Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy 9781350013117, 9781350013148, 9781350013100

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication page
Contents
Series Foreword
Introduction: Deconstructing Azawad
Race and blood ideology in the Sahel
Chomsky, Keenan, and US foreign policy
Keenan and Cartesian ethics
Deconstruction and ethics
The nobleman and the négraille
Conclusion
1 The Plundering of Mali, Past and Present
The fall of the north, past and present
France to the rescue
Leo Africanus, the European Arab
The Meccan sharif of Timbuktu
The blood of the Askiyas
Conclusion
2 The African Trace
Nyama, an occult materialism
Nyama, heka, and psychē
Nyama and the body’s fluids
Nyama, gender, and the musical instrument
Nyama and the apparition of the inapparent
Conclusion
3 The Sahelian Specter
Augustine and the Egyptian trace
Hauntology and the Sahelian trace
Orality-literacy contrasts in the Sahel
Major Denham’s reading lesson
Specters of the Askiyas
The Sahelian leviathan
Nyama and violence
The fecal epiphany
The tombs of Timbuktu and the work of mourning
Conclusion
4 The Duty of Violence
The heart of the mother
The tears of the mother
Ouologuem and the messianic remnant
Tall, Ogotemmeli, and circumcision
Ouologuem and The Duty of Violence
Conclusion
5 Nyama, Fratricide, and Reconciliation
Occult sorcery in the Tarikh al fattash and the fall of the Songhay Dynasty
La genèse, nyama, and reconciliation
La genèse, hostipitality, and the covenant
La genèse and the myth of blood purity
La genèse and the new republic
Timbuktu, fraternal conflict, and animal sacrifice
Sorcery, fetishism, and jihad in Sissako’s Timbuktu
Conclusion
6 What Is To Be Done?
Hemingway’s “bipartisan hero” and Mali
The French occupation of northern Mali
Conclusion
Epilogue Zongo, Sankara, and the Burkinabe Revolution
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy

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Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought Series editors: Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone This series interrupts standardized discourses involving the Middle East and the Islamicate world by introducing creative and emerging ideas. The incisive works included in this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning canons of theory, theology, philosophy, literature, and criticism through investigations of vast experiential typologies – such as violence, mourning, vulnerability, tension, and humour – in light of contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate thought. Other titles in this series include: Gilles Deleuze, Postcolonial Theory, and the Philosophy of Limit, Réda Bensmaïa The Qur’an and Modern Arabic Literary Criticism: From Taha to Nasr, Mohammad Salama Hostage Space of the Contemporary Islamicate World, Dejan Lukic On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam The Politics of Writing Islam, Mahmut Mutman The Writing of Violence in the Middle East, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism, edited by Lucian Stone Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question, by Zahi Zalloua

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy Christopher Wise

Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Christopher Wise, 2017 Christopher Wise has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN :

HB : ePDF : ePub:

978-1-3500-1311-7 978-1-3500-1310-0 978-1-3500-1312-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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For Fallou Ngom In Friendship

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Contents Series Foreword Introduction: Deconstructing Azawad

1 2 3 4 5 6

The Plundering of Mali, Past and Present The African Trace The Sahelian Specter The Duty of Violence Nyama, Fratricide, and Reconciliation What Is to Be Done?

Epilogue: Zongo, Sankara, and the Burkinabe Revolution Notes Bibliography Index

viii ix 1 15 33 67 93 127 137 143 169 179

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Series Foreword Poets, artists, theologians, philosophers, and mystics in the Middle East and Islamicate world have been interrogating notions of desire, madness, sensuality, solitude, death, time, space, etc. for centuries, thus constituting an expansive and ever-mutating intellectual landscape. Like all theory and creative outpouring, then, theirs is its own vital constellation – a construction cobbled together from singular visceral experiences, intellectual ruins, novel aesthetic techniques, social-politicalideological detours, and premonitions of a future – built and torn down (partially or in toto), and rebuilt again with slight and severe variations. The horizons shift, and frequently leave those who dare traverse these lands bewildered and vulnerable. Consequently, these thinkers and their visionary ideas largely remain unknown, or worse, mispronounced and misrepresented in the so-called Western world. In the hands of imperialistic frameworks, a select few are deemed worthy of notice and are spoken on behalf of, or rather about. Their ideas are simplified into mere social formulae and empirical scholarly categories. Whereas so-called Western philosophers and writers are given full leniency to contemplate the most incisive or abstract ideas, non-Western thinkers, especially those located in the imagined realms of the Middle East and Islamicate world, are reduced to speaking of purely political histories or monolithic cultural narratives. In other words, they are distorted and contorted to fit within hegemonic paradigms that steal away their more captivating potentials. Contributors to this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning canons of theory, theology, philosophy, literature, and criticism through investigations of the vast experiential typologies of such regions. Each volume in the series acts as a “suspension” in the sense that the authors will position contemporary thought in an enigmatic new terrain of inquiry, where it will be compelled to confront unforeseen works of critical and creative imagination. These analyses will not only highlight the full range of current intellectual and artistic trends and their benefits for the citizens of these phantom spheres, but also argue that the ideas themselves are borderless, and thus of great relevance to all citizens of the world. Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone Series Editors viii

Introduction: Deconstructing Azawad Not long after the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was murdered (in fact, he was tortured, raped with a bayonet, and then executed without trial),1 truck caravans of armed Tuareg militants trekked across the Sahara Desert into northern Mali. For many who made the journey, their arrival was a homecoming of sorts since these same men and women had originally migrated from Mali to Libya in 1972 because of drought and political discrimination that they faced at home.2 Gaddafi, who was of Berber origins like the nomadic Tuaregs of the Sahara (although he sometimes claimed that the Tuareg people were “Arabs”), welcomed Mali’s insurrectionary Tuaregs to Libya, where they later joined his standing brigades, including the Tarq brigade, the Fars brigade, and the Khamis brigade (the latter headed by Gaddafi’s own son).3 When Gaddafi fell in 2011, the Malian Tuaregs who had enjoyed Gaddafi’s patronage found that they were no longer welcome in Libya. Now, they returned to northern Mali, this time armed with weapons from Gaddafi’s looted treasure trove of armaments that poured into Africa’s black market.4 What began as a US led “humanitarian” intervention in Libya soon became a regional catastrophe, especially for the Republic of Mali. Many of the Tuaregs who returned to Mali in 2011 were secular nationalists. In fact, Tuaregs like the famed Nigerien poet Hawad have never been “Islamized” and are frankly hostile to Islam.5 Others, like those attracted to the Ansar Dine, embraced a Wahhabist variety of Islam that most Muslims in the region reject as a species of Arab imperialism. In the months that followed, Tuareg militants of diverse political and religious orientations forged a working alliance under the leadership of the charismatic Ifoghas Tuareg Iyad Ag Ghali, the jihadist, DRS collaborator, and head of the Ansar Dine, declaring the newly independent state of Azawad in northern Mali on April 6, 2012.6 But the nation of Azawad was not to survive for more than a few months. In January 2013, French ground and air forces crushed the rebellion in the north and reestablished French political hegemony throughout the region. Though the French brought an end to the independent state of Azawad, the unrest in northern Mali continues to this day, and the fate of the Republic of Mali remains unclear. Among other topics, this book explores the rise and fall of the nation of Azawad, arguably the worst catastrophe in the history of the region, with the ix

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possible exception of the Sa’adian Conquest of 1592 CE . Readers unfamiliar with the work of philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Gianni Vattimo may wonder at my reliance upon deconstructive theorists in discussing Azawad. However, I argue here that deconstruction indeed has much to offer those who wish to understand Sahelian society, including the recent crisis in Mali. Deconstructive theory may also serve as a valuable tool in helping to predict what is likely to happen in the future. Though my book is written for Islamicate African and Middle Eastern specialists, it may also prove useful to anyone interested in the future of the Sahel, including analysts of US and French foreign policy, NGO workers, Foreign Service officers, international funding agencies, and, above all, the concerned citizens of the Republic of Mali and other affected peoples in the region. Because I discuss the crisis in Mali with particular reference to the work of Derrida, my book also addresses basic questions of methodology in current foreign policy debate, especially on behalf of my readers with little prior knowledge of deconstruction. This book builds upon the work begun in two of my earlier books, Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (2009) and Chomsky and Deconstruction (2011); and, it builds upon Gianni Vattimo and Michael Marder’s recent volume Deconstructing Zionism (2014), an edited collection including my own essay “The Spirit of Zionism: Derrida, Ruah, and the Purloined Birthright.” In my book Chomsky and Deconstruction, I sought to deconstruct Noam Chomsky’s work in “bio-linguistics” but refrained from deconstructing his ethically motivated criticisms of US foreign policy. I did so in part because I often find myself sympathetic with Chomsky’s criticisms of US foreign policy, despite my reservations about his neo-Cartesian bias and pretensions to “hard science.” I have especially appreciated Chomsky’s courageous analyses of Palestine and the US -Israeli relation, Afghanistan, and the US -led war in Iraq. Since I offer my own critique of US foreign policy in the Sahel zone, I am compelled here to draw more explicit attention to the limitations of Chomsky’s analyses of US foreign policy in the African setting. I also discuss Jeremy Keenan’s The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa (2009) and The Dying Sahara: US Imperialism and Terror in Africa (2013). I do so not to disparage the many important contributions of Chomsky and Keenan to foreign policy debate, but to clarify essential differences between their approaches and more authentically deconstructive analyses of US foreign policy. In The Dying Sahara, for instance, Keenan refutes the claims of his critics that he is a “conspiracy theorist,” asserting that, “[t]he irony of this broadbrush smear was that I was not constructing a conspiracy but ‘deconstructing’ their own [my

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emphasis].”7 Keenan places his claim that he is deconstructing conspiracy theories about Mali in scare quotes, perhaps to distance himself from what many still regard as a suspect methodology. Whatever the case may be, Keenan is certainly not performing a deconstructive analysis of the crisis in Mali. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a critical approach to it that has less in common with the work of philosophers like Heidegger, Derrida, and Vattimo than Keenan’s. Keenan’s rhetoric is straightforwardly thetic and deductive, rather than questioning and inductive. The starting point for his various analyses is not a particular trace of the real in the world of sensory perception, but an intuitive hunch that he seeks to prove through marshaling all the evidence at his disposal. Keenan seeks to evangelize or convert his readers. Some will be persuaded, others not. In any event, what he is doing has nothing to do with deconstruction. In fairness to Keenan, malapropisms like his use of the word “deconstruction” occur often in Western academe, even in literature and philosophy departments, where many who speak authoritatively on the topic of deconstruction, usually to dismiss it as jargon, only know what they have read in shoddy journalistic accounts and mediocre paraphrases. If nothing else, it is my hope that the approach taken here will at least clarify how deconstructive approaches to foreign policy debate over the developing world differ from those of political theorists like Keenan and Chomsky. Derrida especially, in my view, offers an important alternative to the quasi-scientific approaches taken by Chomsky and Keenan in the realm of US foreign policy debate. As my own book addresses a distinctly African crisis, I will argue here that deconstruction, especially Derrida’s articulation of it, offers a viable and compelling approach in the Northwest African context, not least because it offers a distinctly African means of theorizing the crisis in Mali. Though deeply concerned with the history of European philosophy, Derrida was born in Algeria and lived there until he was nineteen years old. Derrida was a Judeo-African or “black-Arab-Jewish” man and this fact is not insignificant. In taking this approach, I deliberately elide Chomsky’s “grand imperial design” theory about the monolithic role of the United States in international politics, preferring instead to focus on more local attitudes, histories, and cultural traditions in the Sahel. I am guided, in this respect, by the work of regional analysts like Thomas Hale, Paul Stoller, and Joseph Paré, all of whom have underscored the ancient, interdependent, and integral nature of Sahelian society, urging scholars of West Africa to attend to the region’s “ sahelité” or its “deep Sahelian culture.”8 Hale rightly observes, “The evidence suggests that amid great ethnic diversity in the [Sahelian] region there was, and still is, much

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cultural uniformity.”9 I am also persuaded by Akbar Ahmed’s argument in his book The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (2013), that an informed understanding of local culture and history must always be the starting point for US -based interventions in the Islamicate world, including academic ones like this one.10 In past works, I’ve compared Egypto-African notions that inform deconstruction, especially in Derrida, Africa, and The Middle East but also in Deconstructing Zionism, where I sought to situate regressive Israeli beliefs about blood election in their proper historical and cultural setting.11 The question of blood nobility and its relation to Sahelian conceptions of the word will be revisited here, including its historical links to ancient Egyptian civilization, although I do not deconstruct Derrida’s idiosyncratic biases in favor of Judaism, as this question was addressed at length in my previous writings. Readers of Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East sometimes criticized my book for its too exclusive focus on Derrida’s views of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Hopefully, these readers will be more satisfied with the overtly African focus of the present book. I nonetheless maintain that the deconstruction of Azawad and the deconstruction of Zionism are not unrelated tasks. In contrast to Derrida, I affirm here, as I’ve argued elsewhere, that concepts of citizenship governing international law should not be articulated with reference to one’s blood inheritance but rather one’s actual residence in a town or particular place, the classical or Kantian conception of the citizen. This question certainly links the otherwise distinct cases of Israel and Azawad.

Race and blood ideology in the Sahel In the summer 2014, when asked in a journalistic interview about Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, the Italian philosopher Vattimo, who is a co-editor of Deconstructing Zionism, forcefully condemned Israel’s aggressive policies in the Occupied Territories. In fact, Vattimo compared the Zionist state of Israel to fascist (or Nationalist) Spain under Francisco Franco.12 Vattimo’s provocative remarks received significant media attention, mainly because Vattimo urged Europe’s citizens to take up arms and join the fight against Zionist militancy, coming to the aid of the Palestinians of Gaza, just as many Europeans in the 1930s had once joined Spain’s Republicans in the war against fascism. Vattimo’s comparison of the Zionist state of Israel and Nationalist Spain under Franco is compelling in many important respects. Whereas Franco’s unique brand of

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fascism was established upon the twin pillars of throne and church, in Israel today one’s eligibility to become a full Israeli “citizen” is still based in regressive doctrines of blood election, sometimes described in terms of tribal identity and sometimes as a religious ideology. As stated previously, this book does not directly address the theme of Zionism. However, Vattimo’s comparison of Nationalist Spain and Zionist Israel is helpful in analyzing the recent conflict in northern Mali. Tuareg beliefs that led to the revolt in Mali, not unlike the Law of Return in Israel, were underwritten by archaic, reactionary, and occult notions of blood nobility; I mean, the Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg jihadists’ claims to their own noble status as sharifs and blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. It is easy to confuse the different Arab and Tuareg tribal clans of northern Mali, who are sometimes aligned with one another and sometimes in conflict. The Berabiche peoples of northern Mali are men and women of Arab origin, who have lived in the region for hundreds of years, especially in the vicinity of Timbuktu. Because of their Arab origins, they have been willing on occasion to serve the national interests of Arab states like Algeria and Libya, including working for AQIM (or Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, according to Keenan a puppet of Algeria’s DRS ). The Berabiche and the Kounta, who are also Arabs, speak Hasaniya, a Saharan regional dialect of Arabic though different than Algerian Arabic. Kounta Arabs tend to live in the vicinity of Gao and are particularly proud of their noble status as blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. The Tuareg, on the other hand, are Berbers although some Tuareg peoples, like Ag Ghali, who is an Ifoghas of the Kel Ireyakkan Tuareg, also assert their noble status or identity as sharifs, or noble blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. As Andy Morgan notes, “There was a racist element to the Islamists’ application of Shari’a [in northern Mali]. Almost all the condemned were ‘black’ Songhoi or Bozo men. Almost all those who judged them were ‘white’ or lighterskinned Arabs, Touareg, or foreigners.”13 Berber Tuaregs who assert such claims are in some ways akin to the Peulh in that they are of mixed ethnic origin but quite proud of their Arab blood heritage. Other Tuaregs who are simply Berbers make no claims to being blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Such Tuaregs are more likely to be drawn to secular nationalist groups like the MNLA .14 The beliefs of Tuareg sharifs like Ag Ghali about their noble blood status are not unique in the region but are held by many other tribal groups and are quite ancient. Certainly, they are pre-Islamic. Ag Ghali and the Ansar Dine’s failed jihad was also influenced by an imported variety of Wahhabi Islam that tends to view Sahelian articulations of Islam as heretical.

