New Directions

Volume 3 | Issue 4 Article 8

10-1-1976

New Trends in African Art: The Liberation ofSymbolic ImagesKojo Fosu

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Recommended CitationFosu, Kojo (1976) "New Trends in African Art: The Liberation of Symbolic Images," New Directions: Vol. 3: Iss. 4, Article 8.Available at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol3/iss4/8

TfRNATIO

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Fosu: New Trends in African Art: The Liberation of Symbolic Images

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By Linus A. Hoskins

Since World War II, the label of under-development has been stamped on coun-tries that have not been able to take onthose characteristics which fall under thebroad description of modernization orindustrial ization. Many reasonshave beenput forth as the root cause for economicunderdevelopment in these countries-now called "Third World," "underdevel-oped," or "developing countries."

It is the contention of this writer that thederivation of the terms "underdevelop-ment/underdeveloped" has been a psy-chological move on the part of the West-ern world to secure and maintain superi-ority over the non-white world. Further,this same type of psychology is used tocompartmentalize and categorize certainpeoples and societies under the guise oflevels of development. The outcome ofthis genre of psychology has been thatthese terms are synonymous with inferior/backward peoples.

In analyzing the psychology of under-development, Dr. Walter Rodney, in hismagnum opus, How Europe Underde-veloped Africa, suggests that an "indis-pensable component of modern under-development is that it expresses a par-ticular relationship of exploitation: namely,the exploitation of one country by another.All of the countries named as 'underdevel-oped' in the world are exploited by others;and the underdevelopment with whichthe world is now preoccupied is a productof capitalist, imperialist, and colonialistexploitation."

According to Dr. Rodney, the inter-pretation that underdevelopment is some-how ordained by God is emphasizedbecause of the racial trend in Europeanscholarship. In other words, the West hasa very distorted perception of Black, non-white peoples of the world.

The late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, in hisbook, Class Struggle in Africa, attributedunderdevelopment "not to exploitationbut to inferiority, and racial undertonesremain closely interwoven with" the ques-

tion of development and underdevelop-ment.

Western economic experts view theproblem of underdevelopment in termsofthe economic backwardness (inferiority)of the' people. In the book, EconomicTheory and the Underdeveloped Coun-tries, Hla Myint stretched the point furtherto emphasize that: "although the 'under-development' of natural resources maycause the 'backwardness' of the people,it does not necessarily follow that anyeffic ient deve lopment of naturaI resourcesresulting in an increase in total outputwill reduce the backwardness of thepeople "

What the above statement suggests is:Although the so-called underdevelopedcountries are able to achieve a level ofdevelopment comparable with that of thedeveloped countries, the peoples of theformer countries will still remain, and beconsidered, backward, inferior. Onesenses the subtle implication that equaleconomic development of resources doesnot mean that the peoples of those coun-tries are equal- even if the peoples ofthe underdeveloped countries were todevelop their resources to the same levelof the developed countries, they still willnot be able to reduce or eradicate theirinherent inferiority.

Contrary to what economic textbooksmay suggest, the primary criterion fordesignating countries as being developedor underdeveloped has strong racial over-tones. It is not a mere coincidence, there-fore, that in countries where the Black,non-white population constitutes themajority, these countries are called ThirdWorld or underdeveloped. Thesecountriescomprise Latin America, Asia, Africa andthe Caribbean-that is two-thirds of theworld's population-countries that suf-fered colonial undevelopment.

When professor James Tobin of YaleUniversity visited China in 1972 (alongwith other American academicians andexperts), he was surprised at the tremen-dous ignorance in the West concerning acountry with which the United States and

the West had so little contact for a quarter 27of a century. Despite this, he attempted (ina magazine article) to apply Westerncapitalist concepts, definitions and valuesto the Chinese situation. In the article,"The Economy of China: A Tourist's View,"Change magazine, March/April 1973,Professor Tobin stated that he thought ita worthwhile exercise of imagination totry to construct some plausible, consist-ent, primitive national accounts from thehints and scraps of data he was able topick up while in China.

