Intermediality: A Paradigm for African Identity in the Twenty-First Century
Kalua, Fetson
One notion of African identity is based on the credo that generally champions the
view that so-called Africans should not only celebrate an identity that is predicated on
racialised and essentialised blackness, but also seek out (and hopefully render
assistance to) any black persons anywhere in the world. Crucially, it was the black
experience of slavery, as well as colonialism, that helped to foster such essentialised
notions of identity. It is a matter of tragic irony that the very people who were written
out of history are architects of some of the continent’s worst excesses, notably ethnic
wars, genocides and related manifestations of black-on-black hatred and violence.
Rather than giving attention to ideological positions that privilege notions of
predetermined “Africanness”, I situate the debate in the disciplinary positions of
history, philosophy and literature, and posit the idea of intermediality, meaning a
state of in-betweenness, as a model for articulations of identity that not only promote
the reality of our “otherness”, but also teach us what it means to be human. I argue
that the idea of an African identity that is grounded on an essentialised blackness
flies in the face of the history of a continent that has always been defined by“otherness” or difference. In employing intermediality as a core concept of intersubjectivity
on all articulations of identity that put the emphasis on respect for
difference, I invoke selected post-structuralist and postmodern discourses to argue
for an African identity in the twenty-first century that is more fluid and contested than
any transcendent regimes of cultural certainty and legitimacy would have us believe.
I insist on the primacy and the relevance of the idea of intermediality and,
consequently, Africa’s interconnectedness with the rest of humankind.
↧