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The majority of black Malians who joined the Tuareg and Arab jihadists in the founding of the theocratic state of Azawad were men and women who affirmed religious belief in their own status as noble blood descendants of Arab sharifs, including local Peulh Muslims. Outside the region, the Peulh (or Fulani) are commonly perceived as black, but in the Sahel zone they are believed to be white on the basis of their Arab blood from the family of the Prophet Muhammad, whatever the actual color of their skin.15 Consequently, Peulh, who are particularly proud of their Arab heritage, may be sympathetic with men like Ag Ghali who assert their blood nobility. Others, like the black African men who were attracted to the Ganda Koy militia in the conflict of 1994, including Songhay, Bambara, Bozo, and other black ethnic groups, are hostile to the white men of the north whom they see as racists. (Ironically, this includes the Peulh, some of whom joined the Ganda Koy in violent and retaliatory acts against the whites of the north.) The complex racial dynamics of the Sahel zone are too often elided in scholarship on the region, often due to what Fallou Ngom has called “taboo racism” in the Sahel, by which he means Arab and Tuareg racism directed against black African people.16 In this light, I also closely examine arguments set forth by Keenan in his The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara about the role of Sahelian Tuaregs in this conflict, yet another white ethnic group in the region.17 I argue here that while Keenan’s approach is laudable in some respects, his views are too biased in favor of the Tuareg people. He articulates this view against both Arab and black African peoples in the Sahel zone. In effect, Keenan’s personal sympathies for his many Tuareg friends lead him to adopt a far too partisan approach on their behalf. Keenan echoes the views of many Tuareg on the Bamako and Niamey governments to the south, which he suggests deliberately follow “programs of exclusion” against the Tuareg people. Keenan names this Tuareg fear “ivoirianisation.”18 Typically, Keenan underscores black African violence against Tuaregs, while doing everything he can to provide rich context for Tuareg violence against black Africans. As a case in point, retaliatory Tuareg attacks on governmental outposts in Mali are for Keenan not lawless outbreaks of violence but the inevitable result of “Malian troops violating nomadic camps and their womenfolk.”19 Keenan also denies that MNLA Tuareg ever participated in atrocities at the massacre of Aguelhok, claiming that MNLA Tuaregs left Aguelhok the day before these atrocities took place, and that it was AQIM militants who were guilty of human rights violations (in other words, Algerian Arabs).20 This view is certainly at odds with the views I heard while traveling in northern Mali during the summer of 2014, where stories of the atrocities at Aguelhok remain a source of terror for

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black Malians. Keenan disputes claims that MNLA Tuaregs participated in the Aguelhok atrocities because, “Tuareg men are not known to slit throats as a form of killing humans or to kill their captives in cold blood [my emphasis].”21 But Keenan begs the question, “Known to whom”? He is also oblivious, or at least indifferent, to doctrines of occult blood among Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg sharifs. Keenan remarks that, “[Gaddafi] referred [in a speech given in northern Mali] to the [local] Tuareg as the original ‘Arabs’ of the region, when they are, in fact, Berbers.”22 Here, Keenan implies that Gaddafi was merely being eccentric or perhaps whimsical in describing the Berber Tuareg in such terms. It does not seem to occur to him that Gaddafi strategically appealed to Tuareg sharifs or notables, who would be flattered to be described as legitimate blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. In contrast to the Tuareg Gaddafi may have sought to flatter, there are a great many Tuareg in Mali, particularly in Bamako, who have satisfyingly adjusted to modern life as citizens in the Republic of Mali, even in the aftermath of the Ansar Dine’s failed jihad. In contrast, the Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg of northern Mali, with some exceptions, have continued to express their contempt for the basic republican values underwriting Mali’s constitution, values maintaining civil rights and equality for all of Mali’s citizens under the law. In an article in the Columbia Political Review, Claire Heyson notes the failure of the Tuareg aligned with their MNLA to attract followers from black ethnic groups in the region: “The MNLA’s main flaw is their inherent alienation of Bella, Songhai, Fulani, and other minority ethnicities [in northern Mali],” Heyson states. “[This failure] has driven otherwise unaffiliated Malians into the open arms of the MNLA rivals.”23 Kassim Kone similarly draws attention to what he calls “the rigidly hierarchical nature of Tuareg society,” underscoring the historical contempt of the Tuareg for the values that underlie the very concept of the republic. In an article in Cultural Anthropology, Kone states, “When the French colonial administration with their ‘Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité’ ideals attempted to end slavery [in northern Mali] and initiate the notion of equality in the 20th century, the Tuareg reaction was that ‘no fraternity could exist between lions, hyenas, jackals, cattle, donkeys, sheep, and goats.’ ”24 Notably absent from Keenan’s analysis of the plight of the Tuareg in northern Mali and Niger in The Dying Sahara is much reference to the Bella, who have long been the black slaves of white Tuaregs, despite the fact that slavery was outlawed in Mali in 1960. In 1968, the Malian author Yambo Ouologuem in his great novel The Duty of Violence powerfully depicted the history of the claims of “Arab” notables in the Sahelian region, like the Ansar Dine jihadists, who claim their right to rule over the region’s “black rabble” (“négraille” is the term Ouologuem famously coined)

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because they imagine that they are the elected blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. In the most scathing terms imaginable, Ouologuem describes these local notables as “black Jews” who cynically manipulate the Islamic religion and local beliefs about the importance of their own noble descent. He also establishes links between Arab oppressors in the Sahel and their later French counterparts, who also affirm racist doctrines regarding their elected status as white Europeans.25 Now that the Tuareg jihadist Ag Ghali and the Ansar Dine have been driven from northern Mali, the French have not surprisingly tightened their iron grip on the north, especially in the Kidal region. Since dissolving Azawad, France has shown its obvious reluctance to restore Mali’s territorial sovereignty, not if doing so interferes with French interests. Those familiar with the history of the region will perhaps not be surprised at France’s response to the crisis. In fact, France has certainly used this crisis to its own advantage. This unhappy development has generated a great deal of resentment against the French who were originally greeted in Bamako as Mali’s liberators. As Keenan shows, the US and Algeria likewise share important stakes in controlling northern Mali, and both the US and Algeria have done their part to further erode Mali’s territorial sovereignty. I argue here that the founding ideals of Mali’s Republic, if the Republic of Mali is to have a future at all, must be understood, honored, and even loved by all of its citizens, including Mali’s Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg. Long ago, JeanJacques Rousseau observed that the “public thing” (the res publica or the republic) willed into being by the social contract is a wholly artificial construct, a kind of prosthetic limb, or even “iron lung,” as Derrida calls it.26 For this reason, Rousseau emphasized that all children residing within the republic must be taught to love their native country at an early age. Love of a prosthetic human creation does not come to us naturally. It must be inculcated. If there is a thesis to my book then, and I am skeptical of the value of most thetic discourse in foreign policy debate, it is that hope for Mali’s future lies in the education of Mali’s young people. This is a view that I heard reiterated in many conversations during my visit to Mali in 2014. However, I insist here that it is not only Mali’s citizens who must learn to honor the founding ideals of its republic. The US , France, and Algeria must also begin to respect Mali’s status as a sovereign nation with a republican constitution. Many in Mali today are ready to wash their hands of the Kidal region, the current epicenter of the conflict, not because they want to see Mali split into two separate nations, but because they are skeptical that the US , France, and Algeria will ever release their hold on the north. This skepticism is well-founded. It is one reason why the French and the Americans continue to be so distrusted in the region.

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If a fraction of the American dollars spent on AFRICOM and other forms of militarization in the region were diverted into educating Mali’s children, the reunified Republic of Mali might have a real chance. At the conclusion of Ouologuem’s novel The Duty of Violence, the Saif (or local notable) demonstrates his willingness to be a full player in the postcolonial game, to abandon his pretensions to blood nobility and recourse to extra-legal violence. (In the novel, the character called the Saif tosses the serpents he uses to assassinate his enemies into the fire while playing chess with a French bishop.) With the exception of outlaws like Ag Ghali, most of Mali’s citizens today – including many of its loyal Tuareg citizens – are eager to repair its damaged republic and look towards a brighter future. This can only happen if external foreign powers like the US , France, and Algeria, with their many economic and political interests in the region, finally begin to respect Mali’s territorial sovereignty and invest their time, efforts, and money in educating Mali’s children, not in arming the region. Mali must be allowed the opportunity it deserves to evolve into a stronger sovereign nation, in effect a more authentically democratic state with a republican constitution, rather than a mere client state of France and the US . This is not a matter of the US and France offering their benign patronage to the Republic of Mali, but their choosing to honor international law and order. My book is therefore partisan in its own way: It is partisan because of my overt support for the Republic of Mali and the “black-rabble” of Ouologuem. It is not that I am unsympathetic with the dilemmas of the Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg, their longing for an independent state in the Sahara, but the history of the region also shows that Sahelian peoples have for centuries lived together in peace and harmony, including the white tribes of the north and their black neighbors to the south. While there have certainly been outbreaks of violence between Arab and Tuareg peoples and those who live in the south, the history of the region is ancient. Within this very old history, local ethnic groups like the Tuareg, Songhay, Peulh, Bambara, Mande, and many others have lived in relative peace. Within the longer arc of the region’s history, the Sahel zone has been nowhere near as violent as Europe, especially during the twentieth century. In a US television interview back in 1971, Ouologuem made this same point: “I would like to think that Africa excels in everything . . . But, unfortunately, after the Hundred Years War, Stalin, the Inquisition, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc., I am afraid we poor Blacks, underdeveloped Africans, [cannot compete with the West in violence].”27 The cultures of white and black ethnic groups in the region are strikingly similar to one another despite superficial differences like the color of one’s skin. Divisions in the region, as well as periods of conflict between different

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ethnic groups, have almost always been instigated by forces that are external to the region, usually Arab or French. As stated previously, it should be evident that I take a frankly partisan view of this conflict. But, I also argue that there is no possible viewpoint on the conflict in Mali that is not inherently conspiratorial. Conspiracy is the essence of the political. This is perhaps the most important lesson of Derrida’s Specters of Marx.

Chomsky, Keenan, and US foreign policy Chomsky is an important target of my critique of the recent crisis in Mali, despite the fact that he has not written as extensively on the Sahel as Keenan, because Chomsky like Keenan claims that he speaks the Truth about US foreign policy, and because he militates for an infantile and irrational anarchism, a fantasy world without laws and without violence. There will always be laws, and they will always be backed up with the use of force. Kant makes the same point: a law that is not backed up with force is no law at all.28 Chomsky militates on behalf of an imaginary world that has never existed and never will exist, enjoying the vantage point of the disinterested observer, an inhabitant of what Descartes once called “the land of romance.”29 Unlike Chomsky, Keenan is not arguing for an anarchist solution to the crisis in Mali, nor does Keenan seem to have the slightest interest in supporting the restoration of the Republic of Mali. Ever distrustful of the Bamako-based government, as well as the Algerians to the north, Keenan takes his stand with the disenfranchised Tuaregs who dream of an independent Tuareg state. Keenan’s views are perhaps closest to those of the MNLA , the secular (or “ecumenical”) nationalist Tuareg organization that remains a major player in the north. In making his case for the Tuareg people, Keenan models himself after Chomksy, offering his readers an ostensibly ethical analysis of the conflict, even as he militates on behalf of his many Tuareg friends. Keenan also depicts himself as a direct player in the events he describes in his books, relying upon the valuable information provided to him by his anonymous Tuareg informants. He vows to protect his friends’ secret identities, fearing that they will be killed should he reveal their true names.30 Keenan is sworn to secrecy to the Tuareg, bound by solemn oaths of secrecy to his fellow conspirators. Keenan protests that he does not invent any conspiracy theories about the role of the US , France, and Algeria in northern Mali, but, as stated previously, there is no political theory that is not inherently conspiratorial, including Keenan’s. However, my use of the word “conspiracy” in foreign policy debate is

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not pejorative, merely descriptive. This is a point that Keenan inadvertently makes when he erroneously claims that he is “deconstructing” the conspiracy theories of the US , Algerian, French, Malian, and Nigerian governments. When Keenan insists that he is not trying to construct a conspiracy theory of his own, but “deconstruct their conspiracy theory [my emphasis],” he means that he merely speaks the Truth but does not himself participate in any conspiracy whatsoever, unlike the “evil” policy makers who he opposes.31 Either Keenan truly believes his claims are guileless, or he adopts an obviously untenable rhetorical pose. Whatever the case may be, I underscore again that all those who risk playing the game, like Ouologuem’s Saif, unavoidably participate in a political conspiracy.32 Keenan’s scholarly work should not then be read as a factual account of the crisis in Mali, but a partisan articulation of the nationalist Tuareg view, one that is articulated on behalf of the Tuareg and against the Republic of Mali. What Keenan militates for is understandable, but it is unwise. For, the sooner unity is reestablished in Mali between north and south, the sooner the French and American troops can be asked to leave the region, and Mali’s border with Algeria can be secured. By militating on behalf of an independent Tuareg state, Keenan exacerbates the crisis in Mali. In effect, Keenan’s work reinforces long-standing inner divisions that have always weakened Mali and that first led to its foreign occupation. The imperial logic of “divide and conquer” has certainly guided French, American, and Arab policy makers in Mali since 9/11. By militating exclusively on behalf of Mali’s disenfranchised Tuareg population, Keenan aggravates cultural divisions that now weaken Mali and enable its foreign occupation to be prolonged. The military occupation of northern Mali is similar in many respects to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Most likely, the intent of Western policy makers now shaping Mali’s future is to prolong the occupation of northern Mali as long as possible. This is yet another reason why the Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg of northern Mali should fully cooperate with the Bamako government in the south, to help rebuild Mali’s fragile republic, and then demand the Algerians, French, and Americans to leave. This is also why my own book includes literature on the region that extends over many centuries, taking Mali’s extremely long history into account, rather than relying exclusively on recent journalistic and informational accounts of the conflict. Hale similarly notes, “[I]f representatives of foreign countries posted in Mali sought to uncover the deeper meanings of the 1968 coup d’état that replaced Modibo Keita with Moussa Traoré, they needed only begin with a reading about the thirteenthcentury founder of the Mali empire, Sundiata Keita, whom the Malian president

