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The
remarks that follow bear upon the general question of life, sover-
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
Dualisms
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Achille Mbembe
kind of being the self is, or even the singular matter of which the self is composed. The self is said to always distinguish itself from other selves of different species, and indeed from others of its own species. Because essence
is said to embrace matter and form, there can be no thing but a particular
thing. In other words, every life is singular. Implicit in modern Western
thought is therefore the impossibility for a single and same thing, or a single
and same being, to have several different origins or to exist simultaneously
in different places and under different signs.'
Mirrorings
Nietzsche attempted to question these dead-ends in his criticism of the
classical theory of knowledge and its corollaries, the notions-quite
political-of
"truth," of "being," and of "time." He did not oppose "being" and
"truth" to "falsity." By "truth," Nietzsche had in mind the concept of life. In
life-is "fictive": "Nothhis view, in fact, all that can be thought-including
not
been
that
has
comes
to
our
consciousness
modified, simplipreviously
ing
fied, schematized, interpreted.' (Nietzsche 39). By thus insisting upon the
"fictive" where others would emphasize the "rational," he in fact challenged
the division between "likeness" and "presence," a "world of appearances"
and a "true world." Appearance, he asserted, itself belongs to reality and is
a form of its being. As for the world, it is essentially a world of multiplicity
from different points, it has just as many different
and proliferation-"seen
is
its
essentially different at each point" (Nietzsche 89; emphasis
being
faces;
in original).
Another key way of imagining the relationship between self, life, and
Psychoanalysis recognizes that
sovereignty comes from psychoanalysis.
self is split. By privileging the
I
that
the
that
is
not
else
speaks;
something
existence of a "nocturnal element" at the very core of what passes for the
subject, psychoanalysis acknowledges the idea of an "otherness within,"
an unconscious that emerges from the phenomenal world of the psyche
(see Vaysse). This "nocturnal element" is not the product of an accident.
It is part of the subject just as it is part of the world of desire, dreams, and
delirium. Recognition of the "nocturnal element" not only signals a break
with conceptions of the corporeal being as a space of the negative: it is also
an affirmation of the idea that "the ego is continued inwards, without any
sharp delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity [...] for which it
serves as a kind of facade" (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 253).
But if Nietzsche and psychoanalysis articulate the unsaid-that
is, the
fictitious character of reality and the "nocturnal side" of the subject-they
do not always allow for an explanation of the radical processes that bring
to
reality into being, processes that escape the dualisms fundamental
modern Western metaphysics. Now, one way of rendering such an explanation is to begin with the notion of the mirror-or, rather, the experience of
their dual relation with two key faculties: imaginaghostly sovereignty-in
tion and remembrance.
Considering the mirror, Iacan implicitly attributes to it two principal
traits. First, the mirror is the site where the self is linked to its own image.
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
The self that has identified with that image and has taken it on is inscribed
that unite the I to
in an irreducible line of fiction. The correspondences
the image are projected as ghosts, in a completely ambiguous relationship
of the subject with the world of its fabrication. On the other hand, the
mirror is the place where "likeness" redoubles "presence." According to
Lacan, "the specular image seems to be the threshold of the visible world,
if we trust the disposition in the mirror presented in hallucination and in
dream by the imago of the body itself [... ] or if we notice the role of the
instrument of the mirror in the apparitions of the double where psychic
realities are manifested, realities that are moreover heterogeneous"
("Le
stade du miroir" 93-101).
Following Lacan, three properties of the mirror are of interest to us
in the interpretation of Tutuola's fiction. These three properties allow us
the relationship between the ghost, terror, and life
to re-conceptualize
on the one hand, and, on the other, the function of the imagination and
remembrance in this relationship. First of all there is the property of the
Vernant argues
marvelous. In his study of the mirror of Medusa,Jean-Pierre
that "instead of reflecting appearances and returning the image of visible
objects placed before it, the mirror opens a breach in the backdrop of 'phenomena,' displays the invisible [... .] and lets it be seen in the brilliance of
a mysterious epiphany" (Mortals and Immortals 141). This property derives
from two types of powers belonging to the mirror: the power (experienced
by the self looking at itself) first to project, create an appearance, and
second to discover its own image.
