2 History and Sociability
2.4 Theorizing the Sociology of the Malawi Society
2.4.3 The Role of History and Acting in the “Now”
In social theoretic and even philosophical presentations by and of the West, forgetting is akin to weaning oneself from a prior state of underdevelopment to a more advanced stage of
130 It should be borne in mind that these contradictory concepts are only contradictory to the extent that they are co- present in terms of their absolute connotations or definitions. In the real social setting however, these concepts are deployed tactfully to accompany a performance and as such emerge and disappear in a manner that facilitates their mutual co-existence – a mutual co-existence that is impractical only the stage of a performance and yet harmonious within the space of the mind or of consciousness. This is because performances draw from historical definitions which allow its spectators to recognize the logic or direction of that performance as it is being appropriated.
131 Again, consciousness is aware of other consciousness-es, which is precisely why social life is governed by some sets of rules or procedures. See Coleman (Foundations of Social Theory, 1994).
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development. It is similar to the shedding of a state of nature to attain the greater clarities of civilization. It is a progression from a parochial, rudimentary state to a more sophisticated and developed state. To look back into one’s own history is to aggressively emphasize the progression, and to undermine the earlier rudimentary levels of existence. This process of looking back emphasizes those points at which informed choices caused the West to opt for a superior course of history over an inferior one.132 That is, to look into history is to refer to the
“that thing which we once were but are no more precisely because we abandoned it for this something better we are today”. There is thus an inherent commitment to keeping records, writing and the systematic revisiting of those records to emphasize the greatness of or to improve the now. In some instances in which the now is not so great the more rationalized mind, equipped with newer techniques, asserts itself nonetheless intricately picking out the errors that were overlooked at the time they were committed. Even in a failed now, the present mind and its techniques still purport themselves as superior in which one kind of history is exalted and another is shamed.
Conversely, in the Malawian setting, what is forgotten could be understood as that which is intersubjectively known to be inappropriate at a given time or times, and at a given space or spaces. It is akin to collectively, through that intersubjective awareness, co-echoing what is and what is not. This is not to depict the Malawian as one who is incapable of losing any single bit of history from memory. What the argument seeks to present here is that the thrust for progress accompanied by the throwing off of the primitive for the more civilized as seen in the West’s approach is not as tenaciously pursued in the Malawian context.133 Indeed the sentimentalism that has come to ensemble African culture as something that was disrupted and corrupted by western colonial imperialism has only made this need to keep remembering even more emphatic. The point being that what is lost from Malawian memory is lost due to the natural limitation of the human mind or minds to retain information accurately coupled by the social condition that actively warrants the creation or invention of history as opposed to the intentional systematic forgetting throttled on by a commitment towards emphasizing one kind of historical narrative over another as seen in the West.
132 See Habermas’s Modernity: An Unfinished Project cited in Calhoun (Contemporary Sociological Theory, 2012);
also see Wolff (1978: 500b) as he glorifies Western culture’s own cultural ability to question itself systematically through standardized methods of science.
133 This might be evidenced lack of an entrenched writing and record keeping tradition, preferring the usage of the oral tradition in which things are not merely lost in terms of historical accuracy, but things become resources for future events precisely because of that inaccuracy which is endemic to the oral tradition.
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This term history, which keeps recurring, ought to be disambiguated somewhat as well. It has so far been used in two ways. Firstly it has been used within the context of a factual and chronological documentation of events followed by the generation of casual explanations pertaining to the unfolding of the Malawian society – that is, in its academic or scholarly sense.
This is particularly the order in which history appears in the first sections of this study up to the section titled An African Modernity and its Rationality. Its second usage emerges especially in this section in which history refers to that which can be called upon because it is or can be collectively remembered; that which can be imagined in relation to something that can be remembered; which draws its power primarily from this mutual perceptibility; and has within it the malleability for potential exploitation; all to validate an action within a specific context through social performances – that is history in its political or social sense.
This diabolical role of history is in fact not strange. Some historians have noted for instance that before colonialism the territory that is now Malawi heard what were essentially claims embedded in historical tales whereupon kings and chiefs legitimated their power. When stronger kingdoms emerged, chiefs sometimes conjured stories linking various widely known events to demonstrate their connections to the new powerful leader or in other instances to attest to the validity of their own chieftaincies and kingdoms if they came under challenge (Berman, 1998).
Disgruntled deserters of one kingdom could raise themselves to the status of chiefs in other territories riding on the tales they would tell about their shared lineage with a well-known ruler of a large or dominant kingdom (Berman, 1998). During colonialism, as patronage grew in the divide and rule posture of the State, numerous chieftaincies sprung up and told known tales, adding validity or proof to the agitations and competitions for State recognition. During Banda’s regime, the president himself inaccurately conjoined various aspects of Malawian history, and disregarded others, with regards to the process of de-colonization to present himself as the God- Ordained ruler of the newly independent country. He also appropriated aspects of the Chewa matrilineal culture to present himself as Malawi’s ultimate guardian and further is paternalistic hegemony (Lwanda, 2006). Bakili Muluzi, Malawi’s first president in the democratic dispensation, told the well-known tales about the Malawian people’s torturous past and how he was committed to eradicating poverty via cash hand-outs at political rallies. More recently, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s president who died in office in 2012, told stories of why he went into exile, conveniently side-stepping his personal problems with Kamuzu Banda, and only emphasizing his detest for the colonizer, thereby expressing the view that his exile was only because he was too proud to be ruled by a colonial government (Lwanda, 2006). He deliberately avoids mentioning his problems with Banda as he too was at this time committed to creating a
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hegemonized State-Society, embedded in his own personality by rehearsing Banda’s authoritarian script (Lwanda, 2002). The resource of history permits therefore the actuation of action upon a context everywhere punctuated with contextual appropriateness.