Identity, Hegemony, And Played Through The Dynamics Of Swahili Giriama And Fractal Recursivity

“Ibn Battuta’s stories give us a picture of Africa through eyes of a devote Muslim traveling all over the continent of Africa and the world. In his accounts sub-Saharan Africa is described prior to colonialism and racism. Ibn Battuta’s stories as they are transcribed in “Ibn Battuta, In Black Africa” by Said Hamdun and Noel King are representative of the only written account of this period and give us the most realistic and accurate account of this time in history.

“African societies developed diverse forms, from large centralized states to stateless societies organized around kinship or age sets rather than central authority. Within this diversity were many shared aspects of language and beliefs. Universalistic faiths penetrated the continent and served as the basis for important cultural development in Nubia and Ethiopia.

As anthropologist Bruce Knauft described, the Gebusi clan had words that described many different aspects, examples included oil the Gebusi word for tomorrow and yesterday and owa for grandparents and grandchildren, but the most defining one was kogwayay, a catchfall marker to describe all of their cultural distinction. Because of kogwayay’s branching terminology, kogwayay is also the Gebusi’s word for ethnicity, the identification with a cultural group because of shared values customs and beliefs, while inversely excluded from different groups. One aspect that contributes to the Gebusi’s sense of kogwayay is religion. Through Knauft’s book we see their religious ways introduced and watch them change and adapt with the dynamics of cultural change over time.

When most western people think about Native American or African religions there is a certain stigma that comes with the topic. This is in part because there is a lot of misinformation in the world about Native American and African religions. When most westerners think of African religions they think of voodoo and black magic. Likewise, the view of Native American religions is still looked at through the lens of the pilgrims who wrote about Native Americans as being savages and less than human. These stereotypes were all formed from a lack of accurate information. African and Native American religions are very similar. It is difficult to find a lot of accurate information on African and Native American indigenous religions because of the lack of written history but there is a lot of oral history that has been passed down from generation to generation. From this information, it is clear that Native American and African religions have many more similarities than they do differences. Three of these similarities will be discussed in this paper. The first topic of discussion is the similarity between African and Native American people when it comes to their perception of the spirit world. Following this topic are the similarities between Native American and African views on the afterlife and finally, the diversity of beliefs within African and Native American religions.

In Zora Neale Hurtson’s ethnography, Tell My Horse (1938), she uses her research and field notes from her year in the Caribbean islands to study how the political atmosphere and culture tie into the religion of Vodoun. Being one of the first in her field to study this religion, Hurston hoped to expand research upon the subtle nuances within the African diaspora and increase the people of Caribbean’s acceptance of their African identity. In doing so, Hurtson found her research discouraged the idea of Pancaribbeanism and diminished stereotypes of Vodoun being a religion based upon only evil possession and pagan sacrifice.

Haour, A. (2005). Power and permanence in precolonial Africa: A case study from the Central Sahel. World Archaeology, 37(4), 552-565. Retrieved from the JSTOR

The author Maryse Conde has based the story of Segu on real life events and practices of the late 18th and early 19th century. The author has tried to bring out the tensions that existed in Africa at that time by using the four brothers of the Traore family,Tiekoro, Siga, Naba and Malobali as scapegoats. She talks about each of these characters in depth to show us their influences on the city. She shows how traditional religion and Islam impact each character in the story.

“Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa” by Charles Piot is a book based on the lives of the people of the remote village called Kabre located in Northern Togo. The author discusses the “vernacular modernity” of the people of Kabre village that has been influenced by a long tradition of encounters with outsiders that included the colonialists. The author provides an in-depth analysis with ethnographic details about the Kabre people as the author discusses a wide range of their culture and history that included houses and the structure of homestead, gender ideology, ritual like initiations, exchange system, and social relations (Piot 178).

There are many countries in the world and every country is unique and individualistic with many exclusive qualities. Everyone in the world has a culture but it is not easy to accept or agree with other people’s culture. The ethnography, “Guests of the Sheik”, written by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea really captures what it is like to live and to be immersed into another culture. Ethnography is “comprised of the writings of the anthropologist, detailing the life ways of a particular culture, investigated by means of direct fieldwork” (Arenson, and Miller-Thayer 1). Elizabeth Fernea lived in a small village of El Nahra in southern Iraq for two years to gather data for her anthropologist husband Bob. In the beginning, she had limited knowledge of Iraq, its religion or culture, but as she started connecting with the women of the society, she came to learn both about this foreign country and about herself. Acculturation is “the process of acceptance resulting for the contact between two cultures, or an individual interacting in at least two cultures” (517). As she builds relationships with the woman’s, she is acculturated.

