The Soulouque paradox

To understand the Haitian emergence as a neo-African node of the West, it’s necessary to understand its context; as an area, in the triangle of the Greater Antilles, in which the modern concept of nation-state enters in crisis. This would be due to the expansive nature of the Americas in general, for the cultural structure of the West; although in an unequal solution, according to its ability to resolve that critical nature in its specific cases.

The economic and institutional density of the Spanish viceroyalties, for example, is not the same as that of their general captaincies; nor is the capitalist projection of the English colonies, with its dissipating effect on political contradictions. Not even the Brazilian singularity, which precisely exports that capitalist projection to the English colonies; when the expulsion of the Sephardim, who had brought the sugar machine from the Iberian Peninsula.

In this context, the second Haitian empire of Faustino I, is not a historical nor political continuity of that of Desalines; even if it is legitimized in the latter, precisely postulating that continuity, as an impossible restoration. The line of Desalines dies with Henry Christopher, and that of Soulouque is a contraction of Boyer's republic; failed in the positive rationality of its classical liberalism, imported with North American Freemasonry.

Soulouque's movement then directed towards the neo-African emergence, with that legitimacy in Desalines; who was also but a different emergency on its own, determined by its proper circumstances, not any historical continuity. The brevity of Soulouque empire conditions in this singularity all subsequent development on Haitian politics, as a culture; from the negrism of Prince-Mars —as a conceptualism— to the political negrism of Duvalier, as an existential scope. The movement is typical, and would be the effective link of the Haitian phenomenon to the Western structure, as dynamic; replicated, as a function of political axiality, in the Bourbon restoration and that of Napoleon, due to that said brevity.

It is in this that the context is important, because of the structural incapacity of the of the West to organize itself; which is projected in the tensions from the Westphalian pacts, to the false stability of modern capitalism. None of the Greater Antilles even achieves this political stability, but the Haitian case is also special; since in Haiti it is not a question of the number of contradictions that converge, as in Cuba and Puerto Rico; but of the suppression of all structural capacity, with the conditioning of the debt in which it is born, under Desalines.

Here Boyer's republic emerges as a negation of the Haitian emergency, with the transfer of that debt; which seems to guarantee the liberal positivism of the republic with North American capitalism, which is already political and not economic. This considers the double nature of modern capitalism, which goes from pragmatic and existential to political; when the ascension of the House of Orange incorporates it into the government, with its institutionalization in the banking network.

The empire of Faustino I thus functions as a contraction, to which Prince-Mars in fact points as Africanization; which is the proposal of Negrismo, although already vitiated in the same intellectualism he criticizes as Bovarism. This would be the contradiction, because Prince-Mars does not openly advocate for that authoritarianism, with its tribal basis; which still subsists, in the marginal institutionality of the bizangos, as a precedent of the Haitian parastates.

This would explain the Duvalier’s ascendancy in Haitian culture, as the link that Prince-Mars does not name; but that is there, contradicting all the tension of the West from Westphalia, together with Puerto Rico and Cuba. The Haitian reality is brutal only because of the scope of this contradiction, dissolved in the North American’s meta-stability; which nevertheless cannot be guaranteed outside of that massiveness of consumption, as the current European crisis seems to demonstrate.

This is interesting, because the European crisis would be the final systematization of the outbreak that gives rise to the Haitian crisis; when economic desystematization ceases to guarantee that meta-stability, as an appearance of order in the turbulence. Soulouque, the stone of Louverture, then smiles in the cynicism of Duvalier, with the nervous ambiguity of Prince-Mars; and the Haitian republic would have failed right there, leaving only an untenable appearance, which is what is dissolving now.

Apotheosis of Fernando Ortiz and the alternative of Lachatañeré

Rómulo Lachatañeré's critique of Fernando Ortiz is usually understood as an adaptation of the latter's excesses; marking his progression, from legal positivism to a better understanding of Cuban culture. The rectification of his initial judgment on Santeria, and the adequacy of his criticisms on criminality, would confirm this; at least in a historically significant sequence, still insufficient to exhaust the scope of Lachatañeré.