Again, the adjectives in Professor To-bin's report are not dissimilar to thosepreviously used to describe African' artand culture and the Black family structure.[In Fred J. Parrot's Wind in the Sieve, onelearns that the Western world labeledAfrican art as primitive and uncivilized.The white man used his own values andstandards to judge natural African art-something he knew absolutely nothingabout. Not only was African art primitive,but as the centuries elapsed, one cameto realize exactly what the white man did.He plainly outpsyched the African, stolehis art and cultural forms, brought themback to the West, modified them and thenexalted them as products of the West].

ProfessorTobin, in otherwords, injectedthe Western (best) way of doing things inChina, without recognizing the fact thatthe Chinese also have the right to adopttheir own economic methodology andsystem. Again, it is simply the same ra-tionale whereby it is conceived that theWest is right and that all other cardinalpoints are wrong or inferior.

Professor Tobin failed to take into con-sideration the truism that the people ofChina turned inward more than 20 yearsago and adopted a different style of life,sought a consumption pattern more con-sistent with their own condition and sta-tion of life. China has redefined her eco-nomic and social objectives to staggeringproportions, liquidated privileged groupsand vested interests, and redistributedpolitical and economic power which shehopes would be successful-not through 2

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28 revolution but rather through an evolu-tionary process.

Dichotomy of the WorldProfessor Tobin's analysis of China'seconomy is one example of the superior/inferior psychology (mentality) Westernexperts have used to categorize peoplesand countries throughout history. Indeed,the components of economic hydraulicssuggest that the world has been system-atically dichotomized to reflect this trend.Forexample:

West EastIJews . . GentilesChristians . . PagansFeudal lords .. .. SerfsCapitalists (relations of production) Proletariate (forces of production)Rich, developed, advanced, Poor, developing, underdeveloped,

industrialized. . backwardCentral, price-makers, haves. ... Peripheral, price-takers, have-netsSecondary and tertiary producers . Primary producersFirst and Second World Third WorldWhite. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Black, non-white

(In terms of conventional geo-politics, theFirst World consists of Europe, Japan,North America; the Second comprisesChina and the Russian Orbit; while theThird World includes Latin America, Asia,Africa and the Caribbean.)

As can be seen, those on the West plankare considered advanced, developed,and superior; those on the East, under-developed, backward, and inferior. Thisis the scheme that has been operativethroughout history (even today). Althougheconomic textbooks and even the UnitedNations have put out criteria for designa-ting countries as developed or under-developed, the pattern in which the worldhas been molded suggests otherwise. AllBlack, non-white, "backward" peoplesare partitioned as Third World-develop-ing or underdeveloped-while the Firstand Second World membership is ex-clusively Caucasian or quasi-Caucasian.

For decades, Western experts havebeen telling Black, non-white peoplesthat they are underdeveloped, and Blackpeople have accepted this fact. The ex-perts acted on the Black man's mind intobelieving and accepting the fact that heis underdeveloped. Beyond that point, the

Black manwas notquickenough to realizethat when the Western experts say thatBlacks are underdeveloped what theyreally mean is that Black, non-whitepeoples are inferior; and that their stateof underdevelopment stems from geneticinferiority.

Africa, the richest Continent in theworld[in natural resources], is exemplary ofthe racial determinant in the syndrome ofunderdevelopment. The African Continentand its peoples are sti II regarded as un-derdeveloped; and that fact has beenaccepted as a given. Indeed it cannot bedenied or rejected that the only reasonAfricans are considered underdevelopedor backward peoples is because they areBlack-their natural economic resourcesand potential are unimportant. As shownearlier, underdevelopment is synonymouswith backward peoples and even thoughthese peoples were to develop eco-nomically, they would still be consideredbackward and inferior. They are alsoconsidered to be "incapable" of develop-ing the resources of their own countriesand are taught to labor and appreciateEuropean manufactured goods, so as tobecome "good" customers of the West,the industrialized world. (This point wasemphasized by Nkrumah in TowardsColonial Freedom). ,

