Against modern thought

The idea that modern capitalism arises from English industrialism, eludes its origin and support by the culture; which had been expanding since the discovery of the so-called New World, flooding the market with sumptuary objects. This expansion, prior to the technological revolution, would determine the consumption habits, stimulating industrialization[1]; as a culture that is not only consumerist, but also dependent on that consumerism, in the artificiality of its economic organization.

As a culture, with its own political expression, this would be what distorts the modern understanding of culture; already in crisis due to its own hermeneutical contradiction, with the political specialization of its middle class, as an intellectual. Neither capitalism nor the bourgeoisie would be then a modern phenomenon, defining the West culture since ancient times; when the expansion of Phoenician trade —outside its own regulatory framework— reshaped the Greek political stratification.

It will be the intellectual specialization of this middle class, with modern commercialism, what will provoke the crisis; and this comes from the political —not economic— conflicts of the transition to the late Middle Ages, with the Carolingian Renaissance. That Carolingian renaissance would in fact be an extension of the Merovingian, but lacking a middle class to become a cultural expression; that only appears with Louis VI in the twelfth century, in his strategy against the expansion of the Merovingian empire; and that is why it takes its reference from that Carolingian period, as the closest instance of its political legitimacy[2].

Then, Modernity, with the fall of Granada and the discovery of the New World, would not be an original renaissance; but a reordering of the old one, explaining the postmodern persistence of the feudal political structure; including the tying to the gleba (land), by which citizens cannot move freely between countries. All this implies that modern thought —from Descartes to Kant, Hegel and Marx— develops as a political fiction; hermeneutically conditioned by its economic dependence, on both the aristocracy and the crown that funds it; explaining the period as a progressive disorder, rather than as a cultural order properly speaking.

Hence, the crisis in which Modernity culminates in the nineteenth century is not exactly political but anthropological; surpassing in this that of the Roman Empire —which survived in the Byzantine— and that of archaic Greece; to resolve itself in a postmodernity, which only marks the establishment of a new order, like that of the Germans in Rome. To understand this phenomenon, it is then necessary to overcome its determination, which is hermeneutical; not economic, because the economy only makes possible its historical realization as a political expression, but does not determine it.

Hence, any renewal of the structure will come always from its popular base, ethnically defined in an identity; because this identity is what provides them with the referents of their needs, as existential instead of political. This will reshape that hermeneutic, in its political framework as an order in disintegration, due to its dysfunctionality; but without its determination, given that marginality for which it had resorted to his identity, rather than to political convention.

None of this can be understood by modern thought, as dialectic and not trialectic, creating an epistemological loop; for which it can understand history, but not its determination, which is transhistorical, as a condition of reality. Hence this insufficiency, from which all its projections are contradictory but in dichotomies, not trichotomies; because of its incomprehension of the transhistorical nature of the real, structured in its immanence, not in its transcendence.

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[1] . It refers not only to gold and silver, which facilitated mercantilism by flooding the markets, but also to consumer goods, such as tobacco, alcohol and sugar, which are not as important to existence as English wool, which they displace.

[2] . It refers to the formation of cities under royal protection—with a bureaucratic structure—within fiefs under Angevin jurisdiction; referring to the entity formed by the County of Anjou and the Duchies of Aquitaine and Normandy, owned by the English crown. It’s from this function that is understood the pseudo-aristocratic character of the middle class; because its functional displacement of that aristocracy, providing the State with the new capital of ideology, with its of its intellectual specialization.

Hip Hop

Kendrik Lamar is the latest statement about Hip Hop in the United States, perhaps more than Childish Gambino; but before the two of them, it was a carefree —and therefore existential— way of expressing American culture; which is always that of the dangerous black ghettos, because gentrification has already distorted everything else. In this sense, the guilty silence in the face of the scandal with which Eminem triumphs, on black stages, is understandable; recalling the legend of the King, who is said to have stolen the spirit (soul) from the blacks, to commercialize it, white at last.