In fact, and for whatever reason, this adaptation would have hidden the momentum of Cuban anthropology; settling it in Ortiz's positive conventionalism, even if due to an inability to do anything else and not ill will. The issue here is not the change of perspective imposed on Ortiz by the other, but what his own work establishes; with a first compilation on Afro-Cuban mythology, whose importance exceeds Ortiz's excess and arrogance.

In fact, the other apotheosis of Lachatañeré would not lie in postulating the religious maturity of the cult of Ocha or Santeria; accessing cultural determinations, which do not depend on their political, juridical or racial treatment. In this difference there is an anthropological tension, which rectification —even if authentic— does not manage to resolve; displacing the problem, from Ortiz's evolution to the very possibilities opened by Lachatañeré.

It is therefore not a question of a judgment on the black population, but of the emergence of a cultural configuration; capable of recognizing and elaborating itself from its own determinations, not in the conventionalism of national politics. There is a ontology extracted from this mythical tradition, which proposes black culture as an alternative, in its sufficiency; which in fact determines the Cuban culture in its popular base, with the progressive blackening of society.

Lachatañeré would not expressly formulate that ontology extracted from his compilations, but rather allows it; being in this that it is unnoticed by the special interests of that conventionalism, which are political. His work on folklore would then be a realism avant la lettre, in the adequacy of Feuerbach's negativism; and as part of the neo-African emergence in which the West is disorganized, which is critical and early.

Ortiz's apotheosis in his conventionalism does nothing but exacerbate the country's problems, which are cultural; posing them as political in their determinism, and therefore as an ideological solution rather than an existential one. Lachatañeré's alternative pointed to the ontological function of culture, from this religious maturity; which is nevertheless pushed to the margins, feeding the dialectical loop of modern historical confrontation.

Curiously, Lachatañeré would participate more radically than Ortiz in this historical confrontation, in his communism; but unlike Ortiz, he is black —of Haitian descent as well— and settled in the other capitality of the East. His case then, like that of Du Bois in the United States, Fanon in the Caribbean and Senghor in Africa, is one of contradiction; but as a triangular tension, which pushes the potential emergence of the neo-African, in its evolution.

In Ortiz's apotheosis, Cuban racism becomes surreptitious and even spoils the blackening of its popular culture; everything was agreed upon in a convention of miscegenation, which nevertheless prevents the effective integration of the black. The latter is subtle and profound, since the black is exhibited in Cuba as an integral part of its folkloric expression; but denaturalized in the ontological function of that culture, by the determinism of the political expression in which it is realized.

This becomes critical, given the insufficiency of any other alternative, because of its intellectual but not existential excellence; such as the ontology of Lezama Lima —in its functional realism—, which still does not understand and incorporate the black. This is especially relevant, precisely because of the excellence of Lezama's realism, in the limitations of its Catholicism; only understandable in the practicality in which culture exceeds its intellectualization, because of functionalism.

Gramsci's mistake

The current political crisis in the West would not originate in Marxist populism, but in its correction by Gramsci; who, observing the deficiencies of Marx's economic determinism, recognized that of his own cultural determination. That is no small thing, Marxism limited itself to recognizing the superstructural function of religion, taken from Feuerbach; but Gramsci identified its simple instrumentality, recognizing the superstructure in culture itself.

In reality, Gramsci also erred by excess, attributing substantive value to the superstructural function of culture; whose determination did not come from the economic power of capitalism, but from its function as ontological. This is the problem with the dialectic of history, starting from history itself as a total reality and not its expression; which would be determined in the transhistoricity of culture, as a function of reality in its specialization as human.

Because of that, the political problem is not exactly ideological but epistemological, given in this ideological reduction; which comes from political determinism, as a hermeneutic —in epistemological function— already given of the real. In this sense, for example, the worker does not vote against his interests, which are in capitalist realization; but against those of the intellectual middle class, which is the one in conflict with the bourgeoisie, because of its unproductivity.

The latter is understood from the very anthropological nature of culture, whose ultimate expression is politic; which is organized in a social structure, in which relations are capitalist, as the power (potency) of realization. The question is anthropological, because it resides in the codification of capital as a set of resources, which are existential; and that only because of this existential function —in its potentiation of culture— does it become political, not the other way around.

