Globalization And The Impact Of Dislocation And Population Movement On The Creative Process
This
paper was presented in a panel discussion in 2004, for a conference organized
by women writers of African descent, "Yari
Yari Pamberi: Conference of Black Women Writers from all over the Globe"
(October 12-16). The venue was New York University. I was invited
to participate by one of my aunties, Dr.
Rashidah Ismaili AbuBakr. I
was as usual, very much embroiled in the "busyness" of everyday life,
but given that I love and respect Aunty Rashidah, I agreed--with
trepidation. Why trepidation? I am not what an old, good friend
calls a "Lit Crit", her shorthand for literary critic and creative
writer. The panel discussion was to center around "The cultural
interaction and adjustments of writers in exile and writers who have immigrated
to other locations." I felt therefore obliged to channel
"Lit Crit" type energy and write a short story. This is not a
true story but a pure fictional treatment derived from imaginative story
telling. Afterall, I listened to many stories while a child in
Nigeria.
I also felt ambivalent about
designating myself an exile. In fact, I could only be considered an
economic exile because the vagaries of the international political economy and
the effects it had on Nigeria had marooned me in the United States, making me
wonder, can I go home anymore? Don't get me wrong, I am always traveling
to Nigeria, so, I am not talking about going home in a literal sense. My
musing is instead about whether or not home remains the same for a
sojourner.
This is a subject that I take up in
my contribution to the newly published book, West African Migrations: Transnational
and Global Pathways in a New Century. Edited by MojúbàolúOlúfúnké
Okome and Olufemi
Vaughan and
published by Palgrave Macmillan.
You can click on the following links to see the book on the Palgrave website in
the UK and the Macmillan website in the US respectively:
Here's the table of contents for
those who don't want to bother to click on any links:
Chapter 1: West African
Migrations and Globalization: Introduction - Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi
Vaughan
Chapter 2: "You can’t go
home no more," Africans in America in the Age of Globalization - Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké
Okome
Chapter 3: Transnational
Identity Formation as a Kaleidoscopic Process: Social Location, Geography, and
the Spirit of Critical Engagement - Samuel Zalanga
Chapter 4: What to Wear? Dress
and Transnational African Identity - Elisha P. Renne
Chapter 5: Insurgent
Transnational Conversations in Nigeria’s ‘Nollywood’ Cinema - Peyi Soyinka-Airewele
Chapter 6: Centripetal forces:
Reconciling cosmopolitan lives and local loyalty in a Malian transnational
social field - BruceWhitehouse
Chapter 7: Towards an African
Muslim Globality: The Parading of Transnational Identities in Black America - Zain Abdullah
Chapter 8: African Migrant
Worker Militancy in the Global North: Labor Contracting and Independent Worker
Organizing in New York City - Immanuel Ness
Chapter 9: Transnational
Memories and Identity - Titilayo Ufomata
Chapter 10: Arrested
Nationalism, Imposed Transnationalism and the African Literature Classroom: One
Nigerian Writer’s Learning Curve - Pius Adesanmi
The cover image is by Stephen Adeyemi Folaranmi "Four Friends and Me", 2006, acrylic on canvas
The cover image is by Stephen Adeyemi Folaranmi "Four Friends and Me", 2006, acrylic on canvas
My chapter's title: "You can’t go
home no more," Africans in America in the Age of Globalization"
explores many of the issues considered in this attempt at fiction. I have
a disclaimer: Nothing in the following story is to be taken as a factual
representation of the life of anyone, living or dead. It is purely the
product of my imagination.
I began my presentation
thus:
The topic of this panel immediately
brings to my mind, the words of Psalm 137, reiterated in Boney M’s “By the
Rivers of Babylon”. By the Rivers of Babylon is a hymn of national mourning,
according to a Jewish source from the evidence reproduced below. It is
also evident from reading the Psalm that this is an expression mourning, a
lament about exile. So like many other writers, I decided to use Babylon
as a creative device to speak of the exile of Africans and the toll that the
ongoing diasporization could take.
The destruction of the state and the
Temple and the exile to Babylonia (6th-5th centuries, B.C.E ) were traumatic
experiences that produced extensive literature expressing desires for revenge,
stirrings of repentance, expressions of anguish and lament, and a yearning to
be reconciled with God and restored to the land of Judah. Outstanding in this
literary outpouring is Psalm 137 (best known by its opening words "By the
rivers of Babylon"), a hymn of national mourning.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we
sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion.
