African Mythology in Global Popular Culture: Setting the Stage for Possibility
The deep roots that West African culture and its associated mythologies have in the Black African diaspora of the Americas has resulted in numerous references made to them in Black American popular culture over time, with a definite increase in such references within the last decade. Black American popular culture undisputedly occupies the vanguard position in most of American popular cultural expression, itself a significant driver of global popular culture. It is safe to say, then, that the spotlight on what the African continent has to offer is getting brighter and will only continue to do so. This goes beyond juggernauts like Beyonce’s Black is King. Entertainment giant Disney which released Black is King, recently announced partnerships with animators from Uganda and Nigeria intended to “tell stories inspired by African culture using comic books, art and augmented reality”. Nigerian storyteller Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death is being developed into an HBO TV series . Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, another Nigerian storyteller, dives into Igbo mythology and is also being developed into a TV series for FX. Across the continent and the Diaspora, activists, creatives and others are involved in a wide range of educational, writing, art, comic book, and other projects to preserve and continue to bring these cultures and their associated mythologies to life. This is a welcome phenomenon in a cultural mainstream which often sees ancient Egyptian culture and mythology as the only viable option worth exploring from the African continent.
With Hollywood as the main arbitrator, the full range of what cultures and mythologies from all over the world have to offer are actively explored either explicitly by re-enactment or retelling in film, music, books, paintings, sculpture, and other art, or implicitly when they are used as inspiration to re-imagine new worlds in science fiction and fantasy. Historically, the level of interest in and the volume of output for content based on the full range of what is available in Black African cultures and mythologies have been low. They have also been marked by a seeming insistence on painting pictures from the continent using colors and techniques which can either only express the devastation and resulting dysfunction of colonialism or express efforts to push back against that narrative with that of a cosmopolitan continent, a phoenix rising from the ashes of exploitation. The conspicuous absence of a rich and diverse representation of the continent which does not only rely on its recent history could easily be ascribed to the prejudice-tinged lens with which many cultural artifacts from the continent are viewed but that would be telling only half the story. While racial prejudice certainly factors in the absence of a full expression what is available in Black African cultures and mythologies in the global popular culture narrative, the squeamishness and indifference of significant numbers of Black Africans themselves to this content plays a significant role in creating and maintaining this vacuum. This attitude, of course, has its roots in the double whammy of the era of Islamic conquests and the eras of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and European colonialism. Both these periods of devastation included the forceful introduction of Islam and Christianity and their associated mythologies, at the cost of the mythologies and associated worldviews of Black African groups. Attacking and invalidating a given people’s beliefs about themselves and the world they inhabit remains a primary weapon of conquering entities. These highly disruptive periods in the continent’s history significantly dispossessed or weakened the link between many Black Africans of their sense of identity and community which these indigenous mythologies supported, in many cases replacing them with the mythologies associated with Islam or Christianity. The increasingly popular and demonstrably unwise reliance on science and other secular mythologies as unbiased and infallible arbiters of experiential truth does not help the situation.
