Historical Distortion and Human Degradation: The “Tribe” as a Eurocentric Mentality than African Reality

Introduction If by tribe we mean a social group that shares a single territory, a single language, a single political unit, a shared religious tradition, a similar economic system, and common cultural practices, such a group is rarely found in the real world. These characteristics almost never correspond precisely with each other today, nor did they at any time in the past. (Lowe et al 1997; my emphasis) The debate usually re-emerges every so many years in Kenyan [and possibly other] newspaper columns. It could be that every generation goes through the same debate which means that more work needs to be done to eradicate the term along with malaria. (1) (Mukoma Wa Ngugi http://h-net.msu.edu, April 2007) The "tribe" or something presumably "tribal" has been an enduring feature of the suggestions. Remaining weaknesses are of course my own. debate on Black Africa since the nineteenth century (Mafeje 1971; Vail 1989; etc.). Colonial administrative necessities and the then fledging discipline of classical anthropology have had a lot to do with this, (2) as had many receptive Africans, intellectually or as a survival mechanism within a 'tribe'-defining colonial order (Davidson 1992: 101, passim). Yet, far from being a historical specificity of particular regions, the "tribe" as it appears in modern social science, news media, and popular discourse, is rather a cognitive construct of capitalist hierarchy. It is historical as a concept of identity and power, and not as an analytical category. As such, the "tribe" is an expression of Eurocentrism in general and not simply of colonialism and anthropology; hence, its common acceptance, along with 'Oriental despotism,' by 'bourgeois' and Marxist circles alike, as evident in the "civilizational" explanations of history (Wallerstein 1992; Amin 1989; Blaut 1993; Valensi 1993). (3) In Black Africa, while some have demystified the concept of "tribe" or have become indifferent to it, for others it still constitutes a dilemma: on the one hand, the stigma of the 'primitive,' 'barbaric' and 'atavistic,' the concept connotes, and on the other, the 'undeniable reality' it seems to describe. Thus to deny the "tribe" is to deny the African condition as it 'really is' (e.g. Ekeh 1990 cf. Amin 1997, Melber 1985, Mafeje 1971, Vail 1989, Wallerstein 1979). This of course is an old dilemma among the Western educated (Davidson 1992). One such agonizing figure was the Ghanaian (Gold Coast) clergyman Attoh Ahuma. While paying homage to Africa in the abstract, urging Africans to be proud of their continent and its cultures, Ahuma's inner conviction was reflected in the position that "we must emerge from the savage backwoods and come into the open where nations are made" (quoted in Davidson 1992: 39). Such a wholesale self-indictment may find less sympathy among Africans today. Yet it is hardly surprising that one of the most stinging criticisms today from one African to another is to charge him or her with "tribalism." As a form of anti-ethnic discrimination in social institutions and other relations (see Hengari 2007), this of course is a genuine language of resistance beyond the conceptual meaning of the "tribe." That is, contrary to Peter Ekeh (1990) and others, the language of "tribalism" by Africans neither necessitates nor legitimates the analytical (or even terminological) acceptance of the "tribe" (Lowe et al 1997). (4) As a phenomenon of hierarchy and a status definition of savagery, (5) the "tribe" (in, and given, the colonial context) represents some of the key forms of violence--in the relations and processes of exploitation, historical distortion, and the general assault on human dignity--that Fanon's social critique exposes. For Fanon (1963: 37), such violence expresses the necessarily unequal and "divided" "colonial world" (see later below). (6) Equally important is the role of power-related knowledge in the (psychic/ideological) creation of the colonized. …