0:00

Hello,

0:12

and welcome to the history of Africana philosophy

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by Teekay Jeffers and Adamson. Brought

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to you with the support of the King's College London Fellowship

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Department and the LMU in Munich online

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at historyphilosophy dot net. Today's

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episode, Weapon Of Choice.

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Amid Khad Khad. Philosophers

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are often seen as uninvolved figures,

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literally sitting in an armchair as they develop

0:35

their ambitious ideas and refined distinctions.

0:38

While this reputation is not entirely unearned,

0:41

the tradition has given us more than

0:43

a few counter examples. We've

0:45

by now met plenty of activist intellectuals,

0:48

people who can credibly be called philosophers

0:50

on the basis of their deep theoretical investigations,

0:53

but who also put their freedom and even their

0:55

lives on the line in the cause of liberation.

0:58

It's hard to come up with a better example than

1:01

whose philosophical musings went hand in

1:03

hand with waging a war of independence, and

1:06

who in January of nineteen seventy three

1:08

made the ultimate sacrifice for his cause.

1:11

Cupral's philosophical writings are inextricably

1:13

bound up with his career as a revolutionary leader.

1:16

Some of them were addressed to the soldiers under his

1:18

direction and sought to build their morale

1:20

and clarify for them the nature of their struggle.

1:23

Others were delivered before international audiences

1:26

and in part intended to attract political support.

1:29

In the year nineteen seventy two alone, for

1:31

instance, he made no fewer than thirty

1:33

one trips abroad for the sake of international

1:35

diplomacy, from Asia to Europe to the

1:37

United States. It is symbolic

1:39

of this diplomat's importance as a philosopher,

1:42

though, that his last trip to the United States

1:44

just a few months before his assassination included

1:47

meeting Amir Barakah, who was

1:49

at that time still in his black cultural

1:51

nationalist phase. As we noted

1:53

in episode one hundred and twelve, this part

1:55

of Baracca's career was deeply inspired

1:57

by Milano Karanga's philosophy of

1:59

Kawäida, but came to an end a

2:01

couple of years later when Barakka publicly

2:04

repudiated black cultural nationalism and

2:06

embraced instead of Marxist perspective focused

2:08

on third world solidarity. As

2:11

it turns out, we can find Baracca explicitly

2:13

telling the New York Times that he was led

2:15

to this shift in theoretical understanding by

2:17

his study of Capella's thought. Amlcar

2:21

Cabral was named after a scourge of

2:23

the Roman empire, Amelukar, the

2:25

Jeffers of Carthage, who fathered the more famous

2:27

animal. Cabral, himself

2:29

an African destined to defy Empire, was

2:31

born in nineteen twenty four in what is now

2:33

Guinea Bissau, but then still

2:35

the colony of Portuguese Guinea. This

2:37

is not to be confused with the former French

2:40

Guinea, also known as Guinea Kanakri,

2:42

after its capital city. This is the place

2:44

usually called Guinea in English nowadays.

2:47

Cabral parents hailed from Cape Verde,

2:50

a nearby archipelago of islands in the

2:52

Atlantic Ocean that is also considered part

2:54

of Lusafone Africa. Lusafone

2:57

may sound like a musical instrument designed for

2:59

use in free jazz, but it just means

3:01

Portuguese speaking. After

3:03

growing up in Cape Verde, Cabral spent time

3:05

in Portugal itself studying agricultural

3:07

engineering in Lisbon beginning in nineteen

3:09

forty five. Here he came into contact

3:12

with Africans from other Portuguese colonies,

3:14

such as Ibostino Neto of Angola,

3:16

who would go on to become Angola's first president.

3:19

Cabral also discovered two philosophical movements

3:22

that have loomed large in the story we've been telling

3:24

in this podcast series. These two

3:26

movements, Neptun and Marxism, greatly

3:28

shaped his ideas even as neither of

3:30

them managed to claim his unqualified allegiance.

3:34

But we should not discount the importance of

3:36

his field of study, agronomics, informing

3:38

him as both a political actor and a philosopher.

