If you are interested in the intellectual grounding of the Harlem Renaissance - and really how is it possible not to be? - then here is a good review of Alain Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth. Locke’s most famous essay, “The New Negro”, written in 1925 can [...]
Film: Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness
Here is a clip of the fascinating and timely California Newsreel hour-long documentary on Melville J. Herskovits, the pioneering anthropologist of African and African-American studies.
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Stanley Crouch waxes eloquent on HBO’s newest show: No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
Hornsleth: Danish Artist and Ugandan Village
I have just stumbled into Mr. Kristian von Hornsleth, intrepid Danish artist known for audacious works such as the Fuck Me Daddy Bikini and his generally dark view of the art world and art lovers (see his poem, ‘FUCK YOU ART LOVERS.’)
Now his war against global capitalism and consumerism (take a look at his Fuck [...]
Is the Digital Indaba the Internet Berlin Conference of 2006?
(This post is a follow-on to a previous one on next week’s Digital Indaba on Blogging and the resulting comments that included accusations of my being racist and illegitimate)
Does the African blog-space – if there is such a thing – need codification, a coming together, a corralling under the auspices of a code of conduct [...]
Comments on “(White?) African Blogger Conference in a Week”
Below are some comments on the last post I had on the upcoming African bloggers indaba. It turned out that AB&H is racist and illegitimate. I will be back to talk more about the attempt to codify the African blog space and make it part of a kind of NGO-ish, funded civil society [...]
(White?) African Blogger Conference in a Week
Word on the street, the Khartoum one where I am for the week, is that there is a Digital Citizen Indaba on Blogging conference being held in Grahamstown, South Africa. It is a shock that there should be this kind of meeting without AB&H being told about it. From the list of speakers, listed [...]
The Rule of Law (you say you want it?)
From:
To: KCL SS&PP Students (University of London, King’s College)
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:30:37 PM
Subject: DVD & video borrowing restriction
Dear all,
Please see the dull but important message below, which will principally
affect users at the Maughan Library.
************
Dear student,
We have recently implemented a borrowing restriction regarding the ISS
DVD/VHS collection.
In compliance with the Video Recording Act (VRA) 1984 [...]
Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing.
From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz philosophy. [...]
Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing.
From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz philosophy. [...]
‘How to write about Africa’ by Binyavanga Wainaina
some tips: sunsets and starvation are good
Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means [...]
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi; buy an African farmer a chicken or a goat
There is always something new out of Africa. The latest being the website lastminute.com offering you, its customer, a chance to ‘buy a sheep, a goat or some chickens from FARM AFRICA.’ (I quote directly off their website) As you make last ditch vacation plans, you may also have a last minute change of heart [...]
Is my cucu’s cucu guilty of participating in the slave trade?
Is my cucu’s cucu guilty of benefiting from the slave trade? Do I carry the guilt of those that did? I just read a great post by Keguro and may have forever annoyed him by writing such a long comment that I have made it into a post here.
I am confused about how to [...]
Some Email Considerations on the African Bush and its European Saviours
Below are some emails that I exchanged with one of my closest friends (PK) just after reading James Miller’s great essay, ‘Carnivals of Atrocity: Foucault, Nietzsche, Cruelty,’ (in Political Theory, Vol. 18, #3, August, 1990.) It is a bit of a switch from the kind of digressions and rants that have appeared here in the [...]
Food Force: The UN video game that makes learning about aiding hungry people cool
To be on the edge nowadays you’ve got to be able to multi-task. For instance, your love of computer gaming can now be combined with your concern for starving people. Premiering here on Bullets & Honey is the United Nation World Food Program’s latest idea: Food Force. That’s right, the international gaming market is realising [...]
The Mythology of Project Keenya
Binyavanga Wainaina is back, this time with a rant on this blog’s favourite subject, Kenyan or African nationhood.
Most mythologies of nationalism cannot stand the scrutiny of logic. This is why one party states, and KANU (Kenya’s former ruling party) youth wingers and the hundreds of choir masters whose career consisted of composing praise songs for [...]
“For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!”
I just had to put up this interview of my good friend James Shikwati (Director of the Inter Region Economic Network - IREN) who was being interviewed by Der Spiegel on German aid to Kenya. It is not very different from the stuff that has been on these pages often in the past, but [...]
The Unintended Consequences of African Christianity to Politics and Power
I have just come across an amazing columnist called Spengler who writes for the Asia Times. It turns out that the African church which was the subject of one of my recent posts has been exercising Spengler’s mind with provocative and interesting results. His focuses on the role of belief in political life, especially in [...]
Africans and the European Soul
Are the Formerly Colonised Set To Colonise Their Colonisers?
(A speculation)
It has come to my delighted attention that African churches are increasingly sending missionaries to the United Kingdom. And that the declining number of British volunteers joining the Catholic priesthood - in Wales for instance - has meant that African priests are increasingly taking over rural [...]
Are Ordinary People as Stupid as Their Leaders Believe?
Recently, an old friend who lives in New York told me that he wanted to leave because he was convinced that he was in a fascist United States. A participant at a writing seminar handed me an essay to review in which she likened George Bush to Hitler and the people who voted for [...]