In an operation that is as empirical as it is imaginative, the self becomes
its own spectator. The self is present at the spectacle of its own division and
duplication, acquiring, in the process, the ability to separate itself from
itself. The self that views itself has a sharp awareness of the fact that what
it sees beyond the material screen is indeed itself or, in any case, a reflection of itself. This power can be called the power of reflection. The same self
can, after the act of looking at itself, remember more or less clearly its own
reflection or shadow.
The power of the shadow originates from the possibility of escaping the
constraints that structure perceptible and sensory reality, notably the sense
of touch. One can see in the mirror, but cannot touch what is seen. For the
double that is relayed by the mirror is a fleeting, fictive double. One can
only touch oneself And it is this touching oneself that is reflected in the mirror
and which is returned to us through the mirror. And what the mirror sends
back to us is, to a large extent, untouchable.
The divorce between seeing and touching, the flirtation between touchand
the untouchable, the duality between that which reflects and that
ing
which is reflected is based on the double principle of immateriality and
unreality, or, more precisely, on the spectralization of reality. In the mirror,
being and identity are fugitive, intangible, but visible; they constitute that
negative space which is the gap between the land its shadow. The other law
is that of luminosity. There is, in fact, no reflection in the mirror without a
certain distribution of things in proximity and distance, a certain manner
of playing light against darkness, and vice versa. Without such interplay,
there can be no manifestation of the double.
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Achille Mbembe
The other property of the mirror is what could be called its power of
terror. This power is born of the disquieting reality brought into being by
this place that is not a place for it does not rest upon any terrain. Where,
indeed, are the image and the self thus imaged by the mirror situated? What
terrain, what ground supports them? Sabine Melchior-Bonnet provides this
answer: "The self is both there and elsewhere, perceived in a troubling
ubiquity and depth, at an uncertain distance: we see in a mirror, or rather
the image seems to appear behind the material screen, so that the one
who sees himself can question whether he sees the surface itself or across
it," and adds, "The reflection causes the sensation of an immaterial underworld to rise up beyond the mirror and invites the gaze to a cross-over of
appearances" (113-14).
Now strictly speaking, the crossing-over of appearances can be associated with a penetration into the heart of the "psyche."Crossing through
appearances is not only to go beyond the split between what one can see,
what one can touch, and what is hidden, invisible. It also means running the
risk of an autonomy of the psychewith respect to corporeality, expropriation
of the body going hand-in-hand with the unsettling possibility of an emancipation of the fictive double. The latter acquires, in such a setting, a life
of its own, a life given over to the dark work of the shadow-magic,
dream,
and delirium inherent to any confrontation between self and self.
The third property of the mirror is the power offantasy and imagination.
That such a power might be possible resides in the fact that every play of the
mirror rests-as discussed above-upon
the constitution of a gap between
the self and its representation, a space of breaking and entering and of
dissonance between the self and its fictive double reflected in the mirror.
Because the self and its reflection are not superposable, duplication can
never be easy. Dissemblance and duplicity are thus an integral part of the
relationship with the mirror, that is, in the long run, in the confrontation
between self and self.
Delirium
Let us break the mirror on Tutuola's writing. What do we see? The spectacle
of a world in motion, ever reborn, made of fold upon fold, of landscapes
and topographies, figures, circles, spirals and fractures, colors, sounds, and
noises. A world of images, one could say. But above all, a world inhabited by
beings and things that pass for what they are not. More than a geographical space, the ghostly realm is foremost a field of visions: fantasies, strange
spaces, masks, surprises, and astonishment; in short, permanent commerce
with families of signs that intersect, contradict, and nullify one another, set
themselves back in motion, and go astray within their own boundaries. Perhaps that is the reason the ghostly realm escapes synthesis and geometry:
[T]here were many images and our own too were in the centre of
the hall. But our own images that we saw there resembled us too
much and were also white colour, but we were very surprised to
meet our images there [. . .]. So we asked from Faithful-Mother
what she was doing with all of the images. She replied that they
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
were for remembrance and to know those she was helping from
their difficulties and punishments. (248-49)
A world of hidden knowledge, no doubt. But, above all, as will be seen later,
a world shaped by the remembrance of fragments of life, of the work that
is the struggle for life.
