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On Colonialism and what it Reveals about other Cultures: A Critical Notice of Jean and John Comaroff Willem Derde Cultural Dynamics 1992; 5; 197 DOI: 10.1177/092137409200500205 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cdy.sagepub.com

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ON COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES A Critical Notice

of Jean and John Comaroff

WILLEM DERDE

Universiteit Gent,

Belgium

Introduction Since the sixteenth century, the cultural contact of the West with others is inextricably tied to colonial expansion. It is within this context that our image about other cultures and its dissemination has taken form. The same applies to anthropology. It &dquo;emerged as a distinctive discipline at the beginning of the colonial era, ... it became a flourishing academic profession towards its close, [and] throughout this period its efforts were devoted to a description and analysis-carried out by Europeans, for a European audience - of nonEuropean societies dominated by European power.&dquo; (T. ASAD (ed.), 1973, p. 14-15). Because the West, due to its expansionist and imperialist drive, subjugated other peoples and cultures, one can only speak of a ’muddy’ (or even distorted) picture of other cultures. This image was further determined by the enormous cultural influence emanating from the West. No culture or continent that came into contact with the West was able to distance itself from the cultural influence of the latter. Not merely the technical innovations but also the intellectual and conceptual renovations induced changes and transformations that would leave an indelible mark on the colonized. Now that the overwhelming power of the West is tempered and its expansionist tendencies have disappeared, the time is ripe to look at and analyze this period from the required distance and sobriety. Now that the beginning of the most recent colonial expansion is nearly a hundred and fifty years behind us, it is possible to initiate an investigation about the wrong conceptualizations about other cultures: how is it that we do have the ideas that we do; how and in what fashion and manner has one culture influenced the other in this process; and so forth. One such work which allies itself with this trend is that of Jean and John Comaroff. In this extended treatise-which shall comprise of two volumes...

Cultural

Dynamics 5, 2 (1992)

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198 ON

COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

Comaroff. In this extended treatise-which shall comprise of two volumesthey investigate how the colonial confrontation between the blacks and the whites in South Africa actually took shape and what its influence was upon the reactions and attitudes of both these groups during the latter decades of this

century.

novelty of their approach is to be found in the emphasis placed on the thorough-going influence of colonization upon the consciousness of the parties involved, especially that of the blacks. It is not the economic and political structures that are focused upon, but the extent to which the percepThe

tion, emotions, the consciousness, or the culture

tout court, were transformed the colonial confrontation. The ’colonization of consciousness’ and the ’consciousness of colonization’ are central to this work and it is from this point of view that the cultural confrontation is analyzed. With this approach, the authors hope to find answers to questions like how it has come about that &dquo;those who resist apartheid today - a multiethnic, sometimes secular, and often radical throng of people - can still represent themselves, in the idiom of a Victorian moral army, as a Nation of Jesus&dquo; (p. 3). Not only how we should understand this but also how it is that colonization was a process where &dquo;a selfelected group of Britons sought, methodically to ’make history’ for people whom, they thought, lacked it; to induct those people into an order of activities and values; to impart form to an Africa that was seen as formless; to reduce the chaos of savage life to the rational structures and techniques that, for Europeans were both the vehicle and the proof of their own civilization&dquo; (p. 14, original italics), are questions that intrigue our authors.

through

Of Revelation and Revolution Because of this specific approach, the authors are primarily interested in the individual agents who played an active and direct role in the process of colonization. Hence they focus upon the missionary work of two Protestant organizations: the ’London Missionary Society’ (LMS) and the ’Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society’ (WMMS). After a general introduction, the second chapter discusses the economic and social situation in Great Britain at

the beginning of the nineteenth century. The consequences of the industrial revolution on the self-image of the society are emphasized. Much attention is paid to the recruiting base of the missionary organizations. The authors also analyze the ambiguous reputation of the missionaries and look at their ideas about the kind of society that the latter wanted to create in Africa. This unreal expectation was certainly not helped by the then existing conceptions about Africa. The different aspects of their image of Africa are

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ON COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

