Maravi

(HERALD) The mythology of Eurocentricism

The mythology of Eurocentricism
From Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia.

THE dominance of Eurocentric values, the overriding Western influence in world affairs and the rule of imperial authority — where a European population comprising 10 percent of the world’s population dominates all others can only be explained and understood by realising that Europeans dominate over the 90 percent by lying, by deceit and by force.

European history, Western values, as well as Western democracy are all mythological concepts — they are pretty much a well-packaged set of propaganda designed to create in us a personality other than our own, a culture divorced from our own reality, and beliefs that have nothing or very little to do with our own setting.

The only way we can be in the condition we are in as Africans today is to believe lies. What colonialism and neo-colonialism have done since the 19th Century is to reverse the African mentality and to make our behaviour backwards. We have in many cases been made to take the lie for the truth and the truth for the lie.

Jody Powell, who served under Jimmy Carter’s administration, wrote in his book, “The Other Side of The Story” that a minority in the world can only rule by making backwards the mentality of the majority.

This can only be achieved by reversing the truth, creating lies and getting the majority to believe the lies that the minority creates.

Eurocentric history lies in many ways, and it even lies when ostensibly telling the truth. An effective propagandist does not tell too many big and obvious lies. What he often does is to tell the truth in a way that gets him to get where he wants to go.

Institutions by their very nature are conservative and in an oppressive society as is the world today, institutions often serve to maintain the status quo. Imperialism is one such institution, and all it seeks is to maintain Western power and dominion.

The consciousness of the African has been falsified, our history has been concealed and our achievements have been omitted.

If one takes Egyptology for example; it becomes clear that Europeans stole African history, completely falsified it, and placed false identities on the African Egyptian people.

So we have many of our own people who read history about our own Africa in great detail but project whiteness right into it and that way whitewash their own identity.

Imperial subjugation has conditioned us to think in some strange ways. When we hear the word “slave” for example, many of us assume that the word talks about us black people, as if no other people have ever been enslaved.

This is how the lie is created by the Eurocentric sense of history. It always achieves this deceptive end by making us misperceive reality and truth.

The Western society gets away by pretending that it is free and open. This is why we are bombarded with tonnes and tonnes of information. The reality is that our people are so mentally and motivationally structured that most of them will not and cannot take that information and transform it to our own advantage.

Eurocentric history functions as propaganda — a term defined by Amos N. Wilson as “an effort to persuade people to a point of view on an issue”. This is a history that is used to intimidate Africans. We have a history that inflates European achievements to frightening levels and as a result we are left convinced that our only hope is to hang around these ‘‘great’’ people, otherwise we are going back to the Dark Ages.

We have heard so many times that President Mugabe is taking Zimbabwe to “the Dark Ages” through the land reform programme and the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies.

Many of our own people even agree with this kind of thinking.

This is because colonialism and neo-colonialism have destroyed our confidence.

We have no capacity to comprehend a world greater than the Eurocentric one that exists today, and we do not believe that we can be capable of creating anything as great or greater than what white civilisation has created.

This way we live in a social system that has created a personality orientation of subjugation and inferiority. We do not have to know the details of European history; in fact most of our people do not know those details at all. Without any content to back it up, Eurocentric history thrives on its intimidatory impression.

That is the whole point; to leave an impression that will become a dynamic source of behavioural orientation towards the world. So our collective personality must in this regard be impressed and transformed in a fashion compatible with Western interests.

This is why the rationalisation of slavery as a bygone must impress us; same goes for colonisation and even imperialism. We have a Eurocentric sense of history that rationalises Western domination.

The only reason our culture and history have been stolen from us is so that we can think that we had no culture until the coloniser gave us his, or projected his own upon us — so that we can feel that we are not capable of culture, and of developing a culture of our own.

One effective way of justifying domination of another people is stealing their history.

Amos Wilson argues that history may be used to influence personality, culture, roles, and even to motivate us to commit suicide, to provoke to commit what Dr Bobby Wright called “menticide” (mental genocide), and may be used “to create or rationalise fratricide, genocide and self-destruction.’’

Almost all of us have at one time attacked or blamed someone wrongly because we had been given a wrong history. So many murders have been perpetrated because someone believed a lie.

So many wars have been started because the population was lied to and a history was projected in such a way that it motivated people to kill. The George W. Bush — Tony Blair — John Howard tripartite Iraq lie of 2003 quickly comes to mind.

