Culture and Imaginaries of Renewal
Keynote by Felwine Sarr
Raw Academy, Dakar, May 2017
The aim of what I propose in this reading is to question culture as a space for the production of meaning and significance, but also as a space for projects and an agent of social transformation.
This (culture) through its possibilities of informing and reconfiguring the imaginary, has an impact on reality, its perception, and consequently on social practices. Culture in its broadest sense will be considered here as a space where social consensus and social norms are renegotiated, but also as the site of ruptures, recompositions and renewals.
The concept of the imaginary will be interrogated as well as its relationship with artistic practices. If culture can be defined as a set of sociological and anthropological traits that distinguish a given social group. It will be considered here first as all works of the mind requiring creativity in their production, linked to the education of the individual and the production of symbolic meanings: scientific, artistic, literary culture, the arts and various ways of inhabiting time….
Culture is therefore a way of seizing and exploring reality in all its dimensions.
The imaginary relates to the ability of a group or an individual to represent the world, using a network of image associations, which give it meaning. The imaginary appears to be a central function of human psyche.
On a collective level, the production of myths also meets a crucial need for the group to amalgamate its values, in a story of origins and ends, which holds the world together in a coherent narrative. Each human group constructs its own imaginary.
The genius of human cultures lies in the creation of symbolic languages that allow meaning to be established in a network of their own images. Gaston Bachelard, based on his reading of the symbolism of all the great human traditions, asserts that: ” Our belonging to the world of images is stronger, more constitutive of our being, than our belonging to the world of ideas “. The imaginary is therefore
a space of freedom through which man gives himself to see the world and engages with it. For Deleuze, ” the imaginary is an indistinguishability of the real and the unreal “.
The articulation of this perpetual space of creation that is Culture, and the question of renewal through work on the imaginary will be the main thread of my talk.
The African continent is diverse. From northern Algeria to the Cape of Good Hope, it is home to an abundance of different cultures, peoples, historical backgrounds, geographies, modes of social and political organisation and timeframes. Despite this diversity, which is one of its riches, it seems to me that the African nations share the same destiny, face the same historical challenges, have the same recent history, but above all, share the project of an Africa that must once again become its own power. The continent of Africa is facing many challenges. These are political, educational, economic, security, etc.
It’s obviously about resolving the issue of social and political imbalances and meeting the basic needs of the African people. But above all, we must not allow ourselves to be trapped by a mindset of necessity. A civilisation is not exhausted in its material values; these are complemented by cultural (spiritual) values that give it meaning.
Also, it seems to me that the most urgent of its challenges is to complete its emancipation and build a civilisational project that allows individuals and societies to flourish, but also that proposes to the world a rise in humanity (Fanon).
It often seems to us that one of the privileged spaces for meeting these challenges is that of politics. This is not my feeling. The space of politics is certainly fundamental managing the City, establishing fair rules for the game, for sharing resources, building citizenship are tasks devolved to politics. However collective psychology, behaviours, attitudes, ways of being and doing, the relationship to oneself, the relationship to the world, are spaces strongly structured by Culture in its extensive sense as a space for the production of meaning and significance, but also for the edification of women and men (of the humanity of women and men).
If there is one area where the African continent, despite the upheavals of a turbulent recent history, has kept its power to radiate and disseminate intact, it is indeed that of culture. Whether in music, painting, graphic arts or any other art form, there is no art form in the world that has not been influenced by African productions. Music speaks for itself in this respect.
This power of dissemination can be translated into economic capital, and this is the point of the reflection around cultural industries. But this creative force can also be understood and used as a power of self-transformation and reinvention. Because that’s what it’s all about, to face up to present challenges and envisage futures, we need to reinvent ourselves. That’s why I’ve chosen to frame this talk around the notion of renewal, self-invention and cultural mutation
The reinvention of self
Culture as a place for self-reinvention.