It is also a world that one experiences and that one creates, in instability,
in evanescence, in excess, in that inexhaustible depth that is generalized
theatralization:
To my surprise, when I helped the lady to stand up from the frog on
which she sat, the cowrie that was tied on her neck made a curious
noise at once, and when the Skull who was watching her heard the
noise, he woke up and blew the whistle to the rest, then the whole
of them rushed to the place and surrounded the lady and me, but
at the same time that they saw me there, one of them ran to a pit
which was not so far from that spot, the pit was filled with cowries.
He picked one cowrie out of the pit, after that he was running
towards me, and the whole crowd wanted to tie the cowrie on my
neck too. But before they could do that, I had changed myself into
air [. . .]. (210)
We penetrate into the ghostly realm through its border, across the
edges. From this perspective, the ghostly sphere is a lateral space. But it
positions itself equally as a decor. It is found not at the periphery of life
but on its edges. It constantly spills out over its assigned time and space. It
is a scene where events continually take place that never seem to congeal
to the point of consolidating into history. Life unfolds in the manner of a
spectacle where past and future are reversed. Everything takes place in an
indefinite present. Before and after are abolished, memory is destabilized,
and multiplication reigns. There is no life but a life that is fractured and
mutilated:
[A]ll the hero-ghosts who were fighting the enemies with us were
killed and also many of the heads were cut away from their mother's
body [.. .]. After we won the war the whole of us were gladly marching to the town. But as the "Invisible and Invincible Pawn" woke up
all the dead soldiers and replaced their heads which were cut off
by the enemies to their necks and as my own was cut off as well, so
he mistakenly put a ghost's head on my neck instead of mine [ ..]
so this head was always making various noises both day and night
and also smelling badly. Whether I was talking or not it would be
talking out the words which I did not mean in my mind and was
telling out all my secret aims which I was planning in mind whether
to escape from there to another town or to start to find the way to
my home town [...]. (108-09)
The remembrance of the mutilated organ responds, as if in echo, to
the violence of decapitation: the head-the
visible seat of identity-passes
into the void. It has fallen under the enemy's blow. Mutilation does not
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Achille Mbembe
Research in AfricanLiteratures
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Achille Mbembe
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
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Achille Mbembe
11
reality that ceases its becoming at one moment, and then an instant later,
is returned to its nothingness."
Ghostly violence is deployed under diverse shapes. At the base of
all these figures there is nevertheless a common principle: the desire to
murder:
To my surprise was that when it was about two o'clock in the midnight, there I saw somebody enter into the room cautiously with a
heavy club in his hands, he came nearer to the bed on which he
had told me to sleep, then he clubbed the bed with all his power,
he clubbed the centre of the bed thrice and he returned cautiously,
he thought that I slept on that bed and he thought also that he had
killed me. (198)
Incidentally, in the ghostly realm, life and murder are one and the same
thing. Ghostly terror operates also through capture. This too assumes diverse
forms. The most ordinary of these is physical capture. It consists simply in
binding the subject hand and foot and gagging him like a convict, beyond
the bearable, to the point where he is reduced to immobility. From then
on he can neither run, nor even move. He can barely stir: the spectator of
his own powerlessness.