There on the willows we hung up our
lyres,
for our captors asked us there for
songs, our tormentors, for amusement,"Sing us one of the songs of
Zion."How can we sing a song of the Lord on alien soil?If I forget you, O
Jerusalem, let my right hand wither;let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease
to think of you,if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest
hour.Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem's fall;how
they cried, "Strip her, strip her to her very foundations!"Fair
Babylon, you predator,a blessing on him who repays you in kind what you have
inflicted on us;a blessing on him who seizes your babiesand dashes them against
the rocks.
Psalm 137 has been attributed by
rabbinic sources to the prophet Jeremiah, placing him "at the rivers of
Babylon" either at the very beginning of the exile or at the very end;
many modern scholars refute this view. In his scholarly article on Psalm 137,
James Kugel discusses the complexity in pinpointing this poem's authorship and
period of composition.[1]Several
scholars have claimed that the harp-playing weepers by the rivers of Babylon
were not an abstract personification, but the levitic singers, whom their
captors forced to join the other exotic court orchestras that the Assyrian and
Babylonian kings kept for entertainment. After the return from Babylon, these
orchestras served as the prototype for Temple music established in Jerusalem.
Music as a sacred art and an artistic sacred act was gradually given its place
in the organization of the Temple services, but not without a power struggle
between the levites and the priests. It has been suggested that the
descriptions of the numbers and performance of the levitic singers may have
been exaggerated so as to afford prestige for the levitic singers, and for the
same reason, the poem "By the waters of Babylon" may have been
inserted in the collection of Psalms.
WHY THEY CRIED AT THE RIVER
The midrash offers us another
insight: "Why did Israel see fit to weep along the rivers of Babylon? R.
Yohanan said: The river Euphrates killed more people among the Israelites than
the wicked Nebuchadnezzar had killed. For when Israel had been dwelling in the
Land of Israel, they drank only rain water, running water and spring water;
when they were exiled to Babylon they drank the water of the Euphrates, and
many of them died."[2]Writes Prof.
Kugel: "This explanation, perhaps rooted in reality a well as biblical
texts (see Jeremiah 3:18), connects the weeping in Babylon with that weeping's
cause: there was where we sat down and wept because it was there, at the river
of Babylon, that more of us died than had died even at the hands of
Nebuchadnezzar. It is to be noted that such a reading not only justified the emphatic
'there,' but gives new meaning to the psalm's opening words 'al naharot bavel'
meaning not so much 'by' or 'beside' Babylon's river as because of Babylon's
rivers we sat down and wept, for they were the cause of our greatest
suffering."[3]
A Jewish reference can be found at: By the
Rivers of Babylon (Psalm 137) I: A Hymn of National Mourning
And a Biblical reference at: Psalm 137 :: King James Version (KJV)
There are also songs that give a
melodious interpretation. Below are two versions, one by The Melodians and the
other by Boney M.
And now I return to the topic at
hand: Globalization And The Impact Of Dislocation And Population Movement
On The Creative Process: The cultural interaction and adjustments of women
writers in exile and writers who have immigrated to other locations.
Where do I begin? What do I say? How
can I express it? What does it all mean? It was a New York Fall morning. It was
just after rush hour on the number two line going uptown in Manhattan. A young,
beautiful, well-dressed black woman came out of the train. The train sped off.
She crossed to the opposite side of the tracks, looked toward the direction
from which the train should come, saw a train speeding toward the station, and
promptly jumps onto the track in the path of the oncoming train. The train
screeched to a stop inches from her. The driver jumps down. Hands reached down
to the track and pulled her up. She looked dazed. Inside, she was disappointed
because she had hoped to die. The train operator kept asking her, Why? Why? Why
did you do this? She remained mute. Finally, an ambulance arrived and she was
led away. She spent the next month at a psychiatric hospital. This young woman
was en route to the university where she was a Ph.D. student. She was married
with one child. She lived in a middle class suburb of New York City. She was
loved by her entire family. She had completed all the coursework for her degree
and was studying for the comprehensive exams. Her grades were well above
average. What happened? What was wrong? What could possibly make a woman with
such a promising future decide to do something so destructive? This was what
the psychiatrist tried to tease out of her for the entire month that she was in
the hospital. By the time she left, neither the psychiatrist nor herself was
any wiser as to the whys and wherefores. She still regretted not having died.
The young woman was an African
immigrant that had been in the US for three years. She was deeply unhappy every
single second of those three years because she felt like a fish out of water.