No one seems to stop before that undaunted faculty of reality, which realizes itself over the artificiality of prejudices; because Eminem and Elvis would be the proof of a process as surreptitious as it is public, of blackening of culture. The phenomenon is less scandalous —although denied just the same— among Cubans, because of the coexistence in the tenements; which, forced by economic precariousness, does not offer the lateral escapes of the state of well-being, and forces mutualism.

In any case, Elvis Presley's vulgar sensuality and Eminem's white trash violence show the same thing; and it is the existential nature of all transcendence, as a condition proper to the immanent, and not a parallel value. This is the peculiarity concealed by the fiery political speeches of Lamar and Gambino, who are black; because it resides in that precariousness that protests, not in the protest, which is delegitimized by the success of the protesters.

Obviously, as a peculiarity it is also subtle, and that is why it can go unnoticed by the interest of those protesters; who are obviously not interested in the effectiveness of their protest —making it banal— but in the success it brings. This, in fact, is also understandable and legitimate, if in the end precariousness has aesthetic value and in that a commercial scope; even if it loses consistency in the racking, as another trap of God, when it promotes our ethical suprematism.

The truth is that Hip Hop is poetic, because it is the pure and legitimate expression of an existential experience; visible even in that sublimated violence of Destiny Child in Iwant a soldier, already dissolved in Beyonce's divinity. Hip Hop today, like Blues yesterday —and rumba in Cuba—, is the contribution of blackness to the cultural adjustment of the West; and it is no coincidence that they all resolve themselves in a footwork, with which the dance expresses its rhythmic naturalness.

On the other hand, the great speeches of Lamar and Gambino are not made for dancing, or even for reflection; they demand assent —not consent— looking defiantly to see who dares to make any other gesture than their obviousness. They are hypocritical in its uselessness, like the critical Realism of the French with the falsity of their anti-heroic humanism; while, in contrast, the simplicity with which the violent man condescends to the gentle gesture is more realistic and effective.

Hence the poetic efficacy of Hip Hop, so little elaborated that it blushes the snobbery of the damned and lost poets; and for which Cubans should rethink the simplicity of regaetón, whose “reparterismo” replicates neigborishm. With similar subtleties, timba emerged in Cuba imitating the arrangements of black Disco music in the United States, for example; and even a mythical Rob Parissi has no problem acknowledging that Funky rescued him, precisely because of his uniqueness as a white.

It should not be forgotten, the dynamic is due to the reflexive function of poetic act, which never descends into discursive; that is why American television is populated with horror, speaking to emotion and not to intelligence; for if it were truly to speak to the intelligence, then he would have to be honest, and that is only guaranteed by horror. It is not a rhetorical game, but the dramatic value of existential experience, which is always bitter; because as sensible, effective knowledge is based on pain, giving meaning to pleasure and joy.

Bantu persistence in Cuba, another prelude to the MogiNganga

One element slips away its silent presence in the political violence of Cuba's history, and that is its undeniable raciality; it may be invisible today, given the trauma that paralyzed all processes in the country, but latent in its rawness and potential. Of course, even the political trauma of the Cuban revolution exhibits its racial nature, in its own recurrences; but it has also camouflaged this nature of the conflict, with the myth of priorities, avoiding its transhistoricity.

Cuban racial violence would be submerged in politics since independence itself, which was already artificial; if in fact it did not count on the will of the people to redeem, but on the interests of his economic elite, which it legitimized. The first break would occur with the very first conflict of the republic, given its inconsistency, not directly but laterally racial; capitalizing on racial resentment in the face of the apathy and cynicism of that economic elite, which was already also political.

That would not be gratuitous, coming from the arrogance that justified this violence, with its literary and political fictions; which is the perversion inflicted with Martí's martyrology, like a useless Christ in that idealism of the modern spirit. Nor will it be gratuitous that the expression of times and place is Modernism, with its symbolist grandiloquence; surreptitiously perpetuating the postposition of black people, which is the one bringing some realism, in his existential pragmatism.

