work. He believes that the Id is the wild one bent on gratifying all pleasure instincts. But soon the Ego emerges through socialization to check the selfishness of the Id by teaching the little motherfucker that the mother was not accessible to his Eros. Frustrated, the brothers leave home to found their own families where they repress their own sons while still battling with their despotic father with the childish dream of liberation in the form of patricide. Finally the Superego comes in to regulate the instinct for pleasure by imposing the work ethic that makes people sweat for their living when they would rather avoid all work and simply enjoy erotic pleasure (with the exception of the privileged few such as artists and intellectuals who may truly enjoy their work). The trick is to let people believe that by working, they are simply battling with nature and conquering it in order to exploit it.

Thus civilization is an endless exercise in repression of natural instincts of Eros and Nirvana. Herbert Marcuse (Eros and Civilization) subjected Freud to a detailed critique in which he demonstrated that this idea that repression equals civilization runs through Western Philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel before Nietzsche dissented with his queer sense of morality as immorality. Marx, Lenin, Mao, Du Bois, Diop, Nkrumah, Fanon, Rodney, Cabral, Toyo, Achebe, Davis, hooks, Amadiume, Nzegwu, Collins, Ekwe-Ekwe, and Hall are my model critics of Freud because they revealed that what was mistaken as Eros was mainly the profit motive of greedy capitalists who would not hesitate to kill their fathers or sons to maximize profits. Freud speculated that some of my model critics did not really end repression but actually founded repressive regimes that they brazenly called the dictatorship of the proletariat in their efforts to refuse the 'reality principle' that civilization progresses through repression. Marcuse disagreed with this speculation by Freud and insisted that a non-repressive civilization is possible when we allow our imagination to roam free in the arts and sciences without being bogged down by the 'performance principle' that is prone to aggression in the psychology of Freud. I have critiqued Freud elsewhere on his view that Africans, Aboriginal Australians and Maoris were extremely neurotic for their stringent maintenance of incest taboos compared to Europeans who had no qualms about marrying their first cousins. Today, science has proved that those 'natives' that Freud called barbaric in this context knew what they were doing because inbreeding weakens the genetic pool.

During her presentation to my class, Kenyetta introduced the land of Kentifica which she discovered and mapped as the intersection of globalized Africana homeland and Diaspora with its own handmade musical instruments (as is the norm in Africa), with food shared publicly as performance (common in Africa), with colorful hair designs and textiles covered in African fractal patterns (also common in Africa). She said that she resented being called Oyibo (European) in Nigeria and retorted to her seamstress that she spoke the way she did because some of our people sold others into slavery. I intervened to remind the class that one of the books we were reading for the Introduction to African Studies class was How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney. That book proved that it was not really a slave trade but a class war in which a few African chiefs collaborated with their European class allies to wage war and capture Africans to be enslaved. The rest of our ancestors fought hard to prevent our beloved from being captured and enslaved and the struggle continued through the middle passage to the plantations. We are all survivors meeting one another against the odds.

About the artist…


Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her practice fluctuates between collaborations and participatory projects with alternative gallery spaces within various communities to projects that are intimate and based upon her private experiences in relationship to historical events and contexts. A term that has become a mantra for her practice is the "Historical Present," as she examines the residue of history and how it affects our contemporary world perspective. Hinkle received her MFA in Art & Critical Studies Creative Writing from CalArts and BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Her work and experimental writing has been exhibited and performed Fore at The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, Project Row Houses in Houston, TX, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA and The Museum of Art at The University of New Hampshire. Hinkle was the youngest artist to participate in the multi-generational biennial Made in LA 2012. Hinkle’s work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Artforum, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Hinkle was listed on The Huffington Post’s Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know. She is also the recipient of several fellowships and grants including: The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award, The Cultural Center for Innovation’s Investing in Artists Grant, Social Practice in Art (SPart-LA), and The Jacob K. Javits Full Fellowship for Graduate Study. Hinkle is a recent alumna of the US Fulbright Program in which she conducted research at the University of Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria.