199

treated in the subsequent chapter. The context of this chapter is of course the lively discussions about the retention/abolition of slave trade. The next chapter provides us with a picture of the different aspects of the pre-colonial society in South Africa. The fifth chapter sets out to prune: it places the two worlds against each other and tries to provide an overview of the interpretations that both blacks and whites had of each other, their initial contacts with each other, and so forth. In the last two chapters that follow the previous one, the authors try to seek an answer to the question of the impact of colonization on African culture. The different reactions of the blacks, the political conceptions of the missionaries and their implications for the black world, form the nucleus of these two

chapters. On the ’Reconstruction

of Africa’

From the story that the Comaroffs sketch, it appears that the confrontation in Africa was a one-way traffic where the missionaries were the most important

influencing agents. [They] ... played an important, subtle part in the reconstruction of Africa (p. 13, my italics).

Nothing was more important to them than spreading the Word. Thus religious themes constituted the discourse that the Africans confronted. Introduction of new aspects of faith meant a negation of existing values and beliefs. It is there that the ’colonization of consciousness’ achieved a recognizable gestalt. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this impact and it is best illustrated by those sects that mushroomed out of the ground, as it were. Leaders of these groupings very soon went about setting up &dquo;Chief’s churches&dquo; (p. 265), where native evangelicals were required to appeal to the advice of the leader in both religious and secular matters. The consequence of this was not merely the loosening of the grip of the missionaries upon the natives, but also of loosing control over the emerging African Christianity. These ’churches’ were characterized by an eclectic collection of different conceptions that often coexisted without any coherence or consistency. Rolong, in the nineteenth century, took part in Christian ritual as selectively as they took on other mission innovations. They were not constrained by a sense of systematic theology or universal truth, by any meaningful idea of personalized professions of faith or by the notion that adherence to one religion excluded involvement in all others.... [T]hey were bricoleurs of the spiritual, as well as of the material, domain... And so they remained, even when they followed their chiefs into the church to become what Schapera has dubbed ’nominal christians’ (p. 250). Most Tlhaping and

...

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200 ON COLONIALISM

AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

supposed to have influenced the African culture was transformed into an unrecognizable hotchpotch of apparently unrelated elements. The Christian elements changed so fundamentally that they were unrecognizable even to the missionaries. By being incorporated into a different system, these concepts lost their original properties. How, then, can one speak of a fundamental transformation of African culture brought about by proselytization? Moreover, consider the above question in the light of the African culture Consequently,

what

was

into contact with the West. The first missionaries faced an enormous difficulty in understanding how the Africans experienced the world and what kind of order they discerned therein.

before it

came

Neither of the missionaries [referring to Mackenzie and Willougby] could quite put their finger on yet a more basic fact: that the Tswana worldview could not be distilled into a ’belief system’ or into a rationalized metaphysics, without reifying and distorting it. (p. 152, my italics).

The ’Tswana world view’, in other words, exhibited a similar formlessness both before and after the impact of Christianity. Consequently, it is all but clear where we are to seek for and find the deep reconstruction of the ’black’ mind.

Africa Reconstructed? The Comaroffs offer the

following explanation for this ambiguity.

The

case of the Southern Tswana simply underlines the truism that changing religious identity, itself a highly complex problem of meaning and action, is always

an element of more embracing historical transformations. It is a matter of novel media as well as messages, of cultural form as much as content. What is more, the significance of conversion to Africans themselves cannot be assumed to conform to European preoccupations-a serious point, to be sure, since it is their experience that the concept is meant to illuminate. (p. 250).

Surely, this is a serious point. By suggesting that conversion meant something entirely different to the blacks than it did to the whites, the authors emphasize the cultural differences between the blacks and the whites. The only problem, however, is to make this difference perceptible and clear: And so the problem remains: how well does [the concept of conversion] grasp the highly variable, usually gradual, often implicit, and demonstrably ’syncretic’ manner in which the social identities, cultural styles and ritual practices of African peoples were transformed by the evangelical encounter? (p. 249-250, my italics).

