Sigh
to many modern African Peoples(diaspora + continent) seem to have a shytty idea of African societies through time...
- hunter gather
- pastoral
- agrarian
- market
- colonial/slave
- complex("modern") market
The ridiculous shyt I see people talk about has nothing to do with historical reality and how African men, women, children, elderly, ...and yes the ancestors(I'm not talking spooky shyt here) managed societies. To many are patterning themselves after....
- Biblical ideals/norms (desert societies)
- Middle class cacs from the 50's
- Stupid ass feminist ideals (attempting to over turn euro societal tendencies that historically had little to do with the various African societies on the whole)
On the topic of patriarchal & matriarchal:
I suggest stripping the idea of patriarchal / matriarchal from your vocabulary and look at our history on its own terms. Attempting to use those concepts in your analysis will corrupt the conclusion.
I.E. just look at how people organized themselves to successfully survive, thrive, and reproduce in various societies through time on it's own terms
Conceptual Incarceration –
The knower is given a set of predetermined concepts and definitions to utilize in the process of knowing. This amounts to European hegemony. In this regard, the alien or Eurocentric ideas inhibit us from fully understanding African reality. The African thinker is, in fact, conceptually incarcerated.
-Wade Nobles
Psychology Serving Humanity: Proceedings of the 30th International Congress of Psychology
...our ability to regain balance as African intellectuals has to do with the recognition that concepts have the capacity to lock you up, concepts have the capacity to limit the parameter of your knowing and understanding. The concepts you use as the critical discourse have the ability to prevent you from engaging in critical thought. That's what I call conceptual Incarceration, the concept puts you in jail. ...It's not any different on the street than it is in the academy. It is the intellectual discourse that is the jail so we start thinking with white thought, thinking with western ideas, those ideas themselves lock us up and it is insidious, it is very difficult to talk about it because I'm speaking English. I'm not speaking igbo, not speaking fulani, even the language itself becomes difficult.
-Wade Nobles
2006 CHEIKH ANTA DIOP Conference
Conceptual Incarceration –
The condition of African thought under the influence of the European Worldview. It refers to the conceptual universe or boundaries imposed on African cognitive-intellectual functioning by the internalization of the European Worldview. Consequentially, such a condition reflects one which defines, i.e. limits/constrains or "imprisons," the conceptual universe of African thought under the influence of the European Worldview
- Kobi Kambon
Maybe the terminology is off...but, in laments terms....I'm basically just saying that it's men's job to be the leaders in building up society. In a physical sense, as in....building infrastructure....The roads, the churches, the stores, the businesses and the business opportunities....The schools and the educational opportunities....The government buildings and the governmental job opportunities...The Military..The defense...All that is male responsibility. Where as maintaining society is equally male and female responsibility. This has nothing to do with the after fact of when things are are already built...As is job opportunities and what not...I'm just referring to the building process. Not The Maintaing Process.
But that has nothing to do with patriarchy or matriarchy ...thats simply building infrastructure. Men building infrastructure has nothing to do with patriarchy, likewise women building infrastructure matriarchy.
This is that nonsense I've heard seeping out of youtube voices like sgt willie pete, black authority type dudes. After years of arguing with women they came to some conclusion that...
- until black men build up the "infrastructure" that they can't expect black women to follow their lead.
- and that other women enjoy the fruits of their mens patriarchy which is what keeps them in pocket
- etc etc
I'm not against building at all
..but what I am saying is that their conflation with the building of infrastructure = patriarchy is fundamentally flawed and stupid.
Given an environment the question is how do we...
- live
- survive
- reproduce
- protect
Then we have to say what resources do we have at our disposal to enable the above.
After that we say who is responsible for doing what.....
- Youth
- adults
- women
- men
- elderly
- ancestors
Organization of a group has nothing to do with patriarchy & matriarchy. They simply organize their society given their environmental needs. Who does what is governed by the environment and the peoples sense of self. Ideas of patriarchy & matriarchy are simply European analytical lenses that often distort any true understanding of the phenomena in question.