It wasn’t the food and it wasn’t the people around her. It wasn’t the pressure
of school work, as a matter of fact, that was a welcome relief. It was
everything. She constantly wondered, what am I doing here? She dearly longed to
return home. For her husband who was very supportive and loving, how could they
possibly afford to pay for the airline ticket on their meager resources, which
would be better spent paying for necessities like rent, food, clothing,
childcare, school fees and transportation? Some patience, some perseverance,
some more sacrifice, and they could finish school in flying colors and go back
home in style, having garnered the precious golden fleece like the heroes in
one of those tales that were first recorded in ancient Greek mythology, tales
of course, that as educated Africans, they knew better than their own ancestral
tales that were passed down by word of mouth, a treasure trove of orature, but
only the truly educated could possibly know this, not the mis-educated products
of postcolonial African educational systems.
The young woman knew all this in her
head – home was something that had to wait. Much preparation and sacrifice was
still to be endured. Her heart however, did not understand it. She wanted her
family, a loving, supportive community that extended beyond the nuclear family
of husband, child and herself, a culture wherein she was understood and
accepted, contradictions and all. She wanted to go home. Being in America, the
land of opportunities was for her, imprisonment, exile, misery personified. Her
creativity was stifled, although she still passed all exams. Her heart was
broken. She had no support system to speak of, and lost the capacity to
articulate what the problem was. She turned within herself and began to
converse with herself. She even argued vociferously with herself. She could no
longer sleep well. She could no longer eat. She was tormented and conflicted.
Her whole life up to this point had been consumed with getting a good
education. She had planned to become a tenured professor before she turned
thirty, and was determined to accomplish her goal. However, now, life had lost
all meaning. All former purposeful actions had become irrelevant. She was
broken.
Getting to the heart of what caused
all the problems ended up taking up to two decades to sort out. In the
meantime, our young immigrant woman graduated with her Ph.D., got a job right
away, published books and articles, got tenured, became respected in her field.
She also tried to commit suicide four times. She took years of this
anti-depressant or the other. She tried the talking cure. She prayed fervently
to God to show her the purpose for her life. Why was she spared? What would it
take to be happy? She was now able to go home on visits. She noticed that she
anticipated the home-going passionately and felt elated and at peace while back
at home, only to be deflated and miserable when she returned to "God’s own
country". She realized that she was in Babylon and was stuck. She was a
captive in a strange land and could not possibly sing the Lord’s song as
entertainment to those who held her in bondage. But how could this woman
rationally be said to be in bondage? She was accomplished, gifted, talented,
educated, liberated, the epitome of today’s hybridized global citizen.
What had brought our young woman to
America? She came for education, in search of the proverbial “golden fleece”.
She chose this university because she bought into the hype about it being one
of the finest institutions of higher learning in the United States of America.
Everyone was nice, but nobody was warm. She made no friends, but had plenty of
acquaintances. The professors were polite but not interested in mentoring her.
This is what brought the first self doubt – she wanted to apply for a
fellowship. This is a classic "rivers of Babylon situation". How can
a person be happy, fulfilled, and creative in a strange land? Creativity
necessarily demands centeredness, belongingness,
This necessarily brings up one of
today’s most used buzzwords: globalization. Our young woman eventually figured
out sans therapists and psychiatrists that she was driven to come to America by
the powerful draw of globalization. She was kept there by globalization and she
self-liberated from globalization by re-connecting with her source, her origin,
what makes her unique and special – mother Africa. The reconnection is not
unproblematic, because going home, time and again, she discovered that it is
true what Lou
Rawls and George Benson’s lyrics say: “you can’t go home no more, your past
is dead, dead and gone, they tore down the house where you were born.” Most of
the things she longed for in her nostalgic desire for home had either lost
their appeal, or they’d changed irreversibly, and she was forced to figure out
what exactly made home home. To bring things away from the personal to the
general, what is globalization, and how does it affect the creative process?
There are a few possible effects,
but they cannot be homogenized. The effects are determined by a woman’s class
and race, and possibly status. What does this mean? It’s possible for
globalization to cause not dislocation, but re-location. Some African women are
a part of the chosen few, those who are actively sought-after and recruited to
take well-paying jobs and prominent leadership positions, and they can pick and
choose which opportunities to pursue. Other African women are not at this stage
yet, but they are in training for becoming desired. Our young woman whose
abbreviated story I told left Africa in hopes of becoming prominent. Yet other
African women can only hope to move, not anywhere in the world, but to some
other African country and some of these are recruited too. Another group of
African women would leave the continent “by any means necessary” and they are
willing preys for well-paid staff of multilateral organizations like the United
Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund as candidates for domestic
service. Another category of these same women are daily recruited into the
international sex trade as trafficked persons. Yet another set are drug
couriers. There are also African women who are dislocated by war and conflict
to become refugees in just about any country that would take them. One more
group is imposed by those who flee from political oppression and persecution by
the state. They become exiles, and again, would go anywhere there is refuge.
