Agbayani Shaina Agbayani Professor Monica Popescu 2010-12-02 ENGL 444 The Double-Edged Sword of Education in Nervous Conditions

Relating the relationship between formal education and psychological malaise in African society, R.A. Hodgkins notes that "The school provides the African with his most important contacts with European civilization and introduces him to the new ways of satisfying his aspirations, but it is also in the schools that conflicts of culture occur (31). In Tsitsi Dangarembgas Nervous Conditions, the school emblemizes the key locus for possibilities, alternatives, progress, and liberation due to the intellectual and material advantages that attend it. The mission school is additionally a site for the reproduction of colonial ideologies, its attendance becoming a practice and metaphor of the disintegration of tradition. Colonial education is also regarded as a necessary ingredient for the progression of Africans from their primitive societies to a civilized world (Mgadla 48). Yet the colonized communitys trajectory towards the ideological oughts of the colonizers via education is in conflict with the is of its traditional culture. Thus, the colonial school the teleology it implicitly prescribes - grounds cultural friction, creating self-alienating nervous conditions. Yet this condition is invaluable for our protagonists. Hegel notes that: the understanding cannot release itself from the fixity of these antitheses. The solution therefore, remains for consciousness a mere oughtwhich seeks a reconciliation without finding itthe truth only lies in the conciliation and

Agbayani mediation of the two[which is] in its nature and in reality accomplished and always self-accomplishing (Hegel 60) In these respects, I will argue that the colonial school in Nervous Conditions is a double

edged sword- it is a noxious institution to the extent that it re-inforces Eurocentric notions of the Wests entitlement as a legitimate patron figure to Africa; yet valuable in itself insofar as it is a site of contesting values that elicits the dialogue by which our protagonists develop the critical faculties through which they become aware of and negotiate the racial, gendered , and economic intersectionality of their identities. Teleological Ideology of Colonial Education : the White Man embodied by Babamukuru Western colonizers in Africa proposed a civilizational scheme within which the African is affixed in a static, backward position that calls for recuperation by the colonial education, amongst other institutions (Herskovits, Armer). Babamukuru becomes the comprador within such a scheme. He emphasizes the merits of the colonial education by, for instance, summoning Tambu to ensure that she recognizes the value of her opportunity for mental and eventually, through it, material emancipation (87). Babamukuru implicitly reinforces the colonizers discursive self-representation as an authority of intellectual and material superiority. He thus appoints the intellectual and ethos systems defined by the Occident as the ideological models towards which to strive. Babamukuru, as a product of the wealth of opportunities afforded to him by British colonial privilege, symbolizes the African colonial product that mission education can generate. His refinement in mission schools contributes to the intellectual wealth he reaps, and his subsequent ascendance within the Rhodesian British community. The beguiling benefits that attend colonial education, materialized by Babamukurus comfortable lifestyle, seem to promote awareness of a particular teleology of success, that

Agbayani There is but one destiny for the black man. And it is white (Fanon 202). This assumption is substantiated when we consider that the material and intellectual development permitted by his education result from his identity as a beneficiary of male white privilege. European settlers in Rhodesia showed a particular interest in educating men, since it was particularly Men who were not socialized or disciplined to obey and defer to Europeans or to work for wages threatened both the military security and the

potential economic profitability (Summers 450). The material benefits garnered from the colonial education beguile in such a way as to obfuscate the reality that the authority and education given to Babamukuru is a legacy of racialized and gendered European politics that aimed to reinforce colonial dominance, suppressing those it purported to assist. The Capitalistic Teleology of Education- Hard Work Yet the material impoverishment experienced by the mass is what gives substance to these politics, which are predicated by the capitalistic, protestant work ethic framework by which colonial education is lauded as a meritocratic institution that provides the opportunity for Africans to autonomously liberate themselves. Putatively, Eurocentrically-defined hard work (reading and working diligently in mission school) translates into progression towards success (also defined Eurocentrically- material wealth). Likewise, Deleusz notes that one of the axioms that guides the advancement of Western civilization is the categorical imperative that man must work to advance himself within the teleology of capitalist accumulation (Deleusz 193). Accordingly, Tambu notes that: i) Uncle was not afraid of hard work diligent, industrious, respectfulhe was a good boy, cultivable, in the way that land is, to yield harvests that sustain the