3:41

You may recall that Africana Horton

3:43

of Sierra Leone, who we covered in episode

3:46

fifty five, published a book in eighteen

3:48

sixty seven about Cabral West Africa

3:50

based on his survey of the climate soil and

3:52

plants there. Similarly, after

3:54

his studies, Cabral went back to Guinea in

3:57

nineteen fifty two, where he worked for the

3:59

overseas ministry of Portugal in the agricultural

4:01

service. He undertook an agricultural

4:03

census and released his findings in

4:05

nineteen fifty three. These made for

4:08

dry reading, no doubt, Yet, the seeds

4:10

of his revolutionary thought were already planted

4:12

here. He lamented the environmental

4:14

impact of capitalism as manifested

4:16

for instance in the use of monocultures where

4:19

huge swaths of the territory were

4:21

used to grow just one crop, like ground

4:23

nuts, with dire consequences for

4:25

the population and the soil itself. And

4:29

since the choice of crops cut across tribal

4:31

boundaries and was often linked to socio

4:33

economic status, chaparral's focus

4:35

on agriculture started to lead him toward

4:37

thinking of class rather than ethnicity

4:40

as the main principle of division within Guinea.

4:43

Even as he was working for the colonial government,

4:46

Cabral began also working to undermine

4:48

it. He tried to get the peasants to

4:50

see that they were being exploited in ways they

4:52

could not even proceed. As when the

4:54

Portuguese worked to keep crop prices artificially

4:57

low. When went to do

4:59

consulting work as an agronomist in Angola,

5:01

he participated in founding an organization that

5:04

would serve as the basis for the MPLAA, the

5:06

People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola.

5:09

This is the party that ultimately secured Angola's

5:11

independence and that still rules Angola

5:13

today. The same year, nineteen

5:15

fifty six, while visiting the capital of

5:17

Portuguese Guinea, which is Bissaud. He

5:19

and others, including his brother, Lewis Cabral,

5:22

created the African party for the independence

5:24

of Guinea and Cape Vegas. The PAI

5:26

GC. This is the party

5:28

through which he would pursue his life's work, that

5:30

is the liberation of both his homelands,

5:32

Portuguese Guinea, and Cape Verde. In

5:35

nineteen fifty nine, a massacre of striking

5:37

dock workers in Bissau showed the danger

5:40

and limitations of mobilizing urban laborers.

5:42

So as the nineteen sixties saw the struggle against

5:45

colonialism and turned violent, the PAICC

5:47

used guerilla tactics to disrupt Portuguese

5:49

control over rural areas. As

5:52

they gained territory, the party demonstrated its

5:54

own capacity for political leadership through

5:56

the setup of infrastructure Chike schools,

5:58

hospitals, and law courts. Unsurprisingly

6:01

given his intellectual training, Kabbalah

6:03

used an agricultural metaphor for the struggle.

6:05

Resistance was like scattering rice

6:07

and hoping it will grow. In

6:10

this process, he saw many aspects of traditional

6:12

African society as less than

6:14

helpful. As one scholar of

6:16

his thought has commented, had no

6:18

nostalgia for pre capitalist communalism.

6:21

He saw the top down structures of some ethnic

6:23

groups Chike the Fula and Mandinca as

6:26

counterproductive because their chiefs were in

6:28

his view, often co opted by the Portuguese

6:30

colonizers. He also

6:32

felt that traditional belief systems should

6:34

be confronted with the power of modern science.

6:37

When anecdote tells of how he challenged a village

6:39

elder who was skeptical of the need for

6:41

sending children to the new schools. Cabral

6:44

out a cigarette lighter and challenged the

6:46

other to explain the physics behind the flame

6:48

it produced. This same

6:50

theme is emphasized in his features to the rank

6:52

and file of the PAIGC. Here

6:55

of lightning or magical totems Chike animals,

6:57

horns, is near superstition. And

6:59

the new society they were building was to be based

7:01

on science and not imaginary things.

