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.

Whatever happened to neoliberalism!

In the first place, it was not liberal but neoconservative, and that is the problem with paradoxes, they are misleading; especially in this case, in which the bourgeoisie tried to surpass its own intelligence, only to deceive itself. The problem of neoliberalism was in the feudal nature of Modernity, contained by democratic conventions; because the contribution of Modernity was the moderation —not the overcoming— of medieval structures, with those conventions.

That is what explains the relativity of modern democracy, without it becoming unhinged —as it could have been— in anarchy; contained in the authoritarian elitism of modern intellectuals, not in the access of the popular class to power. These intellectuals were also fed by a dissident aristocracy, which they legitimized in their populism; and this was the ideological development of liberalism, legitimizing sovereignty in the people instead of in God; but also marginalizing that people who legitimized it from effective power, because of their alleged intellectual incapacity.

This explains populism, because the revolution is never popular but populist, in another of those political turns; but more importantly, it explains the surreptitious growth of the middle class, to that apotheosis of intellectual excellence. After all, as a parameter of culture, it is also a parameter of cultural mediocrity, in more of those paradoxical twists; giving meaning to that professionalization that distorts the economy with technocracy, displacing pragmatism.

That is what wounded the bourgeoisie, the betrayal of an aristocracy too authoritarian to become bourgeois; unlike in England, where he aristocracy was too strong to allow that trickery to the Monarchy in its own authority. That is why absolutism was so relative in England, without allowing its monarchy the political excesses of France; for there is no such thing as history, but the peculiar developments that organize culture.

So the problem with neoliberalism was not its bourgeois nature, but its political decharacterization as a class; for which it agreed to rely in the business schools of the universities —oh, intellectualism!—, instead of in real practice. That would be why it ends up subordinating productivity to planning, in the corporate culture of the political; and thus ending up like the political, wearing down its own material base in theorical projections, like socialism.

This decapitalization may not be theoretically visible, dissolved as it is in the growing inflation of the economy; with the devaluation of wages, which moves their value to the profit of investors, in an apparent increase of productivity. This would have been the kind of trick with which Louis XVI's finance minister financed American independence; but at the expense of the solvency of that same monarchy, and which he ended up blaming for its waste, as it still does.

It is also true that there is no such thing as a socialist economy, but a state capitalism, as a corporate culture; which is the Leninist distortion of Marxism, facing its own failure to create an effective economic alternative. In this regard, Necker's trick was not precisely this apparent productivity, but the budget against debt; but what is at issue is the technocratic character of these tricks, reducing intelligence to sleight of hand.

Neoliberalism was thus the last bourgeois offensive, but a bourgeoisie already weakened in its lack of character; that committed it to the technocracy of modern politicians, too mediocre to be effective in their intellectualism. In reality, neoliberalism would have been the alternative to socialism, in the face of the inevitable death of Soviet communism; appropriating the technocratic structure of political corporatism, with the inefficiency of classical empires; from the moral rhetoric of meritocracy, as false as it was authoritarian, but as irrational as the feudal aristocracy never was.

So neoliberalism was so weakened that no one noticed its death, under the siege of surreptitious socialism; so weak that it cannot fail to lead to anarchy, paradoxically from a classical conservatism, not real liberalism. That makes sense, as an effort to preserve political resources, after the cultural debacle of rationalism; which is anthropological, pushing the whole of Western civilization into the abyss, with that blind faith in platonic elitism.

 

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.

Problems of American Blackness 2/2

In the same sense, the political development of the black American southeast, would tend towards a form of socialism; which, weakened by corporate aggressiveness in economy, will be unsustainable like the African empires to which it appeals. These formations will thus be progressively impoverished, due to the typical unproductiveness of the political model; aggravated by the elephantiasis —also typical— of government structures, as guarantors of economic order.

Although for different reasons, this foreseeable development would be that of cases such as Haiti and Cuba; which respond to the structural weakness of sub-Saharan petty imperialism, due to its dependence on a strong personalities. That would be inevitable, due to its origin on the margins of the West culture, rather than in an effective African centrality; as emporiums of political power, in the growing weakness of the Western structure, with its progressive decadence.

This precariousness is what resembles American blackness, to that Germanic expansion in the Roman decadence; but as a process extended in time, which in Europe was only consolidated in the ninth century, with Charlemagne. In the United States, as the modern culmination of medieval chaos, the nature of the conflict is not warlike but economic; making development more imperceptible, in a political expression that transcends the ideological; but for the same reason it has more effective possibilities —than in Haiti and Cuba, for example—, in its religious nature.

