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should be careful how we engage it. In Mbembe’s view, (as cited in Hitchcock, 1997, p. 236), this “‘chaotic plurality,’ one in which conflict and contradiction are the very mark of postcolonial ‘being’.” Acknowledging the provisional nature and ongoing theorisation of post- colonialism, Hitchcock (1997, p. 236) argues that “It is likely that because ‘postcolonialism’ also refers to the present, history may later provide it with a better name.”
While it does not always provide answers, what can be concluded from the above is that postcolonial theory can be useful in extending our understanding of the context within which the current History textbooks are produced (described in Chapter 1). It also helps explain the nature of those textbooks and also the possibilities in terms of the African consciousness they may construct. Therefore the choice of postcolonial theory was helpful in my study as it played some of the roles that Cohen et al. (2009) state to be the roles of theory in educational research. This includes providing further abstractions of the nature of textbooks and African consciousness which Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 could not do. This also justified my adoption of a theoretical framework in addition to a conceptual framework.
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The third kind of postcolonialism (and the one I use as a framework) is discursive postcolonialism. According to Hitchcock (1997) the uniqueness of discursive postcolonialism is in that it “assesses the condition of postcoloniality as a discursive construction” (p. 233).
Evidently, it foregrounds issues of discourse as a crucial aspect of understanding postcolonialism. Therefore to better understand this kind of postcolonialism, one needs a firm grasp of discourse theory. It is for this reason that this section explains discursive postcolonialism through a discussion of the major tenets of discourse theory. Simultaneously, its inherent contestations are also elucidated.
To understand discourse theory one has to trace the roots of the concept of discourse. In this regard, Rogers, Malancharuvil-Berkes, Mosley, Hui and Joseph (2005) trace its origins and link them to present-day meaning and application:
The word ‘discourse’ comes from the Latin discursus, which means ‘to run to and fro.’ The word ‘current’ comes from the same Latin root. Within a CDA [Critical Discourse Analysis] tradition, discourse has been defined as language use as social practice. That is, discourse moves back and forth between reflecting and constructing the social world (p. 369).
Despite the deep time roots, the concept of discourse in social research only became integral around the beginning of the 20th century. Discourse analyses and related post-structuralist studies have been classified as having roots in critical theory (Luke, nd). However, the emergence of discourse theory in social research is to a greater extent linked to what is commonly referred to as the linguistic turn. Some of the key figures in this research included Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and later Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida (Howarth &
Stavrakakis, 2000). The basic premise of the linguistic turn is that “meaning does not exist outside language” (Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006). It implies the importance of language in the construction of any meaning. This would similarly imply that from a postcolonial point of view, African consciousness is not only constructed by language, but it can be understood through language. This is especially so considering the argument in Chapter 2 that African consciousness is an intangible mental state and can only be made sense of through manifestations. Such an understanding consequently foregrounds the importance of language. However, not all
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discourse theory scholars agree to the undisputed centrality of language in the formation of all meaning. Indeed, Ifversen (2003) sees this view as a “radical ontological claim” (p. 60).
If language is taken to be a crucial aspect of meaning making, how that language is constituted can be debatable. From a structuralist point of view language is constituted by text and speech, but moving into poststructuralism the boundaries become blurred. Yet, text itself is a contested concept. Ifversen (2003) views text to be a “unity of meaning, which contains sequences of sentences” (p. 61). Furthermore, text has to have cohesion and in the case of textbooks, it is their material form which should give them the textual meaning. Therefore since the linguistic turn, text has ceased to be viewed as written language only, but according to Halliday (as cited in Alba-Juez, 2009), “text is everything that is meaningful in a particular situation” (p. 6). This shows the blurring of boundaries between text and speech since in the view of Alba-Juez (2009), “a text may be a magazine article, a television interview, a conversation or a cooking recipe”, (p. 6). However, the bottom-line of the structuralist thinking is that all such examples of text and speech constitute language which can then be analysed to make meaning.
However, the post-structuralist view, championed by scholars such as Derrida and Foucault, foregrounds discourse rather than just language. To them, text, speech, action and visuals all constitute discourse (Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006). In addition, not only is text linked to a particular genre as explained in Chapter 3, but it is also “always related to some preceding or simultaneous discourse” (Alba-Juez, 2009, p. 6). This would mean that all the textbooks that I analysed comprised discourse which fell within a particular genre. Instead of analysing text, I would therefore analyse discourses. These discourses can be disassembled “in order to understand parts in relation to the whole” through a process which Derrida called deconstruction (Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006, p. 103). In the case of my study I therefore deconstructed issues on Africa and Africanness from a historical consciousness perspective so that I could make meaning of the whole that is African consciousness.