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claimed as an ancestor.”33 I could not agree with Hale more. However, I also address cultural themes that are seldom taken seriously outside the region, including local practices involving the use of sorcery and witchcraft. Taking such practices seriously in order to better understand the region’s events is not to adopt a “wild-eyed” and naïve belief in magic, as one of my critics has pompously suggested.34 It is rather to appropriately honor the local culture.35 Here, I situate the war in northern Mali in the historical context of its deep Sahelian matrix, emphasizing the more complex image of the Sahel that emerges through history, not merely during catastrophic periods of upheaval that have typically been engineered by the Arab world or the West. I insist that the political and cultural history of the region, including the Tuaregs’ long standing and difficult struggle for survival, certainly did not began with the Global War on Terror or the establishment of AFRICOM in the Sahara. This is not to say that Malians who are Berabiche, Kounta, or Tuareg have not suffered in ways that are scarcely imaginable in the US and Europe, and that they are not suffering now, but that the men and women of the north have more typically lived in harmony with their neighbors to the south, and they can do so once again. I repeat then that this is an overtly partisan intervention offered on behalf of the Republic of Mali. But I do not claim here that I stand in possession of the Truth. I argue instead that the prosthesis that is the Malian Republic should be fortified in the aftermath of this crisis. I make this case not because I imagine that the Republic of Mali exists in any metaphysical sense but because it most certainly does not exist as anything other than an artificial human creation. No one can be certain that the thing conjured by Mali’s citizens, the res publica that is brought into existence through an overtly conspiratorial act, is a correct representation of the soul of the Malian people. The public thing that is conjured is rather a spectral figure that one swears to uphold. To swear to uphold any republic is not a matter of rational truth although it does involve careful decisionmaking. To be truthful in this case, however, means keeping one’s promises, not that one stands in possession of the Truth. Readers who demand the Truth about the crisis in Mali, as opposed to the “lies and deceptions” of US policy makers, will be disappointed with the approach taken here.

Keenan and Cartesian ethics Keenan’s The Dying Sahara (2013) was preceded by The Dark Sahara (2009) and, a decade before that, Sahara Man: Travelling with the Tuareg (1999). Each of

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these works adds yet another chapter to a coherent project that was first motivated by Keenan’s concern for the Tuareg in the Sahara. Keenan’s work is important because there can be no lasting peace in Mali until the Tuareg receive the justice they deserve. If I criticize Keenan’s work here, it is not because I think that his research is unworthy of critical attention.36 On the contrary, Keenan’s books on the Tuareg offer a detailed, provocative, and well-informed perspective for all those seeking to better understand the recent crisis in Mali. This does not mean that there are not notable problems with Keenan’s methodology. In fact, much current US and European-based research on Islamicate Africa is similarly weakened by the individual scholar’s uncritical reliance upon academic modes of analysis that are often inappropriate in the African setting. At a recent gathering hosted by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, entitled “Beyond the Islamic Public Sphere Conference,” in April 2014, I was surprised at the reluctance of conference participants, most of whom were historians, to make any use whatsoever of concepts drawn from deconstruction. One participant suggested to me that Heidegger’s problematic political affiliations made his work “too suspect” for most trained historians today. In contrast, Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, which participants imagined to be a non-violent realm where inter-subjective and rational discourse takes place in Islamic society (for instance, the discursive space of the internet), was widely viewed as a viable means of conceptualizing current events in African society. Habermas, who famously rebuked Heidegger for his links to the Nazi party, is a neo-Marxian critical theorist, associated with dialectical materialists like Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and others. Though the work of Habermas is a politically “safe” source from which to draw one’s concepts, the idée reçue of the public sphere is nonetheless inappropriate in the Sahelian context, largely due to the incoherent notion of violence underwriting it. Unlike the nuanced dialectics of Frankfurt Institute theorists like Adorno and Horkheimer, Habermas’s theoretical approach is often more Cartesian than dialectical or Marxian, despite his affiliation with the Frankfurt School. In The Dying Sahara, Keenan does not build upon the naïvely utopian concept of “the Islamic Public Sphere,” but his approach to recent events in Mali is no less Cartesian than Habermas’s. Eager to establish the Truth of what really happened in the Sahara after 9/11, Keenan is oblivious to many of the basic philosophical assumptions that underwrite his analysis, which he models after the work of Chomsky. Keenan’s indebtedness to Chomsky is made explicit on numerous occasions in The Dark Sahara, which Keenan situates as a single regional analysis that may take its

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proper place within the larger framework of Chomsky’s Orwellian hypothesis regarding the US ’s “imperial grand design” for Africa, indeed for the world at large.37 The epistemologies of both Keenan and Chomsky are founded upon a neo-Cartesian metaphysics of pure intuition, guided by the conviction of both that their perceptions of recent historical events are indisputably correct. Keenan and Chomsky offer competent analyses of US foreign policy. They both enjoy correct perception, what Descartes called ratio but what Chomsky repackages as “unconscious knowledge” of the events that they analyze.38 In contrast, many African poets, writers, and philosophers reject the metaphysics of Descartes as a particularly odious extension of French imperialism in the region, one that is unsuited for Northwest Africa, given its unique and ancient history. Chinua Achebe, for instance, has described René Descartes as the father of an enormous “ontological accident,” not unlike a toxic spill of nuclear waste.39 Donald Wehrs similarly shows in his Islam, Ethics, Revolt (2010) the problematic nature of relying upon Cartesian approaches in seeking to understand Islamicate Northwest African culture and history.40 After studying the Mande griot for a number of years, the American anthropologist Barbara Hoffman likewise concluded that, “there is no standard grammar [in Sahelian society] . . . that underlies all others as a Chomskyan-style deep structure, no monolithic ‘competence’ to which the analyst can make appeal [my emphasis].”41 In the opening passages of both The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara, Keenan evokes the specter of the Russian dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn who once urged his readers to refuse to “participate in lies.” But, as Keenan observes in the prefaces to both of his books, Solzhenitsyn also argued that writers and artists must do far more than merely refuse to participate in lies. They must go further and try “to defeat the lie!”42 Unlike the hundreds of men and women who help shape the “thoroughly evil policy” of the US in Africa, Keenan will refuse to “live a lie.”43 Keenan quotes Solzhenitsyn’s imperative in the opening sentences of both The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara as a kind of ethical mantra for his readers. Keenan states, “In what is a sad reflection on the state of the world in which we live, it has increasingly become the task of the anthropologist to ‘defeat the lie.’ ”44 In this passage, Keenan signals to his readers that he is a trained anthropologist and academic who is normally guided by objective research standards, but he is compelled by urgent circumstances to speak in the name of an even higher Truth. Against the lies and deceptions of the US State Department, Keenan appeals to his readers as the uncompromising man of Truth.45 Keenan’s rhetoric of intuitive truth and ethical self-righteousness is justified with reference to the work of Chomsky, who routinely compares the work of dissidents like himself and Keenan to the biblical

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prophets.46 It is not simply that the Truth exists for both Keenan and Chomsky; it is rather that they believe they are in full possession of it. In the case of Chomsky, it is worth noting that his ethical claims about US foreign policy, like his appeals to the innate language faculty he calls UG (Universal Grammar), are grounded with reference to hypothetical fluids that he imagines float around inside the human brain. If thought is a chemical secretion of the brain, as Chomsky claims, so too are human ethics.47 Both are organic chemicals that Chomsky imagines are lodged inside the head. These chemicals have not, of course, ever been located. Chomsky suggests they never will be located, but we cannot doubt that they are really there. “[W]e don’t know what the fundamental principles of moral judgment actually are, but we have very good reason to believe that they’re there . . .,” Chomsky states. “[T]hey’re largely part of a geneticallydetermined framework, which gets marginally modified through the course probably of early experience.”48 I underscore this point here because Chomsky’s views of ethics, that they are accurate representations of an imagined organ hidden in the human brain, are clearly at variance with Sahelian notions of ethics, which are far more akin to the views of deconstructive theorists like Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinas.49 Despite important philosophical differences in the views of all of these deconstructive thinkers, each insists in his own way that ethics are finally about our relation to others, not organic chemicals in the brain.

Deconstruction and ethics Deconstructive approaches to ethics, arguably inaugurated with the publication of Heidegger’s “The Anaximander Fragment,” are complex and far from homogenous. In his careful reading of Anaximander, Heidegger translates the Greek concept of justice (or “dikē”) as “jointedness,” and injustice (“adikē”) as “disjointedness.” Heidegger argues that the ancient Greeks construed justice as a matter of being “in-joint” with the other and injustice as being “out-of-joint.” If there is such a thing as justice, it is all about our relation to the other. Whatever Heidegger’s personal politics, his careful readings of the Greek and other thinkers have reoriented, if not revolutionized, the study of philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In The Principle of Reason, Heidegger performs a nuanced reading of Leibniz’s reddere rationem or “the principle of reason,” which shows that reason must always be rendered. On the one hand, the principle of reason implies that the ground of reason is always already transcendent and must therefore be re-presented: this is reason in the form of competent

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representation. On the other hand, if reason must be re-presented, the question of the “must” for Heidegger is an inherently ethical one: Why must reason be represented and for whom? Heidegger argues that to ask this question is to pose the principle of reason in another “tonality.”50 To render reason in this other tonality implies that we must give a reason for reason itself. Heidegger suggests that all those who render reason must be reasonable. They must be reasonable, for they have responsibilities and obligations to others. These others to whom one is responsible are not figments of our imagination: They are living others, real entities who inhabit the planet earth, not the planet Mars like Chomsky’s famous Martian Scientist.51 Ethics are always about our duties and responsibilities to others. Derrida puts it this way, “The ‘unrecognizable’ [other] is the beginning of ethics, of the Law.”52 According to Kant, who obviously follows Locke, every text that is actually written, that acquires an externally available form, is meaningful only insofar as it exists as an empirical trace of the real or a phenomenon in the world of the five senses. For Kant, censorship is linked to the word that exists as a trace of the real and is a form of critique that is invariably backed up with force. As stated previously, a law that is not backed up with force is no law at all, at least not for Kant. In The Social Contract, which was a text that profoundly influenced Kant, Rousseau remarked that religious faith in the law that is inscribed on the human heart, as opposed to this actually existing law, is “the secret faith” that all legal systems and all law-givers depend upon, and in this respect Rousseau singled out the Prophet Muhammad, as well as other great law-givers in human history such as the Prophet Moses and the Protestant reformer Jean Calvin. But, Rousseau knew very well that the law “inscribed on the heart” was a merely figurative law, not an object that one might hold in one’s hand or examine with a microscope, like the moral fluids hypothesized by Chomsky. “What, in the last analysis, is law?” Rousseau asked. “If we simply try to define it in terms of metaphysical ideas, we shall go on talking without reaching any understanding; and when we have said what natural law is, we shall not know what the law of the state is.”53 One may believe in this higher law as a matter of faith (in the Pauline sense, faith is “belief in things unseen”), but belief is not the same thing as empirical knowledge. Chomsky calls “unconscious knowledge” what for Rousseau and Kant is merely a matter of faith and thereby imagines that he has solved the problem of the groundlessness of his claims to rational and ethical competence. According to Chomsky, to even raise the question of rational or ethical grounds amounts to little more than “harassing” those like himself who are busy performing the serious work of scientific and political research.

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In Derrida’s reading of Kant, he makes much of Kant’s affinities for Judaism. Derrida imagines a Kant who was also a German Jew, influenced as Kant was by the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. But Derrida tends to over-dramatize Judaic contributions to European philosophy, while eliding the role of Egyptian, African, Arabic, and Islamic thought in shaping the philosophy of the West. In fact, Kant was a Protestant Christian from a Germanic region in Europe that is now part of Russia. Many of Kant’s remarks about Judaism and Islam were both ignorant and intolerant, when not shockingly anti-Semitic. However, if Kant was neither a Jewish nor a Muslim philosopher, and if he was regarded by the church authorities of his day as a heretic, Kant remained a philosopher in dialogue with the Abrahamic faiths. What must be underscored then is not Kant’s affinity for any particular Abrahamic tradition, but rather the fact that Kant was a philosopher whose thought is inconceivable outside the historical framework of the Abrahamic faiths. International Law is deeply indebted to Kant, as is the very notion of a United Nations. Derrida is sometimes too hasty when not dismissive in his criticisms of Kant and International Law, which he argues “global-latinizes” non-European cultures like those of Islamicate Africa and the Middle East. For partisan reasons of his own, Derrida criticizes the Kantian concept of the citizen as a latently religious notion, the basic right to occupy the earth of the town (or “cité” in French) where one is born. In effect, Derrida militates in favor of Zionist notions of the citizen, suggesting that both the Kantian and the Zionist concept of the citizen – though distinct – are similarly informed by religious ideology.54 But the citizen for Kant was simply one who dwells in a particular town. This is the liberal democratic definition of the citizen. In his essay “To Eternal Peace,” Kant makes the case that we are all entitled to human rights because the world we live on is a big round ball. The fact that the earth is a big round ball means that every one of us has to put his or her feet somewhere. This right to inhabit the earth includes every human being on the planet. All of us enjoy the universal right to hospitality, the right to be welcomed by the other. Hospitality is also one of the oldest and most enduring features of the Abrahamic religions, for Abraham was nothing else if not the Prophet of Hospitality, and the very theme of the Abrahamic is at one with the deconstructive and Kantian theme of hospitality. The influential Orientalist Louis Massignon first introduced the concept of the Abrahamic into French scholarship, after learning it from his careful study of Islam. Derrida borrows this term from Massignon and extends it in many original and thought-provoking ways. As a Sephardic Jew of Algerian origins, Derrida found much to appreciate in the work of Massignon (though he also, in my view, unfairly criticized Massignon for his “atmospheric anti-Semitism”).55

