8.1.2. The Communal Dimension of Love in Africa
Senghor, who had personally experienced the sterility of
hatred, opposition and isolation and had turned towards a synthesis which would
bring men together rather than maintain them in a perpetual conflict, sees love
as the highest form of human energy. Love achieves that totality and coherence,
that communion which African myth has always and fairly effectively been
seeking. This communion is achieved at three levels.
First, love brings man's individual acts into a unity of
totality within the person himself. We are always tempted to act piecemeal, for
the here and now. But if we consciously relate every one of our acts with the
ultimate unifying goal, we thereby also think all acts among themselves and
with the events throughout the universe.
Secondly, love totalizes us in the sense of making us aware of
ourselves as persons. It is by loving others that we transcend ourselves and
thus grow personally. This is not merely an external union like people sitting
in the same room, but a communion of persons, like the love between husband and
wife which enriches and ennobles both persons. Unless and until man learns to
evaluate himself as a person, there is no room for growth in dignity.
Thirdly, humanity as a whole can only be totalized and given
social cohesion through love. Any political system and any international
organisation which relies exclusively on socio-economic techniques or on laws
and police enforcement must fall unless love guides all those structures. It is
based on structures to which man is subjected or on fear of which man's dignity
is robbed. Sen ghor has this to say:
They sacrifice the part to the whole, the person to the
collectivity. Since a materialist postulate underlies this, and since the
collectivity is conceived solely as a technical organization, it does not
attract (as love does); to push the
individuals towards it, one must resort to constraint and
violence.I
The communal dimension of love in Africa is mostly expressed
in the way events are celebrated. An event is never one's event or one's family
event: it is a celebration for the whole community or the whole village. A
marriage for example engages several families: the family of the bride,
maternal and paternal, as well as the family of the bridegroom, maternal and
paternal. All are invited to celebrate the event, even those who are not
directly concerned. The same holds true for other good events like First Holy
Communion, Baptism and others. Bad events such as burials are also celebrated
in a community spirit. All come together in order to comfort the bereaved
family and in order to express their love and concern to the afflicted members
of the community.
As such, Africa can inspire western man with this dimension of
love because western society has come to be more individualistic and
materialistic than the African society where solidarity and hospitality are
values that have to remain despite the influence of the media and despite what
has come to be the westernisation of the world.
Nevertheless, we cannot just place the negro-African
contribution exclusively at the level of culture from his vision of the world.
Africa has greatly contributed to the development of civilization and of
science it is important to note this and to encourage scientific research and
innovation in Africa.
In the light of the Pan-Human-mobilism, it is important to
rebuild a certain self-esteem in the hearts and minds of Africans, by showing
them that they have offered much to other civilizations and that they still
have to work hard in order not to play a figurative role in the dialogue of
civilizations. We acclaim the work of Cheikh Anta Diop in giving back to
Africans a certain pride that could give them the momentum to strive to develop
their civilization, referring back to ancient Egypt. It is clear from the
150 works of Cheikh Anta Diop that the contribution of Africa
in sciences, in art, in religion and most of all in philosophy cannot be
measured.
Léopold Sédar Senghor goes a step further, by
showing that African civilization has been assimilated by the western world as
from the end of the I9th century. This is to show the important role
that Africa has played so far in the dialogue of civilizations. Sen ghor
avers:
K depuis la fin du XIXè siècle et la
revolution
epistemologique, scientifique, littéraire,
artistique qui l'a marquee, l'Europe, l'Euramerique plus precisement, a
commence d'assimiler les civilisations que l'on disait K exotiques ». Et
celles-ci d'assimiler, inversement, la civilisation euraméricaine. Et
l'on sait, pour m'en tenir aux arts en general, que, sans les vertus de la
Negritude, ni la sculpture, ni la peinture, ni la tapisserie, je dis ni la
musique ni la danse ne seraient ce qu'elles sont aujourd'hui : les expressions
déjet, d'une Civilisation de l'Universel. »1
In fact, the Civilization of the Universal consists in
accepting one another in our values. It is a coming together to share what we
have as valuable in our cultures. It proves once more that humanity needs each
and every one of us. This passage of Sen ghor shows that the Civilization of
the Universal is a process of assimilation of what is valuable in the other
culture: Europe assimilating African values in art, music, dance, sculpture,
arts in general and Africa on the other side, assimilating the values of
European civilization. He then insists on the fact that without the value of
the expression of African personality throughout the world, by means of arts,
music, dance,
I Léopold Sédar Senghor,
Liberté III, Negritude et Civilisation de l'Universel, Paris, I977,
p. 44. [...]Since the end of the I9th century and the
epistemological, scientific, literary and artistic revolution which marked it,
Europe, Euramerica, more precisely, began to assimilate the civilizations which
were considered as "exotic". And these latter inversely, began to assimilate
the Euramerican civilization. And we know, just as far as arts in general are
considered, that, without the virtues of the Negritude, neither sculpture,
neither painting nor carpeting, I say, neither music, nor dance would be what
they are today: the expressions already of a Civilization of the Universal.
sculpture, painting and so on, would not be what they are today:
the expression of the Civilization of the Universal.
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