Agbayani cultivatorThis indicated that life could be lived with a modicum of dignity in any circumstances if you worked hard enough and obeyed the rules (19). ii) Babamukuru, through hard work and determinationhad broken the evil wizards spellHe was completely dignified, didnt need to be bold anymore because he had made himself plenty of power. Plenty of money. A lot of education. (50) What is thus inherited as a result of the perceived fruits of education in the colonial context is a psychology of the African, [in which] it has been the ability to read and

write that has given the European his controls over man and nature (Herskovits 51). In a sense, this renders the uneducated African voice benign and unworthy. MaShingayi notes that: Maiguru can express her opinion because she is educated. Thats why you all keep quiet. But me, Im not educated, am I? Im just poor and ignorant, so you want me to keep quiet, you say I musnt talk (140). She thus reveals the entitlement with which the educated (those with the privilege to afford education) voice is heeded in such a quasi-meritocratic capitalistic schema and the subsequent disenfranchisement of the uneducated. When we consider the implications of the professed virtues of education for Tambu the industriousness with which she strategizes and exerts her efforts in order to gain access to the colonial school - the lures of colonial labour ethics become patent. The framework informing Tambus observations of what education signifies is predicated upon modern Western capitalist theorys assumption that the extent of ones enterprise parallels its material outcome. Ironically, this is same principle invoked by colonial authorities to justify its exploitative role as Africas benefactor. Thus, by accepting these principles in her keen pursuit for an education, Tambu has in a sense ceded to the

Agbayani colonially-defined agenda according to which Africans must be brought into modernity through the avenues paved by colonial powers, such as the mission school. The irony generated by such an education is that it can engender a critical consciousness of the notion of progress towards modernity, as it does in Nyasha. This can instigate a disavowal of the Western teleological scheme and nostalgia for reversion to tradition. This is discussed by Tambu when she notes: Nyasha took so much interest in the things ourgreat-grand-parents had done. When I confronted Nyasha with this evidence of the nature of progress, she became quite annoyed and delivered a lecture on the dangers of assuming that Christian ways were progressive ways (141) Yet as Tambu remarks when Nyasha, in a similarly critical manner, comments on the formers future at convent school, that it is a marvellous opportunity to forget yourself

(179), Tambu notes that Nyasha can afford to cast these critiques due to her privilege- she has not experienced the material destitution that effaces colonial educations vices. Tambus choice to avail herself of the opportunity to forget herself is justifiable. While dismissing the opportunity for economic advancement is only an expense affordable to privileged coteries, Tambu, the breadwinner of her family, cannot afford to give heed to Nyashas criticisms. The Prospect of Education: Awareness of Race and Gender Tambus educational prospects do, however, afford her a ripened ability to discern the racial and gendered dimensions of domestic paradigms. Even before the possibility of entering the mission school is tangible, Tambu is aware that her intersectional identity as a black female situated in the colonial context renders more urgent her need for education. She echoes her mothers observation that Being black was burden because it

Agbayani

made you poorBeing a woman was a burden because you had to bear children and look after them and the husband (16), yet cites her anomalous Aunt to lay claim to her aspirations- it was better to be like Maiguru, who was not poor and had not been crushed by the weight of womanhood (16). To realize this potential made viable by Maiguru, Tambu declares to her parents that she will go to school again (16). As Tambu becomes aware of the benefits she can reap through education in racial and gendered terms, she regards education as synonymous with extrication from the drudgery of womanhood and the destitution of blackness. Yet simultaneously, as Maiguru notes, People were prejudiced against educated women. Prejudiced. Thats why they said we werent decent (181). The quagmire into which women are thus affixed is the product of the dichotomous schema that denies of the possibility of intersectional identities, the acceptance that the woman, educated or not, can be dignified. The realization of this conundrum of femaleness is rendered to Tambu, Maiguru, and Nyasha by virtue of their education. New Teleology: Nyasha`s Realizations of the Threat to Patriarchy When Tambus departure from the feminized domestic sphere is marked by Nhamos death, this threatens to subvert patriarchal structures, thus arousing Jeremiahs chauvinism. In increasing the necessity of the masculinisation of the domestic sphere, Tambus education threatens Jeremiahs masculinity. The concerns that result from this are articulated by Jeremiah when he scolds Tambu: Can you cook books and feed them to your husband? Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables. (15).Thus foregrounded through the friction between educational attainment and the fulfilment of domestic roles are asymmetrical gender relations.