Friday, May 20, 2016

Symposium on the Igbo of the Southeast Nigeria


Symposium  on the 50th Anniversary of the publication of The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria by Professor V.C. Uchendu, held in Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, May 2, 2016

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Details of My New Book on Arthur Nwankwo

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ISBN: 978-2904-53-8 (Paper); 978-2904-54-6 (Hard Cover) First Edition (C) Agozino 2016

Blurb:
This book situates the socio-political thought of Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo within the paradigm of Africana Studies as a way of encouraging more scholars in the field to pay more attention to contributions from scholars based in Africa. At the same time, scholars in African Studies should radicalize the field by embracing the revolutionary field of Africana Studies to make all the respected African Studies Institute in the world to evolve into Africana Studies Institutes. Nwankwo’s revolutionary theory and praxis are challenging to academic scholars in Africa who appear to be satisfied with quoting theorists from Europe without adequate originality in the development of indigenous knowledge systems for the explanation and transformation of the enduring conditions in Africa. This book differs from the previous tributes to Nwankwo by his admirers in the sense that this is not a tribute but a constructive critique and also because this book goes beyond the theoretical and historical texts of Nwankwo to read his creative writings inter-textually.

Praise for the book:
… critically incisive study of outstanding intellectuel engagé Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo by Biko Agozino, one of the most prolific and accomplished scholars of his generation.”  - Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Visiting Professor in Graduate Programme of Constitutional Law, Universidade de Fortaleza, Brazil.

"The book is very informative, lucid and analytical. It provides a rigorous analysis of one of Nigeria's and Africa's foremost activist and revolutionary (Arthur Nwankwo) who challenged the oppressive and unjust rule of military and civilian regimes in Nigeria. Furthermore, the book elucidates the complexity of the Nigerian state and the position of the Igbo Nation. The book is compulsory reading for all those interested in both the Nigerian and African project." Professor Akpan Hogan Ekpo, Director General, West African Institute For Financial And Economic Management (WAIFEM), Central Bank of Nigeria Learning Centre and Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

‘This is the first systematic study of the ideas and praxis of Arthur Nwankwo. Biko took a studied and methodical approach to Nwankwo's worldview and political practice in a critical and yet fair minded way. It is an inspiring work in the realm of African political thought which scholars and activists will find useful.’ Professor Abubakar Momoh, Director of the National Electoral Institute, Abuja, and Professor of Political Science, Lagos State University, Lagos.

‘The book Critical, Creative and Centered Scholar-Activism: The Fourth Dimensionalism of Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo by Professor Agozino presents a brilliant, refreshingly in-depth understanding of the works of the great African intellectual, Arthur Nwankwo. The book provides uncommon insight into the possible motivations and reasoning behind certain beliefs of Dr. Arthur Nwankwo as espoused through some of his published works. Reading through Professor Agozino's work should remind the present and future generation of Africans, that life, to be well lived must be founded on values, principles and moral convictions. Writing the book must clearly have been a sacrificial exercise embarked upon for the sole purpose of bringing what should come to light, to light. Generations to come owe a mountain of debt to professor Agozino for this selfless act.’ Dr. Chika Ezeanya, Assistant Professor of African Business Studies, University of Rwanda, Kigali.

‘It seems safe to say that  CRITICAL, CREATIVE AND CENTRED SCHOLAR ACTIVISM: THE FOURTH DIMENSIONALISM OF AGWUNCHA ARTHUR NWANKWO will be one of the best social science books of the year in Nigeria and may be of the decade. Biko, arguably one of the worlds leading experts on sociology and Africana Studies, made a powerful case for Afrocentricity: "AFROCENTRICITY … DOES NOT START FROM THE PREMISE THAT EUROCENTRICISM IS ALWAYS WRONG BUT FROM THE FACT THAT WHATEVER IS THE FOCUS OF ANY SCHOLARSHIP SHOULD BE PLACED AT THE CENTRE OF SUCH SCHOLARSHIP". By this, Afrocentricity as an approach, is elevated to a global principle with broader human implications.’ Dr. Augustine Obelagu Agu, Retired Senior Social Policy Officer, UNICEF, Independent Policy Consultant, Texas, USA.