Other forms of capture occur through the projection of a light whose
starkness, harshness, and brutality invest objects, erase them, recreate
drama:
them, and then plunge the subject into a quasi-hallucinatory
So as he lighted the flood of golden light on my body and when I
looked at myself I thought that I became gold as it was shining on
my body, so at this time I preferred most to go to him because of his
golden light. But as I moved forward a little bit to go to him then
the copperish-ghost lighted the flood of his own copperish light on
my body too, which persuaded me again to go to the golden-ghost
as my body was changing to every colour that copper has, and my
body was then so bright so that I was unable to touch it. And again
as I preferred this copperish light more than the golden-light then
I started to go to him, but at this stage I was prevented again to
go to him by the silverfish-light which shone on to my body at that
moment unexpectedly. This silverfish-light was as bright as snow
so that it transparented every part of my body and it was this day I
knew the number of bones of my body. But immediately I started to
count them these three ghosts shone the three kinds of light on my
body at the same time in such a way that I could not move to and
fro because of these lights. But as these three old ghosts shone their
lights on me at the same time so I began to move round as a wheel
at thisjunction, as I appreciated these lights as the same. (24-25)
The light reflects its brilliance and its radiance on the body that has
become, under the circumstances, a luminous dust, a porous and translucent matter. This fluidification of the body results in the suspension of its
prehensile and motor functions. Its component parts become legible. The
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
light also causes new forms to emerge from the shadows. The startling combination of colors and splendor not only transfigures the subject; it plunges
him into a whirlwind and transforms him into a whirligig: the plaything of
antagonistic powers that tear at the subject so that he cries out in horror:
But as every one of these three old ghosts wanted me to be his
servant [.. ..] all of them held me tightly in such a way that I could
not breathe in or out. But as they held me with argument for about
three hours, so when I was nearly cut into three as they were pulling
me about in the room I started to cry louder so that all the ghosts
and ghostesses of that area came to their house [...] (26).
The Beat of the Drum
Still other forms of capture are tied to hypnotism
and bewitching:
Achille Mbembe
13
lose the memory of their chains. They discard their habitual gestures, liberating themselves from their bodies, so to speak, in order to better prolong,
through a multiplicity of intermingled lines, the creation of the world:
[W]hen "Drum" started to beat himself, all the people who had
been dead for hundreds of years, rose up and came to witness
"Drum" when beating; and when "Song" began to sing all domestic animals of that new town, bush animals with snakes etc., came
out to see "Song" personally, but when "Dance" [. . .] started to
dance the whole bush creatures, spirits, mountain creatures and
also all the river creatures came to the town to see who was dancing. When these three fellows started at the same time, the whole
people of the new town, the whole people that rose up from the
grave, animals, snakes, spirits and other nameless creatures, were
dancing together with these three fellows and it was that day that
I saw that snakes were dancing more than human-beings or other
creatures. (263-64)
The space thus created by song, dance, and the drum is that of generalized
spectacle. All of the energy imprisoned in the bodies, beneath the earth,
in the streams, on the mountains, in the animal and vegetal world, is suddenly liberated, and none of these entities retains an identifiable equivalent
or referent. In fact, they are no longer referents of anything at all. They
are nothing more than their own inherent totality. The dead, the spur of
dance, the beat of the drum, and the ritual of resurrection dissolve into an
ambivalence and general dispersion of all things imaginable, as if suddenly
let loose at random: a telluric sequence, indeed, through which that which
was buried has been jolted out of sleep.
There is also noise. Ghostly violence consists equally in an art of making
noise. That noise is not gratuitous. It is almost always linked to specific
operations of control and surveillance:
I noticed carefully at this stage that if they are breathing in I would
hear the cry of frogs, toads, pigs' cry, the crowing of cocks, the
noises of birds and as if uncountable dogs are barking at the same
time [... .] (66).
[T]he cowrie that was tied on her neck made a curious noise at
once, and when the Skull who was watching her heard the noise,
he woke up and blew the whistle to the rest, then the whole of them
rushed to the place and surrounded the lady and me [.. .]. (210)
One noise almost always calls forth another, which, in turn, generally gives
rein to a crowd movement. Noise can reach such a pitch that its immediate
consequence is deafness:
[A]ll these heads were making various fearful noises with louder
voices along the way, even the rest of us could not hear any other
creatures' voices except their own which nearly made us become
deaf (108).
