22020172- Cultural Death

Cultural Death

            I will be making just 1 argument in this blog regarding cultural death. That argument revolves around the idea that the culture of the colonized did not merely die out organically nor was there some sort of quick replacement policy of local culture for that of the colonizers. In fact, local culture was misunderstood and viewed under a very ethnocentric lens which led to it being viewed as barbaric, backward and uncivilized. It is this view of local culture that greatly contributed to laws and regulations outright banning it and the use of force to suppress it which eventually led to the dying out of this culture not only then but also post decolonization. For this argument, I will mostly be referring to Soyinka’s Death and the King's Horseman.

            Pilkings efforts to halt the proceedings of the ceremony for the death of the King’s Horseman revolvess consistently around his opinion that this is a barbaric sacrifice happening. Notice how even when Amusa describes the event as Elesin committing death Pilkings immediately says “obviously he means murder” he goes on to call it ritual murder later on. This is just one of many examples from the text where we see colonial stubbornness in understanding local culture. Based on the dialogues one can reasonably infer that such practices have long been banned and this act is one which is now lawfully illegal. It is important to note how the colonizers flattened out any and all similar practices into this one broad category of ritual murder or senseless sacrifice. What is also taken for granted as understood is the concept of death. While for the Europeans it may be the epitome of human rights abuses to take the life of a person there is no reason why such must be the case for cultures elsewhere. As is the case here Elesins death is not only of great importance to the locals but also a cause of dignity, of pride and in some ways that of honor and celebration. The refusal to consider the context of these acts results in God syndrome. If we see colonialism as foreign domination of one people over another we must understand the wide ranges of places over where this domination happened. It is the implemented dominance of one culture over another that we see here. It is the privilege of the colonizers to be able to dictate their cultural notions of things like death over the locals which then results in the formation of laws and state structures that eventually lead to the death of native culture. It is then perhaps an understatement to say that there was cultural death in countries that were colonized and more appropriate to say that such culture was beaten down and murdered. Murdered not just for oppression but because the white man saw it as his burden to eradicate barbarism and civilize those who weren’t. This civilization could not happen when such acts of “cruelty” prevailed.

Notice that this misunderstanding of culture doesn’t just come from the strict military actions of Pilkings. It can also be seen in a different way from the patronization of Jane. On many occasions, we see the sympathetic Jane unable to understand local culture and feel pity and sorry for the poor, stupid and superstitious natives. Often we see this character as horrified by the cruel actions of local culture. While the eventual actions of Jane may not be as horrific as those of her husband the same messiah complex lies in her too. She is also a part of the system of colonization that chose to eradicate such acts because of how they themselves perceived it. She too falls guilty of viewing native culture under her Eurocentric lens where she condemns the entirety of it to the term uncivilized and participates in the eventual death of it.

If you view the reaction of both Mr. and Mrs. Pilkings you will see how two different approaches both judge native culture according to their own lens turning even the local population against one another by making them enforcers of the very law that destroys their culture. Even today the fact that most post-colonial states are closer to European culture than they are to those of their natives because of the state-sponsored murder of it centuries ago makes us ask the question that is our freedom complete and one in both the political word and the cultural one.