It is in this that the interests of the workers —as human beings— are in social realization, which is thus capitalist; just like that of the middle class and the bourgeoisie itself, as classes only because of their political and not ethical specialization. The contradiction is then always between opposing and not continuous interests, such as those of the productive process; but of the conception of capital as economic or political, respectively by the bourgeoisie or the intellectual elite.

However, given its own political determinism rather than cultural existentialism, Marxism does not understand it; assuming its capitalization of culture as legitimate, within the framework of Kantian categorical transcendentalism. It is not then that culture fulfills this superstructural function, without the fact that it is not a given superstructure; nor that it is not resolved in religion, as Feuerbach had already intuited from Kantian negativism itself; but that all this would be the way in which the real organizes itself as human, in capitalist relations as functionals.

The proof would be in this same ideological reduction of dialectical materialism, as capitalization of politics; which is an economic order, although now —thanks to Feuerbach's inversion— against reality itself. This would be due to this determinism, which would attack this specialization of the real as human, in the political; which, displacing culture in its determination of society, distorts it in its economic relations as political functions.

Here, Feuerbach's inversion would not overcome the epistemological problem of German philosophy, as an ideology; but would displace it towards religious representation, just as Marx would preserve its hermeneutical structure. German ideology would therefore not be about a doctrinal continuity, but about a common epistemological organization; which, from this idealism, tends to reduce the real by reducing it to its representation, giving it as substantive. In this sense, the critique of ideology would not be solely or mainly political, but above all epistemological; in its conversion of particular determinations of knowledge, into universal principles of interpretation of the real.

This is the value of Transcendental Realism, in its observation of culture as an ontological function, proper to the real; which therefore superimposes itself on the political expression in which it is realized, in its transhistoricity. In short, it is this transhistoricity what gives it its superstructural value, in the concrete functions in which it is realized; traditionally solved in religiosity, by the axial property of the cultural function, in its reflexivity.

Senghor, Negritude and Transcendental Realism

Senghor's choice for Tempels' Bantu ontology would not have been gratuitous, but based on his aesthetic interest; pointing to the reflective capacity of art, just in a political sense —as ideological— rather than a cultural one. That would not be gratuitous either, but would respond to his own determination in that sense, as in Du Bois's error; which is not surprising, if it epistemologically solves the understanding of reality as nature, in culture.

This is the innate property of art, in its own formal condition, from the archaic era to Modernity in the West itself; but it is also a current phenomenon and common to all culture, in their mythological traditions, as representations of that reality. Only here would there be a couple of fallacies, for which this is not fulfilled, although it does point to that intuition; since as a postmodern, his case has already passed the distortion of Modernity, in its structural dysfunction.

As a principle, however, and as formal in its own character, art would retain this reflective capacity; but for that same reason, not in conceptualism, which make it dysfunctional, depriving it of that representational capacity. This formal representation would occur by sympathetic analogy, referring to the structure of the phenomenon represented; distorted in the convention of the right sense, presuming the understanding of the phenomenon, due to its rationality.

This is what delegitimizes postmodern conceptualism, although it understands it in its desystematization of modernity; which would not be in the formal apotheosis with which it is fulfilled in the Baroque —as classical—, but in this contradiction. The problem is then not of art, as a practice of craftsmanship, but in its displacement through philosophy; with its professional specialization, in modern intellectualism, which is what establishes it as such, and not postmodern.

That is to say, modern art responds to its classical formal nature, but is displaced in that same modernity; giving rise to the postmodern crisis, which is of its own modernity, and not of its classical and formal tradition. In fact, and returning to Senghor, the art he postulated was not the formalist of popular traditions; but the conceptual one of this intellectualist conventionalisms, as can be seen in his wonderfully solved poetry.

It is therefore a poetics or aesthetic philosophy rather than art, with its object in a political, not aesthetic concept; legitimized in the historical transcendentalism of its political determination, not in its formal properties. That is why Senghor has to resort to a conventional ontology, without resting on the very property of poetry; which is counterproductive, reducing it to the ideological value that it intended to overcome, as a mere alternative.

