{"id":1017,"date":"2008-12-21T16:38:38","date_gmt":"2008-12-21T21:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=1017"},"modified":"2015-01-07T14:04:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T18:04:54","slug":"of-mirrors-mics-and-membership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=1017","title":{"rendered":"Mirrors, Mics, and Membership"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

There is much that might be said about why urban Africans in the
\nNorthern Rhodesia of the late 1930s should have been so interested in ball-
\nroom dancing and formal evening wear. But the Rhodes-Livingstone anthro-
\npologists were right about at least one thing: when urban Africans seized so
\neagerly on European cultural forms, they were neither enacting ancient African
\ntradition nor engaging in a parody of the whites. Rather — as Wilson recog-
\nnized — they were asserting rights to the city (cf. Caldeira 2001; Holston 1999)
\nand pressing, by their conduct. claims to the political and social rights of full
\nmembership in a wider society. <\/p>\n

As Wilson noted, the acquisition and display of European clothes and
\nother goods was the only domain available in colonial society in which Afri-
\ncans could assert their claims to “a civilized status, comparable to that of the
\nEuropeans.” Urban Africans did not want to be regarded as “decorative bar-
\nbarians” but as “civilized men.” They wanted, that is, to be full and equal citi-
\nzens of a modern urban society. If they enthusiastically adopted elaborate
\nforms of European dress and manners, it was to press their claim “to be re-
\nspected by the Europeans and by one another as civilized, if humble, men,
\nmembers of the new world society<\/strong>” (Wilson 1941:19-20, emphasis added). <\/p>\n

This crucial claim to membership is denied by interpretations …
\nwhich suggest that such urban Africans were performing modernity
\nonly to appropriate its magic for use within an indigenous cultural order. But
\nthe most vital political question raised by practices of colonial emulation did
\nnot concern the incorporation of Western symbolic materials into African local
\ncultural systems. Rather, it concerned the place Africans were to occupy in a
\nglobal sociocultural order — their status in a new “world society” — a point that
\nboth Wilson and his informants seem to have understood very well.<\/p>\n

           — James Ferguson, “Of Mimicry and Membership”<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

\ndo you see why it’s amazing
\nwhen someone comes out of such a dire situation
\nand learns the English language just to share his observation?
\nprobly get a Grammy without a grammar education,
\nso fuck you school and fuck you immigration,
\nand all of you who thought i wouldn’t amount to constipation.
\nand now i’m here without the slightest fear and reservation.
\nthey love me in the slums and the native reservations.
\nthe world is a ghetto administ’ring deprivation.
\n…
\na lot of mainstream niggaz is yappin about yappin
\na lot of underground niggaz is rappin about rappin
\ni just want to tell you what’s really crackalackin
\nbefore the tears came down this is what happened…<\/p>\n

           — K’Naan, “Somalia”<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is much that might be said about why urban Africans in the Northern Rhodesia of the late 1930s should have been so interested in ball- room dancing and formal evening wear. But the Rhodes-Livingstone anthro- pologists were right about at least one thing: when urban Africans seized so eagerly on European cultural forms, they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[400,413,28,227,404,267,407],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academic","tag-africa","tag-anthro","tag-global","tag-hip-hop","tag-somalia","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8414,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/8414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}