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In remarks Derrida made to some of his Marxist respondents in 1994, many of whom harshly criticized his political views after the publication of Specters of Marx, Derrida stated that he did not wish to speak wounding words in retaliation to his critics, but that he preferred to lay down his weapons before them.56 Here and in many other places, Derrida appealed to the Kantian notion of hospitality, but this Kantian notion is far older than Kant, far older than all of the Abrahamic traditions. Unlike those of us who base our epistemologies upon a purely interior and incommunicable mental experience, Kant insisted that a priori concepts are not meaningful in themselves: they are only meaningful when activated on the occasion of experience.57 Secret human intentions are not available to living others unless they are articulated in actual human language that is available in an external and empirical sense. Like the “ethics” of Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinas, Kant’s ethics were other-directed: Kant based his ethics upon the very real duties that we have to very real others.58 Unlike Chomsky, Kant argued that truthtelling is not merely a matter of competent representation. It is also a matter of keeping one’s promises, of honoring one’s vows to others. Vows are not objects that we ever hold in our hand. No one knows at the moment that a promise is uttered if it will always be kept; and yet such promises must be kept as a fundamental condition of human survival. In the Abrahamic traditions, circumcision is the signature that marks the here-now, or the physical presence of the one who makes his pledge to the other. The theme of circumcision, which is the sign of the covenant, is at one with the Egypto-African theme of the vow. There is little that is idiosyncratically European about the anti-Cartesian views of deconstructive theorists on the question of human ethics. Nuanced debate on the themes of the social covenant, the force of law, oath swearing, the signature, conjuration, hospitality, the Abrahamic, and many other philosophical notions that are imagined to be the invention of European thinkers, have long been debated in the Northwest African setting. Most of these so-called deconstructive concepts were not simply borrowed from the Islamicate African world. They arose in a setting long predating the cultures of East and West, the ancient Egypto-African civilization that thrived for thousands of years before the time of Christ. I am not making the case here, however, for the EgyptoAfrican origins of Sahelian society. The question of the historical origins of Sahelian society is not relevant to this book. Instead, I merely draw attention to obvious instances of “situational contamination,” to cite Fredric Jameson, those cases where it is difficult if not impossible to imagine that Africa’s many diverse cultures did not at one time come into contact with one another.59 I take this approach not only because deconstruction rarely concerns itself with the

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question of historical origins, but also because it is not altogether certain that ancient Egypt itself may not have some Sahelian “origins.” Who can say which culture is older? The question of the interrelations of ancient Nubian and Sahelian societies has scarcely begun to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. Still, Derrida’s evocation of the Abrahamic is not in itself sufficient in theorizing deep Sahelian culture. This is so because the history of the region, as well as the history of the ancient concept of hospitality, long predates the Abrahamic traditions. This is why the Abrahamic is construed here as a relatively recent concept that must be situated within its own proper historical horizon.60

The nobleman and the négraille Egyptologists like Eric Hornung, Jan Assman, and many others have written extensively about the historical importance of the Egyptian monomyth, or the “Hamlet Constellation,”61 which is explored here in relation to regional views of how social hierarchies, specifically the opposing castes of the nobility and the nyamakala (griots, blacksmiths, tanners, hunters, basket-weavers, and others), came to be established throughout the Sahel. How did archaic notions of polluted blood, as well as skin color and Hamitic narratives in the Abrahamic traditions, come to justify the servitude of so many human beings over so many centuries in Northwest Africa? The ritual enactment of the Egyptian monomyth, centered on the cosmic struggle between Horus and Seth over the right to rule ancient Egypt, is one of the oldest rituals known to humankind. This rite was enacted for thousands of years before the blood rite of the Christian Eucharist. The climax of this rite occurs when Seth, the killer of Osiris, unwittingly consumes the semen of Horus, which has been hidden on a leaf of lettuce. Variations on this rite include not only ancient Sahelian tales regarding the origin of the nyamakala, but also the biblical tale of Jacob and his older brother Esau, who is tricked into eating a polluted bowl of soup and thereby loses his birthright (Gen. 25:30). In the case of ancient Egypt, the main consequence of this rite is that a social hierarchy is established in which Horus retains his noble status because his bodily fluids, unlike those of Seth, remain uncontaminated. In contrast, Seth is debased when the powerful fluids of Horus commingle with his own, transforming him into a man of unclean blood. The nobleman is literally the man of pure blood. The Egyptian monomyth is explored in fuller detail in these pages, but for now I merely note the interrelations of this theme with the work of Derrida and Sigmund Freud.

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Freud’s views of the origins of incest prohibition, the democratic, and totemic inscription practices articulated in Totem and Taboo, which are discussed in Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship, do not significantly contradict what we know about the ancient rite that Egyptologists like Hornung and Assman call the “Hamlet Constellation.” In fact, Freud and Derrida’s respective theorizations of these “deconstructive” themes enable a richer understanding of the Egyptian monomyth’s probable historical basis. In ancient Egypt, the older male Seth loses his noble status when he is tricked into eating Horus’s bodily fluids. Most variants of this tale emphasize the role of Isis, Horus’s mother, who comes to her son’s aid through masturbating him and causing him to ejaculate on the leaf of lettuce that Seth eats. However, the ruse of Isis already marks a ritual softening of what the rite most likely depicted, which was the profoundly violent, if not Hegelian, struggle between two males for social dominance. The strong father of Freud’s was simply the strongest male in the father horde, not necessarily the biological father of those males over whom he asserted his dominance. What the Egyptian monomyth reenacted was the fierce struggle between two strong male combatants. The winner of this brutal contest was the one who overpowered his opponent and then raped or sodomized him. Hegel speaks of the struggle for recognition as a struggle to the death; however, it is reasonable to assume that those who were defeated in these ancient contests were forced to submit to the further degradation of their public rape. In effect, they resigned themselves to the polluting of their own bodies with the semen of the stronger male. Male homosexual boastings of the successful rape of another male are among the earliest forms of writing in existence.62 The loser in this contest was the one who was contaminated with the semen of his rival, who had taken into his own body the poisonous fluids of the stronger male, and was forced to publically acknowledge his own debasement. The stronger male triumphed, but this also means that the “nobleman” was simply the biggest rapist in the father horde. Freud’s father in Totem and Taboo is the archetype for the pure blooded nobleman. As Freud observes, the first covenant is established when the weaker males who have been publically violated form a conspiracy to kill the noble brute who has traumatized them. The law of what Freud calls the father horde is no law at all. It is merely the tyranny of the rapist. This is why the band of brothers conspire to kill the father in the first democratic pact and agree to abandon the tyrannical practices of the noble father. The ancient Egyptian reenactment of the cosmic battle of Seth and Horus was a step forward in human history, for its ritual enactment also marked the historical disappearance of this terrible contest. The

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memory of these contests was nonetheless preserved in ritual form for thousands of years, even as the father horde ceased to exist. Belief in blood nobility persisted among the ancient Egyptians, as it does today in both Israel and the Sahel, but the terrible truth about the nobleman – that he secured his noble status through raping all those males who were weaker than him – is repressed and finally forgotten. In contrast, the women of the father horde were construed as filthy receptacles of the nobleman’s bodily fluids, a repository of his semen and therefore dangerous and dynamic creatures. The evidence of woman’s pollution and basis for her lower class standing was not merely her weaker physical condition, like her counterpart the violated brother, but her toxic menstrual fluids that defiled her and all those who came into contact with her during menstruation. Prohibitions against Islamic women entering mosques during cycles of menstruation, which prevail to this day, along with copious Bible passages stigmatizing menstruating women, attest to the enduring nature of such beliefs in the Abrahamic traditions.63 In The Death Penalty (2014) and elsewhere, Derrida ponders the mystery of what he calls “bad blood” and the difficulty of distinguishing “good blood” from “bad blood.”64 But for ancient peoples in the Egypto-African context, menstrual blood endured as the most potent symbol of polluted blood. Sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman was perhaps the most evil act imaginable in the ancient world, a sure sign of one’s own blood impurity. In contrast to Derrida’s equivocations regarding the exceptional case of the Zionist state, as well as the claims of Arab and Tuareg nobles in the Sahel, I argue that the ideology of blood election should not be allowed any place in international political debate. Instead, it should be rejected as an obviously indefensible and unjust ideology, or a form of false consciousness. In Mali’s new republic, the ideology of blood nobility must be stigmatized for what it is: an ideology that is underwritten by barbarity, rape, and injustice. Children of Mali’s new republic must be taught to stigmatize the ideology of blood election. This is also why Ouologuem’s The Duty of Violence, which fearlessly deconstructs doctrines of blood election in Mali, remains such a valuable resource for all those who wish to understand the recent conflict in northern Mali. Against the fraudulent and malicious claims of the Saifs, Ouologuem militates on behalf of the black-rabble or “négraille,” the historical victims of Mali’s blood nobles throughout the region’s long history. Though a member of the Umarian Tijaniyya, Ouologuem is not a Peulh (or “black Arab”) man like so many others who belong to this Sufi brotherhood. Ouologuem is a black Dogon with no Arab origins. In some respects, Ouologuem’s views are closest to the Murdiyya of

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Senegal, whose founder Amadou Bamba was a black African man. (Léopold Sédar Senghor once called Bamba “an apostle of négritude.”65) However, Ouologuem is not the only advocate who has courageously spoken out on behalf of the négraille. In the mid-1960s, Ouologuem was influenced by figures like Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, who also placed impoverished black peoples at the very heart of their thought systems. (In the Sahel, the historical heir to Fanonist theory was the Burkinabe revolutionary Thomas Sankara, who was murdered in a coup d’état orchestrated by Blaise Compaoré in 1987.66) In The Duty of Violence, Ouologuem refers to the poorest of the poor in the Sahel as the négraille, a term he borrows from Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. In contrast, Fanon speaks of the “damné du terre,” or the “wretched of the earth,” a description that forefronts the question of economic class, rather than the color of one’s skin. Certainly, many white Malians, like the impoverished Tuaregs of the far north, would have no problem describing their present condition as “wretched,” even if they do not think of themselves as black. Now that Azawad has fallen, a specter haunts the Sahel, the specter of Thomas Sankara. It is perhaps not coincidental that the crisis in northern Mali led not only to the fall of Mali’s government, but also the fall of the corrupt regime of Blaise Compaoré, the despot whom Norbert Zongo once called Burkina Faso’s Mobutu. The fall of Compaoré in Ouagadougou has been accompanied by renewed demands for justice regarding the murders of Sankara, Zongo, and the hundreds of others who were killed with impunity during the Compaoré years. This is also why what happened in northern Mali is not merely a negative crisis for the entire region but an event with the power to positively transform the future, possibly leading to populist reforms facilitating greater justice for all Sahelian peoples, including the white people of the north and the region’s women and children. In the aftermath of the crisis in the north, especially after the slaughter at Aguelhok, the corrupt regime of Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré was toppled in a controversial coup d’état. Despite the ill-fated and problematic nature of the coup, Malians were rightly outraged at the appalling levels of corruption in the Touré government, its complicity with Tuareg kidnappers, and the embezzlement of funds intended to fortify Mali’s military in the north. However, there is evidence to suggest that Compaoré was every bit as complicit as Touré and many other Malian government officials in collaborating with Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg kidnappers and drug-runners in the north. After almost three decades of rule, the corrupt regime of Blaise Compaoré was at last toppled in Burkina Faso, an event that few analysts foresaw. The fall of these corrupt Sahelian politicians, especially Compaoré, may signal a more

Introduction

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hopeful era in the region. I argue here that the crisis in northern Mali and the fall of Compaoré are not unrelated events. For this reason, among others, it is misleading to speak of the Sahel as a “dark” and “dying” region, as Keenan does in the titles of his recent books on Mali. Hyperbolic rhetoric of this nature, although perhaps motivated from laudable concern for the Tuareg, fails to accurately represent what is now happening in the region.

Conclusion This book explores the homogenous and ancient history of deep Sahelian culture against the backdrop of the recent crisis in northern Mali. While Western analysts often lament the immaturity of the fledgling republics of West Africa like Mali’s, as well as the corruption of local politicians, they would do well to remember their own indebtedness to Egypto-African civilization in the historical formation of their own laws, governments, and societies. They would also do well to remember that the Sahel zone is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, living cultures on the planet. While the nations of the Sahel certainly have much to gain from careful study of the liberal democratic governments of the West, the US and Europe also have much to learn from careful study of the amazingly diverse, ancient, and complex cultures of Northwest Africa.

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The Plundering of Mali, Past and Present

At the time of his birth, sometime between 1489 and 1493 CE , Leo Africanus was named al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Zayyati. His parents were Arab Muslims from Granada, Spain who migrated to Fez after the Christian Reconquista, after European Christians recaptured much of the Iberian Peninsula from Arab Muslim control. At the age of seventeen he went on a commercial and diplomatic mission to the land of the Songhay people, in what is today northern Mali. Leo Africanus may or may not have made a second mission a few years later. In 1518 he was kidnapped by Christians from Sicily and presented to Pope Leo X, who was seeking information about Africa. Shortly thereafter he converted to Christianity and was baptized Johannis Leo de Medicis, a name he later changed to Leo Africanus. His Description of Africa, written in 1526 and published in Italian in 1550, was written at the Pope’s behest, and was later translated into French, Latin, and English. The brief portion of the text describing the Songhay lands provided Europe with its first glimpse of Sahelian society. It also permanently established the legend of Timbuktu in the European imagination. Leo Africanus visited Timbuktu sometime between 1506 and 1510. This visit took place about fifteen years into the reign of the Askiya Muhammad, the founder of the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas. In 1529, the first Askiya, who was going blind, was deposed by one of his sons, the notorious and still despised Askiya Musa. The most prosperous of the Songhay Askiyas (or kings) was the Askiya Muhammad’s son, the Askiya Dawad, who came to power in 1549. After the bloody years under the leadership of Sunni Ali Ber, the Askiya Muhammad had brought peace and prosperity to the Songhay people. No doubt rumors of this thriving black African dynasty in Gao and Timbuktu had reached Fez. While Description of Africa was written in European languages for a Christian readership, Africanus traveled to survey the Songhay Dynasty on behalf of a Moroccan pasha. Later, another Moroccan sovereign from Marrakech, Mulay Ahmad Al Mansur, would destroy the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas and turn it into a vassal of the Moroccans. 1

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy

Though led by the Moroccan Pasha Jawdar, the invading army from the north largely consisted of “renegade” Spanish Christians, referred to in extant Songhay texts as the Arma. In fact, Jawdar was a Christian eunuch and loyal servant of Mulay Ahmad. One of the Songhay authors of the Tarikh al fattash, a 400-yearold chronicle from Timbuktu, tells the story of the fall of the Songhay Dynasty from the Songhay perspective, noting that the Arab Muslim and Sephardic Christian invaders speak to one another in a “technical” (or military) language that he doesn’t understand. That “technical” language was Spanish. Ironically, the grandfather of the man who notes this in the Tarikh al fattash would have understood this technical language for he was himself, like the parents of Leo Africanus, a Spanish Muslim who was forced to migrate to Northwest Africa in order to avoid converting to Christianity. There he married a Soninke-Songhay woman, who was the mother of Al Hajj Mahmud Kati, the first author of the Tarikh al fattash. In fact, many of the oldest documents in the Kati family archives in Timbuktu are written in Spanish, as well as Arabic and Ajami, or African languages transcribed with the classical Arabic alphabet. Leo Africanus is an interesting figure not only because he gave Europe its first image of the fabled city of Timbuktu but also because he was simultaneously an Arab Muslim and a European Christian, as it suited the purposes of the moment. He was a man who was able to move comfortably between these opposing identities, a figure transcending the unassailable binary of Orient and Occident. But looking at this complex historical figure today from a more southward perspective – I mean, from the viewpoint of Malians living in places like Segu, Mopti, and Gao – Leo Africanus may not appear quite so mysterious or fascinating. In fact, Leo Africanus may seem an all too common, if not frightening, composite of the invader from the north: an homme du nord, as one says in the Sahel. For more than 500 years, Arab Muslims and European Christians have worked together to further their many economic, imperial, and political interests in the region. Among other achievements, some more dubious than others, their collaborative efforts led to the enslavement of a great number of black African peoples from Mali, some ending up in the Americas, but most in places like Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. There are two separate but parallel histories of race and slavery in Africa. First, there is the well-known history of race and slavery throughout the Americas, often referred to as the trans-Atlantic slave trade or “triangle”; second, there is the lesser known history of race, racism, and slavery of black African peoples in the Arab Islamic world. At least it is lesser known in the West. In West Africa, this history is well known and remains a source of great bitterness and resentment.