This is the contradiction marked by Sartre in its critical essay (Black Orfeo), and what defines Negritude as romanticism; highlighting the ambiguity of its object, as political and not properly aesthetic, and therefore without an existential function. For this reason, he is not interested in an ontology proper to these cultures, and which he would find in their popular traditions; with which he would have avoided the criticism – also excessive – of Franz Fanon, with an ontological sufficiency of culture.

The conflict of Negritude is thus resolved, as the very extension of that of the West, in its internal contradiction; reproducing the same excesses that it criticizes, and for the same reasons that it criticizes in them, in its determinism. This limits its scope, since Negritude does not manage to constitute itself as an alternative postulation; although it still evidences the insufficiency of this Western tradition, in that modern stage as its apotheosis.

That would be the value of Negritude, as of postmodern criticism, not the critique of the West, but of its modernity; understood as a contraction to the functional principles of the tradition that culminates in that stage, not its alternative. Of course, none of this is perceptible from the very parameters of that contradiction, determined by it; but only from an instance capable of reconciling its terms, which is precisely the meaning of Transcendental Realism.

Senghor, la Negritud y Realismo Trascendental

La opción de Senghor por la ontología bantú de Tempels no habría sido gratuita, sino basada en su interés estético; apuntando a la capacidad reflexiva del arte, sólo que en sentido político —como ideológico— en vez de cultural. Eso tampoco sería gratuito, sino que respondería a su propia determinación en ese sentido, como en el error de Du Bois; lo que no es extraño, soluciona epistemológicamente la comprensión de lo real como naturaleza, en la cultura.

Esta es la propiedad innata al arte, en su propia condición formal, ya desde la era arcaica en el mismo Occidente; pero es de hecho un fenómeno actual y común a toda cultura, en su tradición mitológica, como representación de eso real. Sólo que aquí habría un par de falacias, por las que eso no se cumple, aunque el esfuerzo sí apunta a esa intuición; ya que en tanto postmoderno, su caso ya ha pasado la distorsión de la Modernidad, en su disfunción estructural.

Como principio no obstante, y en tanto formal en su propio carácter, el arte sí retendría esta capacidad reflexiva; pero por lo mismo no en el conceptualismo, que lo haría disfuncional, privándolo de esa capacidad representacional. Esta representación formal se daría por analogía simpática, referida a la estructura del fenómeno representado; distorsionada en la convención del sentido recto, presumiendo la comprensión del fenómeno, por su racionalidad.

Esto es lo que deslegitima al conceptualismo postmoderno, aunque lo comprenda en su desistematización de lo moderno; que no estaría en la apoteosis formal con que se cumple en el Barroco —como clásico—, sino en esta contradicción. El problema no es entonces del arte, como práctica de suyo artesanal, sino en su desplazamiento por la filosofía; con su especialización profesional, en el intelectualismo moderno, que es lo que lo establece como tal, y no postmoderno.

Es decir, el arte moderno responde a su naturaleza formal clásica, pero es desplazado en esa misma modernidad; dando lugar a la crisis postmoderna, que es de su misma modernidad, y no de su tradición clásica y formal. De hecho, y volviendo a Senghor, el arte que postulaba no era el formalista de las tradiciones populares; sino el conceptual de este convencionalismo intelectualista, como se observa en su maravillosamente resuelta poesía.

Se trata por tanto de una poética o filosofía estética antes que arte, y con su objeto en un concepto político, no estético; legitimado en el trascendentalismo histórico de su determinación política, no en sus propiedades formales. Por eso Senghor tiene que acudir a una ontología convencional, sin descansar en la propiedad misma de la poesía; lo que resulta contraproducente, reduciéndola al valor ideológico que pretendía superar, como mera alternativa.

Esto es lo que sitúa al fenómeno de la Negritud en el espectro del romanticismo típico, como reacción al racionalismo; resaltando la ambigüedad de su objeto, en tanto político y no propiamente estético, y por ello sin función existencial. Por ello no se interesa en una ontología propia de esas culturas, y que encontraría en sus tradiciones populares; con lo que habría esquivado la crítica —también excesiva— de Franz Fanon, con una suficiencia ontológica de la cultura.