NOTE: (on the topic of "ancestors" place in society)
- I don't have to test if an apple if safe to eat
- I don't have to rebuild a city ever day I wake
- I don't have to construct a term for "apple" ....or a complete language itself from scratch daily
- I don't have to fight for my place in society and land to build my home on
If my ancestors have already passed these things on to me. If I can rely on my ancestors for these things I can then focus on other unaddressed issues in society.
So, basically what your saying is that this concept of men leading way in building physical infrastructure...Is not a branch of patriarchy at all..And that my terminology is just simply off? Is there a name for it or is it simply just men "leading way in building infrastructure?"
Bingo
Semantic & Epistemological traps:
Once you start calling it patriarchy then you open up the twin issues of semantic & epistemological traps...
2. Semantic Trap - This is similar to the notion of a thing being "lost/added in translation".
Easy example:
- A slave is someone you pay money for and force to work for you under threat of death.
- An adoptee is someone you pay money for and lives with you as your biological child would.
Trap = Both the slave and the adoptee are acquired with money so an adoptee is a slave also.
You can't take one element that is the same in both cases and say they are completely the same because one element is the same. The thing is when you use someone elses language to communicate how your culture brakes down reality samantic traps happen all the time. This happens because the translation is built on what word in the target language is "close enough" to the native concept.
3. Epistemological Trap - This happens when the only way you know to think of/describe a thing is through a given language/worldview.
Trap = Both the slave and the adoptee are acquired with money so an adoptee is a slave also(because I know of no other concept but "slave" to compare "adoptee" to).
Epistemological Traps are easier to dodge though. All you simply need to know are multiple languages/worldviews.
........
X = [a,b,g,h]
Y = [a,b,j,k]
Semantic Trap ---> X==Y because they both contain [a,b,_,_]
NO X & Y are distinct as in some attributes are the same while others are different.
If I say [a,b,...] don't assume [...,g,h] is coming next.
Assumed questions:
Assumed question 1:
How does conflating "men leading way in building physical infrastructure" as being "a branch of patriarchy" equate to the above defined epistemological trap?
Answer:
Do you know of any other term or concept in your vocabulary that embodies the phenomena/concept your trying to describe?
If that's the only thing you know then your in an epistemological trap.
Assumed question 2:
How does conflating "men leading way in building physical infrastructure" as being "a branch of patriarchy" equate to the above defined Semantic Trap?
Answer:
This one is more precautionary. Once you use the term "patriarchy" to encapsulate your concept you open up room for...
- other aspects to be used by associated men who do not understand your limited/restrained/targeted use of the term.
- easily avoided attacks by outside forces(feminist, lackeys, & their promoters) who (assume or leverage) that you are referring to their "boogeyman version" of the term.
NOTES:
Epistemological trap -
The epistemological traps is what John Henrik Clarke mentioned when he said Europeans didn't only colonized Africa, they colonized thought itself. ...European hegemony requires the disenfranchisement of the discursive outputs of African cultural systems, and knowing & understanding is a cultural output. Knowing is a cultural output, just as knowing & analysis are cultural inputs. So we got to begin to talk about how we're crippled by trying to blackenize white thought. Trying to blackenize European thought. Even trying to compare African things to give them legitimacy ...cause we find counterparts in European things. We do that all the time in our intellectual discourse.
...before we were tiptoeing on the platform because we weren't sure about it and we in fact had this sort of mentality were we always look over our shoulder to see if some white professor or some white scholar legitimized our thought. So we were happy when some white person said Egypt, ancient Kemet was black. You say "well finally finally they telling the truth". Who gives a (....) about what they think.
- Wade Nodes
2006 CHEIKH ANTA DIOP Conference
The insidious aspect of the epistemological trap is the process wherein the. Black social scientists (sic) accept a set of White defined assumptions...
- Wade Nodes
Epistemology
Epistemology is the study of knowledge: what we know, how we know it, how we know we know it, and how to keep track of it without driving ourselves crazy.
epistemology - Dictionary Definition