Such open questions provide us with little insight. To the contrary, the problem becomes ever more acute. As I see it, a more intriguing problem comes to the fore: How is it that Africans experienced no difficulties with this syncretism? The scope of this question becomes clear when we realize that a

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ON COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

201

culture that is based on a value system that changes continuously and thus constantly relativises itself could hardly be delimited as a culture. A culture that does not exhibit coherence could neither be identified as an apart culture nor could it be transmitted over the generations. Thus the authors bring us into a paradoxical situation. Their description of the African culture makes the contours of this culture appear vague. Consequently, when they start to describe the process that took place in the African consciousness, they loose all grip on the subject matter.

Description and Experience The Comaroffs, like most anthropologists, assume that cultural differences are those that exist between ideologies, world views, symbolic interpretations etc. (see pp. 13-39). While true of our (western) description of other cultures, how well does it capture the experience of the others? Even before colonization, the African cultures, after a military campaign

attempted to exercise ’hegemony’. But the manner in which the Europeans went about doing this was totally alien. for instance,

African polities that embarked on processes of expansion and state-building usually followed their military predations with campaigns of cultural imperialism in the effort to consolidate their authority.... And yet in none of these cases was there any attempt to forge a new universalism, a global hegemony, like that envisaged by bourgeois Europe in the name of its civilization. Nowhere was the assumption made that there could only be one ’true’ way of knowing and classifying the world, one absolute standard of value. (p. 244).

The result of it was that &dquo;the churchmen, pressed upon the Tswana a notion of difference.&dquo; hitherto unfamiliar (p. 244). This citation does not merely tell us that the Africans experienced the difference between their own culture and that of the ’churchmen’. It also provides us with a rough reference to the elements responsible for it. What the Africans could not understand was how the Europeans could maintain that only one set of beliefs, only one way of looking at the world, was the right one. Besides, it was also not clear to them why the whites made their domination depend so strongly on this belief. For the Tswana people, neither domination nor hegemony had much to do with beliefs. There were many beliefs, and there was no reason to think that one was better than the other. This allowed them to describe sharply the difference as they saw it between themselves and the culture of the whites. ...,

For the Southern Tswana, the encounter with a people so preoccupied with techniques of self-representation and rationalization encouraged them to perceive their own world with a new distinctness and coherence - and to oppose their ’custom’ to

the

belief system’ of the whites. (p. 243).

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ON COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

For the blacks, the opposition was not between adhering to a universal value and tolerating other, different values. To them, the difference was at a deeper level: between adhering to a value system, whatever its nature or coherence, and ’custom’. In this way, they suggested that adhering to a belief system played little or no role as far as their culture was concerned. According to the Africans, what made their culture different from that of the West was the former’s ’custom’, which, at the same time, leant coherence to their culture. By opposing ’belief systems’ to ’customs’, they emphasized that the latter had very little to do with beliefs. Hence, I believe that it is wrong to describe cultural differences in terms of relativism or universalism, as the Comaroffs do. It is not possible to argue that &dquo;the missionary [referring to Moffat] was unwittingly being given a lesson in cultural relativism, a lesson that most modern anthropologists are also made to learn.&dquo; (p. 245-246, my italics). They are not taught a lesson in cultural relativism but in cultural differences. What the Africans emphasize is that their culture cannot be described in terms of belief systems. And that is exactly what the Comaroffs do. The entire conceptual apparatus, using which they describe both the blacks and the whites, is based on notions that can be understood only within the framework of belief systems. If ’belief system’ is irrelevant to understanding African culture as a culture, then one can also understand why the blacks did not spend effort in acting according to a coherent belief system. If such systems are not binding, we need not be surprised at the fact that they were eclectic. The same applies to the most contested practice of the Tswana: the rain dance. The

Irrationality of Rain Dancing: Are

Really Stupid?