7:05

This was just part of the moral education he

7:07

tried to give his followers as he exhorted

7:09

them to display good hygiene, keep their

7:11

clothes neat and clean, and for goodness sake,

7:13

turn up on time for ambushes against the

7:15

colonial forces. This aspect

7:17

of his thought may remind us of another late nineteenth

7:20

century Africana thinker, Ocurti Washington,

7:23

who struck a similar tone in his addresses to

7:25

the students at Taseke. One can

7:27

easily imagine Washington saying, we

7:29

should avoid the superiority complex of

7:31

those who know something and the inferiority complex

7:34

of those who don't know. But in fact,

7:36

these are the words of Cabral.

7:38

Unlike Washington though, cabal was

7:40

living after the negativity movement. While

7:43

Elizabeth as a student, encountered

7:45

Sangamo's landmark pathology of black

7:47

poetry in French and was enraptured

7:49

by it. He spoke of finding in

7:51

this book things I had not dreamed of,

7:54

marvelous poetry written by blacks from all

7:56

parts of the French world, poetry that speaks

7:58

of Africa, of slaves, of men, of

8:00

life, and of the aspirations of men.

8:03

As attractive as Cabral was to negative,

8:06

though, It was extremely important to him

8:08

that African culture should not be celebrated

8:10

uncritically. He was in fact open

8:12

to the idea that European colonial

8:14

powers might be credited with having given

8:16

something worthwhile to the lands they dominated.

8:19

Science, for example, and the language

8:21

used to describe it. As he once notoriously

8:24

asked, making reference to the language of the largest

8:26

of Guinea Bissaud's ethnic groups, how

8:28

do you say square root in Balanta?

8:31

But this should not, of course, distract us from

8:33

the deeply oppressive and malevolent nature

8:35

of colonialism. Gibraltar made

8:37

no bones about wanting to chase the Portuguese

8:39

out of Guinea and State Bade, part of

8:42

a broader effort to end colonialism in Africa

8:44

as a whole. His business was

8:46

resistance, which he defined as follows,

8:49

to destroy one thing for the sake of

8:51

constructing another thing. Like

8:54

in Kruma and others who wrote against colonialism

8:56

and neo colonialism, Corporal understood

8:58

economic exploitation and domination to

9:01

be the core of the colonial enterprise, but

9:03

he put a recognizably Marxist twist

9:06

on this familiar accusation. The

9:08

historical purpose of colonialism, insofar

9:11

as it might have one, would be to revolutionize

9:13

the economic and cultural landscape in its dominions.

9:16

This would, on a traditional Marxist account,

9:18

hasten progress toward the ultimate destination

9:21

of a socialist utopia, which can emerge

9:23

only once capitalism has transformed the

9:25

modes of production. This is what

9:27

was happening when colonial powers ushered

9:29

scientific advances into a place like

9:32

Guinea, advances that could then be

9:34

put to good use in an independent nation

9:36

after a successful revolution against those

9:38

same powers. So there was

9:40

a broader Marxist context for apparently

9:43

paradoxical admission that colonialism

9:45

does have some good effects. Even

9:48

more paradoxical is a point that Reeland

9:50

Rebachah has noted in his book concepts

9:53

of Cabral. In a sense,

9:55

colonialism did not go far enough.

9:57

The dominating nations were reluctant to

9:59

unleash the full forces of revolutionary transformation

10:02

in the colonies. They knew they had

10:04

a tiger by the tail and had no interest

10:07

in making that tiger more vigorous. This

10:09

is our metaphor, not good ross, as you

10:11

can tell by the fact that it doesn't involve planting

10:13

crops. The result

10:15

was the stasis that Cabral labeled block

10:18

development, which shows itself

10:20

in low literacy rates for healthcare

10:22

and so on. It is unjust

10:24

for the dominating power to inflict this condition

10:26

on its colonial victims just as it

10:28

is unjust to prevent individuals from realizing

10:30

their full potential. Guinea and

10:32

Cape Verde had the special misfortune

10:34

to be under the control of Portugal, which

10:37

in Gibraltar's assessment was itself a backward

10:39

country they could not have been a colonial power

10:41

at all without the backing of its allies.