The Plundering of Mali, Past and Present

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Since the time of Leo Africanus, European Christians and Arab Muslims have worked together to further their interests in West Africa, but on occasion they have also competed for control of this vast territory. In 1591, about forty years after Leo Africanus’s visit to Timbuktu, Maghrebian Muslims and Spanish Christians joined forces to decimate a vast, powerful and wealthy dynasty that flourished in Mali for about a hundred years, the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas. Before that, the Songhay were ruled by the Dia Dynasty, a Songhay Dynasty that reached its apex during the reign of the legendary Sunni Ali Ber, noted today for his cruelty and military prowess. In even earlier times, the Soninke or Wakuri nobility ruled both the Mande Dynasty of Sundiata Keita and the Ghana Dynasty based in Wagadu. In other words, the various family dynasties of West Africa were essentially reincarnations of one another, led by the same notables, family, and kinsmen. These notables are referred to in the Tarikh al fattash as the Wakuri, but they are also known as the Soninke.1 The destruction of the Songhay Dynasty of the Askyias in 1591, after the scouting mission of Leo Africanus, did not then signify the demise of a relatively insignificant dynasty in West Africa. It signified the conclusion of an entire epoch. It signified the demise of black African political autonomy, from that day to the present. Arab Muslims and European Christians worked together to bring black African independence to an end.

The fall of the north, past and present Like those Arab and Tuareg Islamists who recently declared the independent nation of Azawad, the Moroccan army that destroyed the Songhay Dynasty in 1591 was equipped with armaments that were greatly superior to those of the Malians. The Songhay of the late sixteenth century fought rifles with wooden spears, bullets with bows and arrows. The destruction of the Songhay Dynasty was incredibly brutal. It culminated in the murder of the Askiyas and their family members, the slaughter of a great many Wakuri notables, and the enslavement and banishment of many others, including Ahmad Baba al Massufi al Timbukti, the famed jurist and scholar after whom the national library of Timbuktu is now named. Ahmad Baba was held under house arrest in Marrakech for seventeen years. Here’s a quote from the Tarikh al fattash describing the events in Timbuktu in 1591: The Moroccans set to work . . . demolishing buildings. Nothing so frightening or cruel had ever happened to the people of Timbuktu. Never before had they

4

Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy known anything more bitter . . . It is beyond our powers to fully describe all the misery and losses that were suffered at Timbuktu when the Moroccans took occupation of this town. It is beyond our powers to tell the tale of all the violent and excessive acts that were commissioned within these walls. The Moroccans even tore off the doors of the houses and cut down the town’s trees . . .2

These descriptions of the Moroccan Muslims’ and Spanish Christians’ acts in Timbuktu seem oddly contemporary. They uncannily echo current media reports from Timbuktu following the invasion of northern Mali by the Ansar Dine (or the Defenders of the Faith) and MOJWA /MUJAO (the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa), supposedly a splinter group of Al Qaeda. The crimes of these Arab and Tuareg men have included the burning of many of the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu, some dating back 800 years, and the desecration of many of the tombs and shrines where the citizens of Timbuktu have gathered to pray for centuries.3 Both the Ansar Dine and MOJWA are Arab and Tuareg Islamists, which is to say they are militants who embrace a shared and arguably imagined Arab identity, despite the hybrid nature of their own ethnic origins. The Islamist invaders in Mali include peoples of mixed ethnic origin, but all of whom identify with white Arab peoples, by virtue of the noble Arab blood they believe flows in their veins. These militant Islamists conflate the Islamic religion with explicitly racist notions of Arab identity. For instance, those Muslims in the region who do not have noble Arab blood in their veins are perceived as secondclass citizens, if not fodder for enslavement and concubinage. The Bella are a tribe of black Africans who are the slaves of the Tuaregs, while the Hal-Pulaar of Mauritania are the black slaves of the Beydanes (or white Moors). In Mauritania, an estimated quarter of a million Hal-Pulaar remain the slaves of the white Moors of Mauritania, despite the fact that slavery was officially abolished in 1980. Hence, when one speaks of the history of slavery in the Arab world, it is important to note that new chapters of this history are still being written today. Arab and Tuareg Muslims have enslaved black African men and women, simply because they are black, for more than 1,000 years, and they continue to do so today. Unlike the Ansar Dine and MOJWA militants, the vast majority of black Muslims living in West Africa emphatically reject any conflation of the Islamic religion with white Arab culture. After all, Islam has been in West Africa for more than 1,000 years. A famous Songhay proverb clarifies the local perspective on Islam’s relatively newcomer status in West Africa, “If a log floats in the water for 1,000 years, it doesn’t become a crocodile.” In West Africa, Islam has long since been Africanized, not the other way around, which is hardly surprising given the

The Plundering of Mali, Past and Present

5

ancient nature of Sahelian society. That is, one is comfortably a Muslim in West Africa while rejecting the racist notion that the more Muslim one is, the more Arab one must be. But, in the United States today, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 and the killing of Osama Bin Laden, one obsessive and misguided theme is underscored in nearly every analysis of the current crisis in Mali: the containment of Al Qaeda in West Africa. While references to Al Qaeda may help to legitimize US interventions in complex and faraway places like northern Mali, they sometimes obscure the actual history of the region, a history that long predates the jihad of Bin Laden, or the recent toppling of Gaddafi. The West’s obsession with Al Qaeda obscures a fact that is obvious to nearly everyone living south of Gao and Timbuktu: northern Mali was invaded to further Arab interests in a black African region, not to spread the Islamic religion. The response of the Arab Islamic world to the occupation of northern Mali has little to do with questions linked to Al Qaeda, 9/11, or Islamic terrorism. Not a single Arab nation spoke out against the foreign occupation of northern Mali, at least not until the French finally acted. Some Arab states, like Egypt and Qatar, even condemned the French intervention. This is because what is at stake for Arabs like former Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi, a member of the Wahhabist Muslim Brotherhood, is the cultural, economic, and imperial interests of Arabs in the region. Such men and women believe that West Africa belongs to them as a matter of natural right, and not to the people actually living in the region. Morsi’s attitude that places like Gao and Timbuktu belong to Arabs by natural right is echoed in literature from the region that is quite old. In 1591, as recorded in a document from Marrakech called “The Account of the Anonymous Spaniard,” before Songhay was decimated by the invading Moroccan army, the Pasha Jawdar sent a message to the Askiya Isaak in Gao demanding that he surrender because the sovereign Mulay Ahmad was “a sharif, a [noble] descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and to him legitimately belonged sovereignty [of the region].”4 Later, when the Songhay Dynasty falls, a poet of Marrakech and loyal subject of the Moroccan sovereign Mulay Ahmad Al Mansur will celebrate the victory of the white Muslims with these words, “The army of the day hath fallen upon the army of the night, and the whiteness of one hath destroyed the blackness of the other.”5 The more recent invasion of Mali occurred with Libyan arms, the silent complicity of the Arab states, and the full economic support of the oil rich Gulf State, Qatar. None of these factors had anything to do with Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. One might also note that it was not only the Arab states that were

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy

conspicuously silent when Azawad declared its independence. In the African American Islamic community, for instance, little effort was made to elicit US support for Mali, the cradle of ancient Sahelian civilization. This is perhaps not surprising, given that Libya’s deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi was one of the biggest donors to the Nation of Islam, both in the time of Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan.6 At the time Gaddafi was toppled, Farrakhan criticized US support for Libyan dissidents, throwing his support behind the same Gaddafi loyalists that were later to wreak so much havoc in Mali. In the past, black Malians like Ouologuem have severely criticized African Americans, especially the Nation of Islam, for their perceived subservience to chauvinistically Arabist interpretations of the Islamic religion. For instance, regarding the name change of figures like Cassius Clay to “Muhammad Ali,” or the basketball star Lew Alcinder to “Kareem Abdul Jabbar,” Ouologuem once remarked, “It’s as if a Jewish person decided to change their name to Adolph Hitler.”7 While Ouologuem’s views may seem severe in the United States setting, they are not very uncommon in places like Mopti and Sevare, where Ouologuem now lives and where several collaborators with the Ansar Dine and MOJWA were executed by the Malian army in the early days of the French intervention.8

France to the rescue While the French-led expulsion of the Ansar Dine, MOJWA and other Islamists from northern Mali was certainly warranted, it is difficult to be anything but ambivalent about the French role in this intervention. On the one hand, the French did what had to be done. I would even argue that is regrettable that the French did not receive more support from the United States and other nations in driving the jihadists from the north. On the other hand, it would be naïve to imagine that the French acted in anything but their own interests in expelling the Arab and Tuareg marauders from the north. In fact, it was the French who drew the national boundaries that comprise the nation-states of the Sahel – Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, and Senegal. The nation-state system devised by the French was not established to serve the interests of West African peoples themselves, but those of the French. The French-drawn national boundaries busted up hegemonic enclaves of ethnic groups, such as the Mossi, the Tukulur Peulh, and the Tuareg.9 It is also important to note that it was competing Peulh (or Arabist) jihads in the late nineteenth century that created the conditions for French imperial

The Plundering of Mali, Past and Present

7

conquest in northern Mali. In fact, all previous jihads in West Africa were led by the Peulh, including the jihad of Usman Dan Fodio, whose ancestry is traced to the Futa Toro (the far north of Senegal). Like the militants of the Ansar Dine and MOJWA , the Peulh (or black Arabs) tend to identify with Arabic civilization and sometimes think of themselves as white African peoples, although they are not recognized as white Africans in places like Casablanca, Fez, Tripoli, and Mecca.10 Some Peulh have even joined forces with the Ansar Dine and MOJWA , although many are divided in their loyalties. The Peulh who have supported the Arab Islamists think of themselves as white Arabs, like the jihadists who imagine that they are bringing “true” Islam to the region. Peulh jihadists Al Hajj Umar Tall (founder of the Umarian Tijaniyya order that is made up largely of the Tukulur Peulh) and Sekou Amadou (leader of the Qaddriyya and the Macina Peulh of northern Mali) fought each other to the death not long after the time of the American Civil War. Their competing jihads decimated Mali so thoroughly that the French were joyously welcomed to the region by black Malians who were sick of the bloodshed and chaos the competing “Arab” jihadists unleashed. The French traveler Felix Dubois, who journeyed from Bamako to Timbuktu in the 1890s, documented the views of local black inhabitants, who lamented the misery of the era of the Arabist jihads. Here, Dubois cites the view of a black Malian man: The Toucouleurs [Peulh] destroyed and pillaged: many of the inhabitants had nothing left to them but their two ears. The fields were no longer cultivated. The country returned to the bush, and wild animals peopled it. Hyenas came to our very doors and carried away our children in the twilight. Then the Frenchmen came, and Segu [the capital of Al Hajj Umar Tall’s Empire] was destroyed, and joy returned to the country. Peace reigned among us: he who does evil is of a certainty punished . . . Now that the harvest is no longer stolen, the fields are once more cultivated. We can travel without fear . . . Today, all are equal and contented, and one may not do wrong unto another. It is to the white man that we owe this: and dost thou still ask why we are satisfied with their presence and wherefore we rejoice in it? Dost thou not now understand why the country submits unto thee and is peaceful?11

An unabashed imperialist and obvious agent of the French government, Dubois calculated that – due to the infighting of the Peulh jihadists – the French were finally able to penetrate a region that had successfully resisted European colonization for centuries. In fact, Joseph-Jacques Césaire Joffre, who was the general that claimed the long-coveted prize of Timbuktu for France, was later to become even more famous for his defeat of the Germans in World War I at the First Battle of the Marne.12 In other parts of Africa, European colonizers had

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy

long reigned, but not here. Dubois understood then that the French were merely in the right place at the right time. As he traveled more deeply into the Sahel, Dubois marveled at how few French people lived in the region at that time – how few were needed – and how willingly the local black population served the French. Looking into the future, Dubois shrewdly offered his fellow colonialists the following observations in 1898: [W]e recently saw El Hadj Oumar [Al Hajj Umar Tall] and Samory [Touré, the founder of the Wassalou state, which successfully resisted French rule from 1882 to 1898] rise, and it will undoubtedly be in the cause of religious fanaticism that the country will be roused to revolt against our dominion in the future. Our Sudanese possessions are peopled with diverse races owning so little in common with one another, that it would always be possible to bring one tribe to reason with the assistance of another, on the condition that the religious influence, which alone could subdue the jealousies and dissensions of these different nations and unite them in a dangerous whole, must be at once and totally crushed.13

The Malians who welcomed the French more than a hundred years ago were also black Africans. In this sense, the events of January and February 2013, during which the French were so warmly welcomed in Mali, are as uncanny as the descriptions of the decimation of the city of Timbuktu in the Tarikh al fattash. The US State Department, under the leadership of Hillary Clinton, was to some extent responsible for this debacle, as it awarded $500 million for military assistance in northern Mali, but did not oversee the distribution of these resources.14 Most of the tax payer dollars that were intended for Mali’s army in places like Gao, Niafunke, and Timbuktu disappeared in Bamako, leaving Mali’s soldiers in the north poorly equipped to deal with the Arab and Tuareg Islamists. As is said in Mali, “Bamako is a big crocodile. It swallows up everything.” This embarrassment probably accounts for the reluctance of the Obama administration to become more involved in the conflict than it did, despite the obvious urgency of the situation. However, one can be sure that there is a certain irony that was not lost on the citizens of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and other black African nations: in the face of an Arab and obviously racist military invasion from the north, the first African American to sit in the Oval Office did practically nothing, while an ancient black civilization was being looted. In comparing the responses of black African nations to the occupation of Mali and those of the Arab states to the north, the differences are obvious and remarkable. They also reveal how black peoples in West Africa perceive what is happening today and why. In contrast to the silence and complicity of the Arab

The Plundering of Mali, Past and Present

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world, the black African nations of the region, which are also predominately Muslim, sent thousands of armed troops to assist the French in driving out the marauders from the north. This is because the people of Chad, Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere did not believe that the conflict was about Islam, but about Arab interests in the region.

