Page 49 - Culture Society and Economy

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CULTURE, SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

event, the segments are implicitly essentialist. It is apparent, for example,
that the inter-African process of cultural unification among persons of
African descent in the West – the process by means of which, for example,
Asante and Ibo amalgamated, and tribalism was overcome which began
in Africa itself – was and is far more important historically than the
African-European relationship. Indeed, the latter is inconceivable and
was inseparable from the former. Many years ago, I put forward the
thesis that this truly historic process of becoming ‘African’ in the West –
in some ways an incomplete process in Africa herself – is the fundamental
theme of the history of black people in the West. 44 It is one riven with
tensions, violent conflicts, class, color and other contradictions but it has
proceeded nonetheless. This does not deny the rather obvious fact of
powerful European influences. It simply does not assume that this African-
European relationship provides the entire axis on which black culture in
the West turns and that this relationship, important as it obviously is, sets
the framework for analysis of this historical experience.
This weakness springs from the tendency to discuss black culture in
the West, popular and otherwise, solely with reference to the West and
without any reference or connection to black culture in Africa. A similar
error would hardly have been made if the subject had been that of
Scottish culture in Canada. Hall’s conception of the ‘hybridity’ of black
culture in the West – regarded by some black intellectuals in the West as
‘obviously’ the most important part of black culture in general – suffers
from a lack of a deep historical perspective which integrates this cultural
tradition and experience with its really existing African past.

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