10:44

In an amusing moment, he remarked that

10:46

Portugal not only fails to produce airplanes,

10:49

It doesn't even produce toy planes.

10:51

So as he wrote elsewhere, if Portugal could

10:54

have a civilizing influence on any people,

10:56

she would be accomplishing a kind of miracle.

10:59

Cappell once gave a speech entitled the

11:01

weapon of theory and the phrase sums him up

11:03

pretty well. At first glance, the

11:05

theory he was weaponizing looks like orthodox

11:07

Marxism. But he was at pains to resist

11:09

this interpretation in part for political

11:11

reasons. He wanted to persuade countries

11:14

like the United States to stop siding

11:16

with Portugal and being pigeonholed as

11:18

a communist wasn't going to help with that.

11:20

Furthermore, for him, pragmatism should

11:23

Trump ideological purity. Asked

11:25

about his approach, he said, if you want to call

11:27

it Marxism, you may. Am I a Marxist?

11:30

Judge from what I do in practice. Labels

11:32

don't concern us. Closer

11:34

study of his writings also reveals the innovations

11:37

he made within socialist thought. As

11:39

Olofaming Taewoo has written, Cabral

11:42

just incorporate Marxist theory into his

11:44

analysis, he extended and in profoundly

11:46

original ways, transformed it and

11:48

suited it for the African terrain. Keppel

11:52

was provoked to these changes by a deficiency

11:54

he perceived in Marxism, the problem

11:57

of depicting the societies of pre colonial

11:59

Africa is being outside of any history,

12:01

worthy of the name. Remarcus,

12:04

history is the story of class struggle, which

12:06

was absent in these supposedly rudimentary,

12:08

nomadic, and sedentary forms of life of

12:10

the African Cabral by

12:12

contrast stressed that Africa did have

12:15

its own history even if it had been interrupted

12:17

by external domination. Colonialism,

12:20

he said, made us leave our history and

12:22

enter another history. In

12:24

fact, he differed dramatically from Julius

12:26

Nader who we discussed in our last episode

12:28

because unlike Nader's claiming Ujemah,

12:31

the basis of African socialism, Cabral

12:33

insisted that this earlier history of African

12:35

life involved class differences. To

12:37

make this point, Kapral pointed to the chief

12:39

dominated cultures Chike the Fula. Furthermore,

12:43

he believed that the complex African cultures

12:45

that preceded colonialism had survived

12:47

through its depredations. To destroy

12:49

culture, one must more or less annihilate

12:52

or at least entirely uproot the

12:54

people who practice it as was done to some

12:56

native Africana. Anything short

12:58

of this will leave the original society in

13:00

place, in however weakened estate,

13:03

so that it can provide resources for anti

13:05

colonial struggle, and for the new nation

13:07

that emerges after independence. Thus,

13:10

Cabral himself from the idea of an African

13:12

renaissance what has never died

13:14

as no need to be reborn. Combining

13:18

these insights with the admission that some European

13:20

ideas are good, like science, and

13:22

some African ideas bad, like witchcraft,

13:25

we arrive at Cabral overall position

13:27

on culture. The weapon of theory

13:29

yields the weapon Chike. Africans

13:32

who select the best of what both Africa

13:34

and Europe had to offer. He

13:36

thus wrote, while we liquidate the colonial

13:38

culture and the negative aspects of our own culture

13:41

in spirit. In our midst, we have to create

13:43

a new culture, also based on our traditions,

13:45

but respecting everything that the world has won

13:47

today for serving people. Cabral

13:50

like to call the process of embracing the past

13:52

without being uncritical about it, reaffronization,

13:55

or a return to the source. This

13:58

theme in his thought has been discussed by the air train

14:00

philosopher, Sune Seta Cabaret on.