El conflicto de la Negritud se resuelve así como extensión misma del de Occidente, en su contradicción interna; reproduciendo los mismos excesos que critica, y por las mismas razones que critica en ellos, en su determinismo. Esto sería lo que limite su alcance, pues la Negritud no alcanza a constituirse como una postulación alternativa; aunque todavía evidencia la insuficiencia de esta tradición occidental, en la de ese estadio moderno como apoteosis.

Ese sería el valor de la Negritud, como de la crítica postmoderna, no la crítica de Occidente, sino de su modernidad; entendida como contracción a los principios funcionales de la tradición que culmina en ese estadio, no su alternativa. Por supuesto, nada de eso es perceptible desde los mismos parámetros de la contradicción, determinados por ella; sino sólo desde una instancia capaz de conciliar sus términos, que es precisamente el sentido del Realismo Trascendental.

Black conservatism and the lie of the Democratic ideological switch

Democratic liberalism claims a traditional ascendancy over the political identity of blacks, but it is false; it is anchored in a supposed ideological change of 1960, when Kennedy capitalized on the black vote, around Martin Luther King. That is, however, a false narrative, about a circumstantial episode, which did not even actively engage King; who until the last moment maintained his proverbial reticence, in the cultural pragmatism of the American black, naturally conservative.

First, this conservatism must be clarified, because it’s not exclusive to black culture but to culture in general; as a structure that organizes existence as a human being, therefore of existential rather than political value. For this reason, it even reproduces the thermodynamic principle, as morphodynamics, in the conservation of resources; already from that existential function, but even reaching the political expression, in which it is resolved as a historical reality.

The ideological conflict is then artificial and not organic, arising from the political determinism of Modernity; and which therefore responds to the positive rational reduction of politics, not to the reality of culture itself. It’s worth to mention that this notion of culture is that same meta-politic theoretics are looking now, because the insufficiency of dialectic; since reality can’t be reduced to its political expression, but have its determinations outside it, without being metaphysic. History is then trialectic rather than dialectic, imposing the objective circumstances over the subjectivism of economy; which never respond to universal categories, but to the punctuality of the individual and its own circumstances, as culture.

Hence the intrinsically conservative character of this North American black culture, due to its political marginality; in the conservation of its resources as existential, in the family, tradition, individual responsibility, etc.; in the face of which, the ideological organization results in a squandering of those resources, without any practical result. That is why every political investment, since Roosevelt's New Deal, stumbles upon this same black skepticism; which will only give way momentarily, when caught up in the existential political crossroads, such as that of Dr. King. This intertwines presidential candidate Kennedy's call to his wife Coreta, with his father's open commitment; as a concrete pressure, to which King's pragmatism yields, but not an ideological change of the party.

Of course, this is taken advantage of by the intellectualism of the Boule Movement, which is traditionally liberal; to the point of having sacrificed the autonomy of the Niagara Movement with Du Bois, to found the NAACP. This is the tradition that anchors the political identity of the American black to this manipulative sponsorship; as seen in the open field operation of the Black Lives Mater, always in an electoralist and democratic function; without, however, managing to transcend a really popular ascendant, in its middle-class pretensions.

Above that, the truth is that the liberal tradition loses its consistency of intellectual projection, already unsustainable; a third of a millennium since its triumphant postulation, when it has tried all its possibilities and only fails. Since then, the West has helplessly witnessed its structural desynchronization, in this growing inconsistency; by which the references, which made existence in culture possible, have been and continues to be lost.

The phenomenon is therefore deeper and more complex than this tension, compromising the existence of the black; because, even in an incredible paradox, it appeals to an emergent and apotheosic development of conservatism; not only in this political confrontation, but in this as an expression of that deeper phenomenon, in its determinations. This conservatism then becomes the spine of political culture, as believed even by the most liberal of the blacks; because it was W.E.B. Du Bois himself who postulated the conservation of this cultural singularity, in favor of the whole culture.

About te Ethnic Manipulation as Politics

The problem with political determinism is that it distorts the ontological function of culture, which is existential; in the provision of its determinations as ideology, which thus ceases to be existential, as properly political. Hence historical transcendentalism, in that sort of political romanticism, coming from the idealist tradition; appealing to an Arcadian communitarianism in primitive societies, which ignores the motive of the economic function.