From there, like everything that is denied, that element will feed on its own negation, growing in its potentiality; not so total as to annihilate the nation, but enough to wash it down, in its impossibility. However, nothing can hide the contradiction, transparent in the inconsistency of the country's projections; and in which, what is frustrated with surreptitious racism is reality itself, rather than the black who expresses it.

The Negro, as a person in whom reality as a human is enhanced, cannot be frustrated in the face of difficulty; but only to remain in that same latency, looking for the way out in which to realize itself as that reality. Racial frustration is here the political trick with which he is manipulated, to tie him in symbol to transcendentalism; which as historical instead of metaphysical, does not offer him any possibility, but is what keeps him unreal.

The conflict then erupted in 1906, with Quintín Banderas, executed by the arrogance of his own naivety; in which, like the mythical popular simple faith of Catholicism, he mocked those he executed, in the name of his executioners. The conflict thus becomes scandalous with the massacre of 1912, but it is insidiously hidden, blaming Morúa Delgado; who covers the bastardy of José Martí, like the cursed inheritance of a nation arisen against the will of its people.

That’s why the conflict is retracted to the crisis of the Batistatos, making it clear that the problem is of a cultural nature; it is transhistorical instead of historical, not of transcendence but of immanence, denying the cosmos that sustains the black; and with it the whole adjustment of the Western culture, as the force in which the Negro would realize himself, if he overcomes the difficult. The peculiarity consists in the double religiosity that permeates Batista's culture, blackened in its popular character; with strong and cunning officials, such as the Coc of Buena Vista, positioned over the corpse of the one from San Isidro.

It is known that Morúa Delgado was a Freemason like Martí, it is speculated if that —unlike him— he could be a palero too; but it is known that Gustavo E. Urrutia was a palero, with fables of cauldrons buried in the gardens of Miramar; signifying, to the horror of Cuban Catholicism, that cultural advance, insidious because of hermeneutical in existentialism. Nor can it be gratuitous that the political violence against Batista was led by the Catholic university students; with a systematicity that provokes a reaction in accordance with its bloodthirstiness, but unforgivable for what it meant.

New Abakua Suite, prelude to the MogiNganga

To Ediel González

Because of false political miscegenation, much is known about Abakuá mythology, but little of its political ascendancy; when it emerged as the Ekpe Society, putting an end to the slave trade, basing the economy on palm oil[1]. The process was obviously more complex than merely political, but it implied a clear purpose of resistance; which is extremely original, since in that same process, the Ekpe society was an emerging, unconventional alternative[2].

In fact, it would be as a result of this that the Calabar region would lose its commercial supremacy, with the railroad; which allowed the relocation of colonial authority to Lagos, without depending on the coastal privilege of the Efik culture. This would undoubtedly demonstrate great maturity and political will, to negotiate a commercial specialization; moving from the assured success of the slave hunt, to an economy of production, not of mere consumption.

This is especially important, conditioning the anthropological narrative, which explained trafficking in culture; without considering that, even if exceptionally, there were degrees of extreme maturity and will in this regard. The same would happen with the Igbo geronto-democracy model, which is common to the Cameroon area; including that Efik culture, and the complex cosmogonic movements with the Efut and Efor, from which the myth Ekpe is taken.

What this highlights is that capacity of this cultural phenomenon in its political emergence, emulating the original crisis; when the decline of the original cult (Ndem), with the development of new lifestyles, broke the social structure. Then, as now, the Ekpe Society was only a mutualist society, interested only in the priesthood; and the latter even with an openly political interest, because of the susceptibility of the traditional priesthood to sorcery; which is what beats in the gender conflict of the founding myth, after the drama of Princess Sikán, of Efut origin[3].

The secret character of the magical aspects of the phenomenon, would be what shows its political, not practical, nature; from the capture of the ekpe in the original ceremonies, producing the sound —but not the vision— that betrays its presence. This is later reduced to liturgical value, strengthening its doctrinal function, in what is already a convention; sufficient to sustain society in its emergence, with a moral code, which legitimizes the individual in his social function.

