chapter sets out to explain the conceptual framework for this research. Such a framework is vital as it facilitates the maintenance of focused and coherent communication throughout the entire study (Babbie et al, 2006). There has been some tentative reference to consciousness earlier in this chapter and in Chapter 1, but here I explain that the conceptual framework for this thesis is African consciousness, which is founded upon an understanding of a combination of Africa, Africanness, and historical consciousness. The works of Rüsen (1993, 2000), Anvik and von Borris (1997), Mazabow (2003), Van Jaarsveld (1989) and Kwang-Su (1999) are central references in this conceptualisation based on their argument that all social phenomena (including African consciousness, in this case) can be described and understood historically. I refer mostly to Kwang-Su (1999) as his work proved to be a valuable example of how Rüsen (1993)’s historical consciousness was applied into another study. In this section I firstly review scholarly issues on consciousness in general and then on historical consciousness. I will then show how I used the arguments from the review of the literature to construct a conceptual framework of African consciousness.
The meaning of consciousness normally varies depending on the field in which it is being applied. This is why there exists various, albeit fundamentally related, forms of consciousness such as group consciousness, collective consciousness, national consciousness, cultural consciousness, class consciousness, political consciousness, environmental consciousness and
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black consciousness.12 But an understanding of consciousness as a basic concept is essential before I try to construct a comprehensible illustration of African consciousness. While consciousness, per se, is not the focus of this study, it is necessary to explain its range of meanings and implications. According to Janzen (2000, p. 155) when in the field of social History, consciousness can simplistically be understood as “being aware of what is happening.”
Some of the various types of consciousness listed above are also referred to henceforth to illustrate and elucidate the concept of consciousness in general.
The deepest engagement with consciousness has been in the fields of philosophy and psychology where it has been argued that consciousness is an awareness that results from beliefs, feelings and experiences (Tye, 1996). This psychological interpretation means that consciousness can be understood to be a mental state. In other words, consciousness is an abstract phenomenon that is constructed in the human mind. Only when an individual is in the state of consciousness can they make decisions related to the situations in which they find themselves (Tribus, 2004). To illustrate this relationship, Shingles (1981) tried to show the link between black consciousness and political participation in the USA. Similarly, Smith, Burlew and Lundgren’s (1991) research concluded that African American women who demonstrated high levels of black consciousness were able to deal with self-esteem issues and thus cope better with the challenges they met in college. Such studies try to demonstrate links between a particular mental state (consciousness) and a particular action. Mazabow (2003) notes that philosophers and psychologists do not agree “as to whether consciousness is purely a mental activity” (p. 38). In this regard, Biko (2002, p. 3) argues that “[Black] consciousness is an attitude of mind and a way of life” showing how a conscious mental state can be linked to action.
There are many characteristics of consciousness and one such attribute is identification. This can be explained by the case given by Miller, Gurin, Gurin and Malanchuk (1981, p. 495) of group consciousness entailing “identification with a group and a political awareness or ideology regarding the group's relative position in society along with a commitment to collective action aimed at realizing the group's interests.” This was especially so for the Black Consciousness
12 Black Consciousness in capital first letters represents the civil rights movement in South Africa.
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Movement (BCM) in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the aspirations of the BCM was for black South Africans to define their own identity and values, as summed up in this BCM manifesto: “So many things are said so often to us, about us and for us but very seldom by us”
(Ndebele, 1972, p. 14). To add to this, Biko (1979, p. 51) asked two pertinent questions: “Who am I? Who are we?” Such questions can similarly be asked as part of the effort to conceptualise African consciousness.