What marks the violent evolution of the European Middle Ages would be the claim of universality of Christianity; which, interfering with secular power, exceeds the infrastructural capacity of local cultures. In the United States that is not the problem, but the weakness of this pretension of its political structure, as liberal; which is therefore resolved in the infrastructural function of the local churches, which is parochial and not transnational.

In the same sense, the conflict seems confessional in principle, like that of the early Lutheran Reformation; but it differs in that it is interdenominational —between Baptists and Methodists— and non-jurisdictional, by its political practices. This conflict would develop surreptitiously, due to the political commitment of the so-called African Methodism; as an instrument of ideological liberalism, in a functionally conservative community, such as the black one. This would be solved with the slow migration —hence the surreptitiousness— from the Methodist to the Baptist church; by the latter's appeal to family culture —rather than to the protection of the state— in its functional conservatism; different from the liberal, as practical and not ideological, in the appeal to its existential resources, given its political precariousness.

However, that will only condition the development, which is favorable to the ideological projection of Methodism; because of its conjunction with government protection, reminiscent of the populist absolutism of Louis XIV in France; respect to which it is more efficient, materializing in a state of well-being, paid for with the public debt. Nevertheless, this will make it possible for alternative structures to emerge, in the face of the problem of unproductivity; that will end up undermining the effective scope of that state of well-being, thus surpassed as infrastructure.

To solve this, Americans would have to turn to their own history, but factual and not ancestral; that is, to find their references in their own historical singularity, which transcends African origin. An example would be the ambiguity of the indigenous wars, which in the Seminole case are also known as black; because of that North American ethnogamous peculiarity, by which blacks share with Indians the path of tears.

However, this approach —as existential rather than political— would be pragmatic and not transcendentalist; hermeneutically detaching itself from the liberal tradition, which sponsors it with its own historical reference, as ideology. Hence those contradictions that prevent the consolidation of a local black culture, in transcendentalism; with the conditioning of the past, which they will partially deny, based on their own founding myth.

An example of this denial would be the historic participation of African political structures in the slave trade; as a contradiction that would separates them from the origin they claim, making it inconsistent as a political expression. Another example would be that of the same appeal to the exceptions, and in general to the Mediterranean area; by which they cannot access the resources of the original tribal organization, such as that of geronto democracy and matrilineality.

Problems of American Blackness 1/2

The problem of blackness in the United States is identity —or lack thereof—, supplemented with its references to Africa; which provides the bases but not the structure of that identity, and much less can it resolve its determinations. It is not that this projection takes place in a vacuum, since it has a basis in the very culture of the American Southeast; whose segregationism is not only political but also due to the swampy geography of the eastern islands; resulting in a kind of New Africa, due to the isolation of the plantations, which made syncretism difficult. However, this will still be insufficient, since it still depends on the negativity of segregation, whatever its cause; not allowing the practical consistency —as positivity— of some economy, even primary, as in the Seminole case.

This is why its expression, as a culture, consists of a political projection instead of an existential one, as an ideology; with the positivist and romantic rational nature of the idealist tradition, which it shares with the liberalism that sponsors it. The problem with this is the artificiality of that liberalism, which actually acts a functional conservatism; since it consists of a vigilance over the individual, to whom it subordinates the community, in that historical transcendentalism.

In the opposite direction, cultures tend towards the same transcendentalism, but they are adequate by their tribal infrastructure; which limits that political determinism with its own cultural consistency, in the power of the family as a private space. Elements such as matrilineality, in the very infrastructural function of the clan, are limits to this transcendentalism; that ignores them in the political conventions proper to the West, such as the community or the common good.

These are values attributed to African primitivism, but never superimposed to its basic tribal infrastructure; but they do constitute in the West its very structure, with its natural reduction of culture to that political determinism. That, for example, was the case with Christianity, when it over imposed itself to tribalism, with the crown of Carlo Magno; as the moment the West culture lost its existential object, in crisis since the imperial efforts of Julio Cesar. It's for a reason that these values reach their conceptual excellence in the West, with figures such as Kant and Descartes; but in a development that starts from the very basis of that transcendentalism, from Platonic to Neoplatonic uranism; which then organized in Christianity, prepares the war debacle with which the West arrives at Modernity to end.