Let us look at the morphology of devel-opment. The Congo produces about 60percent of the world's output of cobalt, 8percent of copper and 4 percent of zinc;Africa's iron reserves are put at twice thatof America's and two-thirds of the SovietUnion's. Africa's calculated coal reservesare considered to be enough to last for300 years; Africa has more than 40 per-cent of the world's potential water power;and among the most valuable commod-ities mined in the Congo are iron ore,uranium, radium,germanium, manganese,silver, tin, and cadmium. There is hardlya country in Asia, Latin America, or theCaribbean which has such rich and variedmineral resources. Agricultural resourcesare no less great, and there are trernen-dous reserves of water that can be used

for the production of power and electricity.Yet despite all the natural resources,Africa is still considered underdevelopedby Western standards.

Is Africa underdeveloped or do wejust accept that datum and fall victimsof the psychology of underdevelopment?Are we underdeveloped because so-called experts say we are? Are we goingto define ourselves and our conditions?

The point is that the so-called ThirdWorld, underdeveloped countries are notunderdeveloped, but undeveloped. Theyare undeveloped because of their non-development under colonialism, to theextent that colonialism did not generateeconomic development and industrial iza-tion in the colonies, rather, in the "mothercountries" of the colonizers. Therefore, theresources of the colonies were not under-developed, they were just not developed.Hence, the reason why the Industrial Rev-olution took place in the United Kingdomand no development took place in thecolonies. This is the paradox of under-development. The United Kingdom andEurope became developed, while thecolonies remained undeveloped. There-fore, the use of the universally acceptedterm "underdevelopment" is but a decep-tive facade to camouflage the generallyaccepted truism of economic retardationcum exploitation and undevelopment thathas been the plight of the now so-calledThird World countries for centuries. Dr.Rodney, in his book, explains the processthis way:"Colonialism was not merely a system ofexploitation, but one whose essentialpurpose was to repatriate the profits tothe ... 'mother country.' From the pointof view of the colonies that amounted toconsistent expatriation of surplus pro-duced by colonized labor out of the re-source of the colonies. It meant thedevelopment of Europe as part of thesame dialectical process in which (thecolonies were) underdeveloped."The primary problem facing so-called

Third World countries today is not under-development, but the problem of trying to 3

Fosu: New Trends in African Art: The Liberation of Symbolic Images

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develop their economies after centuriesof non-development or undevelopment oftheir resources under colonial ism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, and other isms.Another corollary, of course, is the prob-lem of political, psychological, cultural,and economic dependency, the solutionto which is total liberation. (For a moreexplicit analysis of the structure of de-pendence, see Michael McCormack'sLiberation or Development, Study PaperNo.5, Barbados, West Indies: CADECPublishers, 1971).

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Liberation of the Mind

The crucial question now is: What shouldBlack, non-white peoples do to overcomeand extricate themselves from the psycho-logical web the Westem world has swungaround them?

The solution is in the liberation or de-colonialization of the mind. The achieve-ment of mental liberation does not merelyinvolve plugging in new information; itinvolves getting rid of old information. Itis time that Black, non-white peoples see,evaluate, and categorize themselves ac-cording totheirown values and conditionsand not to be evaluated according to ex-traneous, Western and incompatiblevalues.

The process of decolonization takes inmental as well as cultural and economicliberation. Black people must instill intheir minds the truism that the West's ruleof thumb in designating countries andpeoples as being developed, underdevel-oped-and so on-stems from a racialview of the world, a racial dichotomizationof the world, a racial view of history and aracial conceptualization of the Black, non-white man. The Black man must considerhimself as being developed-developedaccording to the Black man's perceptionof himself and not according to the West'sperception of the Black man. And whenthe Black man has set his mind in motionalong these lines, only then will true liber-ation begin. 0

The writer is an instructor in the Department ofAfro-American Studies, Howard University.

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