Since consciousness is a mental state, it is not apparent and can only be noticed through its manifestations (Van Beek, 2000). For instance, the identity created through consciousness would need to be authenticated by action for it to be actualised. In relation to this, the BCM, according to Biko (2002, p. 51), hoped to authenticate itself by producing what he labelled “real black people.” In his view, these people could be identified, not just by their skin colour or beliefs, but by their actions. Authentication of the existence of one particular consciousness is not always unproblematic as individuals are always exposed to various forms of education, formal and informal, which promote other competing forms of consciousness. It thus becomes problematic to link one particular action to one specific consciousness. In recognition of this conflict even early 20th century scholars such as Du Bois and, later, Frantz Fanon wrote about double consciousness (Moore, 2005). Double consciousness refers to the kind of thought- processes an individual experiences as a result of feeling a sense of belonging to two forms of consciousness. According to Moore (2005), a person with a double consciousness will always find it difficult to remember their past as they tend to fixate themselves in other people’s realities. However, scholars such as Asante (as cited in Moore, 2005,p. 761) argue against the possibility of a double consciousness and contend that people can simply have many confusions of a single consciousness. The implication of such arguments is that on one hand there could be many variations (confusions) of one consciousness, while on the other hand different types of consciousness contest for space in an individual’s mind, in the process constructing a particular being. The dominant discourses will be crucial in entrenching one type of consciousness over the competing others.
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With reference to the actualisation of group consciousness, Miller et al (1981, p. 496) claim that consciousness tends to comprise tenets such as “polar affect,” “polar power” and “individual versus system blame.” Polar affect involves preference of the group with whom one identifies over others. Polar power can be manifested in contentment or discontent over the condition in which one’s group finds itself. In the context of such conditions, group consciousness can either result in individuals accepting the responsibility for their condition or placing the responsibility on other variables, such as the system. The above arguments imply that consciousness is meant to have a purpose. In a critique of Frantz Fanon, Ranuga (1986, p. 182) explains that consciousness should not act as a “repository of crippling fears and debilitating complexes.”
The bottom-line is that, eventually, the conscious individual should be involved in some form of action which tallies with their consciousness. According to Janzen (2000), consciousness, in whichever form, should demonstrate an “awareness of the mechanisms” that society puts in place either to control or to enable behaviour of individuals. Thus, only when one acquires this awareness can one act accordingly.
In relation to group consciousness, if anything, the BCM ended up showing how consciousness is fluid in response to changing contexts and challenges. Originally, black consciousness was a call for mental liberation centred on what they viewed to be the racial politics of apartheid South Africa, as is implied by Steve Biko’s oft quoted statement on the mind of the oppressed being the greatest weapon of which an oppressor could make use (Biko, 2002). This view of consciousness tallied with Fanon’s (1961, p. 30) views which mainly focused on the “colonized mind.” Therefore early black consciousness referred to a mental orientation. However, the BCM later transformed itself from an embodiment of the ideal psychological state into a practical political movement with clear political intentions. The implication of this is that forms of consciousness, African consciousness included, are defined by contextual and temporal factors.
This clarifies my explanation of the South African context in Chapter 1, since it spawned the textbooks that I analysed.
Most of the forms of consciousness can be argued to be knowledge-based, that is, the individual needs some form of knowledge in order to raise their consciousness. The importance
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of education in the development of consciousness is highlighted by Moore (2005) who argues that both Du Bois and Fanon valued education as highlighted by their life experiences. This means that the knowledge acquired at school, including through textbooks has the purpose (intended or unintended) of constructing and thus promoting a particular consciousness. This is in line with Mamdani’s (1999) argument, as quoted in Chapter 1, that an African renaissance can only materialise through the promotion of the development of an African intelligentsia. Not all scholars agree as is pointed out by Van Beek (2000) that more historical knowledge does not necessarily translate to stronger historical consciousness.
Finally on consciousness in general, it has been argued that consciousness should be an expression of what is and not of what is not.This view is expounded by Ranuga (1986, p. 184) who contends that consciousness should be a “point of reference not an absence of or negation of something.” To clarify, I can use the example of African consciousness to argue that an individual who is in a state of African consciousness is not concerned with what is not African, but rather should focus on what is African. This is the dilemma of consciousness in that it tends to be exclusionary as the polar effect noted above demonstrates. For example, the BCM argued that people who were racially classified black in South Africa (such as the black police officers), but who seemed to reject the ideals of black consciousness had labelled themselves out of their blackness.