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
on a stump with
and dressed in a
. .]. After a while
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Achille Mbembe
15
he came out with two of his attendants who were following him
to wherever he wanted to go. Then the attendants loosened me
from the stump, so he mounted me and the two attendants were
following him with whips in their hands and flogging me along in
the bush. (37)
[A]s I was tied in the sun all the young ghosts of this village were
mounting me and getting down as if I am a tree as they were very
surprised to see me as a horse. (39)
[H]e mounted me and the two attendants were following him with
whips in their hands and flogging me along in the bush [...] a
fearful ghost [. . .] brought horse's food [...] I ate the corn [...]
another terrible ghost [... .] brought urine [...] I tasted it as I was
exceedingly feeling thirsty [...]. (37-39)
Ghostly power harasses the subject, screams, beats him mercilessly,
starves him for an instant, and then in the next instant forces him to eat
exactly as one feeds an animal, and makes him drink his own urine.
The Price of the Slave
When he does not kill his prey, the ghostly power seeks to dismember
him-"he
told them that he would cut me into three parts and give each
part to each of them so that there would be no more misunderstanding"
(30) -or failing that, sell him:
[H]e chained me to a tree together with the other slaves that we
met there, all of us were in a straight line. But within four hours all
the rest slaves had been sold and nobody buys me because of the
sores. When he waited with me till about two o'clock and when he
believed that no one could buy me that market day, then he was
loosening the chain from me, and when he was about to return to
his town a rich man came to the market, he looked round but saw
no more slaves except me, because he kept late, then he came to my
boss. He priced me very poor and my boss agreed, he told him to
pay any amount that he likes to buy me, but when he stood before
me and looked at me for many hours he said -"I cannot buy sores
for my town." Then he went back to his town. But as nobody buys
me and I remained unsold, so my boss was flogging me repeatedly
along the way back to his town. (168)
This exercise is carried out over several weeks. The master attempts to
sell the slave but can find no buyer. At that point he maps out a plan by
himself:
"If I take you to the market once more and if nobody buys you on
that market day as well so if I am returning from the market to the
town I will kill you on the way and throw away your body into the
bush, because you are entirely useless for any purpose, even I have
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
told several of my friends to take you free of charge but none of
them accepts the offer [...]." (168)
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Achille Mbembe
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
Along with motor functions, workJor lie rests upon olfactory functions.
These are inseparable from the operation of other senses, for instance sight
and taste. Such is notably the case when the subject experiences hunger or
thirst. The status of odors and aromas is nevertheless complex; they also
serve to locate the road that could lead to deliverance:
[A] s I stood at the junction of these passages with confusion three
kinds of sweet smells were rushing out to me from each of these
three rooms, but as I was hungry and also starving before I entered
into this hole, so I began to sniff the best smell so that I might enter
the right room at once from which the best sweet smell was rushing out. Of course as I stood on thisjunction I noticed through my
nose that the smell which was rushing out of the room which had
golden surroundings was just as if the inhabitant of it was baking
bread and roasting fowl, and when I sniffed again the smell of the
room which had copperish surroundings wasjust as if the inhabitant of it was cooking rice, potatoes and other African food with
very sweet soup [...]. (23)
The other ability required for this workfor life is the ability to metamorphose. The subject can morph under any circumstances. This is notably the
case in situations of conflict and adversity:
Having left this village to a distance of a mile this ghost magician
came to me on the way, he asked me to let both of us share the gifts,
but when I refused he changed to a poisonous snake, he wanted to
bite me to death, so I myself used my magical power and changed to
a long stick at the same moment and started to beat him repeatedly.
When he felt much pain and near to die, then he changed from
the snake to a great fire and burnt this stick to ashes, after that he
started to burn me too. Without hesitation I myself changed to rain,
so I quenched him at once. Again he controlled the place that I
stood to become a deep well in which I found myself unexpectedly
and without any ado he controlled this rain to be raining into the
well while I was inside. Within a second the well was full of water.