I enjoyed reading every single line of your work; and I’m quite surprised that you had to produce this solid work in 2 months. That’s an incredible turn out time for an incisive scholarly work of this nature. It’s a big lesson for me who has been playing around endlessly with two manuscripts for years. … Your big brain is, therefore, also partly responsible for the global warming.’ Dr. Ifeanyi Ezeonu, Professor of Sociology, Brock University, Canada. 

About the Author:
Biko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. He is the author of the following books - Today Na Today (Poetry), 2013; The Debt Penalty (Play), 2010; ADAM: Africana Drug-Free Alternative Medicine, 2006; Counter-Colonial Criminology, 2003; Pan African Issues in Crime and Justice (co-edited), 2004; Nigeria: Democratising a Militarised Civil Society, (co-authored) 2001; Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Migration Research (edited), 2000; and Black Women and the Criminal Justice System, 1997. Also Director-Producer-Editor of Reparative Justice, 30 minutes, color, African Independent Television, Lagos, Nigeria, 2002; Director-Producer of CLR James: The Black Jacobins Sociology Series, 2008; Director-Producer, 'Shouters and the Control Freak Empire', Winner of the Best International Short Documentary, Columbia Gorge Film Festival, USA, 2011. Editor-In-Chief of the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, and Series Editor, Ashgate Publishers Interdisciplinary Research Series in Ethnic, Gender and Class Relations. Ph.D. (Edinburgh); MPhil. (Cambridge); B.Sc. First Class Hons (Calabar).

Book Review Editors of Journals who wish to receive review copies and those who wish to order copies and or arrange readings should contact the publishers or the author directly:

Publishers Contact: Fourth Dimension Publishing Co. Ltd, House 8, First Avenue, City Layout, New Haven, Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria. Phone: +2348035511487; +2348055790009; email: chairman@arthurnwankwo.com or Arthur.nwankwo@yahoo.com www.arthurnwankwo.com
 
Author Contact: Dr. Biko Agozino, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, 225 Stanger Street, 562 McBryde Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24073; Phone: 1-540-231-7699 (Office); Fax: 1-540-231-3860. Email: bagozino@gmail.com or agozino@vt.edu blogsite: www.massliteracy.blogspot.com

Sunday, April 17, 2016

FOREIGN POLICY QUERIES FOR HILLARY CLINTON

--> By Biko Agozino

When it comes to Foreign Policy, former Secretary of State, former US Senator and former First Lady of the US, Hilary Clinton, is obviously the most experienced candidate seeking the nomination of either of the two main political parties for the 2016 US presidential elections.

It has been said that Clinton had some successes in promoting schooling for Afghan girls when she was Secretary of State and that she was in the room when President Obama ordered the capture or killing of Osama Bin Laden but these would not be enough for her to run as a foreign policy achiever.

Her Democratic Party opponent for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, has questioned her judgment (not her qualification) on key foreign policy decisions while the leading Republican Party contender for the nomination, the billionaire Donald Trump, has said that she is vulnerable on foreign policy issues.

A close look at the records of Mrs. Clinton does not reveal any specific achievements despite her experience as the candidate who had visited more foreign countries diplomatically, compared to the other candidates. This article calls on the Clinton campaign to explain the following questionable records in her foreign policy experience and highlight her specific achievements at the three stages of her long experience of public service.

AS FIRST LADY OF THE US

As First Lady, Mrs. Clinton reported in her memoir, Living History, that when she attended the inauguration ceremony of President Nelson Mandela, she was warned by State Department briefers that Fidel Castro said that he would like to meet her and shake her hand and exchange some words but that she must avoid him at all costs because a picture of such a meeting could be used for propaganda purposes. As a result, according to her, she spent the time in the same room with Castro running from corner to corner whenever she thought that Castro was walking towards her. She described her conduct as ‘ridiculous’. What does such a ridiculous conduct say about her as a leader in foreign policy especially when it comes to normalizing ties with Cuba?