Agbayani As Jeremiah recognizes that the matrix of patriarchal power within the household is threatened through Tambus attainment of education, Tambu becomes conscious of her fathers fears that I would fill my mind with impractical ideas, making me quite useless for the real tasks of feminine livingin terms of cash my education was an investment, but then in terms of cattle so was my conformity (34). Tambus burgeoning

understanding of the qui pro quo of education in terms of its modification of the domestic sphere simultaneously cultivates within her a critical faculty for evaluating gender dynamics. And while education seems to bear an emasculating effect for Jeremiah, it masculinises, in a normative sense, Tambu by rendering her the breadwinner, the shepherd for the social and material mobility of her family. Internal Revolution Without External Revolution The psychological outcome of Tambus masculinisation through education brings forth new cultural paradigms that enfeeble the stronghold of traditional ideologies, yet that cannot be uprooted from the traditional society from which they emerge. The colonial school brings forth the re-examination and selective re-establishment by the African of the values in his indigenous social institutions and modes of cultural behaviour (Herskovist 51). As Oswald Spengler notes, ones entrance into the realm of literature implies a complete change in the relation of mans waking consciousness in that it releases from the tyranny of the present (Spengler 149). While the colonial education received by Nyasha, Tambu, and Maiguru allows for their partial mental release from the tyranny of present - its patriarchally-oriented dictates - patriarchal culture nonetheless persists to pervade their concrete social relations as they still inhabit a patriarchal colonial Africa. Such a duplicitous context paves ground for the decontextualization of the individual, whose assumption of a new normative portfolio

Agbayani through education is incongruous to its environment, which lacks the comprehensive change required to allow the unbridled exercise of the scripts newly inherited from modern education. For Maiguru and Nyasha in particular, the acquaintance with Eastern and Western education, both of which can be regarded as colonial schooling, generates more individual mobility for them to manoeuvre within a more gender-symmetrical social nexus. Yet simultaneously, it paves a site of contesting values on which an in-between identity negotiating traditionality and modernity incites implosive ambivalence. In Maiguru, this induces friction between domestic duties and autonomy. For instance, although she proffers: Why should women obtain all that education if not to look after her husband? (101), she nonetheless breaks away from the household when she realizes the lack of appreciation with which she is met, despite her tremendous contributions to Babamukurus extended family. In Nyasha, hybridity renders an inescapable rejection from both parties in a binary scheme. Within a colonial milieu in which the entitlements of the colonizers thrive on dichotomization, the creolization of her identity seems to

render her inexorably inadequate. She conceptualizes that being decent and indecent and good and bad (190) are the categorizations by which her parents chastise her modern attitude. But, as she contends, I cant help having been there and grown into the me that has been there. But it offends them I offend them. I cant help having been there and grown into the me that has been there. Really, its very difficult. (78) Likewise, she perceives that Girls at schoolthink that I am a snob, that I think I am superior to them because I do not feel that I am inferior to men.all because I beat the boys at maths! They

Agbayani do not like my language, my English because it is authentic and my Shona, because it is not (196).

The phenomenon that thereby occurs in Nyasha is relayed by Abdou Moumouni when he notes that colonial education effects the veritable depersonalisation of Africans (Moumouni 54). This is but a portion of the total process of social and cultural learning that comprehends the education of the individualdrawn from the background of the metropole accorded with the prior experiences of the European child but whichconstituted for the African child a most serious discontinuity (Herskovist 53). Tambu and Maiguru in particular are placed into a realm of education which emancipates them from the domestic sphere in which community-tied labour relations formerly ground everyday practices. This creates a new but discontinuous space for the creation of a more individual sense of identity. The de-contextualization of the self that ensues in the process of individualization from a community-grounded tradition is problematic since, as Henrietta Moore avers, The desire to revalue women as persons in their own right is undermined if it turns out to be little more than a reflection of Western cultural concerns ( Moore 41) since to assume that Western notions of the acting individual or person are appropriate to other contexts is to ignorediffering cultural mechanisms (Moore 40). Yet in a positive manner, it is this very alienating disconnect that renovates the individual space as one in which contesting values construct critical faculties.

