Cultural Death - Blog Week 1

Cultural Death

“You stole from me my first-born, sent him to your country so you could turn him into something in your own image…There are moments when it seems part of a larger plan. He who must follow my footsteps is taken from me, sent across the ocean. Then, in my turn, I am stopped from fulfilling my destiny” - this dialogue by Elisen from the play Death and the King’s Horseman encapsulates the idea of cultural death by highlighting the death of the autonomy to freely practice your culture and rituals without being physically obstructed or questioned according to the notions of rationality established by the West that happened in the colonized world. This death of autonomy was not only manifested through the use of power and authority in the form of laws and monopoly on violence, but also through an exercise of epistemic violence whereby a certain divide was created between logos and mythos, thought and emotion, rationality and superstition, and essentially, superior and inferior where the Western ideas of rationality and reasoning were considered superior to the locals’ cultural practices rooted in tradition, irrational beliefs and bizarre practices. This categorical divide provided legitimacy to the white man’s burden of civilizing the uncivilized, primitive locals stuck in their barbaric and irrational practices.

In Death and the King’s Horseman, we see this epistemic violence being carried out even during casual conversation, such as with Pilkings extremely condescending tone when talking about the locals and their cultural practices and using terms such as “barbaric”, “strange” and “nonsense” when referring to their customs. Moreover, we see that it is these British rulers and colonial masters who get to decide what is rational and humane as a practice and what is not. This is observed in Jane’s conversation with Olunde where a ship’s captain deliberately blowing up the ship was seen as justified and heroic, but the locals’ practice of self-sacrifice was not. Additionally, Jane refused to see the problem with the huge losses of life caused by wars, and instead, pointed out the flaws with the sacrifice practices of Olunde’s people. Thus, colonial rulers were essentially exercising a psychic domination on the native people whereby the natives were robbed of their autonomy to freely practice their customs without having to justify those practices according to the notions of rationality entrenched by the colonizers. This psychic domination was not only strengthened by actual physical control and violence, but both these aspects reinforced and complemented each other.

However, this loss and death of autonomy does not simply occur; it is met by resistance. Resistance exists, but is overpowered by the authority. The need to resist arises because a certain strong psychic and physical domination of foreigners and foreign ideas is being exerted.In Soyinka’s play, the local women mock the white people and ridicule Amusa, but eventually, the “law of the strangers” prevails in a way that it takes away the “honor” of the local people by depriving them of the autonomy to practice their beliefs and customs. Thus, the psychic and physical domination of the colonial rulers is enforced in such a way that it is able to overpower the resistance presented to it.