Mrs. Clinton supported NAFTA and other trade agreements that shifted the jobs of US workers abroad without any plan for new industries to create more jobs for poor workers in the US. But she could be given credit in the sense that the Clinton White House left the economy in a better shape than it found it and the blame for wrecking the economy goes more to George W. Bush, although the impact of job outsourcing began being felt more during the subsequent administration.

Mrs. Clinton did not say anything as First Lady to call for US help to stop the Rwanda genocide. Maybe she tried to advocate help for the victims but this is not well known. The disastrous intervention in Somalia that included the shooting down of a US Black Hawk helicopter and loss of troops who also killed thousands of Somali people may have made the First Lady and her husband reluctant to advocate more interventions in Africa.

Mrs. Clinton said nothing to stop 40 pharmaceutical companies from suing the administration of Nelson Mandela in 1998 with the support of the Clinton White House. The Vice President, Al Gore, led the pressure against South Africa and a bipartisan letter was signed by legislators with threats of trade retaliation to force the government of South Africa to purchase exorbitant patented HIV/AIDS drugs from the US rather than the inexpensive generic drugs from India.

It was only after AIDS activists demonstrated and raised questions about whether the Clinton administration valued the profits of big corporations more than the lives of millions of patients that Bill Clinton came out in 2000 to admit that the South African law did not infringe on US patent law. The administration of George W. Bush quickly resolved the case by starting the President’s Initiative on AIDS to buy the drugs and donate them to patients at home and abroad and the pharmaceutical companies dropped their suit in 2001. Mr. Mandela also remained on the US list of suspected ‘terrorists’ until the Bush administration removed his name in 2008.

AS US SENATOR FROM NEW YORK

Mrs. Clinton voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and which did not have weapons of mass destruction. As a result, the whole of the Middle East was destabilized at the cost of hundreds of thousands of the lives of Iraqi civilians, 5,000 US troops who died with many more wounded, and at a cost of more than one trillion dollars. The rise of the Islamic State is directly linked to that bad judgment in support of regime change.

While running for the Democratic Party nomination against Barrack Obama in 2008, Mrs. Clinton also bragged about her Foreign Policy experience compared to the Freshman Senator. One of her claims of foreign policy leadership was a false claim that she and her daughter, Chelsea, were ducking bullets on a visit to war-thorn Bosnia. She quickly withdrew that claim when it was explained to her that it was not possible because US commanders would be failing in their duty if they exposed the First Lady to such a situation.

Also during the 2008 Democratic Party Primaries debates, she claimed that Barrack Obama was naïve for proposing that the US should talk to foreign enemies to try to resolve some issues diplomatically but Obama insisted that diplomacy remained a key part of US foreign policy and that militarism was always the last option to be avoided when possible. Did Mrs. Clinton make a good judgment then?

AS SECRETARY OF STATE

Mrs. Clinton joined NATO to bomb Libya, the only country in Africa to have achieved the Middle Income category in the Human Development Index of the UNDP. This destabilized the country enough to make it a hot bed for terrorists, claimed the lives of US diplomats in Benghazi along with the lives of many innocent Libyans, and raised questions about Mrs. Clinton’s judgments on Foreign Policy matters.

It has also been reported that weapons were shipped Illegally from Libya to Syrian Opposition forces while Clinton was the Secretary of State with the result that the civil war in that country was escalated and ISIS became an enabled huge threat. Her proposed solution was to impose a No Fly Zone in Syria whereas the ISIS forces did not have any warplanes and so her judgment was that regime change was the only solution whereas it was not clear who would take over after the overthrow of Assad. John Kerry as Secretary of State achieved a lot more very quickly by negotiating with Russia to remove the stockpiles of chemical weapons held by the Syrian regime.

Similarly, the coup that overthrew the elected government in Ukraine took place under Mrs. Clinton and it was reported that State Department officials under her went there to distribute candies to right-wing extremists celebrating the coup without knowing that the result was going to be a splitting of the country into two and a brutal intractable civil war. Rather than escalate the conflict by sending in US and NATO troops, the Kerry State Department chose to use economic sanctions against Russia to try and bring about a ceasefire.