Gordon Brown Announces 25.5% of UK Budget To Be Spent On African Aid
(Report from the Reuters Wire Service)
Gordon Brown, Britain’s famously ambitious Chancellor of the Exchequer, yesterday announced that aid flows to Africa will be raised from 0.47% of the UK national budget to a whopping 25.5%. This will be effective immediately. Speaking at the Make Poverty Campaign Rally in Trafalgar Square, Brown emotionally announced [...]
Africa Needs More Millionares - Not AID Workers
Africans should get off the AID band wagon.
What we need is for Africans leaving school to make profits. We don’t need more NON-Profit organisations!
Imagine how crazy it is for poor nations to have almost everyone getting educated rubbing their hands in excitement at the prospect of spending their lives doing NON-Profit work, when in [...]
7/7/2005: London’s Terrorist Attacks
The city is at a virtual standstill and is eerily calm in light of the multiple bombings this morning. I was on the way into the city centre by bus when we were ordered to disembark and told that there had been an explosion on a similar double-decker bus and several on the underground.
Sirens [...]
Choking on Aid Money in Africa
I just had to share these two links:
Choking on Aid Money in Africa
By Erich Wiedemann and Thilo Thielke
DER SPIEGEL 27/2005 - July 4, 2005
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363604,00.html
Does aid work? Yes - for Britain
By Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1675882,00.html
Some Combative Comments On ‘Those Who Would Steal African Humanity’ Post
I thought that some of the comments made about my last post, Live8 and Those Who Would Steal African Humanity, were provocative and fun. It proved to be quite unpopular with some readers, which is all good but I am anxious to hear what Africa means to you.
It seems to me that Africa is more [...]
Live8 and Emmanuel Jal
On Saturday July 2nd, Live8 concerts will be held in ten cities around the world. They will feature the biggest and most famous names in pop. Performing in London, at Hyde Park, will be the African Children’s Choir, Annie Lennox, Bob Geldof, Coldplay, Dido, Elton John, Joss Stone, Keane, The Killers, Madonna, Mariah [...]
An African in St. Petersburg: The Arrival
From today, I will try and keep a kind of diary of my two-week trip to St. Petersburg. Hopefully I will be able to find a computer that I can use to upload the pictures that I am taking.
The Arrival
I flew into St. Petersburg yesterday evening on a flight from Vienna. I have [...]
Kenya Held Captive By Elders
Is it just me or is Kenya held captive by people who were born in the 16th Century? Whenever I see pictures such as this one, with an elderly politician or public servant standing in front of microphones, I always suspect that they are saying something vaguely ridiculous. I know it is a [...]
The African and his Dangerous Loins
The piece below was published in the East African in the Fall of 2004. It is about a London conference that featured all the hypocrisies that I have been ranting about for the past week. It will be followed by a return to the The Matrix Redux: The African Version - stuff that [...]
Confessions of a Middle Class Kenyan
I have spent the last few hours listening to audio tapes of James Baldwin and Malcolm X, reading of the anti-slavery exploits of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry and reading the last letters that his fellow raiders wrote just before they were led to the gallows. I have done this as a result of [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Nigerian PEN Centre Replies to Binyavanga’s Rage
Dear All:
Thank you for bringing this to specific attention. There is indeed reason to shudder at some of the statements credited to Mr. Kapuscinski about Africa and cultures “other” than European, but these things are not new. He has been pinned to the memory of Mr. Conrad but I doubt if his energies or [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Binyavanga Wainaina’s Rage in Manhattan
Dear Friends,
I am in the US, on a reading tour and just found out that Ryszard Kapuscinski will be speaking at various fora in New York City starting on Saturday the 16th of April 2005 - invited by PEN America.
(Read this extract from the PEN Charter:)
MEMBERS OF PEN should at all times use what influence [...]
Think Bush is cynical? Check out France in Ivory Coast
The French have been on a moral high horse since the American invasion of Iraq. They have been joined in their age-old pursuit of American bashing by other Europeans and a smattering of African urban ’sophisticates’. French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, he of the square jaw and aristocratic mien, was on every television channel, [...]
Reviewers Expose Kapuscinski’s Falsehoods
John Ryle in the Times Literary Supplement
http://www.richardwebster.net/johnryle.html
Extract:
“In this mode of writing – the tropical baroque style – nothing can be ordinary or familiar. Everything is stretched and exaggerated the opposite of home. As Kapuscinski has himself written elsewhere of South American baroque. “If there is a jungle it has to be enormous… if there are [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: The Literary Vulture Circling African Suffering
I am not for disguising the violence and poverty that afflicts parts of Africa - in fact I am for it enough that I am writing a doctoral thesis on the place of genocide in political life by studying Rwanda. But I know that I am not the only one who is sick and tired [...]
Misericonomics: Who Will Win the Nobel Prize for this One?
There is a Commission for Africa that has just released its report. Bob Geldof, its chairman, has gotten a shot of fading publicity on the back of suffering Africans.
Is it unreasonable to argue that Africa’s greatest resource is its suffering?Bono, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Kofi Annan and other more junior members of the International [...]
Is there such a thing as African art? Africa Remix answers
Behind the mask
by Mark Irving (The Times Online, January 15, 2005)
Naive, primitive? African artists have outgrown these labels. Why haven’t we?
The centre of the contemporary art world is, as we all know, London. It’s also New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, Shanghai and many other places because contemporary art doesn’t let geography get in the way [...]