dear ikhide
where is the great scheme of things located? what should we give our children, or, in my case, grandchildren?
when i meet people and tell them i teach african cinema they give me this nice, patronizing smile and ask for names as they've never seen one. if i say african literature they struggle to remember Things Fall Apart.
are they ignorant or am i biased? i confess, if you asked me the number of hollywood films i've seen in the last ten years, i'd struggle to remember any. but i try to "keep up" with my field of african lit and cinema, and culture in general.
i don't see why the culture-by-numbers is supposed to be meaningful. i don't see why greatness-by-numbers means anything.
where do we begin if we want to look at the world "from below," instead of from the perspective of dominant cultures or values? the dominant, in all its self-complacence, denigrates us, humbles us, and even in exploiting us seeks to have us applaud their generosity and mercy.
enough.
i'll remind you all the name of the cloth scarf the master gave his slaves, in the caribbean: it was called the dankee-massa. it was the gesture Guelwaar mimicked when he put out his hand in mockery of the african leaders accepting western aid, and said, djeudejeff, dankee master. he said that, sembene wrote that, so the next generation of children, all our children, will be better.
a last word on this focus on the present--there was a time, 2 centuries ago, when shakespeare was in relative eclipse. he was revived in the late 19th century. a time when bach was in eclipse, and mendelsohn revived him. there will be a time when all our greats will have been forgotten, and then maybe revived or lost--trashed to time, becoming mere matter.
i don't care about the list, but where we stand when we say, here is greatness, here is insignificance. ever since the Negritude movement, we have seen africans resisting the denigration of the west. now i want to ignore their paltriness way of counting who is in and who is out; their list is great for themselves by definition: they define what is great by what confers greatness on themselves. it is a joke to take that seriously.
you are right, it is the lion's list. so why do you love it?
if we want to say, let us define greatness for ourselves, ok. i began with sundiata, surely a great figure for niane and 600 years of griots before him, who sang, like homer, the poet, of true greatness. and of course the real greatness was their words. do we have all the names of those griots? i would begin there.
ken
where is the great scheme of things located? what should we give our children, or, in my case, grandchildren?
when i meet people and tell them i teach african cinema they give me this nice, patronizing smile and ask for names as they've never seen one. if i say african literature they struggle to remember Things Fall Apart.
are they ignorant or am i biased? i confess, if you asked me the number of hollywood films i've seen in the last ten years, i'd struggle to remember any. but i try to "keep up" with my field of african lit and cinema, and culture in general.
i don't see why the culture-by-numbers is supposed to be meaningful. i don't see why greatness-by-numbers means anything.
where do we begin if we want to look at the world "from below," instead of from the perspective of dominant cultures or values? the dominant, in all its self-complacence, denigrates us, humbles us, and even in exploiting us seeks to have us applaud their generosity and mercy.
enough.
i'll remind you all the name of the cloth scarf the master gave his slaves, in the caribbean: it was called the dankee-massa. it was the gesture Guelwaar mimicked when he put out his hand in mockery of the african leaders accepting western aid, and said, djeudejeff, dankee master. he said that, sembene wrote that, so the next generation of children, all our children, will be better.
a last word on this focus on the present--there was a time, 2 centuries ago, when shakespeare was in relative eclipse. he was revived in the late 19th century. a time when bach was in eclipse, and mendelsohn revived him. there will be a time when all our greats will have been forgotten, and then maybe revived or lost--trashed to time, becoming mere matter.
i don't care about the list, but where we stand when we say, here is greatness, here is insignificance. ever since the Negritude movement, we have seen africans resisting the denigration of the west. now i want to ignore their paltriness way of counting who is in and who is out; their list is great for themselves by definition: they define what is great by what confers greatness on themselves. it is a joke to take that seriously.
you are right, it is the lion's list. so why do you love it?