We are slowly emerging from several centuries of alienation and the traces of this, in our collective unconscious, are still vivid. There is no need to list the manifestations of these, they are numerous the latest xenophobic violence in South Africa can be classified in this register : that of self-hatred…
The colonial fact led to a disruption of the basic personality of African social groups, substituted the old systems of production of meaning by new ones, exercised extreme political and symbolic violence ; and this left traces in the psyche of a majority of Africans, including those who did not live through the colonial moment through the transmission of a trans-generational memory. The violence of post-colonial states that have made their populations vulnerable (by failing to fulfil their regalian functions of providing for their well-being) ; but also by violently repressing their aspirations for greater equity and dignity ; have also left deep traces in the psyche of individuals
Hence the need to rebuild psychic infrastructures, self-esteem, to emerge from self-shaming and to heal painful memories. Also, culture can be an instance of the cure. Music and religions, which are arts of participation, can play an important role in this process, offering the possibility of communion, catharsis, and the transformation of the group into act (a society is only effective when it becomes a power to act in common).
Man does not have immediate relations with the world. His experience is configured by mediations that construct his universe. Also, the question of putting the world into representation is important. An important question is to know to what extent images produced in Africa (about Africa) (photography, cinema, visual arts) can contribute to a displacement of certain representations, to a reconfiguration of the territories of the visible, the dicible and the thinkable…
Cultural productions are a space of discourse and representation. They must convey an image reconciled with oneself (work in photography, cinema (Félicité), documentary film (image of African sorcerers)
Renewal.
Culture articulates a discourse on the present, it echoes existential questions, but it is also a place from which to envisage the future. Society reproduces itself in its imaginary space. This is the missing part without which no future is conceivable. One question might be, where will the renewal come from?
Renewal will only come if it emanates from the psychic structures of the community. It will not come from an order imposed from above : the law, politics, or institutions. These can impose an order, but in a very costly way if it is not internalised, I would even say appropriated, if it does not elicit deep support (questions of civility, citizenship, management of public space).
The westernisation of Africa has been underway since colonisation : official languages, education system, administration, economic organisation, institutions, have taken on western forms on the African continent. For all that, social structures are reluctant to completely embrace these forms and the value systems that flow from them.
There is a disjunction between grafted institutional forms and mental frameworks and systems of meaning that continue to produce in various spaces, different forms of organisation of these. There is something hybrid about the unfinished business, the ideal form that is still being sought, the train that has not yet reached cruising speed. These forms in gestation indicate that a work of re-articulation is in progress.
Social, political and educational systems can change in fifty years : this was the case in colonial Africa. But systems of thought, worldviews and epistemic frameworks derived from African cultures, as well as the profound philosophy of life they convey, continue to drive African societies.
These prime movers, whose action is long-lasting and profound, despite the grafts undergone, are what we need to decipher in an enterprise of open re-knowledge of ourselves and to fertilise.
The cultural and epistemic frameworks of societies are the result of historical processes, so they are in flux. They evolve either because the group that has put its values to the test renegotiates them, or because of an external aggression that can lead in extreme cases to their profound modification or disappearance. The aim is to understand these changes and their current forms. And more than grasping them, it’s about accelerating cultural mutation
Accelerating Cultural Change.
The notion of the contemporaneity of several worlds[1] seems to me to describe contemporary African societies quite well, characterised by a process of political, social and cultural change, an unfinished transition from the old to the new A juxtaposition of temporalities within the same society, sometimes even within the same individual, where several reference systems can coexist, negotiate, conflict or cross-fertilise. Some people live in traditional times, modern times and post-modern times. Since a society’s cultural values are constantly being redefined, changing African societies are symptomatic of this ongoing renegotiation of their cultural references and this transversality of several worlds.
This Africa that is and that is coming is protean. Its Reason is plural. It has not disenchanted its worlds. Spiritual life is still vibrant and abundant. Its religions, its music, its arts, its cities, its relationship with itself, its body, its presence in time, all bear witness to this invention of the self on a daily basis. It synthesises the religious, the political and the cultural. The open-air laboratory that it constitutes keeps its forges working at full capacity, feeding them with fuel gleaned from every field. However, it needs to lay the foundations of its stability, prosperity and influence in the long term. In order to accelerate its cultural transformation and give birth to the unprecedented things it holds in store, the question of how its representations are developed is crucial.