In African tribal primitivism, on the other hand, culture cannot lose its existential function, not even in this determinism; which, lacking sufficient infrastructure, collapses the phenomenon in its very formation, before its apotheosis. This is the case of all the empires in the sub-Saharan area, with the exceptions of Sudan, Ethiopia and Mali, for example; which are explained in their contamination by the influence of Mediterranean culture, including the religious element (Mali). In Congo, on the other hand, like Oyó in Nigeria and Dahomey, this structure cannot survive its own contradictions; because its inability to go beyond tribal organization —as domestic—, resolved in matrilineality.

The references of North American blackness to a primitive African communism would try to make up for this lack; already in that historical and transcendentalist projection of political determinism, but in a conceptual ambiguity. In this sense, they come to legitimize themselves in the exceptionality of the great imperialism, not in the tribal regularity; to which they nevertheless appeal in their ideological function, despite its direct contradiction of exceptional imperialism.

The contradiction is logical, due to the special nature of this political projection, as an ideology rather than culture; by not being on behalf of the popular class, but of an intellectual elite, formed in that patronage by political liberalism. The best example of this case would perhaps be that of W.E.B. Du Bois, probably the most outstanding personality in that segment; but because of its contradiction with black leadership in its popular origin, with figures such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglas.

To be continued

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.

---

[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.

---

[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.

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.

---

[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.

On the mystical and recurrent ghost of Duvalierianism

One of the most incomprehensible and strange phenomena of Haitian political culture, is the recurrence of voodoo; as an example, by Western standards, of the primitivism of this culture, whit repercussions on its social backwardness. In the first place, the problem would be that Haitian political culture does not respond to these parameters of the West; not being able to materialize as such since its emergence as a country, product of the same Western political crisis.

In this sense, and beyond its historical references, Haitian political tradition and culture is hard broken in its periods; without a connection between these, allowing the consolidation of any residual tradition, to be used as a reference. The first problem here is in the French pressure, posing the economic debt that prevents this organization; not only in that conflict of the nineteenth century, but also in the present, with the American interests, throughout the twentieth century.

It should be remembered the creation of the Haitian central bank, transferring the debt to the United States; and the occupation of the country for two decades, creating the imbalance that conditions any attempt at restructuring. In this context, Duvalier's rise to power —like that of Batista in Cuba— responds to this structural deficit; which is of a sufficient political tradition, and dates to the destabilization caused by the Petion-Boyer’s republic.

This instability is not due to the brutal tribalism of Dessalines and Christopher, with their monarchical pretensions; but precisely to the idealistic pretensions about a democratic republic, without the economic resources to do it. Due to the early stage of modern humanism, the incomprehension of this is easy to understand, as with any development; but no the persistence of those pretensions, despite the evidence of this importance, while still not allowing this development.

Strangely, this is what explains the ascendancy of mysticism, as a substitute for an organized political culture; which, not being able to establish itself, subsists in that perpetual —and certainly brutal—contraction of religious functionalism. This is what the monarchism of Dessalines and Christopher meant, legitimizing itself as a revolutionary mysticism; from that Boukman's proclamation to the Bondye, in which the revolution began, to Louverture's struggle with the French recalcitrance.

The answer to the Haitian political problem is thus anthropological, because the problem is first anthropological; emerged from the great crisis that was the French Revolution, as an anthropological disaster of West culture. This does not mean that the alternative to Haiti's political deficiency is Duvalier's violence, but only that it’s deficiency; and its solution would be an emergent development, by which these contradictions are appeased, in a national reconciliation; allowing the weaving —as anthropologic— of economic relations at popular level, no corporate and less still of foreign.

This is the meaning of Haitian gangs, which are also popular and not elitist, as an alternative to interventionism; whose violence is not different from that of the recurrent dictatorships, because it fulfills the same coercive function. In fact, it is not new but the same as the movement that opposed the martyrdom of Charlemagne Peralta to American interventionism; which resurfaces after the same threat of intervention, from the dictatorship —no less brutal— of Raoul Cedras.

No one will ever want to accept this premise, because of the idealistic faith that keeps the whole West in crisis; not just Haiti, which is only the place that lacks a sufficient tradition to assimilate and consume that disaster; but to the entire West, converging in the transitive —even racial— tension, that begins in Haiti and culminates in Cuba. Haiti is then only the extreme expression of that crisis, which by its dimensions resembles the Minoan cataclysm; now reproduced as culture, thus preventing its recovery, as that of Phoenician commerce on Mycenean population.