Myths are the stories of the fundamental events which resulted in the creation and ordering of the world, of nature, or of a given culture. [1] They usually involve the deeds of deities and other supernatural beings and they confirm a society’s religious values and norms, providing patterns of behavior to be imitated, testifying to the efficacy of rituals and their practical ends, and establishing the sanctity of cults and other cultural institutions. The mythology of a given group can be described as a system of interconnected myths, or stories, told by a specific cultural group to explain the world in a manner that is consistent with the people of the group’s experience of the world in which they live.[2] American mythologist Joseph Campbell describes myths as metaphors which help the human psyche relate the facts of life as are known, to the unknown, the transcendent, consciousness of life by life, this mystery we all live as humans which is beyond speech, or words.[3] What this suggests is that while myths often do include nuggets of historical or scientific accuracy, whether or not the mythology of a group or a culture consists of factual events or phenomena is not the point. Their importance is in how they help people explore, make sense of, and navigate those universal and personal experiences which underpin and affirm life. Myths often deal in archetypes, that is images, patterns of behavior, locations and ideals which are common to the human experience and thus evoke deep and sometimes illogical emotions when encountered.[4] The mythology of a people or a culture, and there is always one even if disfigured or pathological, can be secular or religious. It orients the people within the culture in their relationships with themselves, with each other and the world around them. It connects them to a sense of the role they have to play in society. The world is currently witnessing the testing of the modern American mythology of the United States being a nation of Christian God-fearing rugged individuals on the forefront of human excellence and innovation. This myth is not holding up very well, reflecting the fact that as an organizing principle, mythologies are at their best when they can extend beyond the individual acting only for himself or for his in-group, which can only result in chaos.[3]
I see the current upsurge of interest in indigenous Black African mythologies as more than fortuitous. I see it as cosmically ordered. Like most other indigenous mythologies from around the world, mythologies across the African continent emphasize the importance of balance between the individual and the collective as well as the interconnection of all things in the matrix of life. The validity of such a worldview cannot be overemphasized given the ongoing pandemic whose roots in deep-seated social, economic, political, and other inequities highlights the fact that humans and other planetary entities are a tightly interlocked community, even if some among us insist on operating as though this is not the case. The pandemic reality also highlights the absence of a mythology oriented to the totality of this planetary interdependence. As Joseph Campbell put it in a visionary statement made in the 1980s, “the social field is the planet” and we have “mythological groups oriented to parts of the totality”.[3] There is also a distortion of mythology, with the persistent but erroneous tendency to read myths not as poetic metaphor but as prose or historical fact which is then applied to the aggrandizement of particular groups and societies.
The way I see it, the resurgence of interest in indigenous Black African mythologies is an essential step towards the realization of a global mythology capable of reflecting this reality of planetary interconnection and enabling successful individual and group navigation of the present and emerging experiences associated with this interconnection. This global mythology cannot rely on the input of one group or exclude others as it has for much of the last two millennia of human history. It must be an organic outcome of the meeting, healthy intercourse and harmonious integration of the different cultures and mythologies. It must be informed by the plurality of these ideas but also be capable of relating with what is known in modern human life which is now regularly impacted by advances in science and technological knowledge which have profound implications. It must not only enable people to see themselves clearly as a member of whatever permutation of geographical location, age, gender expression (or lack thereof), spiritual belief, nation, economic status etc. constitutes their primary in group, it must also enable them to relate the experiences of this in group to the experience of planetary collective.
Consequently, the realization of the full potential of what this could mean necessitates deliberate engagement by Black Africans of all tribes and nationalities. This is especially important for those Africans of the current Information Age who come from countries with national mythologies based on colonial tropes and whose education likely lacked deep, if any, emphasis on the history, mythology, and culture of their tribes. For many of these individuals (and I count myself as one of them, albeit one desperately trying to forge a viable path forward) the myths which guide life do not involve a healthy intercourse between adopted Islamic and Christian myths and those of their tribes. Also, the adopted myths from Islam and Christianity stand in seeming contradiction with the positions of modern science and other secular mythologies, and tribal myths are still unacquainted with modern science and other secular mythologies. The effort to open and sustain the lines of communication between these worldviews should be wholeheartedly embraced and participated in not as intellectual exercises but as concrete efforts to envision and embody a more complete sense of what it means to be black, African, and human. As Toni Morrison puts it: “it is out of the clarity of one’s own culture that life within another, near another or in juxtaposition to another is healthily possible.”[5]
References
[1] Honko, Lauri. “The problem of defining myth.” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 6 (1972).
[2] Agatucci, Cora. “Culture, Religion, & Myth: Interdisciplinary Approaches”. Web.Cocc.Edu, 2010, https://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/CoursePack/culture.htm. Accessed 22 Dec 2020.
[3] Campbell, Joseph. The hero’s journey: Joseph Campbell on his life and work. Vol. 7. New World Library, 2003.
[4] Stankey, Scott. “Myths And Archetypes Commonly Found In Literature”. webs.Anokaramsey.Edu, 2015, http://webs.anokaramsey.edu/stankey/Literat/Other/Myths.htm. Accessed 28 Dec 2020.”
[5] Morrison, Toni. The source of self-regard: Selected essays, speeches, and meditations. Vintage, 2020.