The historical novel Segu by Maryse Condé is set in the African country of Segu during a time of great cultural change. The African Slave Trade, the spread of Islam, and personal identity challenges were all tremendous and far-reaching issues facing Africa from the late 1700s to early 1800s. Condé uses the four brothers of the Traore family, Tiekoro, Malobali, Siga, and Naba, to demonstrate the impact that the issues of Islam, slave trade, and identity had on African people through the development of each character. The oldest of the sons, Tiekoro exemplifies the influence and spread of Islam through out Africa at the time.

Conflicts in these countries stem from a complex nature of historico-political legacies of past leaders. While some scholars blame conflicts in Africa to be the consequence of colonialism, I believe it is more complex than that. The continual preservation of the system that does not balance the power differences, however produced group formation along the lines of applicable social identities, as it relates to their experiences. (Volkan, 1997) Bloodline, a metaphor for the process of identity formation draws its strength from the author’s ability to draw a link between social identity formation and blood-related issues. Citing the Middle East, Isreal, and Palestine, his psychoanalytic methods helps in understanding dimensions of social identity formation as one beyond the Freudian understanding of the dynamics of group psychology. (Moghaddam, 2006) equally situates social identity formation as the best explanation for Islamic terrorism.

"Segu is a garden where cunning grows. Segu is built on treachery. Speak of Segu outside Segu, but do not speak of Segu in Segu" (Conde 3). These are the symbolic opening words to the novel Segu by Maryse Conde. The kingdom of Segu in the eighteenth and nineteenth century represents the rise and fall of many kingdoms in the pre-colonial Africa. Therefore, Segu indirectly represents the enduring struggles, triumphs, and defeats of people who are of African decent in numerous countries around the world. There are three major historical concepts that are the focus of this book. One is the spread of the Islamic religion. Another is the slave trade, and the last is the new

“Segu is a garden where cunning grows. Segu is built on treachery. Speak of Segu outside Segu, but do not speak of Segu in Segu” (Conde 3). These are the symbolic opening words to the novel Segu by Maryse Conde. The kingdom of Segu in the eighteenth and nineteenth century represents the rise and fall of many kingdoms in the pre-colonial Africa. Therefore, Segu indirectly represents the enduring struggles, triumphs, and defeats of people who are of African decent in numerous countries around the world. There are three major historical concepts that are the focus of this book. One is the spread of the Islamic religion. Another is the slave trade, and the last is the new trade in the nineteenth

The desire to conquer land that was previously unexplored has existed throughout history. This desire forced many indigenous societies, who were usually dominated technologically, to adapt to the teachings and overall system of the ‘superior’ conqueror nation with destruction as the only alternative. This causes a major impact on how a certain society functions, even after seeking independence from the foreigners. The rise and fall of indigenous societies can be analyzed through various media. Chinua Achebe is a novelist specializing in African literature, and this essay deals with the themes regarding colonialism in one of his many novels. In

In the novel The River Between, Ngugi wa Thiong’o expresses a strong moderate nationalist sentiment displayed in various ways. The subject of this novel, is a meaningful portrayal of how the theme of colonization is at the heart of most African literature written in English. The River Between was Ngugi’s first work to be published in his own language, Gikuyu and then translated into English. His radical shift from the use of the European languages to the use of an indigenous African language, Gikuyu, was a way of fighting imperialism: “I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, an African language, is part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenyan and African peoples” . The novel addresses the early days of colonial intervention and richly illustrates the interference of the pre-colonial tranquil tribal life style at the hand European missionaries and colonizers . Apart from the novel’s primary language of publication we see Ngugi’s nationalist mindset through the Kikuyu people and their actions throughout the historical fiction. The issues of cultural and national identity are made obvious which tie into Ngugi’s perspective towards the Europeans. Furthermore, through the protagonist Waiyaki, we are further able to envision the aspiration to overcome colonialism through his very own desire to unite the two feuding ridges at the time, Mukuyu and Kameno.