There are finally, African women who never leave home but are still dislocated
by globalization, a relentless economic force that changes the nature of home
and hearth, that causes both poverty and affluence, and if they are afflicted
by the former effect, poverty, they are forced too, to survive “by any means
necessary”, and they do, every living moment.
What are the effects of
globalization on the creativity each of the seven categories of women? The
first, the desired category of women may very well jump into the global fray
eagerly and land on their two feet and immediately begin to produce creative
works of art, literature, and so forth. They don’t miss a beat. The danger for
them is that their creativity is bounded up by the demands of the job, the
grant, the workshop, the conference, the career. They produce, may be prolific,
may be recognized worldwide, but should rightly lament and mourn. “by the
Rivers of Babylon” should be their theme song because they are studk in a
strange land and must sing in response to the demands of those who carried them
off into captivity. Of course, these gifted and desired women are not knocked
down and dragged at gunpoint to take their important jobs. They’re instead
wooed and attracted, bound by silken cords to the oppressors’ realm. The “desired
in waiting” category of women could become successful and become what they wish
for. They could also run into problems as our beginning story so clearly
illustrates. The same possibilities await them as those for the successful
women.
Women who are forced to move to
another African country because they are not in the “A” class of the desired
may experience the fate of the first group, but may not yet be able to more
quickly find a niche that nurtures and rewards their creativity than if they
had been pushed to the West. They may also find as Nigerians and other Africans
do in South Africa that they are resented and rebuffed. One possibility not
raised thus far is that hostility and brutality can and do strengthen people.
As the Yoruba say, “Adanilóró f’agbára kó ni,” that is: one’s tormentor teaches
one to be strong. They may rise above the compulsions and hostilities that
marginalize them and be creative in spite of and in response to
marginalization.
What are the possibilities for those
who leave Africa “by any means necessary”? As some one else’s domestic servant,
what happens to creativity? One could rise above adversity, realize one’s hopes
and dreams and challenge all the stereotypes about what one’s ultimate hopes
and dreams should be. This would be the experience of a minute minority. As a
sex worker, what are one’s possibilities? As a trafficked person, what are
they? There are some stories of "successful" sex workers who build
fabulous mansions in their villages or towns of origin and themselves become
independent madams who recruit other women into the trade. Yet others, and
these others are the majority, make no headway, succumb to sexually transmitted
diseases and all that this entails, and suffer all manner of indignity.
Can they go home? Can even the "successful" sex worker go
home? What might that home be?
For a refugee, exile, and a
dislocated victim of globalization, what happens? The possibilities cannot be
predicted a priori. The only right starting point is as a first step, to resist
oppression by refusing to entertain the tormentors, the oppressors, the brutal
dominators by not singing the Lord’s song in a strange land. If they don’t sing
the Lord’s in a strange land, are they thereby silenced? No! It is actually
succumbing to singing the Lord’s song in the strange land that is a desecration
because it would be a gratification of the desire of their oppressors for
reducing sacred hymns of worship to songs for sheer entertainment. As suggested
by the very first reference to “The Rivers of Babylon in this paper, resistance
and fighting back are the right responses.
This means African women who are
dislocated, re-located and moved from home must necessarily dig deep to
excavate and rehabilitate their connections with home. They can create support
systems through making new friendships and forming new kinds of family that
draw upon African indigenous systems of building family and friendship. They
must build new institutions that foster and support creativity. They must be
willing to recognize, acknowledge and assist fellow exiles and write songs of
freedom in the multiply possible forms that exist – poetry, prose, fiction,
non-fiction, textbooks, monographs, paintings, protests, memoranda, arts,
crafts. They must ensure that they make an impact on the world and effect
change. Since globalization is an inexorable process, they must use its
innovations to project their voice and to build new transnational communities
that cannot be bound, cannot be controlled, constrained or curtailed by Babylon.
This of course is easier said than done, but that being said, it is not
impossible. To connect with creativity in spite of being captive in Babylon is
the sweetest revenge. As our young woman’s story demonstrates, this is a
treacherous path. As her story demonstrates, it is not an impossible path to
successfully traverse.
Comments
Just found one typo, "struck", written as "strudk".
Remi Kuteyi.