Letter to my Modern friend

​​SM

Dear Modern Friend,

Madal (former colonial tea plantation in Zambézia province) destroyed by civil war and now home to and part of nature. Photo by author, 2016.

We live in very interesting times you and I, a time full of ironies, contradictions and uncertainties - Anthropocene is such an epoch. The modernist enterprise is shaken. The dear divide that made it possible is now being challenged. The nature resource, this infinite and passive and sometimes beastly creature that was meant to be mastered is now not so out-of-you or me.

This modernist enterprise which came to most African countries with your forefathers via colonization had this kind of building. There was a need to make a clear distinction between what is human and what is culture and with that between what is property, resource and what is the owner the master. That was such the definition of civilization, my dear modern friend.

My forefathers had to negotiate and in most cases fight and die for their humanity. Constantly reminding your forefathers about the frictions of the many worlds that were put together by the power of the capital. That is the history that you and I inherited my modern friend. That is our legacy.

Your forefathers gave names to our ways of connecting: animism, savagery, cannibalism, totemism, primitivism and the list goes on. Time and time again Anthropologist that departed from the colonial or modernist capitalist enterprise and took my forefathers’ fight were called ”nativists” as in alienated. They told your forefathers, the moderns, as their kin that the people you were calling primitives, quasi-humans were in fact just relating to the nature and themselves in different ways than theirs; they told you that they had to care for and respect the nature that is not out-there but in a constant intimate relation. They told them about the various forms life can take, the different transfigurations and becomings of humanity. What did my forefathers know? They did not master large machines, possess advanced fire arms, means of transport, energy, consumption, engineering, sophisticated architecture: things that you hold so dear today my modern friend! How could your forefathers have listened?

Your forefathers were successful young modern! They managed to single out the components: human is human and nature is nature! They brought schools, hospitals, churches, industries (not so many) and cities to make my forefathers manlike. The ever continuous battle of domestication of nature.

My forefathers were diligent in teaching me your sorcery powers, in civilizing me. I learned. But I continued praying to my gods while also praying to yours. I continued caring and respecting the nature while also exploiting it. I continued consulting bones while still taking your medicines. I took on your forefathers’ project but I couldn’t give them want what they wanted. They had to have half of it! Most of your fellow moderns called me syncretic, informal, chaotic, quasi-modern, over-populated, poor, illiterate, etc., always an imperfect reflection in a broken mirror – I could not ever be quite like you my modern friend.

The victories of your forefathers were mine’s ruin. Son of slavery I was invited into a game in which winning was also losing. Slowly untying the knits that bonded me to my ancestors, earth, values, culture and ways of living. Some of my fellow primitives took the game seriously to the extent that got lost in between: half moderns – half primitive. No place for them in either worlds. See your forefathers won. But was this the kind of victory they envisioned for you! Is this the kind of legacy they wanted to give you?

See, we are closer now, we are here. I am hungry for consumption. But the nature is no longer so willingly wanting to offer itself as a resource. Gaia is alive they say, your fellow post-moderns or compositionists. Global Warming is here. History is no longer just of the moderns, purely human. It makes frictions with another history but much larger much more complex history. Suddenly you are reminded that the nature, you and me are part of one.

They call you a cyborg, a rhizome, natureculture, assemblage! See, we can never be alike. You are not animist. Savage.Primitive. Leave that with me but I welcome you from a in between somewhere. Half primitive, half modern, mulato in culture. I too am where you are now. I know how you are feeling? Shaken! Disoriented! You are not alone. But fundamental questions need to be answered. From where earth, you and I are standing: how do we go about reconnecting? How your history, my history and earth’s history can go along with as less frictions as possible? How do we build a sense of "we" that is not antagonistic but inclusive? What histories and legacies we want our grand-grand children to inherit?

My dear modern friend, see we are not so much different you and I and nature? I ask you from the bottom of my broken heart. Can you listen?

Sincerely yours,

Pfinyinguana (Anselmo Matusse)