14:02

He speaks of how for the native

14:04

past is not preserved intact, but

14:07

cut and cast to fit the historic requirements

14:09

of the struggle. It's an approach

14:12

that could also be used by African Americans

14:14

and other members of the Diaspora One

14:16

can feel an affinity for traditional cultures

14:18

without adopting every value found in

14:20

those cultures and without feeling like a heretic

14:23

every time one adopts values of the dominant

14:25

colonial culture. It

14:27

rolled dug deeper into the roots of culture itself,

14:30

and his speech delivered in Syracuse, New York

14:32

in nineteen seventy. Here he argued

14:34

that culture grows out of the material and

14:36

historical reality of its society. There

14:39

is yet another botanical metaphor here

14:41

that underlying reality is like a plant

14:44

whose flower is, culture. But

14:46

what does material reality mean

14:48

here? The answer lies in what Kupral

14:50

called the productive forces, which

14:52

he argued are even more fundamental than

14:54

class. In a passage of bristling

14:57

with the technical terminology of Marxism

14:59

eros. The definition of class and

15:01

class struggle are themselves the result of the development

15:03

of productive forces, in conjunction with

15:05

the system of ownership of the means of production.

15:08

It therefore seems permissible to conclude that

15:11

the level of productive forces, the essential

15:13

permanent of the content and form of class struggle

15:15

is the true and permanent motive force of history.

15:18

Chaparral means that

15:20

the degree of stratification in society

15:22

results from such factors as sedentary

15:24

versus nomadic lifestyle, focus

15:26

on agriculture versus the raising of livestock,

15:29

the availability of natural resources, and

15:31

so on. To take simple example,

15:34

a society that involves large scale harvesting

15:36

of crops is liable to produce a class of

15:38

peasants and a second class of people who

15:40

are exploiting the labor of those peasants. Cultural

15:43

norms are also relevant here and can be considered

15:46

as part of the productive forces. For instance,

15:48

do women help with the harvest or is it done

15:50

only by men? Thus,

15:52

class is not fundamental in Kabbalah's political

15:55

theory, but it is still very important. He

15:58

was urgently interested in the class structure of

16:00

Guinea Bissau, because it determined

16:02

the course of the laboratory struggle. Ultimately,

16:05

for that struggle to succeed, all classes

16:07

must commit to it. But the spark must

16:09

be lit within one segment of society. Gibraltar

16:12

felt that revolution cannot come directly from

16:14

the working class and peasants because they lacked

16:17

awareness of their own predicament. As

16:19

for the traditional ruling class, in those

16:21

parts of the population that had such a group,

16:23

the rulers tended to become instruments of colonial

16:25

power. Indeed, Gibraltar

16:28

observed that this was one reason the colonizers could

16:30

not utterly destroy a traditional culture,

16:33

they needed to get the leaders within that culture

16:35

to facilitate a colonial domination. But

16:38

if neither of the lower classes nor the ruling

16:40

classes going to launch revolution, who's

16:42

left? The group that included

16:44

himself, the functionaries of the colonial

16:47

regime, for whom he borrowed the long standing

16:49

Marxist term, petty bourgeoisie. Cabral

16:53

discussion of this class is the aspect of his

16:55

thought most reminiscent of Fanae's psychological

16:58

analysis of the colonized, Cabral

17:00

describes the petty bourgeoisie or

17:02

westernized natives as being torn

17:04

between the system that employs them and the enduring

17:07

cultural values of the wider population. They

17:09

are far more assimilated than rural peasants,

17:12

intend to see themselves as superior to

17:14

those peasants, yet they remain connected

17:16

to that class, whether they like it or not,

17:18

for example, through family ties. Furthermore,

17:21

they suffer from daily indignities meted

17:23

out by the condescending members of the colonizing

17:26

elite. Since that elite

17:28

will never accept them fully, their quest

17:30

for identity can be resolved only by giving

17:32

up on assimilation and embracing their

17:34

native culture. It is not without

17:37

a certain astonishment that they come to

17:39

appreciate the richness of that culture. Now,

17:41

the member of the petty bourgeoisie is ready

17:43

or the return to the source. Which means

17:46

literally going to the rural areas

17:48

to live among the people and in due course

17:50

to fight alongside them. Here,

17:52

theory coincides with Cabral

17:55

was just such a functionary who spent years

17:58

traveling amongst the people, bringing attention

18:00

to the injustices they suffered, and to the

18:02

possibility of doing something about it.