This would have been the previous cause of Ndem religiosity, due to the social disorganization in the cults of the forest; which empowering the individual with his private practice, returns to that sense with the domestic ascendancy of the female priesthood. As a political phenomenon, the organization of the Ndem cult then becomes entropic, displacing the private potential; which comes to transform itself through the female priesthood, until it also becomes politically conventional.

In any case, what this shows is the political sufficiency of that cultural structure, subsumed by the Cuban one; that in its surreptitious racism, refuses this emergency, since its most serious outbreak in the cabinet of Fulgencio Batista. However, what this process also shows is its inevitable character, as trialectic rather than dialectical; mediating throughout the Cuban internal conflict, as its true backbone, in the resilience of the black world.

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[1] . Cf: Rosalind I.J. Hackett, Religion in Calabar, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1988, p 42.

[2] . The Ekpe Society appears as a mature entity by the mid XIX century. Cf: Michael Ukpong Offiong The ancestral cult of the Efik and the veneration of saints, Pontificia Facultad Teológica Teresiana, Roma, 1993., p. 28.

[3] . Cf: Rosalind I.J. Hackett, Op. cit., pp 34-35.

Stories with ache, a critical review

Warriors Editions has presented the title Stories with ache, a trilogy of short stories by black Cuban authors; in what seems a naïve effort, attempting to overcome the lack of will for effective integration in Cuban culture; but which, more than that, is the proof of a reality in its own consistency, apart from that lack of will. Thus, as a preamble, this editorial effort may seem socially vindictive, or even be objectively so; but beyond that —vindictive or not— it shows the sufficiency of an incredible culture, condemned to the margins.

Politically, the vindictive scope of this anthology is secondary, because its value lies precisely in its marginality; from which it can reflect on reality, beyond those conventions of the political, in a different scope, as existential. This would have always been the proper meaning of art, at least from that conflictive modernity that confronts it with Reason; but in a dichotomy in which it progressively lost ground, in the face of the crude advance of that conventionalism.

That is another discussion, which helps to put this wonderful anthology in context, but that is also secondary; because what matters here is the reality boiling in these stories, invisible in the falsehood of our political culture. That is also another discussion, just as secondary, but which also helps to contextualize the need for these stories; which with better and worse luck aspired to the realization of their authors, at a time when art itself is declining.

Above all, these are authors who have worked, loved and written stories that were invisible until today; but which now serves as an index and handbook, to navigate the parallel history of black culture in Cuba. This is what makes it necessary, even if against the evolution in which art is already declining of so much conventionalism; because that culture requires its own expression, which could even explain the shortcomings in which the one that covers it fails.

With a prologue of deserved density, this compilation refers to the darkened roots of Cuban black literature; in the tension between Martín Morúa Delgado and Cirilo Villaverde, which perpetuates the whiteness of Cuban negrismo; and in this, it refers to the presence of the black in national literature, with Salvador Golomón in Mirror of resilience. There are many reasons to believe and disbelieve the foundational character of Mirror of resilience in national literature; above all of them —and in both senses— is the moment in which it is known, at the mid-nineteenth century; when the founding myth of the nation is shaped, adjusting the past to legitimize the projection of the future.

Since then, the Negro has always been presented as a passive object of national culture, even if heroic; which is just a political fiction of literature, which does not express that effective reality of cultural miscegenation. That is what makes this anthology pertinent, not precisely as a vindication, which is always unnecessary and effective; but as an access to a reality hidden in its own scope, which that is there, in its own sufficiency, for everyone.

This cosmology, withdrawn and profoundly existential, is what explains the life of the nation, expressed in its culture; and it is the one in these stories, deloused from the profuse editorial activity that characterizes these times. None of them attests to an era, but to a reality, which in its parallelism adjusts the visible one, giving it perspective; and it is good that this work is brought together, as a basis to establish the true canon of national literature.