Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on what it means to be “an African writer”
newstatesman.com
newstatesman.com
"Among Nigerians, complaining about our problems is an art form. Most conversations quickly become a litany of complaints – about government corruption, no light, no water, etc. But if a foreigner were to say the same things, to recite the same litany of complaints, Nigerians would become defensive, sometimes angrily so.
"I have always been curious about this brand of defensiveness – which I myself often exhibit, by the way. It seems to me that we have it because we assume that the complaining Nigerian is aware that Nigeria is not only about its problems, is aware of the human complexity, knows of the intelligence and ingenuity of people, knows how they cry and laugh, knows what motivates them and what they aspire to and what they find meaningful. And we suspect that the foreigner does not know these other stories about us and so we worry about being defined solely by what we do not have and by what we are not. And so our defensiveness emerges."
I hate to use a NNT-popularized phrase, but it's partly because outsiders don't have "skin in the game", and their complaints don't come from a place of shared adversity and knowledge, but from a place of unearned superiority and ignorance.
In most areas in life, you have to earn the right to complain.
I totally get this. I wanted to write a book which centered around my life in high school. One thing that worries me is that even though Africa is a diverse place, there's an expectation that "African literature" should be written in a particular way on particular subjects and experiences. I doubt coming from an upper class family attending a fancy private school counts as such.
This is quite poignant and on the nose in my experience. I'm a dark science fiction author and this has been my understanding of the situation in my field also. With the Sad/Rabid puppies, Gamergate, Racefail, etc. its always been a large discussion that politics should stay out of art, or that art should be apolitical, or that politics in art is pandering/bad.
I feel that the selection of politics in art is actually quite specific- 1984, Farenheit 451, Ayn Rand's works are political with esteem. But works in a distinctly diverse voice are often chagrined for it- the new star wars stuff, the new star trek stuff (even when the old star trek stuff, which is also quite diverse, is well regarded). I've seen criticism that these are 'too political', but I've yet to see someone complaining that 1984 is too political of a scifi piece, or that Brave New World is shoving too much politics in its scifi. But I may just not be adequately read on criticisms of those works- I only have so much attention and I've found the loudest voices are of the most recent works of our time.
So I agree that in the West, describing fiction as political is sometimes used in a pejorative manner, even though several well-regarded works are very political. It's just certain politics are broadly considered 'too far' and hyperfocused on identity in a negative sense. I don't understand this phenomenon myself, actually, but her observance is also my observance here as a Western writer.
But her later writing, about not only writing politically, but also being viewed in a political light are also true to me. Even as one does not write with a political agenda, the writing will be interpreted in a political lens and then you the author will be held responsible. This contrast between that which is viewed politically and that which is written politically is a core of significant amounts of chagrin within the field of science fiction writing.
The final paragraph, before the quote, encompasses so much that I relate to. (I still respect that, as an American author, I could never fully relate to her experiences as a Nigerian author. I respect that her experiences are her own. Merely that I relate to aspects of it.)
"That question “Are you an African Writer?” is one I have been asked many times, and there are times when I have answered “Yes”, a yes that reflected my ambivalence but also my anxiety not to be misunderstood. I belong, was what my “Yes” said, I belong. But that “Yes” often came with a whisper: “But you must let me belong on my own terms, on multiple terms, for that is the essence of art.”"
I assume this is what worries her when being asked if she is an "African" author; people think they already know what that means.
Of course, it's also scrambled by the way the Internet amplifies every outlier voice, and you can get yelled at simultaneously for having too much politics and not enough. And we've got a good group of folk running around and projecting politics everywhere, and screaming at you if you resist them.
You'd get tired of even your favorite food if everyone you knew was literally sticking it in your mouth at what felt like every available opportunity. And even if it's a very healthy food and desirable in every other way, you're not going to enjoy it.
While I'm not sure I call myself "an anime fan", I've found myself going there a lot more lately, because either A: the Japanese culture right now is a lot more willing to just tell a story and not provide me with the "correct" interpretation, complete with social pressure and serious threats of ostrichization if I don't agree with it or B: I'm oblivious to the politics because I lack the context or C: I can see them but I haven't been rubbed raw by constant exposure to the issue, or I have no particular reason to care (e.g., a series clearly tackling the political issue of Japanese government censorship, but it's pretty easy for me to be fairly detached from the politics).
I think that the balance is quite confused- as I stated before, the most well-lauded works are almost all highly political, especially in science fiction. My confusion is that there is a claim there is too much politics in a field whose foundational works are all political works. This makes me believe that it is not that it is political, but that political views around certain narratives are less acceptable than other political views, and are considered "too far". The actual lines are quite fuzzy and filled with nuance, similar to the essayist's experiences with being an "African writer".
I would also distinguish "political" from "philosophical". A lot of anime is philosophical. That's not what's bothering people. Ghost in the Shell musing about what it means to be human and what the line between human and machine will someday be isn't telling me which candidate I need to vote for or else I'll be cast into the outer social darkness where there is much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and deplatforming.