Under the Clinton State Department, there was little effort to restart the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. John Kerry re-started the talks from day one as soon as he took over from Mrs. Clinton. Bernie Sanders said during their debate in New York that Mrs. Clinton had every right to present herself as a friend of Israel but added that resolving the conflict in the Middle East must involve a strategy for treating the Palestinians with more decency.

The Clinton State Department was not able to negotiate with Iran to subject the country’s nuclear program to international inspections and make sure that it did not involve a weapons program. John Kerry was able to get international partners to reach such an agreement with Iran in less time than Mrs. Clinton spent as Secretary of State.

Finally, the Clinton State Department did nothing to normalize ties with Cuba even though this was the policy preference of Obama from day one as President of the US. Once again, the Kerry State Department prioritized this issue and succeeded in reopening the US embassy in Havana within three years to end the isolation of the US as the only country in the Americas with no diplomatic ties with Cuba, allowing President Obama to visit the island as the first US president to do so in a long time. Now, Cuban Americans can visit their families more easily for the first time.

These are questions around the claims of Foreign Policy experience by Secretary Hilary Clinton. Her campaign needs to answer these questions with specific achievements to the satisfaction of the electorate or pivot away from making undocumented claims that she had more foreign policy success than any other candidate.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

OFILI'S BLACK MADONNA

 By Biko Agozino
 
The art of Chris Ofili causes offense to powerful interest groups the way that his historical subject, The Virgin Mary, caused and still causes offense to the non sensibility of certain communities of interpretation. The idea of a virgin mother was abominable in her historical era and she would have been stoned to death had the New Age man, Joseph, not accepted to play the role of a surrogate father to the child of his fiancee.


This is why we should avoid religious sectarianism and political posturing in our reading of what seems to be a historical excavation by Ofili for the purpose of recovering a lost tradition that is threatened with extinction. This work by Ofili seems to argue that The Virgin Mary was black. There is anthropological evidence in support of this argument. For example, Frazier's classic comparative anthropology, The Golden Bough, documents evidence that ancient Egypt was the first to develop the mythology of the Virgin Mother of the Sun God whose birth day was celebrated on the 25th day of December many centuries before the birth of Jeso Christi.
 
If Mary was blonde and blue eyed the way that Western artists portray her, it is impossible to understand why the Roman army and owners of Motels could have turned away a heavily pregnant blonde and blue eyed mother on the pretext that the motels were full. Such a treatment is reserved for black couples in racist cultures although racism would not be the same in those days as it is today. Even with a husband, the pregnant virgin could not find lodging in any hotel because she was a Black Madonna. Toni Morrison narrates this painful aspect of the black experience in her latest novel, Paradise, where even heavily pregnant black women were refused rest and forced to trek for miles to virgin land. The Black Madonna was turned away with the familiar excuse, 'No blacks, no donkeys, no bullshit'. And so, we are told, the holy Bambino had to be born surrounded by sheep, donkeys and, of course, smeared with dung!
 
If this was not enough indication of the lowly origin of the beloved Christ, we are told that the Virgin Mary was chosen because she was a maid, not a princess or a queen. Those who deny her African ancestry are forced to agree that the Wise Men came with gifts from Africa. The star that guided them was an Eastern Star, right? They had to be in Africa in order to follow an Eastern Star to Jerusalem. If they were from Persia in the European continent, as some white supremacists would have us believe, then the Eastern star would have led them to Moscow. They were from the East, not the Middle East and not from the Far East. Geographically, that East is Africa because Jerusalem is to the East of Africa and so travelers who follow an Eastern Star to Jerusalem must have started their journey from Africa.
 
Historically, there is evidence that the young family fled to Africa to save the life of the young Christ. Mary fled home to her kinsmen and kinswomen in Africa and she was taken care of, no questions asked, because Africans have had a longer tradition of belief in the ability of virgins to have Divine children. This is similar to the story in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart where Okonkwo had to go to Mbanta, his maternal kindred, when he was forced into exile by calamity. So the thesis of Ofili's essay is not as strange or as offensive as it seems. The Virgin Mary was and could only have been black.
 