Conclusion

Agbayani 10 Through the extensive process of alienation from both modern and traditional ideologies provoked by their education, Nyasha and Tambu become conscious of the intersectionality of their identities and the problem this poses when situated within the complexities of a traditional-yet-striving- towards-modernity society. This becomes evident during the point at which internal strife culminates into anguished catharsis for Nyasha. Nyashas history-book-shredding purge reveals that this seemingly inevitable colonial teleology is Their [colonizers] history, Fucking liarsTheyve trapped us But I wont be trapped. Im not a good girl . I wont be trappedI dont hate you DaddyThey want me to, but I wont (201). Her employment of the term good indicates her understanding of the conflict and ambivalence inherent within colonial cultural negotiation when it is informed by a history predicated on epistemological binaries of: colonizer and colonized, civilized and uncivilized, modern and traditional, good and bad, etc that effectively and insidiously ignore ontological and phenomenological ambiguities. Her reference to her father also indicates her awareness of the very particular, concrete historical vectors of this culture as they are incarnated in the individual. Yet Nyasha also grants: But its not that simple, you know, really it isnt. Its not really him, you know. I mean not really the person. Its everything, its everywhere. So where do yo break out to? Youre just one person and its everywhere. So where do you break out to? I dont know, Tambu, really I dont know. So what do you do? I dont know. (174) For Tambu, the prevailing consideration that likewise remains is the inescapable scope of the conflict: Babamukuru condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of her femalenessas I had felt victimised at home it didnt depend on poverty, on lack

Agbayani 11 of education or traditionon any of the things I had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Even heroes like Babamukuru did it (115). A profound maturity is revealed in the adolescents insights of the transcendent, ubiquitous breadth of the colonial and patriarchal conundrums as they are embodied on the individual and structural level. This faculty of critiquing is made evident in their astute analyses about gender, racial, colonial dynamics. Such comprehension for them is the dawn of movement that can recuperate the ideological ruptures imposed onto the colonized subject by the colonial project. Their insights are the vestiges of the colonial education that, despite the deleterious agenda that informs it its capitalistic, white supremacist teleologies also equips Nyasha and Tambu with the esoteric experiences that optimize their capacity to employ their liminality as a means of de-constructing, critiquing, and resurrecting themselves from the depravities imposed by the colonial enterprise in order to discover the truth [that] lies in the conciliation and mediation [which is] in its nature and in reality accomplished and always self-accomplishing (Hegel 60). Works Cited Armer, Michael. "Formal Education and Psychological Malaise in an African Society" Sociology of Education 43, no. 2 (1970): 143-158. JSTOR. Web. 28 Nov. 2010. Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004. Deleusze, Gilles."From Sacher-Masoch to Masochism."Angelaki 9, no. 1 (2004): 125133. Fanon, Franz. Black skin, White Masks. Grove Press, 2008. Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich. On art, religion, and the history of philosophy: introductory lectures. Hackett Publishing, 1997.

Agbayani 12 Herskovits, Melville J. "Some contemporary developments in sub- Saharan Africa", African Studies, 13, no. 2 (1954): 49 - 64. JSTOR. Web. 28 Nov. 2010. Hodgkin, R. A. Education and Change. London: Oxford University Press, 1957. Mgadla, P.T. "Review", The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 29, no.2 (1966): 447-451. JSTOR. Web. Moore, Henrietta. Feminism and Anthropology. University of Minnesota P, 1989. Moumouni, Abdou. Education in Africa. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Inc., 1968. Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West, Vol. I, Form and Actuality. Trans. C. F. Atkinson. New York: Knopf, 1926. Summer, Carol. " 'If You Can Educate the Native Woman...': Debates over the Schooling and Education of Girlsand Women in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1934" History of Education Quarterly 36, No. 4 (1996): 449-471. JSTOR. Web.