LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Reading the Past and Present

In terms of Haitian matter I've been reading the new book edited -- and autographed -- by the magnificent Prof. Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott, Origins of the Black Atlantic: Reweriting Histories (2010 - Routledge). Its ToC includes the not-so-easy-to-find seminal essay on the military aspects of the Haitian Revolution, "African Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution," by John K. Thornton, which we wish so much we'd read while working up the Haitian Revolution for The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.  At times it feels nearly like we've entered an alternate historical world, how much more easily hard-to-obtain materials are available, even in a year or two after you could have used them.  When I first began swotting up West African history and culture toward the end of the 1980's, there was so little available in English, and particularly published by U.S. publishers, particularly in trade -- especially when you went to the religions.  Is that ever different now!

I'm also reading Thornton's 1998 work, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatiz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684 - 1706.

Coincidence?  Not really, I suppose.  Kongo and Angola are looming ever larger for the future.

The Kongolese Saint Anthony is a difficult book for me to read. Its difficulty is not caused because it is a history of one of the few well-documented with primary source text documents in the history of the Kingdom of Kongo. The difficulty is that everyone, who is Kongolese, bears Portuguese, i.e. European names. So I keep visualizing the characters in Portugal, which is such a different geography from the Kongo, there on the edge of Europe, bounded by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.


This difficulty is reminiscent of the perceptual shift problems I experienced reading Vernor Vinge's wonderful SF work, A Deepness in the Sky (1999) with the 'Spiders,' their culture and civilization. My trickster mind insisted on perceiving them as humans, and their world earth-like. Vinge had wonderful play with this, which play enriches the reader's experience of reading, not only the novel, but the world. So much so did Vinge play with this that the humans on the space ships seem more alien, less human, than the 'Spiders.' He must have so enjoyed knowing how readers who wanted to comprehend his novel as completely as they could, couldn't have that total immersion reading experience. We have to consciously remind ourselves what we are "seeing" on the page isn't what it really is.
It's a teaching experience for the reader as well, teaching the reader that her perceptions can so easily be wrong, and insistently wrong, even when she knows better.

4 comments:

K. said...

I wonder if or how much musical cross-pollination happened between the Congo and fado. Fado definitely reflects a North African influence; it would be interesting to know if the musical sensibilities of Central Africa had an effect as well. And vice versa, for that matter. Fado is very powerful and mystic, and no one ever accused African musicians of not knowing a good thing when they heard it.

Foxessa said...

We went to Portugal some years back, V. and I, and produced an AfroPop program on the African musics in Portugal. A lot from Angola and Kongo. (There may be a great deal more said about this from over here in the future, from the ground, so to speak, if things go right.)

The Mediterranean gypsies and North African -- meaning Islamic -- going back centuries -- have a lot of influence in Portugal's popular music, including fado, which, in Portugal, is 'white' people's folk expression, at least in Lisbon (Porto is rather different). But not Central African.

You can tell, again, because of the rhythmic structures. No polyrhythm in fado.

Love, C.

Unknown said...

Have you read Thornton's Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World? It's not the be all and end all, but it's one of those books that African studies -- at least in my neck of the woods -- needs to take better account of. I've seen scholars cite it in support of arguments that run contrary to what Thornton actually said, twisting his words so that they seem to say stuff they didn't actually say.

Foxessa said...

Z -- yes, indeed, we own and have read this excellent work!

Love, C.