But when he wanted to close the door of the well so that I might
not be able to come out again or to die inside it, I myself changed
to a big fish to swim out. But at the same moment he saw the fish he
himself changed to a crocodile, he jumped into the well and came
to swallow me, but before he could swallow me I changed to a bird
and also changed the gifts to a single palm fruit, I held it with my
beak and then flew out of the well straight to the 18th town. Without
any ado he changed himself again to a big hawk chasing me about
in the sky to kill as his prey. But when I believed that no doubt he
would kill me very soon, then I changed again to the air and blew
within a second to a distance which a person could not travel on
foot for thirty years. But when I changed to my former form at the
end of this distance, to my surprise, there I met him already, he
had reached there before me and was waiting for me a long time.
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Achille Mbembe
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of death its dark authority. The absence of this mark opens the way to a
fantastic phenomenon: the possibility, for the living subject, to witness his
own burial.
To reach this stage, he must have been ripped from his own scansion
and have been captured in the imagination of another. He must have been
taken for someone else whose history, despite himself, he must endorse.
This drama, properly speaking, is not a doubling. The subject is truly there,
for himself, in his own right. The dead person nevertheless hangs over him,
in a sort of material filter that abolishes the proper identity of the victim
being prepared for burial. The dead person is objectified through the surface
of a living being, in a form that is both spectral and palpable.
The dead person accedes to the status of sign through the mediation
of the body of another, on a theatrically tragic scene that forces each of the
protagonists into the unreality of an appearance that is endlessly renewed,
and into an emblematic mirroring and shimmering of identities. The object
(the corpse) and its reflection (the living subject) are henceforth superimposed. The living subject vainly insists that he is not the dead person, he is
no longer in possession of himself. Henceforth, his mark has become taking
the place of The impassible demon of death has in essence taken possession
of him while he is still alive. Having been made to pass for the dead, he now
finds himself in two different subject positions at the same time.
The living being who is being prepared for the sepulcher has become
another while remaining the same. It is not that he is split or divided. Nor is
it that the dead person he has been obliged to mimic possesses anything of
his essential attributes. Everything is played out in the magical somnolence
of appearances. To a large degree, both the dead person and the living
one have lost possession of their own death and their own life. They are
now, despite themselves, joined to spectral entities that turn each of them
into a primitive and undifferentiated
form. Through a strange process of
the
is
destroyed and consumed by the signified, and
designation,
signifier
vice-versa. The living person can no longer extricate himself from the dead
one he is coerced into representing.
The Load and the Remains
There is, finally, the load that is borne. Here again, often against one's own
wishes:
[H] e begged us to help him to carry his load which was on his front
[... ] we did not know what was inside the bag, but the bag was full,
and he told us that we should not put the load down from head
until we should reach the said town. Again he did not allow us to
test the weight of it, whether it was heavier than what we could carry
[.. .] I told my wife to put the load on my head and she helped me.
When I put it on my head it was just like a dead body of a man, it
was very heavy, but I could carry it easily. So the man was on our
front and we followed him.
But after we had traveled about 36 miles, we entered into a
town and we did not know that he was telling us a lie in saying that
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Achille Mbembe
21
he was going to Deads' Town and we did not know that the load
was the dead body of the prince of the town that we entered. That
man had mistakenly killed him in the farm and was looking for
somebody who would represent him as the killer of the prince.
[.. .] So when we reached the town with him [ . .] he told us
to wait for him in a corner and he went to the king and reported
to him (king) that somebody had killed his son in the bush and he
had brought them to town. Then the king sent about thirty of his
attendants with the man who killed the prince to come and escort
us to him with the load. When we reached the palace, they loosened
the bag and saw it was the dead body of the king's son [. . .] the king
[...] told his attendants to put us inside a dark room.