18:05

In another dramatic formulation, Cabral

18:07

speaks of this decision on the part of the westernized

18:10

native as a kind of class suicide.

18:13

The petty bourgeoisie must abandon its

18:15

relatively comfortable status and the assimilated

18:17

values that have previously defined them

18:20

in order to make common cause with the whole nation.

18:23

Why one might wonder would they do this?

18:25

Apart from the annoyance of those daily offenses

18:28

to their pride, one reason might be a desire

18:30

for genuine political power. As

18:32

the initiators of the revolution, this is

18:34

the class from which the leaders of the newly independent

18:36

nation will be drawn. In

18:39

a book on WEB DeBoise, Farnome

18:41

and Cabral, Charles F Peterson

18:43

has observed that with his analysis, Kabbraln

18:46

shows the way out of the dilemma felt by

18:48

Dupuy's talented tenth though

18:50

for Kabbalah, we're probably talking about a lot

18:52

less than ten percent of the colonized population.

18:55

They will escape their double consciousness by

18:57

becoming the vanguard of a revolution that

18:59

makes them no longer a vanguard, just

19:02

particularly skilled members of the mass population

19:05

instead of a group that stands outside of.

19:07

And looks down upon that population. It's

19:10

a powerful idea, which has attracted

19:12

attention from others, Malana Karanga.

19:15

In an essay on the topic, he describes

19:17

class suicide as the way out of the dilemma

19:19

in which the petty bourgeoisie must choose between

19:22

aligning with the oppressor or the people

19:24

retaining power through alliance with and service

19:27

to the oppressor, who are identifying with

19:29

the interests and aspirations of the masses and

19:31

seizing revolutionary power. was

19:35

no doubt satisfied to see how his own

19:37

life ratified his philosophical theories.

19:39

Himself a member of the so called pity bourgeoisie

19:42

he did lead a popular uprising that eventually

19:44

succeeded in freeing Guinea and Cape Verde.

19:47

But that did not come until nineteen seventy four.

19:49

After the Carnation Revolution toppled

19:51

the government back in Portugal. The

19:53

majority of African countries in existence today

19:56

gained independence in the nineteen sixties, so

19:58

this was rather late. Portugal's

20:00

tenacity in clinging to its colonial possessions

20:03

may ironically enough had been a result

20:05

of its weakness. It simply could not

20:07

afford to lose them. Especially Angola and

20:09

Mozambique. And when the end

20:11

of colonialism did come, it was too late

20:13

for Cabral himself. A year

20:15

earlier, he had been assassinated by opponents

20:17

for women, the PAIGC. It

20:19

was a possibility he had foreseen since

20:21

he knew that the Portuguese were intriguing against

20:23

him and that he had many enemies in part

20:26

because of tensions within his own movement

20:28

between the Cape Verdeans and the Ganaeans.

20:30

In contemplating the prospect of his own death,

20:33

Cabral was well, philosophical. If

20:35

I die tomorrow, he said, nothing will

20:37

change in the intellectable evolution of the

20:39

fight of my people and their victory. We

20:42

will have dozens, hundreds of chaparral's.

20:45

He will be worth spending another episode in the

20:47

company of this remarkable man and one of his

20:50

leading expanse Eaforementioned multifamily

20:52

title. Actually, believe it or

20:54

not, that we won't be joined by dozens

20:56

or hundreds of multifamily titles, we

20:58

will be joined by two of them. There

21:00

are a couple of modern day experts on Kabbal

21:02

by this name, one who works at Georgetown

21:04

University, the other at Cornell University. I

21:07

can easily imagine that they get tired of being confused

21:09

with one another, but there will be no excuse

21:11

for that after the next installment when you

21:13

will get two Femi Tyros for the price of

21:16

one. That price being one that Cabral

21:18

would like the sound of, absolutely free.

21:20

As always, hereon, the history of Africana

21:23

philosophy.