However, reality is punctual and immediate, with a transcendence typical of its own immanent condition; which is even why it is reduced to historical from Dialectical Materialism, without still being able to avoid Manichaeism. That is the problem of racial vindication in historical transcendentalism, which is political rather than existential; appealing to a transcendence of the original culture, which is impossible after the trauma of its economic redeterminations; which in the specifically African case, include a high political component, in the restructuring of society.

The most serious problem here would be that political romanticism, responding to the political fiction of ideology; as an artificial and not organic tension, in the crisis of European absolutism, which gave rise to the modern revolution. It is not for nothing then the centrality of the French contradiction, crawling even through German ideology; to redetermine the cultural structure from the epistemology of its idealist tradition, with dialectics as a canon.

That is already dysfunctional, in its very epistemological nature, reducing reality to its dichotomous tensions; postulated as well as its very political determination, when politics is only the expression in which it is realized; not its determination, which as ontological is structural, and therefore comes from culture, not from society. That is what distortion consists of, which subordinates the individual to the Kantian imperative, ordering that idealist tradition; in a redetermination that reduces the cosmological to ideological, and with it to the existential function as political.

Hence, all this is resolved as a moral question, and thus neoconservative, displacing the cultural functions; which, as we have already seen, go from being existential to political, subordinating the individual in transcendentalism. In turn, it comes from the Cartesian reversal, with its secularization of the religious problem, as moral instead of cosmological; not expressly but already on its epistemological basis, on which Kant later postulates his imperatives.

All this explains its purely Western nature, racially defined as te whiteness of all te contemporary conflicts; which are not merely political, although expressed as such, but ontologically determined in culture. Hence the falsity of those vindicationist archaisms, which manipulate racial tensions as political; when their determination is racially defined by their Europeanness, even if they are postulated as universal.

In fact, this claim to universality comes from Christian humanism, which is also European and academic; on the very basis of modern Enlightenmentism, culminating this distortion of culture in general, with that of European culture. Nevertheless, all this —even if artificial in its intellectualism— was possible because it was credible in its circumstance; and that would be what has changed in at least three hundred years since its apotheosis, with the postmodern crisis of culture.

The problem, however, is one of whites, among whites and for whites, who only manipulate racial tension; making profits even after slavery has been abolished, with the same displacement of the political function; that goes from economic, with the industrial boom, to properly political, in the expression with which society is carried out. Not for nothing, manipulation crosses the intellectually specialized elites, assuming the representation of the popular; which is possible only in the convention of historical transcendentalism, lacking existential consistency.

How Olódùmarè is effectively God

The problem with religious syncretism is its approach from opposites, even based on the same presupposition; which is wrong, trying to preserve religious structures in their purity, not in their functionality. For essentialism it is corruption, and for relativism it is an indiscriminate mixture of unrelated elements; and both positions assume that religions are definite phenomena, not functional systems in continuous adjustment.

But it is this continuous adjustment what gives consistency to the religious phenomenon, as its existential function; which is to regulate the relations of the concrete person with reality, in the reflection of its formal determinations. Hence, syncretism is precisely the development of this phenomenon, as an adjustment of this relationship; whose function is then ontological —and therefore structural—, relating functions of that reality, including the religious person.

So this is not a question of concrete religious identities, but of those functions of reality, conventionally represented; and where, for example, the Abrahamic God is not a figure essentially distinct from other supreme divinities. The difference would then lie not in their metaphysical nature, but in their different representations by the culture; and whose differences are in fact functional, marking that difference of their respective representations.

In that same example, the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition develops in highly institutionalized cultures; where representation fulfills a regulative function of the political and economic order, not merely existential. On the other hand, Olódùmarè belongs to a cosmology where this function is not representable, invokable or personified; that is, it is not subject to representation, because its culture has not developed that conventional institutionalization; so that their representation admits non-conceptual figures, and therefore alien to the logic of human hierarchies.

This contrast, however, is not an absolute opposition to Western rationality, but a functional difference; since this representation is not exclusive to Greek rationalism, but a consequence of its institutionality. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, religion already contracted from its double function, of infra and super-structural, to super-structural; with the political tension on the figure of the prince-priest, in which the former assumes the administration of trade and tribute.