of heathen worship, or even absence (p. 202), the rituals connected with the rain dance were more or less the only discernible elements that the missionaries could relate to superstitious beliefs. This ceremony was combatted with the greatest severity and was an important test case for the success of their evangelical activity. For John and Jean Comaroff, it is a point of conflict that allows them to study the interaction between two cultures. According to them, one need not look far for the causes of this conflict. In

a

society

where

the Africans

concepts of God

were

temples, altars, signs conspicuous by their

Reasons for the misunderstanding and conflict over rain are not hard to find... Not only did the Nonconformists fail to see the contradictions in their own actions, but they also lacked all grasp of the complexities of Tswana ontology. The ancestral rainpots of the chief might have stored the essence of his ritual potency, and rainmakers might have known how to release that essence in order to activate the clouds. But their power was said to work only when the community was in a state of

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ON COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

203

moral rectitude, a state of ’coolness’.... He ’made’ the rain only insofar as he ensured that the conditions of the social world met the requirements of ancestral beneficence f
... In this sense,he nomore manufactured rainfall ...

Nevertheless, as far as the missionaries were concerned, the discussion turned around causal relation between the jumping up and down of a few blacks and raining. How is it possible that they ascribed to the blacks the belief that their dance caused the rains to come? One answer could be that the Africans believed it themselves. But this answer will not do because the missionaries had observed from the very beginning that the blacks thought that their rituals had no influence on higher creatures: Although modimo [the supreme being, original italic] was held accountable for such major catastrophes as drought and pestilence, its actions were utterly inexplicable, being indifferent to human intervention through ritual, it was a residual force at the margins of experience and control. (p. 155, my italics).

question becomes more poignant. What made the missionaries feel so strongly that they had to correct the ’misconceptions’ of the blacks? There are not many options to choose from. If it was not the conception of either of the two parties, then one has to look elsewhere. Fortunately, we are not the first to think about this question. Ludwig Wittgenstein felt the same dissatisfaction too when he read Frazer’s The Golden Bough. One does not have to be a follower of this philosopher to realize that in his notes on Frazer’s book, Wittgenstein makes some very important The

remarks. The very idea of wanting to explain a practice -for example, the killing of the priestking-seems wrong to me. All that Frazer does is to make them plausible to people who think as he does. It is very remarkable that in the final analysis all these practices are presented as, so to speak, pieces of stupidity. But it will never be plausible to say that mankind does all that out of sheer stupidity. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1979, p. 61. My italics).

What bothers Wittgenstein is that Frazer ascribes stupidity to other cultures. The same irritation is to be found with the Comaroffs, but they seek another

explanation. attempt to explain the approach of the missionaries, which is simultaneously a critique of their imperialist attitudes, the Comaroffs refer to the In

an

’integrity and value’ that lies behind this complex set of practices. Because the former negated the values attributed by the Africans to the rain dance, they could not see the integrity of this ritual as the Africans saw it. Thus, the missionaries were blind to the logic and coherence that lay behind the ritual and the entire ontological complex that was dependent on it (cf. p. 245 and 211). In other words, what the missionaries sought but could not find, think the

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204

ON COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

Comaroffs, the authors have. However, the authors do not tell us what logic and which values this ritual has. They merely suggest that the missionaries

interpretation of the actions of the Africans without, what a right interpretation is supposed to be. But this does not explain why the missionaries misinterpreted another culture. The best answer, I suggest, lies in Wittgenstein’s remark: To explain the rain dance as resulting from an erroneous theory is the ’only’ way for us (the westerners) to make sense of the others. We find exactly the same attitude with the Comaroffs as well. They praise the openness of Livingstone’s discussion with a rain doctor. He leaves open the possibility that one could find rationality in the magical thinking which would explain the rain dance. What the Comaroffs do not see is that this discussion is hardly worth its name because the one does not understand either the question or the answer of the other.

provided

a

wrong

however, telling

us

MEDICAL DOCTOR: So you really believe that you can command the clouds? I think that can be done by God alone. RAIN DocTOR: We both believe the very same thing. It is God that makes the rain, but I pray to him by means of these medicines, and, the rain coming, of course it is then mine.

[...] M.D.: [...] I only think you are mistaken in saying that you have medicines which can influence the rain at all. R.D.: That’s just the way people speak when they talk on a subject of which they have no knowledge. When first we opened our eyes, we found our forefathers making rain, and we follow in their footsteps. You, who send to Kuruman for com, and irrigate your garden, may do without rain, we can not manage in that way... (p. 210-211).