Leo Africanus, the European Arab Amin Maalouf ’s popular novel Leo Africanus was not written for black Africans, but a European and Arab readership. It was written in French and later translated into English, so one is certainly justified in calling it a “romance” or at least a “roman.” The author is a Lebanese French writer, from a Maronite family. Maalouf therefore writes from the perspective of a Franco-Arab Christian man, an identity that is as ambiguous as that of Leo Africanus. This is no doubt the reason why he found Leo Africanus so fascinating a figure. Maalouf presents a romanticized account of the life of Leo Africanus. He imagines an enticing romance between Leo Africanus and a black African girl named Hiba, who is his slave and concubine. Maalouf provides the reader with descriptions of Hiba’s “graceful body” as she seductively dances to “the rhythm of negro music.”15 In the more factual Description of Africa written by Leo Africanus, the reader will find no references to the alluring concubine Hiba. However, Africanus does paint an enticing portrait of Timbuktu as a town with great treasure troves of gold, and where men and women alike wander at night “dancing in the streets.”16 Because Africanus’ account of the town was the only one published in English for hundreds of years, it permanently fixed this image in English literature. In Maalouf ’s novel, Timbuktu is also depicted as a city that is perfect for romance, love affairs, and exotic encounters with the other. This is a not very uncommon depiction of Timbuktu in the books written by Europeans about the fabled city. The magical city of Timbuktu, like El Dorado, is a place that stirs the romantic imagination and inspires sensual dreams. What Maalouf ’s novel and Leo Africanus’ description of Timbuktu share is that they were both written for a European and Christian readership in order to satisfy foreign curiosity about the mythical city of Timbuktu as well as Africa in a more general sense. The actual history of the region, which is recorded in great detail in the Tarikh al fattash and the Tarikh al sudan, does not have much in common with Maalouf ’s romanticized account of the city. In comparison, Africanus’ famous description of Timbuktu offers little more than a brief sketch.

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While the Description of Africa is of obvious historical importance, it is dwarfed by the great wealth of information that is contained in documents written by Songhay peoples themselves. There are literally thousands of these manuscripts that have never been digitalized, much less translated, and that remain hidden in places like Timbuktu, Jenne, Kano, and Oudane. Only two of the Timbuktu chronicles have been translated into English, and one of these, the Tarikh al fattash, is a mere abridgment of a volume that is encyclopedic in scope. These documents bear witness to the ancient and rich nature of black African civilization. This is why the first and last acts of the Arab men recently driven from Timbuktu were to destroy hundreds of manuscripts written by black scribes said to be “un-Islamic.” The crimes of these Arab men had nothing to do with Islam. They were racist acts intended to show the Ansar Dine’s and MOJWA’s contempt for black African culture.

The Meccan sharif of Timbuktu Difficult questions like I am raising here are typically only discussed in academic scholarship, if at all. Even informed Western readers often understand little about the historically important role of ideologies of blood election that have circulated in the region for centuries. An emblematic example of such beliefs may be found in the Tarikh al fattash. A chapter entitled the “Principle Features of the Life and Reign of the Askiya Muhammad” recounts an anecdote by a sharif from Mecca named Al Saqalli. The sharifs believe that they are especially elected Muslims because they hail from Mecca, the birthplace of Islam and because of the noble blood of the Prophet Muhammad that flows through their veins. After a long journey, the sharif named Al Saqalli arrives in Timbuktu where the Wakuri notables warmly greet him. His hosts offer Al Saqalli many gifts, but he manipulates his hosts in order to receive even more gifts from them. To get what he wants, Al Saqalli tells the Wakuri a story. Before coming to the Land of the Blacks, Al Saqalli lived in Baghdad. One morning, after sleeping in a field outside of town, he awoke to find the body of a man who had been slain with a spear. Al Saqalli bent over the dead man and removed the spear. At that moment, three of the dead man’s kin saw Al Saqalli removing the spear. They assumed he was the murderer. Al Saqalli fled the scene, but the three men chased him. They pursued him for many years, through many distant lands. At last, Al Saqalli came to Fez, Morocco, where he was offered hospitality in the home of a notable named Ali Ibn Nan. But, the three Baghdadi

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men who pursued Al Saqalli found where he resided in Fez. They came to the house of Ali Ibn Nan and pounded on his door. They demanded that Ali Ibn Nan turn over Al Saqalli to them at once. But, the law of hospitality was well known in Fez. Ali Ibn Nan could not turn over his foreign guest to these men. To do so would have been a crime. Just as the Prophet Lot felt compelled to turn over his own virginal daughters to the men of Sodom, as told in Genesis, Ali Ibn Nan felt compelled to offer his first born son Abdullah to these three men bent on avenging their slain kinsman. The offer of Abdullah in exchange for the life of the noble sharif Al Saqalli is deemed acceptable to the three Baghdadis, and the young boy Abdullah is killed in Al Saqalli’s place. Because Ali Ibn Nan was willing to sacrifice his first born son on behalf of a blood descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, we are told that God amply rewarded Ali Ibn Nan with a hundred sons in place of the beloved son he lost. God also bestows great riches upon Ali Ibn Nan for his righteous act. The clear implication of Al Saqalli’s story is that God loves the blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad above all others. On the one hand, Al Saqalli’s tale is an allegory extolling the imperative that one must always protect the foreign guest, even at the cost of one’s own life. The ancient law of hospitality requires it. On the other hand, the sharif Al Saqalli is not content to extoll the importance of protecting the foreign guest. He reminds his Wakuri hosts in Timbuktu that Ali Ibn Nan offers his hospitality to a noble blood heir of the Prophet Muhammad. In effect, Ali Ibn Nan says to the Baghdadis, “Take my own beloved son Abdullah and kill him in place of Al Saqalli. For, you must not kill a sharif with the noble blood of the Prophet Muhammad flowing in his veins.”17 In other words, Al Saqalli makes clear to his Wakuri hosts in Timbuktu that he is not just any foreign guest. This is why Al Saqalli is loaded with gifts everywhere he goes, as he travels throughout Africa. To sacrifice everything that you have on his behalf, including your first born son, is to walk on the path of righteousness. This is also why the Askiya Muhammad presents Al Saqalli with nearly 2,000 black slaves, and why the Askiya Muhammad indemnifies Al Saqalli and all his relatives from prosecution under Songhay law, save for the crime of murder.18

The blood of the Askiyas It is not only Arabs like the sharif Al Saqalli and the Islamicists who recently invaded Mali who affirm regressive notions of noble blood identity in the region.

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The Askiyas and Songhay in general, as well many other West African peoples, also believe in the importance of blood and its occult qualities. It would therefore be erroneous to imagine that Arab peoples imported such beliefs into West Africa. Belief in the occult power of blood is far older than Islam and has informed Songhay religion for many centuries prior to the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Such beliefs were also common among the Ancient Egyptians, who left a deep impact on Sahelian society. In the Tarikh al sudan, for instance, one will find an account of the summoning of Songhay sorcerers from the town of Kukiya, which is not far from Gao, to do spiritual battle with the Prophet Moses, on behalf of the Pharaoh.19 As legend has it, the staffs of the Songhay sorcerers turned into snakes at the feet of the Pharaoh. So too did the staff of the Prophet Moses, which swallowed up the staffs of the Songhay sorcerers. This same story is also recorded in the book of Exodus, but without specific reference to the Songhay people (Exodus 7:10). In the Tarikh al fattash, the claim is made that Askiya Muhammad is the penultimate Caliph. The more animist version of the bloodline of the Askiya Muhammad emphasizes the importance of his mother Kassaye, who is believed to be a powerful sorceress.20 That is, the basis of the Askiya Muhammad’s power from this perspective is the maternal blood that flows in his veins.21 So precious are the bodily fluids of the Askiya Dawad that the eunuchs who attend him even gather his spittle.22 The words that the Askiya utters – literally the wet wind that he expectorates from his mouth – are so powerful that they have the power to cause physical altercations in the world.23 To make things happen merely by uttering an incantation is to perform an act of magic. Even the English word “magic” comes from the Egyptian heka, a word that is synonymous with the Sahelian term nyama.24 Whenever one talks about racism in West Africa one is also talking about belief in the occult power of blood, a notion that is far more significant than skin color. Such beliefs are coterminous with Jewish notions of divine election on the basis of one’s maternal blood. In Israel a few years ago, for instance, a pop song celebrated the multi-racial nature of modern Israeli society, evoking the fabled image of the biblical patriarch Joseph with his multi-colored cloak. This song became popular not long after hundreds of black Jews from Ethiopia were airlifted into Israel. Despite the wide array of the external skin colors of modern Israeli Jews, the song suggested, the diverse and multi-ethnic peoples of Israel are nonetheless united by one shared blood. It goes without saying that indigenous Palestinians, unlike the new migrant Ethiopian population, were excluded from this only apparently more inclusive notion of a shared Jewish identity, predicated

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on an archaic theology of blood election. Regressive notions of occult blood identity in Israel parallel those of the Arab and Tuareg Islamists who recently invaded northern Mali, but who are themselves as multi-colored in hue as the patches on Joseph’s famous cloak. Many Arab Muslims who cite the popular slogan that “Zionism Is Racism” themselves live and die by archaic notions of a shared blood identity that are not so very different from the Messianic Zionists and Kookists now colonizing the West Bank.25 As noted above, many outwardly black peoples in the region, such as the Peulh, claim that they are white on the basis of their Arab descent, but their whiteness is due to the noble blood they imagine flows in their veins, not the color of their skin. This is also true in Darfur where Sudanese President Omar al Bachir enlisted many black Janjawids to kill their own people, which these men were willing to do because they saw themselves as having noble Arab blood. In the United States, the question of race and racism is typically refracted through the lens of the complex history of race and slavery and distinct notions of what racism is in the US setting. The racism of northwest Africa that is based in notions of blood nobility is not the same as the racial essentialism of the West, although the racism in this region does bear important similarities to notions of blood nobility that one will find in books like Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf. This is why the Western world would be ill-advised to ignore what is happening in northern Mali or to congratulate itself that such beliefs have nothing to do with its own history and culture.

Conclusion Leo Africanus is an interesting figure because he is a historical composite of the opportunistic invader from the North. The man who was baptized Leo Africanus in Rome, but known in the Maghreb as al-Hasan ibn Muhammad, was an ArabEuropean-Christian-Muslim man, all of these things at once. His scouting trips to the ancient land of Songhay signaled the inauguration of both the Arab Muslim and European Christian conquest of West African civilization. That era has hardly come to a conclusion. In fact Mali is more vulnerable today than it has ever been, vulnerable to the whims of northern powers, including France and the United States, as well as the Arab nations of northern Africa and Gulf State nations like Qatar, those Arab states that, in the words of Yambo Ouologuem, “have been satanically blessed with oil.”26 Among other reasons, Malians welcomed the French into their country not out of any great love of the French

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people but rather an appreciation of the liberal democratic and republican principles upon which French government is based. This is not to say Malians today wish to become Europeanized, or “global-latinized,” as Derrida might put it; it is merely to say that the people of Mali have seen enough of what it is like to live in a society where skin color or the blood that flows in one’s veins is construed as the measure of your worth as a human being.

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The key to understanding the region’s sahelité, in Joseph Paré’s terminology, is the West Africa concept of nyama, which may be translated as “occult means” but also “the word.” This well-known concept is as important to regional thought as the concept of logos is to post-Hellenic thought. However, the Sahelian concept of nyama and its many regional inflections, though dissimilar to the Greek logos, is indeed comparable to the Platonic notion of the word pharmakon (meaning both “poison” and “remedy”), which is a central theme of deconstructive thought. In the case of the recent conflict in northern Mali, jihadists’ beliefs about occult blood and its special properties are ironically at one with pre-Islamic and deep Sahelian notions of the word, construed as aspirated breath that is interlaced with the toxic fluids of the body. But it is extremely difficult to understand Sahelian views about nyama unless one first divests oneself of reflexive Platonic biases about spoken language, typically imagined as an empirical representation of an essential structure on the human interior, the logos or the transcendental word that is inscribed on the soul. Ancient Egyptian society, which existed for some 4,000 years before the birth of Plato, did not assume that the world that we inhabit is a mere shadowy replica of a truer world that is timeless and unchanging. Though the Egyptians did believe in nothingness, they assumed that the world we inhabit was the only one that has ever existed and that ever will exist. This is one reason why the ancient Egyptians mummified the dead: one must be ever vigilant in the struggle against becoming nothing.1 Yet they knew nothing of the realm of eternally existing forms, the ideal world articulated by Plato; or, if they did, it was a very late development in the history of ancient Egypt. Those who wish to understand the complex and even baffling term nyama, which is akin to the Egyptian term heka, must therefore try to think these concepts without reference to Plato. They must do so, not necessarily to deconstruct Platonic idealism, although some might be inclined to do so, but to better understand differences been Sahelian and Western worldviews, especially those shedding light on the question of occult blood and its historical importance in the region. Unlike the 15

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linguistic views of neo-Platonists like Chomsky, deconstructive views of language can help solve many of the mysteries that are posed by Egypto-African concepts of the word emphasizing the speaker’s embodiment. They can also enable a more complex understanding of Sahelian views about the importance of blood and its impact on political events in the region, many that are too hastily attributed to Islam or the machinations of Arab, French, and US policy makers.