As is explained in the methodology in Chapter 5, this study was an analysis of more than a single text. According to Ifversen (2003) discourse theory enables the understanding of the meaning of text beyond the level of single text which he calls a “supra-text level” (p. 62). It is at
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this level that discourse reflects inter-textuality, in this case, the relationship between textbooks and what shapes them to be of a particular text. Therefore, discourse studies involving the analysis of textbooks would involve an understanding of the “relation between text, supra-text (discourse, genre) and context (situation, institution)” (Ifversen, 2003, p. 62).
The role of the context in the constitution of discourse is important. While context may be taken to mean many things, a more comprehensive explanation of the context is offered by Van Dijk (2003, p. 356):
It consists of such categories as the overall definition of the situation, setting (time, place), ongoing actions (including discourses and discourse genres), participants in various communicative, social, or institutional roles, as well as their mental representations: goals, knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and ideologies. Controlling context involves control over one or more of these categories.
Therefore it is the context which enables textual analysis to become discourse analysis (Alba- Juez, 2009, p. 8). The basis of this view is the argument that “science, and especially scholarly discourse, are inherently part of and influenced by social structure, and produced in social interaction” (Van Dijk, 2003, p. 352). This means that even my work in this study is not free from contextual influence and can still be interrogated from a discourse analysis point of view.
Echeruo, cited in Schipper (1985, 567) argues that writings are useful in depicting, not just their content, but also “the imaginative temper of the author’s culture.” Using discursive postcolonialism implies an understanding of the postcolonial condition as the context, which in turn influences how we explain meaning.
Using discourse informed theory as a framework for textbook analysis study would also help in better understanding constructions and contestations. Discourse theory acknowledges the tentative nature of discourse meanings since, as Derrida argued that “meaning is always under erasure – always elusive, always deferred, always multiple, always somewhat paradoxical”
(Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006, p. 103). Even so, discourse theory from a Foucauldian point of view explains how objects and subjects are constructed into being. An example of an object that can be given is psychiatry which “only became an object in the 19th century” through the way it was constructed by contemporary discourses (Ifversen, 2003, p. 62). Similarly, African
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consciousness can be viewed to be made an object through the postcolonial discourses, in this case that are in the textbooks. This is a process of “actualisation,” where discourses create and make something real. However, an actualised object will still hold a meaning that can change over time and circumstances since meanings are “contingent and historical constructions”
(Howarth & Stavrakakis, 2000, p. 4). This therefore shows the power of discourses in construction and contestation. When actualisation takes place in the case of a human being it becomes subject construction. According to Luke, (nd) “human subjects are defined and constructed both in generic categories (e.g., as "children" and "teachers") and in more specialised and purposive historical categories” (p. 3). This means that the African can be taken as a subject constructed by discourse, with African consciousness being the object (Howarth &
Stavrakakis, 2000). Since subjects and objects are never fully meaningful they can be referred to as “empty signifiers” (Howarth & Stavrakakis, 2000, 8). Therefore discursive postcolonialism should partly explain how postcolonial textbooks can contribute to the construction of particular kinds of African consciousness in the postcolonial condition. To prove the relevance of discourse informed theory in my study, I can refer to the example of a study byRuth Wodak in which she analysed the discursive construction of Austrian identity (Ifversen, 2003). Similarly, in this study I analysed the discursive construction of African consciousness in textbooks in the postcolonial condition.
Multiple meanings are at the centre of discourse theory. Similarly the theory acknowledges the possible existence of more than one discourse; sometimes even in one context since, as previously explained, the context is multifaceted. The view by Foucault that discourses are contextual means that there are certain aspects of the contexts which are more crucial than others in the creation of hegemony. Therefore discourses should be viewed in terms of the people who hold power at that particular time and are disseminated through related institutions. According to Dimitriadis and Kamberelis (2006), the view by Foucault was that it is within a particular context that “various institutions (including schools) produce discourses that then constitute what can be known or practiced relative to that body of knowledge” (p. 112). In the case of education, the dominant discourse is then translated into becoming dominant educational discourses as described in Chapter 3, (Naseem, 2008). Ideas are modified into
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dominant discourses through a process of articulation (Howarth & Stavrakakis, 2000). Therefore educational media such as History textbooks become tools for the dissemination of the discourses from above and as Foucault argued people become “disciplined subjects” of such discourses (Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006, p. 112).
