Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

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References I he Use o/ 1Vet.narlllar Languages la the bl~~li~wliln 1,llev~~r)i lndzwtry Chirwa. Wiseman Chijere 1994. Dancing l'o~vards Ry7ression: Poprilar Culfllre and Political R~pre.rsion in Malo~li, 1960s-early 1990s. Braa~nfontein: University of the WitLvatersrand. Dalby. D 1985. The L$e and VTttrlitji o//lfiicau~ Lnngz~nges: A Charter For The Fzrtzlre: irl Linguistic Liberation ~ ~ Unity n d of.4filca. Kampala: OAU Inter-Africa Bureau of Languages 29-34. Ekwensi. C 1988. 'l.11c Problems of Writing and Publishing Adolescentll'eenage Literature for Clrildren. /.1fiicrrrl Rook Pzlblishing Recot-cl14.2:9597. Kamlhunxi. W 1994. Writing in thevernacular. Wusi 5.2~47-48. Lindfors. R (ed) 1989. Krilankhzrlcr: Inter-vie~dis With Writersfrorn A4cllalt)i andI,esotho. Bayreuth African Studies SeriesNo. 14. Malawi Governnlent Constitution of the Rep~~blic of Malawi. Manchichi Publishing Company 1996. Catalogzle. Zomba. Mwiyeriwa, S 1978a. Printing Presses and Publishing in Malawi. African Rook Pt~blishirtg ~ecord4.2:87-97. Mwiyeriwa, S 1978b. Verrzacztlar Literature of Mala~.tii 18.54-1975: An A~lnotated Bibliography. Zomba: National Archives ofMalawi. Ngugi wa Thiong'o 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Lungllage in Afvican Literutz~re. Nairobi: Heinemann. T1zi.c is Malawi 1972. Volume 2.5. ~ .~ This is Malawi 1975. Volume 5.9. Timpunza-Mvula, E 1992. Language Policies in Africa: The Case for Chichewa in Malawi. In Herbert, R (ed): Langzlage andSociety Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Tim~unza-Mvula. E et a1 1995. The National Language Policy iiz Mcrlawi. Unpublished Paper, Chancellor College University of Malawi. Turner, WY 1996. Chitzmmbzrkn/Chitonga/Engl~sl? Dictionary. Blantyre: Central AfricanaLtd. acial Governmentalitv: 4 homas Jefferson and frican Colonisation in the nited States before 1816 David Kazanjian Nothing is more certainly written in tlle book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the sarnegovernment (Jefferson 1821). But to return to the colonizing trick. It will be well for me to notice here at once, that I do not mean indiscriminately to condemn all thc members and advocates of this scheme, for I believe that there are some friends to the sons of Africa. who are laboring for our salvation, not in words only but in truth and in deed. who have been drawn into this plai1-Some. more by persuasion than any tliing else: while others, with humane feelings and lively zeal for our good, seeing how much we suffer from the afflictions poured upon us by unmerciful tyrants, are willing to enroll their names in any thing which they thinkhas for its ultimate end our redemption from wretchedness and miseries: such men, with a heart truly overflowing with gratitude for their past services and zeal in our cause, 1 liuinbly beg to examine this plot minutely. and see if the end which they have in view will be completely consummated by such a course of procedure. Our friends who have been imperceptibly drawn into this plot 1 view with tenderness, and would not for the world injure their feelings, and J have only to hope for the future, that tliey will withdraw themselves from il;-for I declare to them. that the plot is not for the glory of God, but on the contrary the perpetuation of slavery in this countly. wliicll will ruin them and the country forever. unless something is im~ncdiately done (Walker 1829). Americas and Africa have long been connected by circuits of appropriation and ange. In this paper I offer an interpretation of how one such a circuit-Thomas rson's plan to deport African Americans from the United States and to resettle em in West Africa-constitutively articulates emerging fornis ofnationalis~n, racism, iberal egalitarianism. I take up Alternution's commitment to intel-disciplinarity by ng Jefferson's writings with Michel Foucault's studies of goven~mentality and us testing the boundaries between 'history' and 'theory'. In turn, I hope that this terpretation of Jefferson's colonisation proposals will resonate wilh current South fi-ican debates over discourses and practices of race, nation, and equality. I also hope at this essay's own appropriation of 'history' and 'theory' can become part of the