Nyama, an occult materialism Though Sahelian peoples themselves have long reflected upon the important role of nyama in shaping daily life in the region, knowledge about nyama outside West Africa has been slow in developing, perhaps due to the relative successes of Sahelian peoples in rebelling against European imperialism for decades prior to the French invasion of the late nineteenth century. Over the last twenty-five years, however, Western-trained academics have increasingly researched, debated, and written about nyama, especially in relation to the charismatic figure of the griot. In the US setting, the publication of volumes on the griot by Thomas Hale, including his path-breaking Scribe, Griot, Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire (1990)2 and Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music (1998),3 Stephen Belcher’s Epic Traditions of Africa (1999)4; and Barbara G. Hoffman, Griots At War: Conflict, Conciliation, and Caste in Mande (2001),5 among other related works like John Williams Johnson’s Epic of Son Jara (1992) and Hale’s The Epic of Askia Muhammad (1996) have led to a rethinking of not only the griot’s role in West African society, but its very basis in pre-Islamic views about sorcery. Paul Stoller’s many ethnographic works on sorcery among the Songhay peoples of northern Mali and Niger have also been instrumental in challenging the philosophical grounds of academic based inquiry into the Sahel zone. Despite the richness of these studies, the concept of nyama, the Mande word for occult “power” or “means,” has nonetheless remained a secondary concern of African cultural criticism. Fascination with the figure of the griot has tended to overshadow the problem of nyama, or, in some cases, generic considerations have taken precedence over matters of the occult. By assuming that nyama flows from the abysmal no place of the blood-filled receptacle that is the human body, and not the Platonic simulacrum of the human soul, many hitherto unresolved enigmas about the griot may be resolved. While it is true that the griot must “learn the secret of occult power [or nyama],” to quote Johnson, as is true of Sundiata Keita in the Mande Epic,6

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knowledge of nyama – so that it does not destroy those who wield it – does not imply Cartesian mastery. But even among the Greeks psychē meant blowing wind before it referred to the human soul. Before psychē became the Immortal Soul, the drama so satisfyingly depicted in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass in the second century CE , it was aspirated breath or wind. I will argue here, however, that the Mande word nyama may be replaced by any number of substitute words for “spirit” in the ancient world. The most ancient term for what nyama signifies is probably the Egyptian word heka, but one might also insert the biblical ruah in its place (assuming the hypotheses of Sigmund Freud and others that the great lawgiver Moses hailed from Egypt),7 or – as Johnson proposes – the Afro-Islamic equivalent of baraka is also synonymous with the Mande term nyama.8 There are plenty of terms that show the dispensability of the word nyama, including the Greek psychē before the Socratic invention of the soul. While the focus in this chapter is on the Mande concept of nyama, and more generally the Mande world of the Bamana,9 Soninke, Khassonke, Maninka, and other groups, the argument made here applies to the larger griot world that comprises of many other diverse peoples in the region. For instance, equivalent Sahelian terms include the Soninke ñaxamala, the Wolof ñeeño, the Fulfulde nyeenyo, and the TukulurFulfulde nyaama. It is difficult to discuss the Mande term nyama without subordinating it to Greek metaphysics, but I will argue here that this is precisely what one must attempt to do, even if – in the end – one finds that one has slipped back into an essentialist logic that is impossible to evade. (The problem is “our” problem, not the problem of the Mande griot.) The Mande who are called the nyamakala include griots (djelu), blacksmiths (numu), tanners (garanke), hunters (donzo), basket-weavers (fina), as well as Islamic praise-singers (fune). To discuss griots apart from the context of their membership in this social group not only exaggerates their social significance, it also promotes a distorted image of the West African bard as a kind of folk troubadour. The griot is only one figure among many others in Sahelian society who concern themselves with nyama. In the end, nyama is the concern of everyone, including the notables with pure blood who seek to evade being contaminated by it. For deconstructive theorists, the Mande concept of nyama, which is strikingly akin to what Plato called the pharmakon in the Phaedrus, may call to mind Derrida’s widely influential essay “Plato’s Pharmacy” in Dissemination (1981), one of Derrida’s most anthologized essays. But, nyama is perhaps more closely akin to ancient ways of thinking about language that are African rather than deconstructive. I would want to underscore here then that the Derridean

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destrukion (or “de-sedimentation”) of Platonic logocentrism occurred only when Derrida dared to reposition Socratic thought within the framework of Egyptian mythologies about language, particularly those surrounding the invention of writing by the god Thoth.10 In Egyptian theology, the creator god Ammon-Ra creates all other gods by an act of speech, or the breath of this god brings forth the universe. Ammon-Ra’s oldest son is believed to have been created by virtue of his ɜhw or “magic,” but this occult power is also hypostatized as a god in its ˘ own right, the Egyptian god known as Heka or the “Magician.” “The word hkɜ is ˙ often left untranslated when it refers to the god: ‘Heka’; or he is called: the god ‘Magic’ . . .” Herman te Velde points out. “Besides magical power hkɜ sometimes ˙ also means magical spell and magical rite.”11 Pneumatic exhalation (or “heka”) is an occult force that infuses the world of things. “In the realm of Egyptian magic,” Ogden Goelet comments, “actions did not necessarily speak louder than words. They were often one and the same . . . Thought, deed, image, and power are theoretically united in the concept of heka. The world is created with, through, by, and for speech.”12 Memphite theology asserted that the universe was brought into being through the power of the spoken word. Throughout Egypt’s long history, the breath remained at the center of Egyptian theology, an ancient concept of language that did not imply any bifurcation of invisible thought and unreal appearance. “In the cosmogony of Thebes,” Cheikh Anta Diop notes, “the god Ammon will say: ‘I am the God who became by himself, and who was not created.’ ”13 Derrida observes that “Ra (the sun) is god the creator, and he engenders the mediation of the word. His other name, the one by which he is designated in (Plato’s) Phaedrus, is Ammon.”14 In Mande creation myth, the creator god is called Mangala (Ngala or Bemba by the Bamana), who creates the twin seeds fani berere and fani ba from his eleusine seed. As is true in Egyptian creation myth, the seeds of Mangala are conceived in the “ ‘egg of God’ which is also called ‘egg of the world.’ ”15 “The world came out of an egg,” as Derrida puts it. “The living creator of the life of the world came out of an egg . . . [I]n his capacity as origin of everything, Ammon-Ra is also the origin of the egg.”16 The God of Genesis also speaks the world into being, but this ancient concept of language is repressed under Platonic-Christian hegemony. “[T]o assert that matter was not eternal, that the world had a temporal origin, that substance came into being through divine fiat, indeed through divine speech,” Susan Handleman writes,“(‘And God said,“Let there be . . .’ ”) threatened the foundations of Greek ontology.”17 In pre-Platonic Egyptian theology, the creator god brings forth the world through an act of speech but also by masturbating his children into existence. The spoken word and human semen are both construed as

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magical fluids that are voided from the god’s body. The word is a seed, as is true in Platonic and Christian thought, but no womb or soul is required for its germination. The male god is self-sufficient, not a sower of seeds in search of fertile soil. His word or sperm is an autonomous and powerful force. He is the god who begets without partner and whose spirit infuses the world of things. There can be no objective universe for the god’s word to reflect upon since it already saturates what Plato called the realm of becoming. In Egyptian theology, philosophy is already breathtaking heresy, the True Ideal an unspeakable atheism. It is undeniable that Ammon-Ra’s offspring Osiris is the father of the son Horus, but, like his Greek counterpart Zeus, Osiris remains the grandson of a more distant and originary father god. Osiris is the son of the son of the father god, who is himself not a metaphysical ground. The spectral abyss of fathers and sons marks a passage into eternity but guarantees nothing outside its own emptiness. To quote Jan Assman, the creator god is “the one who makes himself millions . . . In Egyptian, ‘millions’ also means ‘endless,’ and the word is etymologically connected with the concept of ‘eternity’ as an endless plentitude of time.”18 The paradoxical Greek belief in the Father as intangible yet truly existing essence, which is then represented by a filial copy in the unreal world of the senses, signifies a break from a far more ancient thinking of the word that flourished in Egypt and elsewhere, a theology of the word as groundless ground or mise en abîme. Diop has convincingly shown Plato’s indebtedness to Egyptian cosmogony, especially in the case of The Timaeus, a text that has also received much attention from Derrida and Julia Kristeva. In his last major work, Diop ponders the absence of an atheistic idealism in Egyptian thought, but this does not imply for him that Egyptian “philosophy” is somehow lacking in subtlety or sophistication. For Diop, the epistemological break of Platonism seems to be a sign of Athens’s decadence rather than its strength. Diop’s critique of Platonism mirrors those of Nietzsche and Heidegger. However, Nietzsche’s critique of logical binarism in Western philosophy has been slow in entering into the mainstream of academic Egyptology. Tom Hare, who intervenes in the discipline of Egyptology as an outsider, is one of the few contemporary critics who has shown how Egyptian concepts of the word are merely different, not inferior to Greek ones: “[H]ow often have we heard that the Egyptians could not think abstractly, as the Greeks did,” Hare observes. “This contention . . . confuses the presence of one thing with the absence of another.”19 Western scholars of the Sahel have understandably been fascinated with the figure of the griot, but they have also, like their counterparts in Egyptology, not fully assimilated the lessons of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. One notable exception may be Patrick McNaughton. In

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The Mande Blacksmiths and elsewhere, McNaughton cautions about the problems inherent in projecting Greco-Christian ethics upon Mande culture: “A pattern runs through our literature on Mande culture that applies a Western sense of morality to ideas and practices that Mande individuals generally view in a different way.”20 Father Joseph Henry’s L’ame d’un peuple africain: Les Bambara,21 which was published in 1910, is perhaps the most obvious example of the ethnographic tendency to refract Mande society through the distorting lens of a Greco-Christian ethics. Henry’s influential but misleading descriptions of nyama depict it as a kind of Satanic fluid, as if Sahelian views on the word can easily be assimilated into Judeo-Christian theology.

Nyama, heka, and psychē The occult concepts of heka, nyama, and ruah are sometimes misconstrued as early variants of the post-Socratic Greek term logos. In fact, heka, ruah, and nyama are closer to the Greek term psychē, which is a creative wind that intertwines with eros to birth the human soul. In the OED, psychē means “breath, to breathe, to blow, (later) to cool; hence, life (identified with or indicated by the breath); the animating principle in man and other living beings, the source of all vital activities, rational or irrational, the soul or spirit, in distinction from its material vehicle, the body; sometimes considered as capable of persisting in a disembodied state after separation from the body at death.” Martin Bernal suggests that the Egyptian root šw with the masculine article kɜ may well be the origin of the Greek psychē.22 The Egyptian article kɜ, also transcribed as ka signifies the double, specter, or ghost. In Bernal’s scheme, ka is the etymological precursor of the Greek ker or kar in Dorian and Aeolic dialects (transcribed in Greek and Coptic as ke, ki, and choi), which is used by Homer to mean “fate” or “soul.” Bernal argues that the Greek term psychē, in Egyptian kɜ and šw, represents “two different souls or aspects of the personality.”23 Bernal’s etymology of the Greek psychē is convincing; however, the Egyptian šw is also a hieroglyph for invisible breath that is weighed against the heart of the dead man. For ancient Egyptians, admission to the afterlife is contingent upon speaking the truthful word. The spoken word is an invisible word. It may not be seen, hence the appropriateness of the sign of the feather, an object that is associated with weightlessness, or that may be blown by the mouth’s wind. Bernal observes that kɜ, which is signified by the hieroglyph for open arms, suggests a concept of “open relations between beings,”24 but he does not comment upon the question

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of what a deconstructive theorist, following Derrida, might call “iterability” in relation to the Egyptian concept of the double; that is, how words are meaningful only on the condition that they are repeated, not as things-in-themselves. Every Egyptian word has its ghostly double, but this does not mean that kɜ is a metaphysical ground. In the Coptic New Testament, heka is used to signify the Greek word mageia or magic: “There are several words in the Egyptian language, including ɜhw and hkɜ, which are usually translated as ‘magic,’ ” te Velde notes. ˙ ˘ “The word hkɜ has been preserved in Coptic . . . and is found, int.al., in the Coptic ˙ bible translation of Acts 8, where it is used of the sorceries of Simon Magnus.”25 Heka, which is written as H kɜ, signifies “magic power, divine creative energy, . . . ˙ vital potential, [and] mysterious efficacy.”26 Bernal’s linking of the Egyptian kɜ of H kɜ and the Greek kēr (or kār) of psychē may be brilliant scholarship, but his ˙ theses regarding Egyptian philosophy are somewhat simplistic. In his zeal to restore Egypt’s place in Western cultural history, Bernal ignores important differences between Sophist conceptions of the word and more abstract, atheistic, or philosophical conceptions. Whether or not Plato imports philosophy from ancient Egypt, as some have claimed, the Socratic articulation of logocentric thinking in the Phaedrus constitutes a significant break from the contingencybased thinking of Sophists like Isocrates and Gorgias. Pre-Socratic thinkers in Greece are much closer to early Memphite theologians than Plato. Bernal may be correct that logocentric philosophy originates in Egypt, but it does not necessarily follow that radically different ways of thinking about language did not once prevail in Egypt, as they do now in West Africa. Bernal seeks to restore dignity to the ancient Egyptians by granting them the ability to think in philosophical terms; however, it does not seem to occur to him that philosophical thinking may be a marker of Egypt’s decline, not its greatness.27 In the Phaedrus, the hallucinatory receptacle of the Greek soul is not born until aspirated breath conjoins with sexual desire, the demonic in Heideggerian terms, or what Nietzsche calls a certain “musical mood.”28 The logos, which is inscribed on the soul, and which becomes the ground of truth in Platonism, represses all memory of the blood-filled lungs. A veil is drawn upon the bloody cavern from which the wet word blows. The deconstructive maxim that “there is no outside of the text” is an affirmation of the power of the word, spirit, or pneumatic wind. In other words, there is no textuality without spiritus. There is no outside of this occult power, no world of things for words, or the logos, to reflect upon. What Derrida calls “spirit” in Specters of Marx (in effect, aspirated breath) ushers forth from the cavern of the human lungs, spurred on by orgiastic desire for sexual union with the other. The pneumatic and the erotic herein intertwine to birth the soul as a

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hollowed out space outside the abyss of the blood-filled lungs, which are also synonymous with heart. The soul or mind is born from spirit, from the groundless ground of the body, although it buries the memory of its orgiastic origins. Derrida’s deconstruction of Platonic thought shows that the soul is a myth of language, an invention of the spirit that is propelled by sexual longing for the other. The simulacrum called the Soul makes the radically impossible claim that it is “outside the text,” outside the spirit of the mother. The Soul is a thing made of wind, after “the demonic secret of Eros has been put to work.”29 There is no soul that is not first a matter of aspirated breath, which comes from the abyss of the blood-filled heart. We may say then that the soul or psychē is a liquid text, not an interior receptacle but an exterior fluid that is ejaculated from the orifice of the human mouth. The Greek word psychē is a figure-of-speech, or an already impossible time-space conflation in which spirit, or aspirated breath, and specter, or the visual double, are conjoined in a paradoxical binary. This is so because the word that is heard by the ears can never be seen by the human eyes, only its effect upon the body; conversely, the word that enters the body through the lens of the eyes can never be heard or spoken to, only silently observed. (Derrida is careful to make both of these points in Specters of Marx, which is in part why he calls deconstruction “the experience of the impossible.”) The Greek psychē after Plato becomes a spirit-specter binary, a curtain now drawn over the abysmal coil of blood. In Dissemination, Derrida describes the pharmakon as a powerful liquid that can disable or heal those who receive it. “[T]he pharmakon always penetrates like a liquid; it is absorbed, drunk, introduced into the inside . . . Liquid is the element of the pharmakon.”30 The written word is associated with the pharmakon because it is disembodied or authorless, an orphan without a guardian to keep it from going astray. Plato would have us believe that the spoken word (or spirit) is closer to the Truth than the written word (or specter) because of the presence of the good son, who re-presents the Father in the fallen realm of the sensual, what Plato calls the realm of becoming. Heka by contrast is a spoken word (but also written word) that is without a guardian and is inherently dangerous in its autonomy. In the case of nyama, the category of play is not stigmatized, as in the disembodied pharmakon of writing in the Phaedrus, but construed as a valorized and serious, if not deadly, activity. Hoffman emphasizes that in Mandé society “polysemy is the norm and ambiguity is often the desired result: multiplicities of meanings are conveyed by Mande speech, often more meanings than we have English words for.”31 In her PhD dissertation, she observes that “[v]eracity is not the point of the jeliw’s praise. They intend their words to stir, to move, to