Also, for what I've experienced in the west, I am not seeing what you are seeing- the " telling me which candidate I need to vote for or else I'll be cast into the outer social darkness where there is much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and deplatforming". I'm unsure where Star Wars has done this, or, say, that weird female-cast remake of Ghostbusters? These were fairly mainstream works from what I understand, but they weren't about voting or who to vote for. Their politics, from what I understand, was entirely about who was casted and the choices in casting them, not about candidates.
I'm really confused now. I don't understand where you're discerning politics from philosophy. An anime about exploring the ramifications of the nuclear bomb and the human identity including gender of androids is philosophical, but the dominant western media is about candidate voting- of which I don't know any mainstream western media directly saying who to vote for?
I'm not sure why you think Ghost in the Shell was about the nuclear bombing. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone take that angle on it before, and I've read some stuff about it. It's primarily about technology, most of which doesn't exist yet. And if it differs, it is that it doesn't necessarly take a stand and tell you what to believe, like Hollywood does so much today. I guess that's my primary line-draw on philosophy vs. politics. I see so much less "cartoonish buffoon with obvious badthink vs. righteous, all-virtue rightthinker" in anime.
If you don't believe me, you can easily put it to the test, if you're on social media. Just try posting that you'd like to see some bit of media that reaches across the aisle and treats a Trump voter with some degree of respect, in the interests of human brotherhood. Warning: You may lose friends if you do this. I've posted this challenge three or four times to people before now, and nobody's reported trying it, because on some level... you know.
I'm not, actually. I don't live in silicon valley, and have no idea what the mainstream of silicon valley is in terms of politics.
Also, I think you may be approaching this with a lot more assumptions than is reasonable to be made here. You've made assumptions about me and my position, and instead of diverting to social media I would like to bring it back to the inherent politicality of western media and how it's distinctly more overt and telling people how to vote?
Anime is an interesting example. I am an anime fan, but it's a fraught fandom. Let me tell you, anime is just as political, but its attitudes tend to be more conservative (and therefore less visible; they simply seem like the status quo.) Infantilising female characters, lionising masculinity, challenging authority, celebrating community -- even these widespread and conventional tropes of anime are part of its politics. There's increasingly mature criticism around this stuff via outlets like AniFem, the new VRV blog, etc. It's harder to find that criticism of English-speaking TV, though.
Of course, you should feel free to ignore all this. I'd argue that it's part of your privilege to be able to ignore the politics of art at will, but that aside, even the most dogmatic critics don't want to be writing a thesis in their heads every time they open Netflix.
I think it's probably because white people get uncomfortable when reminded they're slowly losing majority status.
To paraphrases something I can't remember the origins of: we are most deeply embedded in ideology when we don't recognize it as ideology / post-ideology is the ultimate ideology.
Or, to quote David Foster Wallace:
>There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
And, might as well add Zizek:
>That is why we are also unable to shake so-called ideological prejudices by taking into account the pre-ideological level of everyday experience. The basis of this argument is that the ideological construction always finds its limits in the field of everyday experience - that it is unable to reduce, to contain, to absorb and annihilate this level. [...] Does not this everyday experience offer an irreducible resistance to the ideological construction?
>The answer is, of course, no. If everyday experience offers such a resistance, then the anti-Semitic ideology has not yet really grasped us. An ideology is really ‘holding us’ only when we do not feel any opposition between it and reality - that is, when the ideology succeeds in determining the mode of our everyday experience of reality itself.
>---THE SUBLIME OBJECT OF IDEOLOGY
---
>even when the old star trek stuff, which is also quite diverse, is well regarded
Roddenberry would be denounced as the king of social justice warriors if he were writing today. (So would Rod Serling.) Star Trek, Stars War, Dr Who, etc are always okay in the past sense (no matter how bad the individual episode / movie) exactly because they are part of the past, and they cannot and never will change, which, to me, points to the real desire, the real anxiety, of those at present as being one a perpetual potential for alteration, much like a hypochondriac: there's no state of not being sick, only the state of not being sick yet, so the true desire is to be sick, because that is definitive.
And I keep imagining (comics / manga are what I've been seeing the most of this in lately) that if you imagined an alternative history where Alan Moore came along now, there would be no end of youtube videos and blog vitriol about him ruining Swamp Thing with agenda stuff and killing the superhero genre with Watchmen. But, since that's in the past, it can be safely embraced. Much like Martin Luther King, Jr: reviled up until death, after death, the establishment can lionize him. The dead don't talk back when someone puts words in their mouth.
On the one hand a certain vocal contingent of the audience does not want change, but instead wants the same story repeated ad infinitum, even though they say the opposite. The problem is it's not like heroine, where you simply have to increase the dosage until death, instead in must be continually new/different and yet the same, which quickly becomes untenable.
>1984, Farenheit 451, Ayn Rand's works
Interesting how is likely to be called art tends to be dystopian, isn't it? I have this paper somewhere [but that I cannot find for the life of me to link] that puts froward the idea that the dystopian subset of science fiction was allowed to become respectable in the mid twentieth century because it reflected the bourgeoisie's own anxieties about themselves and externalized an internalized death wish.