ongoing circuits of exchange---historical, theoretical, political, intellectual-between the U.S. and South Afi-ica which also have along histoiyl. In 1829, a free African American tailor named David Walker published one of history's most uncolnpron~isi~lg critiques of, and calls for resistance against, U.S. white nationalism. In particular, the fourth chapter or 'article' of David Walker's .Appeal, in Four Ariicle,~, Together with a Pueanzble, to [he Coloured Citizens of tlze World, but in Particular: and very Expressly, to Those ofthe United Stutes ofAlizerica offers a sharp critique of one of the most extensively discussed and debated policy proposals of the colonial and ante-bellurn periods-a proposal that, by the turn of the nineteenth century, would commonly be known as 'colonization'. Although particular colonisation proposals differed from one another in some of their details, they were invariably some version of the following: a state andlor privately f~inded plan to appropriate a territory in Africa or the Americas and to forcibly deport, and/or advocate the emigration of, either the entire African American population, orjust the free African American population, to that territory'. The appropriated territory was, in turn, to become a formally free and independent nation-state. In addition, for many colonisationists this new and independent nation-state was to become an informal political, economic, and ideological colony 0ftheU.S. Walker took particular pains to address a peculiar aspect of the colonisation 01 movement, an aspect about which contelnporary scholars have been strikin, y silent. He insisted on addressing the fact that some colonisationists understood colonisation as emancipatory. That is, they understood colonisation as apractical ineans of rendering or realising the often illusive, modern ideal of 'freedom'. In Article Four of his Appenl, Walker writes about such 'liberal' colonisationists in the unusually panegyric terms of thc passage quoted in my epigraph. Even if we detect a hint of Walker's famous sarcastic or ironic hyperbole in this passage ('Our friends who have been imperceptibly drawn into this plot 1 view with tenderness, and would not for the world injure their feelings ..,'), we still inust take seriously his concern that the ideals of 'salvation', 'truth', 'humane feelings', 'good', 'redemption', and 'the glory of God' had been conjoined with 'the colonizing trick'. He alerts us to the problem that such 'friends to the sons of Africa' understand colonisation as a 'deed', 'plan' or 'procedure'-that is, a utilitarian rendering of such ideals, a material realisation or representation of the illusive notion of 'freedom'. By rhetorically distinguishing unabashed pro-slavery colonisationists such as Henry Clay-whom he condemns elsewhere in the Appeal in ' Secfor example Rosenthal(1968), Booth (1976). Frederickson (198 I ) and Mars (1998). ' Winthrop Jordan (1 968:566) notes that 'warhawk expansionism' between 1806 and 18 16 precipitated a passionate belief in the destiny of the white settler colonisation of at least the entire North American continent. and made Africa and the Caribbean tlie only realistic sites for colonisation. The Monroe Doctrine, and Jefferson's approving response lo it in a letter to Monroe. 24 Oct. 1823 (JeCferson 1899.X:277), serve as markers of this shift, although JeRevson seems to Rave believed in such continelital destiny as early as 1786, as liis 'observations for the article Etats-Unis prepared for the Encyclopedie' (Jefferson 1 899.1V: 180) indicates. Racicrl Governw2en[~1lio~: Thotnas Jefierstin and iffrrcon Coloni,ccrtion different and no uncertain terms (Walker [1829]1995:45-55)-from these s to the sons of Africa', Walker refuses to interpret colonisation as simply a a1 or duplicitous ploy, as merely an ideological surface beneath which would lie re fundamental and self-evident econornic and racialist interests of pro-siaveiy ites. Instead, Walker presents us with the difficult task of interpreting the "joining-'imperceptibly', 'by persuasion'-of colonisation with an eme~ging, Enlightenment conception of 'freedom'. How, he seems to ask, might we perceive and formulate a critique of this powerful persuasion? The articulation of 'freedom' with colonisation that so concerns Walker can be to an under-examined, early period in the history of the idea of isation-from the 1770s, when the first full scale colonisation proposals began to cussed in the British-North American colonies, to just before the founding of the ican Colonization Society in 18 16-and in particular to the pro-colonisation of Thomas Jefferson7. Although some pamphlets advocating colonisation before Jefferson first wrote of the proposal, his over forty years of persistent detailed advocacy undoubtedly make him the project's intellectual founder'. In early nineteenth-century texts that argue for and against colonisatioll widely him as one of the proposal's most influential supporters As Walker's Appeal ts, the colonial and ante-bellum periods in general, and Jefferson's foundational n particular, challenge today's predominant, historical understanding of on as solely a pro-slavery deportation project-that is, as a mechanism for free blacks and rebellious slaves who might 'incite' a desire for freedom slaves. Pro-slavery forces did begin to control colonisation ideologically and ationally after 18 16, and by the mid 1830s would thoroughly doininate the ovement; in addition, even before 1816 some colonisationists certainly envisioned colonisation as solely a deportation scheme. However, from its origins in the 1770s until approximately 1816, the project was in fact planned and supported by a co~nplex and uneasy coalition of free and enslaved blacks (most of whom were northemers), whits abolitionists (mostly northemers), and slaveholders who were vaguely 'troubled' by the existence of slavery (most of whom were Virginians such as Jefferson). The colonisation projects envisioned by these disparate interests were not simply ' This focus on Jefferson is also indebted to Waker. who in liis Appenl critically eva~nines IcCferson morc than any other figure. althougll he does not discuss Jefferson.