The last reply of the rain doctor makes it evident that it is not an answer to Livingstone’s question. The latter wants an answer to the question how it is possible that the dance cause rains to come and is looking for an explanation; the rain dancer is busy explaining what his ancestors did. More even, the rain doctor does not see it as a discussion about creating water. Consequently, irrigation is not an alternative as far as he is concerned. In saying that ’we cannot manage in that way’ he could not possibly have meant that they were not capable of digging wells. To the contrary, as soon as new techniques were introduced, the leaders laid their controlling hands on these techniques (cf. p. 209). The Tswana were open for new techniques. The leaders saw in it a means to strengthen their position. It is not of crucial importance to our argument what the rain dance is really all about. But what is, however, is that these dances were not dependent on some or another causal explanation. Yet, to the Comaroffs, it is precisely here that the West exercised its greatest influence.

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ON COLONIALISM AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

205

The thesis of the authors is undermined further by their own suggestion that the Tswana had no need to explain their actions and rituals. They were obliged to do this after the arrival of the whites.

being drawn into that conversation, the Southern Tswana had no alternative but be inducted, unwittingly and often unwillingly, into the forms (original italic) of European discourse. To argue over who was the legitimate rainmaker or where the water came from, for instance, was to be seduced into the modes of rational debate, positive knowledge, and empirical reason at the core of bourgeois culture. (p. 213, my italics). In to

Whereas earlier on, actions were important, now the blacks were obliged to find (rational) explanations for their actions. They were compelled to base their action on something that had nothing to do with it. It is here that the ’reconstruction of Africa’ becomes visible. Not in the fact that the Africans questioned their values but in the fact that they had to suddenly attribute another status to them- it is here that the impact and the influence of the West on their culture becomes evident. For them, the ’revolution’ occurred when the realization dawned that their ’custom’ was criticized on grounds which they thought were irrelevant. They had to translate their custom in terms of a belief system. Actions derived their consistency not from actions themselves but were from now on subordinated to a belief system. Conclusion

Of Revelation and Revolution slices an important theme which transcends the traditional boundaries of anthropology. The work is destined to be more than a thorough-going analysis of the colonial confrontation in South Africa. By studying the transformation in the consciousness, one tries to achieve a better insight into the emotions and actions of the involved parties from the past. The work, as I have already said before, tries to describe a ’colonization of consciousness’ and the ’consciousness of colonization’. Even though the study is well-built (multiple points of departure, good selection of historical source material, etc.), I feel that the authors have failed to reach their goal. They have not succeeded in showing how the missionaries changed the consciousness of the blacks in any fundamental way. To the contrary, each attempt in the ’reconstruction’ process has only ended up making the contours of the African culture appear vague. Because the conceptual apparatus used is unable to come to grips with the experience of the Tswana, the authors have been unable too to appreciate the crucial importance of the opposition between ’custom’ and ’belief system’ as formulated by the blacks themselves. I have attempted to focus on rain dancing, which the

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206 ON COLONIALISM

AND WHAT IT REVEALS ABOUT OTHER CULTURES

Comaroffs rightly see as a very important controversy, and show that a more sensible approach to the issue is possible. The authors are unable to explain why the missionaries fail to understand the blacks. Only when this discussion is taken up and illumined by examining the underlying opposition could we hope to understand why the blacks and the whites misunderstood each other. In the story of the Comaroffs too does one vainly seek the voice of the African. NOTE *

Jean and John COMAROFF: Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Volume One. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. Cloth, £47.95 ; Paper, £15.25. I would like to thank Balu for translating this paper and for making critical remarks on earlier drafts.

REFERENCES T. Asad

(ed.)

1973

Anthropology and the Ludwig Wittgenstein 1979

Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press.

"Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough". In C.G. LUCKHARDT (Ed.): Wittgenstein. Sources and Perspectives. Hassocks, Sussex: The Harvester Press.

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