Africa Policy Home Page | Roundtable Home Page | Roundtable Archive

08 May 2000

Popular culture has been in vogue for over a quarter of a century now. Its geographical identity provides a base for the in-depth study of its traits, but it is unable to evolve or to become a fully recognized discipline.

Locked into the syllabuses of other academic disciplines, popular culture is defined primarily by what it is not, i.e., the repository of some archaic authenticity. In its multiple genres and manifestations, it refers to local struggles and is targeted to a local audience. This narrow definition by K. Barber (1997:2) confines it to the geography of identity and reflection. On the one hand, it overlooks the fact that the colonial and post-colonial African diaspora exports this culture and that it participates in its development through a commitment to the dialogue engaged in by these two actors and producers, that are separated by distance. On the other hand, this "local" culture is linked to the neo-African culture of the West through cultural transnationalism. The richness, dynamism and creativity of this popular culture are evidenced at the theoretical level by creolization (Harnnez), popular historiography (Fabian, Jewsiewicki), economic transnationalism (Ellis, J. McGaffey) and the creation/reproduction of spaces for its expression in the West and in Asia (Biaya).

A second weakness in the conceptualization of popular culture lies in the relationship between the local and the global. Contemporary scientific literature highlights the dichotomy between these two worlds and their gnoseological practices. The first is concerned with anthropology and the second with immigration and its sociology lending support to the claim that Africa, an under-developed continent, cannot be an active participant in the process of globalization, since it suffers from technological backwardness and economic crisis. Some have pointed to the lack of familiarity on the part of Africans with global affairs. This "economistic" explanation is contradicted by the history of mankind, since modernism, even when unfettered, is first and foremost the construction of the national while globalization is the break-up of this construction as a result of the commoditization of relationships and production.

While we have absolutely no intention of launching a debate about the global and local aspects of popular culture, the main achievement thus far is the recent emergence of a field of study that requires modalities of production and control of its knowledge base as well as the establishment of mechanisms for regulating the scientific discipline. In this context, popular culture, through a set of practices and manifestations, employs advanced technology for the production and dissemination of its works, and once more runs counter to the scholarship in that field. Even though the modalities of its communication eliminates the distance between the local and global, they highlight the aspect of production of scientific knowledge, which lags not only in relation to its objective, which it fails to attain, but also in relation to the real actors involved in the production, of which it is unaware. These actors package the knowledge that is contained in and translated into cultural strategies and practices. But the conceptualization of popular culture will remain unclear as long as the scientific practice fails to keep pace with the movement and its immediate gnoseological productions.

The problem is caused by the rapid obsolescence of the same knowledge produced, since this production is based on and satisfies an urgent popular demand in terms of praxis, while the researcher waits to accumulate evidence in order to create his database and proceed to the stage of analysis. The praxis, on the contrary, develops the use of scholarship to reinterpret inherent culture. By this method, the gnoseological system forces the researcher to use a gnoseological psittacism leading to a detailed analysis of popular culture when that culture has already evolved into something else. This combination of the two levels of scientific and popular knowledge leads to a falsification of reality and the pursuit of fantasies in a false and non-existent reality. It is illustrated by the use and misinterpretation of the myth of mami wata in the Congolese studies, which ignores even its history and its peregrinations from the Oguta River in Nigeria to the Congo River by way of West African migrants.

Popular culture, moreover, does not seek to be a rival to Cultural Studies or to contend for pre-eminence in African research as much as it seeks to reject any anthropological use that reifies it. While these two fields share the same objective, they differ in their concerns and their perceptions of history. Since the colonial experience was not at all the same as slavery, American racism, apartheid or the racial and colonial experience - oppression - even though these may be considered as belonging to the colonial history, the upcoming generations of Africa do not see them as an element of the struggle. On the other hand, they take issue with the two generations of colonial and post-colonial elites and their failed development policies that have impoverished their countries. These youth are moving away from such thinking and are seeking to forge their own identity in their day-to-day existence and their struggle against poverty and the national system that engenders it while seeking an entrée into globalization and universalism, which are the current world culture. These struggles are reflected in urbanity, the arts and their subversive aesthetic, the many and varied forms of solidarity and sociability, where hairstyles, trendy clothes, music and dance have assumed new meaning through changes in linguistic codes.

One important constant may be noted: young people have deconstructed Africa in order to make it into an archipelagic continent, in which the different cities of the globe are connected to the different points of this "great island". This structural reproduction of cities is based largely on the social and economic reconstructions of immigrant groups, their popular cultural practices and their know-how, which are linked to productive activities that permit immigrants to blend into their adopted countries on the one hand, and nationals who have remained behind in the country to communicate with their relatives and friends, on the other. The latter have clearly not cut their ties with their country, but are citizens of the West and compatriots of their fellow nationals, through remittances and contributions. Changes in cultural practices therefore no longer come as a surprise. The example of the Boule falé - ignore them, don' t worry - which appeared in Dakar, in 1997 is only the culmination of the processes of information and mechanisms for the forging of identity and for gearing them to oppose local forms of violence whose roots, however, clearly reflect the ongoing negotiations between this level and the global level.

The rise of the Boule falé is the logical retaking of cultural spaces and their previously isolated social reconstructions which this acephalous movement - "in terms of ideology"- has remodelled into a new ideology incorporating eccentric experiences, where the rupture between the State, university elites and popular elites is manifest. This movement appears as a syntax that seeks to restore to urban society in Senegal its own semantic: the city no longer belongs to its original urban classes, since it has become cosmopolitan; the political sphere is only one component of this new geography and its ideology of the fall from the centre of power. An analysis of this syntax and its semantic, in practice, reveals a cultural shift and opening, in which the mixture of languages -Wolof, French and American-English - constitutes not a social and political obstacle but rather the claim to identity of youth discovering nihilism - not in the philosophical Nietzchean sense - of official cultural projects and the packaging and refinement of a popular culture of leisure and its different forms made possible by globalization. These forms and modalities, even if they draw on the past, have taken on new meaning in this urban culture that combines religions, political demands and cultural subversion in establishing "its universe of leisure" and politics.

Popular culture in the two forms of production of knowledge and information about Africa in the world shows that there is more than one modality of production of information. There is even a practice of production of knowledge and know-how whose users control the production. This division of tasks within the praxis indicates not only the possibilities of negotiation and conflict in the management of cities in the global village but also adverts to a series of illegal activities that are emerging, including even the criminalization of the State. Networks for the exchange of communications and high-technology products are developed and capitalize their investments. In return, popular culture succeeds in converting two distant cities into two spaces that share the same artistic performance: the young musician singing of Brazzaville on the banks of the Seine or Kanda Bongo Man dancing the soukouss in Central Park do not directly address their performances to the spectators present but to the audience back in their countries; they seek this communication through all the media vehicles used (TV, radio, audio and video cassettes, Internet, etc.) This "conversation" is carried on through a set of "cultural traits" and "little words" sent back to those remaining behind in the country. This connection between the practice of the actors and the production of academic knowledge can be identified and studied only if the popular culture goes beyond the realm of ethnology and becomes anthropology and history at one and the same time.

Africa Policy Home Page | Roundtable Home Page | Roundtable Archive