The points raised above on consciousness in general can thus be applied to African consciousness. Nevertheless, it is imperative to explain historical consciousness first, since, as noted earlier, it informs the conceptual framework of African consciousness. According to Kwang-Su (1999, p. 6), the concept of historical consciousness can alternatively be called historical awareness or a historical sense. It gained popularity in the 1990s in Europe, but it was definitely not a completely novel phenomenon; neither can it be entirely divorced from the basic concept of consciousness that has been discussed above.
As is the case with many phenomena, the role of History in current society is not necessarily what it was in the past. It is an understanding of the nature and role of History (or the understanding of historicism) which Ross (1984) referred to as historical consciousness.
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According to Kwang-Su (1999, p. 11) historical consciousness has evolved with the initial view of History as literature in the 18th century; then it became History as science in the 19th century until the 20th century which witnessed a dual development whereby History was viewed both as a social science and as a form of thought.
Similarly, Funkenstein (1989, p. 15) tracks the development of the concept of historical consciousness and claims that in the times of ancient Israel and Greece (up until the 5th century BC) historical time was understood as “a single continuum of fulfilment of God's plan in well- defined chapters.” Such an understanding meant that contemporary events could not be credited to the past and neither could the present be a factor in the future. By the 12th century, there were evident attempts to understand historical facts and texts in terms of the context in which they are rooted. Still it was only in the 19th century that History became “the primary measuring-rod of all human sciences” (Funkenstein, 1989, p. 16). This history of historical consciousness is surveyed by Mazabow (2003) who, in his doctoral thesis, traces it right back to about 3000 BC up until the 20th century.
It is evident that academic debates on historical consciousness became more prominent in the field of History education by the early 1990s. The context then was that the Cold War was ending and European politics were characterised by events such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. Such developments in Europe created a need to chart a new future for the new Europe and, importantly for this study, find a fresh role for History, especially after its blatant abuse during the Cold War era. In rethinking the role of History in the past, present and future the notion of historical consciousness was seen as a useful framework (Laville, 2006). This, it was believed, would have an impact on other aspects of life outside History Education. As I explained in Chapter 1, scholars such as Jorn Rüsen were at the foreground of advocating for a single European monetary currency to strengthen a European cultural capital. He further argued that this capital had to be founded on a common historical consciousness. In other words, this historical consciousness would be functional in the promotion of a kind of European consciousness, and not just individual or national (nation state) consciousness.
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Historical consciousness in simple terms is based on the past, the present and the future. This is captured succinctly by Rüsen (1993, as cited in von Borries, 1994, p. 345) who regards History as a “complex network of interpreted past, perceived present and expected future.” If applied to African consciousness this implies that the individual who is argued to be African is able to link their present situation to the past and the future. More recently, Seixas (2006, p. 11), whose research is not based in Europe, has taken to broaden the concept by stating that historical consciousness refers to “individual and collective understandings of the past, the cognitive and cultural factors that shape those understandings, as well as the relations of historical understandings to those of the present and the future.” This loaded conceptualisation entails some of the tenets of consciousness in general as discussed above. For example, historical consciousness can be viewed from an individual and collective memory point of view and it is a mental state moulded by the context. This is simplified by the Youth and History Project (as cited by Wassermann, 2008, p. 143) which labelled historical consciousness basically as “the connection between the past, the present and the future.” These contentions mean that if one is to understand African consciousness from the point of view of historicism, there is a need to always consider the past, present and future. Therefore an African conscious individual will be assumed to be able to contextualise themselves in the unfolding history of their world, not just their immediate context (Wineburg, 1991).