So people kill, destroy, murder, engage in wars and persecute other people because a certain history creates that behaviour in them. Africa suffers today because of a history that has caused this suffering.

So history is no casual peripheral thing that one just comes across as they pass through high school. It is one’s total orientation towards the world.

This is precisely why the European has arrogated himself the role of the world’s sole valid historian. He knows this way that he can shape a majority world population that lives on lies presented as the truth.

So we adopt these mythologies of democracy, human rights, freedom and so on.

A mythology is a form of denial of reality. We all know the reality of colonial oppressors and we are all clear on the evils of imperialism, at least most of us Africans. We all inwardly admire Pan-Africanism and we all inwardly want to control African resources, as any people would want to do with their own resources.

But when we belong to a political party like the MDC-T, we are more than aware that we are receiving funding and favours from the very oppressors from whom we seek freedom. We then carry around painful realities, memories and conscience. So how do we survive this mental persecution?

This is when you have to resort to functioning in mythologies — if a memory is too painful to be recalled, if recalling it means suffering, pain, shame, guilt and other negative things, then we have people denying the reality of that memory and experience, and in some cases creating a mythology in their place.

These people then become obsessed with the created mythology and they use it as a means of keeping out of their conscious memory the traumatic experiences that they fear so much.

This explains the mythology in the MDC-T leadership that says there are no economic sanctions on Zimbabwe — a blatant lie that only serves to massage the guilt in those that mobilised the sanctions in the first place. It also explains the spirited denials by the MDC-T leadership that they receive instructions from London and Washington.

It is a reality too painful to accept. It is a reality that carries shame, pain, suffering and guilt.

PF-Zapu was never ashamed of Russian backing during the liberation struggle. Equally Zanu-PF was never ashamed of Chinese, Romanian, Bulgarian and Yugoslavian support when they waged the war to liberate Zimbabwe.

These are countries that never colonised Zimbabwe and as such there is no sense of history that brings with it a sense of shame, guilt or pain.

So the Westerner has to repress painful information to maintain his privileges over African resources. To maintain the equilibrium, he needs to profit from the lies he tells himself and others. So he thrives on the lies he tells, the false perceptions and consciousness he creates in himself and others.

He tells himself that he alone names and describes investment laws and market forces; he alone defines democracy and human rights, he alone knows best what constitutes terrorists and he alone fights just wars.

He is aware that the truth and a more realistic history will undermine his gains; so he maintains this mythology that says all other people cannot do much without his involvement.

Realistic history is seen as an attack on the ego of the European, an attack on his status and position in the world; something known as “Western interests” in the international relations lexicon.

Westerners will always attack Afrocentric views because to them real Africanness is a threat to their privileges on the continent.

The West talks so much against extremism and they also preach so much for moderatism.

When the coloniser established segregation laws in Zimbabwe, the laws were against the good and the bad black person, so were the apartheid laws in South Africa, and equally both the good and bad “Negro” sat at the back of the bus in the United States.

But today we are told to consider the good white person when redistributing our stolen land, to consider the good white person when deciding who should invest in our country and how, to remember the good white person when we draft our own constitution and so on.

The West demands moderate conduct from the Palestinians as if the ritual bombings they suffer at the hands of Israelis each year are moderate. It is demanded of Afghanis and Iraqis that they be moderate with the Western invaders occupying their countries, as if the invasion of these countries was in itself a moderate idea.

A mythology organises the world, organises behaviour and it organises interpersonal and intergroup relations. It provides answers, right or wrong, correct or false; it does not matter.

So we have this Western mythology being imposed upon us and it reins because in life we need answers since we cannot stand unanswered questions. This way we are taken advantage of and the world is defined in a certain way to us.

Some Zimbabweans are having a heart attack over the 51 percent shareholding policy for local people; for companies realising a turnover of over US$500 000. They sincerely believe such a policy is “unrealistic” and will make “investors run away”.

This is exactly how the imperial mythology has defined the world of business to these people.

We cannot build a Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans on a contrived history.

We cannot have a national ideology that borrows from a Eurocentric history and at the same time hope to build a sustainable future for ourselves.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on Wafawarova *** yahoo.co.uk or reason *** rwafawa rova.com or visit www.rwafawarova. com

Labels: REASON WAFAWAROVA

posted by MrK @ 4:24 PM