From this transition arises the need for a conventional representation, which allows the management of the divine; in that super-structural function in which it organizes the instituted order, with culture as a transcendent identity. In this context, the equivalence between principles of different traditions is not ignorance or reductionism; rather, it is a structural operation, in which functions are translated, from one hermeneutical spectrum to another; and where hermeneutics is precisely cosmology, as a reflection of the transcendent determinations of the real.

What is thus at stake is not identity nor the names, but the function they fulfill in the cosmological system; in which Olódùmarè is "the vastness that knows the mystery", and God "the creative principle that orders the world". The equivalence does not lie in their respective attributes, but in their position in the ontological structure of culture; and in which syncretism does not fuse Olódùmarè with God out of naivety, but out of structural necessity; since what is at stake is to sustain a cosmology, whose very function is in fact existential and not religious; because the function of religion is existential, as that regulation of the relationships in which reality structures itself.

Thus, syncretism is not a symbolic negotiation, but a structure of survival, which resolves the function of the divine; and it can be said that the critics of syncretism respond even to that determination that they deny, in their representation; since, they must recognize that reductive representation of the divinity as of absolute value, not only epistemic. Thus, syncretism must be understood as an ontological reflection, of functional equivalences, that preserves religious structures; and does this subsuming them in other forms, for their validity lies in the functions they fulfill, organizing the relationships with the reality.

About the concept of Ubuntu

As an ideology, Afrocentrism provides a vital reference to black political thought in the United States; but in this, it can reproduce the same defects as Eurocentrism, thereby losing its own meaning. This is a problem of transcendentalism in general, as a nature of the idealist tradition, which funds modern philosophy; and which determination is serious, as hermeneutical, because of this reproduction of the defects that gave rise to it.

In this sense, the so-called African or Africanist thought only has its object in Africa, but not its nature; given in the interpretation of African traditions, but with the ideological instruments of that idealist tradition. That is the problem, because it distorts the original meaning of these African phenomena and objects, in a Western sense; perpetuating relations of cultural subordination, such as Christianity, in that function of political ideology.

In short, if Christianity served the objects of economic domination, ideology is the new capital; which in its political nature, allows the manipulation of the popular masses, subordinating them to the social structure. As an illustration of this, there would be the elaborations that interpret the concept of Ubuntu in a humanistic sense; a term of Bantu origin, restricted here to its ideological connotation, as political and social, not properly ontological.

That is the difference, since in its original context, the concept of Ubuntu is a complete ontological category; whose connotation is the social projection of the individual, but which is only possible for him as an individual. As a concept, Ubuntu can be traced through the mystical tradition of the Congo culture, in the dikenga; the cosmogram that synthesizes Bantu cosmology, and in which it functions as a category of human excellence.

However, the concept is problematic there, as part of a parallel tradition to imperial absolutism; which it justifies, in that same transcendentalist sense of European idealism, with which he coincides functionally. This is what is interesting, because these imperial formations are not natural to African tribalism; no matter how much the scholars brandish it, mimicking Western political structuralism, because of its identity complexes.

Like Congo imperialism, there was also that of Mali, Oyó and Dahomey, all equally transcendentalist; founded on a supremacy of the state, which emulates European absolutism, of the Richelieu-Mazarin doctrine. In the face of African imperialism, there is the greater naturalness of its tribalism, in a geronto-democratic model; more efficient than that of Western democracy, avoiding the oligarchic character of the latter, based on wealth.

That is what changes in the transition to postmodernity, with the transformation of capital, from financial to political; with the importance of the intellectual specialization of the middle class, in the justification of its class interests. This would be what lies behind the supposed political leadership of Afrocentrism, made up of an academic elite; that is, a specialized middle class, which seeks to define the interests of the popular class, without participating in it.

It is this elitism what can afford the luxury of transcendentalist elaborations, which ultimately defend its interests; which are of class, in the same type of determinism of which they accuse the bourgeoisie, with which they compete. Hence elaborations such as this one, which reproduce that distortion of transcendentalism, typical of the West; focusing political expression on a transcendent idea, such as that of the Common Good (Kant), rather than on an immanence.