Early in the morning, the king told the attendants to wash
and dress us with the finest clothes and put us on horse and they
(attendants) must take us around the town for seven days which
meant to enjoy our last life in the world for that 7 days, after that
he (king) should kill us as we killed his son. (270-72)
The same relationship of embrace between the dead and the living is in
operation here, with the simple exception that the living person must carry
the remains of the dead even when he is by no means the party responsible
for the living's demise. The fissure between death and responsibility for its
occurrence is marked by the load. The bearer of the burden is obliged to
take upon the form, but not the matter of the murderer.
This all unfolds within a field of contrasts, where different realities
are connected and each realityconsists foremost in a conglomeration of
heterogeneous elements that can be bound together only by the temporal
form. The temporality of each reality is, moreover, itself shattered. Life is
henceforth but a series of moments and instants that have no overarching
unity. The entire structure of existence is such that in order to live, one must
constantly escape from permanence; one must continuouslyjump back and
forth between one horizon and another. For permanence is the bearer of
precariousness. It sets the stage for vulnerability. Instability and mobility,
on the other hand, offer possibilities for flight and escape. But flight and
escape are also bearers of danger:
[W]hen he was about to catch me or when his hand was touching
my head slightly to catch it, then I used the juju which I took from
the hidden place that he kept it in before we left his house. And at
the same moment that I used it, it changed me to a cow with horns
on its head instead of a horse, but I forgot before I used it that
I would not be able to change back to the earthly person again,
because I did not know another juju which he was using before
changing me back to an earthly person. Of course as I had changed
to a cow I became more powerful and started to run faster than
him, but still, he was chasing me fiercely until he became tired.
And when he was about to go back from me I met a lion who was
hunting up and down in the bush at that time for his prey as he
was very hungry, and without hesitation the lion was also chasing
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22
Research in AfricanLiteratures
me to kill for his prey, but when he chased me to a distance of
about two miles I fell into the cow-men's hands who caught me at
once as one of their cows which had been lost from them for a long
time, then the lion got back from me at once for the fearful noise
of these cow-men. After that they put me among their cows which
were eating grass at that time. They thought I was one of their lost
cows and put me among the cows as I was unable to change myself
to a person again. (42)
Magic is therefore in life itself. Life itself is not simply motion. It also
has to be endowed with motion and emplotment. As such, it is not divorced
from dream and the work of the shadow (le travail de l'ombre).4Making life
into an intrigue happens when things are taken for what they are not. The
point of entry into life is this work upon resemblance: the power of the
false. In this problematic of "being-in-the-world,"
the opposition between
the psychic, the oneiric and the corporeal is superseded.
The Song of Remembrance
Three conclusions
Achille Mbembe
23
questions qui lui sont posees, ne donnant pas d'un jour a l'autre la meme
explication, n'invoquant pas la meme genealogie, n'enregistrant pas de
la meme maniere le meme evenement, acceptant meme, quand on le lui
impose et qu'il n'est pas irrite, le code banal oedipien, quitte a la re-bourrer
de toutes les disjonctions que ce code etait fait pour exclure" (21-22) / "It
might be said that the schizophrenic passes from one code to the other,
that he deliberately scrambles all the codes, by quickly shifting from one to
another, according to the questions asked him, never giving the same explanation from one day to the next, never invoking the same genealogy, never
recording the same event in the same way. When he is more or less forced
into it and is not in a touchy mood, he may even accept the banal Oedipal
code, so long as he can stuff it full of all the disjunctions that his code was
designed to eliminate" (15). Life, just as sovereignty in the framework at
hand, is but a long series of accidents and incidents, events that could have
happened but do not occur, while others that were not supposed to happen
do, in effect, take place. Under these conditions where, according to the
Nietzschean expression, "tout se divise, mais en soi-meme, et oii le meme
etre est partout, de tous co6ts, I tous les niveaux, a la difference d'intensite
pres" 'everything divides, but in itself, and where every being is everywhere,
on all sides, at all levels, except in terms of intensity, the sole manner of life is
in zigzags.
