Continuing thinking about responsibility, and, in particular Africa and the problems that plague that continent, I read a very interesting piece I came across for work by UNSW Prof, Gavin Kitching. Kitching is head of Politics at UNSW, and is something of an expert on Wittgenstein. This leads him to have a tendency to see through many things that simply confuse the issue in academic debates. He writes wonderfully clearly. This piece is well worth the reading, for giving an understanding of what is at stake in speaking about aid to African states, but also for understanding your position with regard to Africa if you happen to live in a – for want of better terms – western, developed country. Importantly, I think, this isn’t a piece of abstracted academic observations; it is a piece that points to problems of both head and heart.
“I left African studies because what was happening to a continent and a people I had grown to love left me appalled and confused. But I also left it because I felt that the emotionaly stressed and guilt-ridden debate which arose within the African studies community about the causes of Africa’s decline was itself a powerful testimony to a fact even more depressing in its implications than anything that was happening in and to Africa. This fact is, to put it simply, that the most damaging legacy of colonialism and imperialism in the world has not been the global economic structures and relations it has left behind nor the patterns of modern ‘neo-imperialist’ economic and cultural relations of which it was the undoubted historical forerunner. Rather its most damaging legacy has been the psychological Siamese twins of endemic guilt on the European side and endemic psychological dependence on the African side, legacies which make truth telling hard and the adult taking of responsibility even harder. Imperialism fucked up the heads of so many people whom it touched – both colonialists and colonized (Frantz Fanon was absolutely and deeply right about that) and until that – ultimately depressing – legacy of its existence is finally killed, neither Africa nor African studies will be able to make real progress. It was that conclusion which led me – very sadly – to leave both behind.”
Gavin Kitching, Why I gave up African studies, (2000)
Filed under: Africa, Politics, experiences, quotations, random thoughts, responsibility
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