As proof, the new boom in the ideological use of this concept comes from Monsignor Desmond Tutu; who in the Anglican tradition —not the African— responds to Christian Humanism, which is the foundation of the entire crisis of the West. We should remember that Anglicanism inherits the Christian exegetic tradition, as a science specialized in doctrinal interpretation; that justifies the political object in its transcendence —hence transcendentalism— with the reference to tradition.

From Tutu's undeniable —but Westernist— teaching, there are countless scholars given to these elaborations; but all of them come from European institutions, although they brandish African objects for their own justification. The difficulty responds to the hermeneutical nature of its contradiction, in the development of Idealism; by its subjection to the successive dichotomies of dialectics, which are nevertheless fallacious and unnecessary in their artificiality.

Ontological Pragmatism of African Origin, from the Epilogue to MogiNganga

The parallelism of the Greek and African cosmogonies is curious, although by confluence rather than direct influence; like in the rivalry of Olokun and Obatalá for control of the world in Ifé, as in Poseidon and Athena for Athens. In the Greek case, Athena defeats Poseidon by proving her usefulness, granting the people the power of judgment; in the Yoruba case, the judgment is of the divinities themselves in their sufficiency, and Obatalá wins it for his intelligence, not his usefulness. The Yemallá of popular tradition —collected by Rómulo Lachatañeré— synthesizes this conflict as existential; like the original Yembó, a sterile farmer woman, who receives fertility as she adopts Shangó, son of Obatala[1].

In this sense, the historical figure of Shango is that of the unpopular tyrant, condemned to suicide for his excesses; which he must undertake by the hand of his wife —with her as nature—, given its own scope as a political expression. This would not be a symbol of moral value —as from historical transcendentalism— but an existential dynamic; by which in its realization, as a political expression, the human being cannot overcome his individuality; and acts according to his interests, first individual and therefore as a class, corrupting that transcendentalism.

That is why its nature, at the height of its contradictions, produces its structural crisis in as a political expression; but existential in this critical sense, because of the contradiction of its immanence, in that transcendentalism. As a historical figure, assimilated to Yakutá, Shangó thus reorders the meaning of the pantheon, inaugurating the political; who’s potential then lies in Oggún, unfolding the cosmic drama in tension with him, through Yemallá.

Like Shangó —but unlike Oggún— Yemallá is a historical figure, assimilated to the divinity of Olokun; referring to the end of the age of the Erumales[2], more conceptual than the Greek cosmogony at the end of the titanic age. As an example, the personalities associated with Shangó are also associated with politics, or at least with its pretensions; but they are in themselves tragic and controversial, tending to the violence and existential frustration of this realization.

In an explanation of the example, a primordial myth of Shango explains its tragedy, similar to that of Heracles; bringing himself the misfortune of his house, with the careless manipulation of his powers over lightning, causing his madness. Note that, with Shango as a historical figure founding the political expression of the real, this is born of water; reproducing the dynamics of the Bantu cosmogony, although not in a consequential but converging, in parallelism.

That would point to a practicality, as not arising from nothingness but from the formless, like the Greek Chaos; whose first current connotation is in the wild, the Mount (Mayombe) as the spirit (Elán?) that expresses itself in the real. As a space of effective and non-symbolic value, this is the transcendent city of literature, in its referential function; from the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1-2) to the City of God, which ranges from Platonic Idealism to the humanism of Thomas More.

In that same function, but symbolic (political) rather than as a efferent, it appears in contemporary literature; in the transcendentalism of the so-called Magical Realism, from Santa Monica de los Venados, Macondo and Nueva Venecia. However, contrary to those previous cases, this space is not an abstraction (Eidos) that culminates the real (Power); but its Potential, to which the real turns in search of its references, which are existential, not political determinations like the former.

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[1] . Cf: Rómulo Lachatañeré, El sistema religioso de los afrocubanos [Oh, mío Yemallá!], Ed. Ciencias Sociales, La Habana 2001. // It should be noted that, contrary to Lachatañeré's mestizo and popular origin, Cuban ethnography is mostly the work of whites of bourgeois origin.

[2] . Erumale means radiance in the Yoruba language, explaining the emanationism of this cosmology, with the erumales coming from the absolutivity of God, while the orishas (Igbamoles) come from the Igba (güira) formed by Obatalá and Oduduwa.

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 Angevin 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.

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.