We borrow this notion from Catherine Quiminal (1991): “Gens d’Ici Gens d’Ailleurs. Migrations soninké et transformations villageoises, “. Christian Bourgois, Paris, 1991.
Several crop regimes.
There are several regimes of culture in African societies : a popular culture which seems to be opposed to an elite culture mainly based on extroverted imitative models; an urban culture of globalised youth consuming mass global culture (tubes, video clips…) and a so-called traditional culture. There are also power relations within the groups, which often result in the imposition of a dominant culture by the elite.
However, for many individuals, culture is a palimpsest composed of different superimposed layers, borrowing from various universes of reference.
If we consider culture to be a transactional concept in constant redefinition, it can therefore be seen as a project space, the place where we forge and articulate the forms to come.
The Shapes to Come.
The Africa we want, the civilisational project we have, the scale of values we decide to build, the place we give to the humanity of women and men, the content we give to this Humanity ; it is first and foremost a project that takes shape in the space of cultural production. So artists, who are often given the role of visionary, are the most advanced observation post, They are the light that watches and flickers in the night….
Culture is therefore a space for creativity, synthesis and renewal. A space for imagining future forms and how to inhabit its forms. It is the place to express the human face that we wear. And the ultimate ambition must be to enrich human sensitivity, through this face brought to incandescence.
Thought, literature, music, painting, the visual arts, cinema, television series, fashion, popular song, architecture and the élan of cities are spaces where the future forms of individual and social life are shaped and configured. Tomorrow’s world is in embryo in this one, and its signs can be deciphered in the present.
African literature constitutes, for the contemporary period, an important archive of the cultural history of African countries. Born in the 1930s, from the outset it has been a vehicle for asserting identity, culture and politics. It has played an important role in expressing the experiences of peoples, their existential questions and their political ideas. Its pioneers, who would become its classics, inscribed the experiences of Africans in the symbolic landscape of world letters and claimed the expression of imaginaries and experiences rooted in the experiences of their peoples and their cultures.
These texts updated the concerns, ideas and latent forms of peoples’ lived experience. African literature also set itself the task of disqualifying the calamities and disasters of postcolonial situations by imagining counterfactuals…(KouroumA, Waberi)
Design and fashion are spaces where the genius in the creativity of African forms and their aptitudes for synthesis, recycling and remodelling are expressed in all their splendour. By creating an Afro-contemporary aesthetic that draws on local sources and draws on forms from elsewhere, African designers have, without fanfare or trumpet, resolved the issue of cultural synthesis at its most harmonious. Their works bear witness to this ability to mix and match that of the continent’s musicians. Africanness is a movement that no predecessor can define once and for all. It is syncretic and its only task here is to produce the functional and the beautiful.
In the making of change or historical events, the role of an emancipatory imaginary is fundamental. The event is recognised after the event, but is instituted by the discourse. (Before all revolutions, the metaphor of revolution is present in artistic discourse)
But also the imaginary of commitment and distance is also fundamental, it allows a reflexive distance from reality ; art is a reflexive and therefore emancipatory force. It authorises Utopia, which tears apart the fabric of a time that claims to be unchanging and unalterable and allows a glimpse of that something that does not yet exist and above all prefigures it.
The world is to be recreated and perfected, always. There is a renewed genesis of all things. The eternal incompleteness of forms requires their constant reinvention. Every society (culture or civilisation) passes on a heritage and perpetuates a cultural matrix that is the repository of its identity over time, transforming it as the world changes….
Fabien Eboussi Boulaga indicates that it is through culture that man apprehends himself as genesis, as self-production of himself from what he is no longer in the direction of what he is not.
The profound revolution is cultural. And it is in this space that we have the privilege and the responsibility to act…