~ pro-colonisation writings in detail-not surprisingly. as most of these writings are in the form of pcrsonal correspondence. In fact, Walker issues an impassioned if inasculi~list call fol- all African American men to conduct such an examination oS.lefSerson tiienlselvcs. Challenging Jcfferson.s racial theories, Walker (1 995: 14t) writes: 'Mr. Jefirso11.s vely scvure remarks on us llavc been so extensively argucd upon by lncn whose attainments in litcraturc. I shall nevcr bc able to rc;1c11. thalI would not have meddled with il, were it not to solicit cacli of my hrcthl.cn. who !?as tile spirit ofaman, to buy acopy ofM1-. Jcffers0n.s "Notes on Virginia", and put it in ihc l11lnd of!~is soi~. For lel no one of us suppose that tllc refutalions which have been written by oul- wl~ite fiiel~tis arc enough--they arc wliitcs-we are blacks'. I See Jorciaii (I 968:542-55 I ) for detailed descriptions of tile earlics~ psoposals.
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Page 12 and 13: nn Hooper tlie language, ~nesmerisi
Page 14 and 15: Song and dance as we have Teen are
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Page 18 and 19: Glenn Hooper Armah, Ayi Kwei 1973.
Page 20 and 21: 71e lise ~rnoa~~liii- I,crizgii~lge
Page 24 and 25: Davicl Kazanlian deportat~on scheme
Page 26 and 27: David EiLzzcznjlaw Racial C;overrzn
Page 29 and 30: L)av~tl KCIZII~J~U~ Racial Cioverrz
Page 31 and 32: David Kusi~njian Spain's colonies i
Page 33 and 34: David Kczcilzanjicln calculably and
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Page 37 and 38: David Kazanjian terrify~ng effect o
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Page 51 and 52: De Mist, Race and Nutlon Whether th
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Page 64 and 65: urrent lrends in the Prodzdction of
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as L,a Gu~iia hirnself later realis
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Alex la Gums k Politics and Aesthet
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Alex In Gumn 2 Politics and Aest la
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Alex lil Gzlnla .? Politics and Aes
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apart from events, who do not maint
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C'orlnne .sunr/~i~th X,vo wo~orrzen
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Corinne Sandwith Two Women Critics
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Tilo Women Critics and South Africa
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nces and Selected Bibliography hori
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I'F~CI N~~~I.S~I~I~IL Constr~lction
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coti-iplain. They have beer1 writtz
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aised, the title of the essay, The
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value is socially constructed and d
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C'onstuzrct~ons of Protest Poetqj u
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Priya Narisrntll~l Cowstrnctions of
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and public accountability. Althougl
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epresentative ~nullicultural tlnive
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.Yh~zne MU~LZPJ Acnder~~ic I.l.tchn
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Africa. This partially accounts for
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wolnen' has cxetnplary status (llay
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Maqagi. Sisi 1990. Who Theorises? C
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The L)~viikiA Africtrrl Stc~t avid
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ion. Johannesburg: SATRK. This does
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Writitig .Yoz~th IW~M Sole ican ide
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scrubbed away. Thus, Asvat's c Flam
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Book Reviews States of Eniergency i
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Arrived after you had returned honi
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postinodernism: . . . what is post-
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Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

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