With regard to the construction of subjects, an understanding of discourse helps us understand how this process of construction and actualisation occurs. Therefore, since African consciousness was argued to be a state of mind which can be evidenced by manifestations such as action and attitudes, discourse theory explains how the mind is the controller of such actions and attitudes. According to Van Dijk (2003) education is one of the areas where mind-control is largely practiced and “in some situations participants are obliged to be recipients of discourse”
(p. 357). Textbooks thus can be crucial in producing what Van Dijk (2003) calls “mental representations” which can then construct a particular consciousness (p. 358). Therefore, the manifestation and actualisation of African consciousness can ultimately be viewed in terms of how individuals act in respect to issues of Africa and Africanness within educational discourse.
Based on the above discussion, I therefore employ a discursive application of postcolonial theory to explain the construction of African consciousness in history textbooks. The discursive approach in this study is not entirely divorced from discursive approaches in other fields.
Nikander (2006) explained this view thus:
What discursive approaches in different disciplinary locations share, however, is a strong social constructionist epistemology--the idea of language as much more than a mere mirror of the world and phenomena ‘out-there’, and the conviction that discourse is of central importance in constructing the ideas, social processes, and phenomena that make up our social world (p. 1).
The nature of my worldview in this study therefore is revealed through the above statement.
This can be related to my positionality that I explained in Chapter 1. The point is that a discursive approach reveals the social constructionist paradigm within which I worked. The key is on the argument that language and discourses “effectively construct, regulate and control knowledge, social relations and institutions” (Luke, nd, p. 3).
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Applying discourse to postcolonial theory is helpful in understanding how power works even in the postcolonial condition. Therefore discursive postcolonialism exposes the paradox that postcolonial governments can still be exercising power as did the colonial governments. Power can be in the hands of people such as the politicians, the military, the rich and even the authoritative (such as parents, teachers and scholars) (Van Dijk, 2003). The link between discourse and power is expressed by Foucault who views language as the most important kind of power because users of language are usually unconscious of how language constrains them (Tosh, 2009). This understanding can explain how particular discourses appear in the textbooks, since, as explained in Chapter 3, textbook production is an arena of power dynamics in which the more dominant are more likely to have more favourable representation. This favourable representation then contributes to the construction of norms, rules, identities and consciousness. This, in simple terms is what the concept of hegemony entails. Hegemony creates a “horizon of intelligibility,” – a “framework delineating what is possible, what can be said and done, what positions may legitimately be taken, what actions may be engaged in”
Norval (1996, p. 4). The horizon of intelligibility is instituted by discourse and African consciousness can be said to have its respective horizon. However, discourse theory also alerts us that power cannot be absolute in these dynamics. For example, the less powerful will often
“resist, accept, condone, comply with, or legitimate such power, and even find it ‘natural’” (Van Dijk, 2003, p. 355). Therefore, discursive postcolonialism helps expose power and the role it plays in textbook production and construction of African consciousness.
The link between power and educational media such as textbooks is explained by the concepts of the macro-level and micro-level of discourse. Van Dijk (2003) explains how discourses operate at the macro-level of the power holders and at the micro level of the average citizen.
Using this thinking, it can be argued that dominant controllers of the context (usually the politicians) purvey certain discourses which play a part in the construction of an African consciousness within the ordinary citizen. At a micro-level, schools and educational media (particularly textbooks) also purvey their discourses which either augment or sometimes contest the construction done from the macro-level. Studying from such a perspective helps to identify where these levels meet and Van Dijk (2003, p. 354) calls this meeting space the “meso-
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level” of discourse. The poststructuralist thinking which informs discourse and postcolonial theories espouses the fluidity of reality therefore it will not be expected that the meso-level of discourse demonstrates a common African consciousness for all the learners who use a particular textbook in one country.
It is Ifversen’s (2003) view that since historians deal with documents, which can also be called texts, it is important for scholars in History to engage in text analysis. It is important to analyse discourses in textbooks because they are not neutral, as explained in Chapter 3. Indeed Oteíza and Pinto (2008) point out that “the discourse in school textbooks tends to imply that the way things are narrated mirrors precisely the way things are in the world, showing a naturalized view of history” (p. 334). This is in spite of attempts, in some cases, to be objective through the elimination of “attitudinal meta-discourse” whereby they may try to avoid judgements and emphasis. However, the analysis of the textbooks should be theoretically informed for it to be regarded as scientific. The nature of my study and the thread of my thoughts made discursive postcolonialism an ideal theoretical framework for the research.