if we want to say, let us define greatness for ourselves, ok. i began with sundiata, surely a great figure for niane and 600 years of griots before him, who sang, like homer, the poet, of true greatness. and of course the real greatness was their words. do we have all the names of those griots? i would begin there.
ken
On 12/20/13 2:30 PM, Ikhide wrote:
--Ken et al,It is a great list, I did not delete it, I kept it along with the various other profound lists culled by the West to remind us of my irrelevance in the great scheme of their things, and to remind me of how, all we do is talk, talk, talk, and do nothing else.I love the list because it reminds me of that proverb that Chinua Achebe reminds us of: Until the lion tells the story of the hunt, the hunt will always be glorified by the hunter. If George W. Bush is on the list, it stands to reason that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein should share that same spot with him.In much of Black Africa, the most significant figure in world history would be either Jesus or Muhammed, have you been to Africa lately? What are you complaining about? The rest of the characters on that list, you will find in the moldy and decaying "curriculum" in our schools. I did not know that Toyin Falola existed until I joined this list. My 18-year old niece in my village this December did not know who Soyinka is. She had never heard of him or the Nobel prize because she told me she did not study "literature." She goes to university next year, by the grace of ASUU. It is an accurate list.We are always reacting to stuff, we obsess about the West nonstop. Go and develop your own list if you are that unhappy, who is stopping you? I applaud those who have pointed this out and who would like to do this. I am sure we can come up with a list that is just as self-serving from the "African" perspective.Of course the list is self-serving. Hitler is there, but the White Man who gave the world the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and apartheid is not on the list. They are done with Mandela, Mandela is dead, the man who forgave them all theirs sins and more is not on that list.If I was to come up with a list, it would be different, way different. Any list that does not include Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, the Internet (yes, the Internet is a human being) is laughable. This is the 21st century, no one, no one has impacted the world more than the men and women who gave us computers, the Internet and smartphones.Make up all the lists that you want, it is a great exercise, but reserve your humongous intellect, passion and energy for real work. It would be great if this august body would spend some of that energy on holding all of us accountable. Quick exercise we could participate in: Let us form a committee that would analyze what ASUU just got from the 6-month strike. How much of it is salaries, compensation, etc? How much of it helps students in terms of re-building those broken facilities, ensuring that they are protected from sexual predators with PhDs, etc., etc.? When will these facilities be modernized, timeline, etc.? I will be here in 20 years, insha Allah and I can assure you I will remind all of you of your moral obligation to look out for those children that are not yours that are trapped in classrooms that are not fit for pigs.Happy Holidays, all!- IkhideStalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/Follow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhideOn Thursday, December 19, 2013 8:46 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:when i first saw the posting i deleted it since i find the 100 best books, persons, ideas, etc, are all b.s. they stimulate readership, express the values of the persons concocting the list. since it
is a thread, i looked it up. has anyone noticed how they framed it. not that it is their opinion, but the result of "millions of traces of opinion." anyone ask how they determined which opinions mattered, since they already gave as an example chester arthur as number 499.
folks, this is basically a joke wearing the thinly clad veneer of science. you might as well say, god, that is, a christian god, compiled the list.
it is basically the list of figures you'd be tested on if you took a western humanities course.
as for who's in and who's out, notice that asia doesn't have any "significant" figures, not to mention the rest of the non-western world.
the really important datum comes at the end of the piece, the title of the book being flogged by the authors--that is, their own book.
anyone want to buy a bridge? i've got one for sale, cheap.
kenOn 12/19/13 7:14 AM, Adeshina Afolayan wrote:St. Augustine seems to be the best that we can manage in Africa within this suspect ranking. I wonder what the ratiinake is for concentrating on the Western society and still claiming the whole of history as the scope. May be the ghost of Hegel still rules global history; maybe Africa is still waiting in the primeval penumbra of historical reckoning.Adeshina AfolayanSent from Samsung Mobile
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No African on the Time list of the 100 Most Significant Figures in History
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