Chris Ofili is not only a Catholic but also almost a Christ by name! His essay is challenging Modernist ideas of progress and increased human happiness to acknowledge that the Virgin Mary is a sad figure today due mainly to neglect and ridicule. He seems to have demonstrated, indirectly, that King Herod is still in power in New York and that he is still ordering the massacre of innocent creations. The controversy over the work reminds us that in spite of the posturing to being an enlightened age, we still clamor for the dung-smeared virgin to be excluded from respectable Guest Houses and confined to the manger once more. The same people who are chanting the rosary in condemnation of a homage to the Black Madonna would have been the first to chant, 'Crucify him, crucify him!' when Pilate gave them a chance to parole the innocent lamb.
 
Ofili seems to be arguing that the true origins of the Black Madonna have been hidden, downtrodden like dung; but that the Black Madonna is far from being a waste product. Rather, the dung represents manure, fertility, a source of life and a source of fuel, energy and strength. Blackness signifies dung to white supremacists except when it says that their bank account is in the black - an obvious reference to slave-holding measures of wealth and worth.
 
Do you know that in Scotland, there is a mythology of the black foot? If the first person to step into your house after the New Year is black, that is an omen of affluence or in plain English, an indication that you will have your own house slaves to wait at your own great table. John Dunn, the Scottish poet illustrates this with a poem about 'One Blackamoore' in which a French merchant gave the king of Scotland a gift of an African Princess. The black woman was so beautiful that the king decided to organize royal battles in her honor. The prize for the winner was that they had to kiss her black ass. Of course, the king always won the battles! This is probably why many European cultures have cults dedicated to the worship of the Black Madonna in the spirit of capitalism, hoping to be made rich and prosperous at the same time that they were using a ship called The Jesus to engineer the African holocaust.
 
Jesus Christ once told his disciples that if no one believed his gospel, he would turn rocks into his obedient followers. Chris Ofili seems to be saying that Westerners no longer believe in virginity, period. Anyone who remains a virgin until marriage today in the West is to be pitied and ridiculed rather than admired or venerated. Similarly the elephant was, once upon a time, a venerated being around the world. Indians worshiped it and tamed it to transport them to war, Hannibal used it to carry his strong army to Europe, the Igbo of Nigeria sing a victory song that compares them to a community of elephants (Enyi Mba Enyi) - suggesting strength, fearlessness, intelligence, resilience, respect for elders and egalitarianism all at once.
 
But the elephant has since become a laughing stock. Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, laments this in his elegy to Ajanaku, a dead elephant whose skeleton and yam pounding mortar-sized molars are awesome and whose spirit seemed to be imploring humanity to celebrate the living elephant and not the dead one. Today, the elephant is more to be remembered for such laughable metaphors as a white elephant or an ivory tower. The French came to West Africa and did not see the elephants, how much less their mountainous dung. All they saw was ivory in a place that they tried to name the Ivory Coast! That was a better name, however, compared to the British who called the coast a Slave Coast long before it occurred to them that Gold Coast sounded better.
 
Ofili seems to be saying that the miracle of the elephant dung (how could one being do such a mountain of poo?) has been ignored, denigrated, marginalized for too long. He goes on to show that some cultures still value the dung for fertility and energy reasons. The lesson of his work of art is that Africans should take this to a higher level of technology. Africans should re-learn the culture of taming the elephant for transportation, agricultural and energy purposes.
 
The wider lesson from Ofili's essay is that we should try to see the beauty in things that are different. We should be more tolerant of diversity or we will continue the genocidal culture of massacring the innocent just to keep a clique in power. You do not have to be a Catholic or a Rocket Scientist to know that the vilification of Ofili is ill informed. Let us join him and chant the rosary, 'Hail Black Maria'!
 
First Published in 1999           'Ofili’s Black Madonna', October 26, http://www.artnespaper.com/flash/Agozino.htm also published in The Guardian, October 31, http://ngrguasrdiannews.com/editorial/en765801.htm