A third conclusion relates to the relationship between selfhood and
remembrance. The wandering subject has neither a unique form nor a content that has been shaped definitively. Form and content change constantly,
depending on life's events. But the deployment of existence can occur if the
subject leans upon a reservoir of memories and images that are never fixed
definitively. He leans upon them at the very moment that he transgresses
them, forgets them, and places them in dependence upon something other
than themselves. The work for life consists, consequently, in distancing
oneself each time from memory and tradition at the very moment one is
depending upon it to negotiate the twists and turns of life.
With life's contours barely sketched out, the wandering subject must
escape from himself each time and allow himself to be carried away by the
flux of time and accidents. He produces himself in the unknown, by means
of a chain of effects that have been calculated beforehand, but never materialize exactly in the terms foreseen. It is thus in the unexpected and radical
instability that he creates and invents himself. There is thus no sovereignty
of the subject or life as such.
Perhaps that is why, in the middle of the night, the wandering subject
can allow himself to yield to the song of remembrance. Quite often, this
song is buried under the rubble of sorrow and thus prevented from investing existence with a mark of ecstasy and eternity. But liberated through
tobacco, the wandering subject suddenly does away with everything limiting
his horizon. He can henceforth project himself into the infinite sea of light
that makes it possible to forget sorrow:
After that he put a kind of smoking pipe which was about six feet
long into my mouth. This smoking pipe could contain half a ton
of tobacco at a time, then he chose one ghost to be loading this
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Research in AfricanLiteratures
pipe with tobacco whenever it discharged fire. When he lit the pipe
with fire then the whole of the ghosts and ghostesses were dancing
round me set by set. They were singing, clapping hands, ringing
bells and their ancestral drummers were beating the drums in
such a way that all the dancers werejumping up with gladness. But
whenever the smoke of the pipe was rushing out from my mouth as
if smoke is rushing from a big boiler, then all of them would laugh
at me so that a person two miles away would hear them clearly,
and whenever the tobacco inside the pipe is near to finish then
the ghost who was chosen to be loading it would load it again with
fresh tobacco [...]
After some hours that I was smoking this pipe I was intoxicated
the
by
gas of the tobacco as if I drank much hard drink [. . .].
So at this time I forgot all my sorrow and started to sing the
earthly songs which sorrow prevented me from singing about since
I entered this bush. But when all these ghosts were hearing the
song, they were dancing from me to a distance of about five thousand feet and then dancing back to me again as they were much
appreciating the song and also to hear my voice was curious to
them. (74-75)
-trans. by R. H. Mitsch
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ato Quayson, Mariane Ferme, and Alain Ricard critiqued an earlier version of
this essay. Insightful comments and suggestions were made by Sarah Nuttall and
Dominique Malaquais. Sustained encouragement and support were offered by
Abiola Irele.
NOTES
1. From this perspective my approach diverges from the thematics of "the unity
of life" (Aristotle, Spinoza, Lamarck, and even Foucault), discussions concerning the "sciences of life" (Kant, Bergson, Canguilhem), or even the relationships between "life and values." For a quick overview of these debates, see
Hoquet. Some of these critiques can be found in, among others, Nietzsche,
Will to Power1; Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologiede la perceptionand especially Le
visible et l'invisible;Bataille, LErotisme.
2. According to Hobbes: "[E]t tout d'abord, il est manifeste qu'il n'existe pas
deux corps qui sont le mime; car voir qu'ils sont deux, c'est voir qu'il sont en
deux lieux au meme moment, puisque le fait d'etre le mime est le fait d'etre
au meme moment en un seul et mime lieu" 'And above all, it is clear that there
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Achille Mbembe
25
cannot be two bodies that are the same; for to see that they are two is to see
that they are in two places at the same time, since the fact of being the same is
the fact of being at the same time in a single and same place' (English Works1,
ch. 11. See also Locke, Essai concernant l'entendement humain 2, 27: 1-3; Locke,
Identilt et diffrrence. See also Hume, Traiti de la nature humaine 284-86. For Locke
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