One of the major debates regarding historical consciousness is in relation to collective memory which has already been alluded to above. According to Funkenstein (1989, p. 5) there is a tendency to “ascribe historical ‘consciousness’ and ‘memory’ to human collectives - family and tribe, nation and state.” However, he argues that it is a fallacy to do so as, in reality, collectives have neither the capacity nor capability to remember. Trofanenko adds that historical consciousness “differs from collective memory in that it is a reflexive and metaperspective engagement with history” (2008, p. 584). Therefore just as consciousness has been argued to be a mental state, so is remembering which “is absolutely and completely personal”
(Funkenstein, 1989, p. 6). Van Beek (2000) agrees and adds that “only individuals can be carriers of historical consciousness and so research into collective consciousness must necessarily lead through the individual” (p. 343). However, the paradox is that the collective
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nature of consciousness cannot be entirely disregarded because every form of consciousness, including self-consciousness – which might be argued to be personal – cannot be divorced from the context in which it is constructed. If consciousness is to be linked to memory, it can be argued that it remains embedded in a form of collectivism since according to Funkenstein (1989, p. 7): “No memory, not even the most intimate and personal, can be disconnected from society, from the language and the symbolic system moulded by the society over many generations.” Collective memory then promotes social identity and sometimes shared aspirations.
The contemporary understanding of historical consciousness is that it takes multiple context- based realities. But, as has been explained earlier, historical consciousness is a state of mind that forms as a product of social construction. For Kwang-Su (1999, p. 12) the main determinant of the form of historical consciousness is culture and thus “it can be deduced that conceptions of historical consciousness in Europe, Asia and Africa differ.” The assumption here is that geographical areas such as continents have homogenous cultures, something that I have already argued against in the first sub-section of this chapter. However, Kwang-Su (1999) continues to argue that this variation extends to nations and races, implying that, for instance, South Africans have a unique historical consciousness, yet within the same country different races and ethnic groups also have their own forms of historical consciousness. This is also revealed by Mazabow (2003) who refers to concepts such as British historical consciousness, Afrikaner historical consciousness and Black historical perception and consciousness before 1994. This understanding of historical consciousness as culturally and/or politically (nation state) determined is argued to be rooted in particular “segments of the cohort, the "elites" who come to see themselves as the agents to change the existing sociopolitical system” (Kwang-Su, 1999, p. 23). Therefore the collectiveness of consciousness is skewed since the powerful agents of society tend to determine what they deem to be the proper collective memory for their subordinates.
The concept of historical consciousness is premised on the argument that the past as history can never be unerringly and physically reconstructed and therefore people can only retain an
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“internalization of external historical reality” (Kwang-Su, 1999, p. 1). This internalisation is what can be viewed as an individual’s historical consciousness (Van Beek, 2000). However, since the individual’s historical consciousness is constructed within a particular socio-political and cultural context, it cannot be insulated from forces of group consciousness.
Historical consciousness as conceptualised in Europe in the 1990s was not without some criticism. For instance, since it was born out of developments in Europe, History educationists elsewhere questioned whether this common consciousness could be applied outside Europe.
While debates may rage about a global historical consciousness, this concept is most useful for this study on African consciousness. As was noted in Chapter 1, following the formation of the AU, the African leaders, at least theoretically, could be said to be advocating for the charting of a new consciousness, embodied by the African Renaissance.
There are other theorisations that have been purported in History Education which can also be linked to historical consciousness. For example, while Taylor (2003, p. 6) did not specifically theorise historical consciousness, he constructs an index of historical literacy which amongst many criteria, includes the aspect of “connecting the past with the self and the world today.”
The limitation however, as contrasted to historical consciousness as theorised by the likes of Rüsen (1993) or Seixas (2006) is that it does not refer to the future. Taylor (2003) also goes further to say that through the study and grasp of the aspects of History, one ends up developing a historical consciousness. Similarly, Kwang-Su, (1999, p. 8) asserts that “historical consciousness is linked to a range of mental processes” and he further explains that historical consciousness has a structure whereby an individual possesses consciousness of time, transition, causation, periods and development.
Thus far, I have reviewed debates on consciousness and historical consciousness. I then apply these debates to the conceptualisation of African consciousness. I started this conceptualisation by arguing that African consciousness is what develops as a result of the amalgamation of historical consciousness and a personal and/or collective awareness of the constructs of Africa and Africanness. Such an amalgamation can be illustrated by a three-strand cord whereby each strand can be said to be representative of one of the three concepts: Africa,