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arouse strong emotions, to evoke that which is possible, not to describe that which is verifiable.”32 Hoffman also cites the Mandé proverb “play does not kill seriousness,”33 a folk aphorism that could not be further from the Socratic stigmatization of play in the Phaedrus. In fact, Hoffman’s Griots at War shows how lethal play can be in Mande society. “It was through the process of studying the words of the naraw in Kita,” Hoffman’s states, “that I learned how dangerous, even deadly, the nyama of talk can be.”34 McNaughton similarly insists that, for the Mande, “the interpretation of good and evil is much more dependent upon points of view.”35 McNaughton argues that, “issues of good and evil seem rarely to drive the Mande.”36 The simplest definition of nyama is “power” or “means,” often repeated synonyms that reinforce a concept of language that implies indifference to ethics or ideal paternal authorities. If this is so, or if the Mande concept of nyama is closer to the Egyptian heka than the post-Socratic logos, it may be possible to rethink the role of the griot as a discursive complex of nyama rather than a verbal artist who manipulates the material substance of language. Hoffman, for instance, describes nyama as “the energy that inhabits all matter and all beings.”37 McNaughton, whose description Hoffman enthusiastically affirms, describes nyama as “the world’s basic energy, the energy that animates the universe . . . a special energy or occult power.”38 Various scholars who have attempted etymologies of the Mande terms nyama and nyamakala have emphasized their complex history and ambiguity, their possible links to Soninke dialects and Western Mande forms of the word like nyakamala (nyaka for “celebration” and mala which means “to preserve”). In “Etymologies of Nyamakala,” Charles S. Bird, Martha B. Kendall, and Kalilou Tera report that a well-known Malian jalimuso informed them that a defining criteria of the nyamakala is the ability to manifest majigi, the Mande word for “magic.”39 The Egyptian word heka is the etymological precursor of the Greek mageia, or magic.40 Bernal shows how the Egyptian heka is the probable source of the Greek word for hundred, which is hekaton, but also the old crone goddess of magic Hekate.41 Bernal’s suggestion that heka is the etymon of the Greek numeral hekaton is compelling in part because it implies a connection with the measuring scale of the jackal Annubis. What all of these terms share is the common root ka from the Egyptian heka, which may be the etymological source of the Greek psychē. Bird, Kendall, and Tera write that “[i]n a typical example, nyama is held to mean ‘natural force’ and kala is held to mean ‘stick,’ ‘twig,’ or ‘straw’ and, by extension, ‘the handle of a tool,’ as in dabakala, ‘hoe handle.’ ”42 The griot is someone who “know[s] how to handle nyama, as one would handle a tool.”43 Bird, Kendall, and Tera also note that, “the

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compound nyamakala [is] the only word in any Mande language in which kala refers to human agents.”44 This latter point is important because it dramatizes the unusual social status of the nyamakala, and also helps to account for the ancient custom of burying griots in baobab trees. The branch, twig, stalk, stick, or toolhandle suggest the penis, which ejaculates the seed from which the world springs; that is, kala’s phallic connotations imply that nyama is semen that is ejaculated into the ear of the other. Citing her teacher El Hadji Yamuru Diabaté, Hoffman writes, “To speak griot language to someone is to make its nyama enter him.”45 Bird, Kendall, and Tera list meanings for nyama as follows: “evil or satanic; morally neutral; dangerous; polluting: energizing or animating; necessary for action; or indicative of imperfect self-control.”46 Nyama can also mean filth, waste, garbage, or refuse. McNaughton suggests that the root nya should be translated as “means . . . ability, the capacity to succeed, the wherewithal to make something work . . .”47 Youssouf Cissé also describes nyama as meaning life, spirit, or endowed with animated spirit, “a flux that obeys the will of the soul.”48 The word is construed as a seed although Socrates dogmatically rejects disembodied forms of discourse as a pharmakon, a Greek word that means both “remedy” and “poison,” as Derrida has shown.49 Bird, Kendall, and Tera document that “kala can mean ‘powerful agent,’ something with the force to kill, and, by extension, ‘antidote’ or ‘remedy.’ ”50 These scholars state, “This [meaning] expands the logical possible meanings for nyamakala to such things as antidote for evil; remedy against pollution; antidote for poison; or remedy for garbage.”51 Nyama is not an illness, but it is a pharmakon that may cure or cause illness. The griot has historically been associated with tasks involving poison, including the poisoning of arrow tips.52 The nyamakala not only use their knowledge of poisons for the sake of warfare: they are also known as “masters of the leaves” or “masters of medicine [furatigiw].”53 David Conrad and Barbara Frank have suggested that griots may not be buried in the earth because of their connection to dangerous medicines: “[Informants] explain that if griots had been buried in the ground or thrown into the river or ocean, the crops would have failed or the fish would have died.”54 Though Father Henry conflates the nyamakala with Eurocentric satanism cults, he rightly emphasizes that the fluid of nyama may cause illness, suffering, and death.55 The Egyptian concept heka similarly may be employed for evil purposes: “The Egyptians were aware that unordered creative energy was also at work [in the universe],” te Velde notes. “Sometimes we read of evil hkɜ or ˙ the need of protecting oneself against the hkɜ of others.”56 Dominique Zahan ˙ remarks that, “a skilled griot can derange or stupefy the one who hears his

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balemani [genealogy] recited, if he should not stop him in time with a gift.”57 Occult possession is one possible consequence of the release of the fluid called nyama. “Nyama is a force, a power,” Henry writes, “or if one prefers, an energy, a fluid possessed by every man, every animal, every living being.”58 Henry rightly insists upon the matter of fluid in his definition, as does Charles Monteil, who calls nyama “a fluid common to all nature.”59 Nyama can also mean the saliva that is necessary to hold the wind together as well as a magical substance with healing properties. Johnson reports seeing a Mande woman asking a griot for a blessing by holding out her hands so that he could spit into them. The woman then “bathed” in the spittle by rubbing the liquid blessing into her face: “In Mali incantations over various libations are generally terminated by spitting into the mixture before it is consumed,” Johnson comments. “The moisture of the spittle vitalizes the power of the brew.”60 In fact, the saliva of the griot, because it is infused with nyama, is believed to possess curative properties.61 West African views about the supernatural aspects of the griot’s saliva are echoed in numerous Egyptian texts such as The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth By Day. “Spittle has an important function in a number of Egyptian creation stories where a generative force akin to that of semen is ascribed to it,” Goelet notes.62 In The Egyptian Book of the Dead, spittle is characterized as possessing curative powers (see Chapters 17, 72, and 102). The liquid substance of mother’s blood, transmuted into a bonding saliva, is yet another manifestation of the Mande word, provided we think it outside the categories of the ontological. “The text is spit out,” Derrida comments. “It is like a discourse in which the unities model themselves after an excrement, a secretion. And because it has to do here with a glottic gesture, the tongue working on itself, saliva is the element which sticks the unities together.”63 In this sense, saliva, blood, sweat, urine, feces, and semen are interchangeable.

Nyama and the body’s fluids In a physiological sense, the elocutionary utterance comes from the blood-filled lungs as a wet wind that penetrates the ear of the other. The ancient Egyptians imagined the word’s interior site as a container of blood, or heart filled with the blood of the mother. In The Papyrus of Ani, this text’s most famous image depicts the heart of the mother as it is weighed on the scale of judgment against the feather of truth (šw) or the hieroglyph for invisible breath. The occult word is a wind that drips with the blood of the mother. The word comes from this bloody

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no place as a powerful force. Blood is the essence of pneumatic breath, but it is not a metaphysical substance. The word of the nyamakala is saturated with the blood of the other. Sory Camara has argued that links between the Mande terms for griot and blood are purely coincidental, proposing instead that the term jeli or djeli (the Mande term for griot) may come from the Mande word for “housing,” which is jiyali, from the verb jiya, which means “to house a person.”64 However, there is an important link between the terms jeli (the Mande word for blood) and jiyali, rather than a nullifying contradiction, as Camara suggests. This is so because the dwelling that is the groundless ground or site of spirit’s origins is an earth-cavern, maternal womb, or house made of blood. After surveying all known tales of the nyamakala’s origins, Hale concludes that “[b]lood . . . appears as a common feature of all of these stories of [the griot’s] origin and reinforces the close association between the griot and a significant social taboo.”65 West African legends of the “first” griot involve an act of cannibalism during which an older brother cuts off a piece of his flesh to feed his starving younger sibling. Hale points out that the wide diffusion of the tale of the two brothers, one of whom unwittingly commits an act of cannibalism, offers evidence of the ancientness of this story.66 For instance, Claude Meillassoux has recorded a medieval Soninke version of the griot’s origin that recounts the fall of the Ghana Empire.67 The similarities between this ancient legend of the griot’s origin and the religious enactment of Egyptian ritual are striking. Ritual performances of the Osirian monomyth, which were staged throughout the Nile Valley for centuries, pitted Seth against Horus, or Osiris’s killer and brother against his posthumously conceived son.68 In one of the cycle’s most often repeated episodes, Horus tricks Seth into eating his semen, which is disguised in lettuce. “The loser is the one who is penetrated by the semen of the other,” Jan Assman notes.69 After unwittingly eating Horus’s semen, Seth must acknowledge that Horus is more powerful, and that he is now subject to Horus. In fact, Seth must publically proclaim that Horus is the rightful ruler: “The triumph of Horus signifies the end of strife and the beginning of a period of peace and well being . . .,” Assman comments, “a period to which every king laid claim.”70 The Osiris cycle reenacts the reconciliation of Upper and Lower Egypt, but it also establishes the protocol of the noble and the one who must publicly sing his praises. When Seth and the “first” griot eat semen or blood, they violate a primal taboo by inverting the natural order. They make themselves monstrous by performing an act that leads to their downfall and creates a clearly defined social hierarchy. Both Seth and the griot are tricked into performing an act that they feel is profoundly abhorrent. If this act is performed unwittingly, it also empowers the

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griot in far-ranging ways. In the Egyptian context, te Velde points out that “an ordinary person would certainly like to make magic or to be creative, but he is only rarely able to do so.”71 The violation of the taboo against consuming the body’s fluid converts the ordinary person into an extraordinary one. This taboo is referenced in The Book of the Dead which contains numerous chapters that are formulas uttered to prevent the eating of human feces: “What I detest, I will not eat . . .” the scribe Ani repeatedly swears.72 In a fascinating etymology, the Malian scholar Bokar N’Diaye writes that nyama means manure, filth, or feces.73 N’Diaye’s etymology of nyama as feces is also affirmed by Meillassoux, who reports that popular Mandé etymologies of this term emphasize its meaning as “ordure” [human waste].74 Nyama is then all of these things: blood, semen, feces, saliva, the strange and powerful substances of the human body. Nyama not only means energy or life-force, it also means “feces, trash, garbage, and, by extension, bloated, swollen,” McNaughton states, “literally crawling with nature’s products or processes gone out of control.”75 McNaughton’s etymology coordinates very well with Stoller’s personal experience of occult power as “the filth [that is] in the heart.”76 “The apparent contiguity between power and filth implies the danger harbored by the power. The world’s energy allowed to get out of hand could leave the world a fetid ruin.”77 In the Christian scriptures, it is precisely the ancient injunction against eating human feces that Jesus of Nazareth calls into question: “It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles that person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one . . .” Jesus insists. “Do you not realize that everything that enters into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled into the latrine?” (Matthew 15:11–17). Like the Christian god-man, the nyamakala become outcasts because they have violated the taboo against eating the body’s waste. Hale summarizes a wide range of scholarly sources to suggest that griots are buried in baobab trees because they are polluted by their consumption of the body’s fluids and are therefore considered unworthy of burial in the earth.78

Nyama, gender, and the musical instrument If the breath or spirit also implies a bodily fluid, the significance of the bard’s instrument may be linked to its ability to generate this powerful substance. One of Susan and Roderick McIntosh’s more dramatic finds at Jenne-Jeno includes a stone fetish of a reclining figure wearing an amulet around its neck.79 The figure, as the McIntoshes note, is clearly hermaphroditic; the fact that it wears an amulet around its neck arguably links it to the griots, who to this day arm themselves

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with amulets in a similar manner.80 By definition, the griot is the one who defies conventional binaries: “Despised yet desired, needed yet loathed,” Hoffman writes. “Nowhere is this paradox thoroughly explicated; however, where there is social paradox, there are usually questions of power at issue.”81 Matters of gender identity are finally subordinate to nyama, as well as the sheer power of erotic desire. The power of the breath in Mande society is inextricable from the music of the instrument, which awakens orgiastic desire. A.M. Jones has written about what he calls “African metrical lyrics,” or the inseparability of music and lyrics in the Sahelian context.82 The music of the ngoni, kora, balafon, and drum necessarily intertwines with the aspirated breath of the griot. (It is important to point out that the ngoni, molo, and related instruments are far more common than the kora as the primary stringed instruments for the griot.) The musical instrument functions chiefly as an aphrodisiac to coax pneumen from the lungs. To insist upon the indispensability of the kora is really to insist upon the indispensability of sexual desire, for the griot cannot sing until he or she is sufficiently aroused by the music. In regards to the drum, Titinga Frederic Pacéré is probably right to suggest that the word of the drum, what he calls “bendrology” [bendre: More for “drum made from a calabash” + logy or word] is in some sense “prior” to both the oral-aural word and the music of the stringed instrument, but only insofar as he means the invisible rhythm of the blood-filled heart. This word could not, however, be a metaphysical “logos” but a physiological organ that pumps blood. In fact, the More word for griot also is bendre as Pacéré himself points out. “The Bend-Naba, or chief of the Bendre (drum made from a calabash), is the chief of the griots.”83 The actual or external drum, like the kora, ngoni, or balafon, is also an aphrodisiac to get the griot’s heart beating, or to heat up the blood of the griot. The instrument of the griots and the musicians of ancient Egypt serve a similar function despite apparent gender differences of the performers. Eric Charry and Hale have been cautious about articulating possible links between the Egyptian lute and its West African counterpart (in Mande the ngoni; in Wolof, xalam; in Fulbe, hoddu; in Soninke, gambare; in Songhay molo). Charry, for instance, argues that the linguistic evidence is sketchy, emphasizing that the Egyptian lute was played by women, not men.84 It is true that Egyptian images of the lute depict women rather than men playing this instrument, but the performer’s gender is either irrelevant or secondary to the question of heka or the magical wind that issues from the throat. In numerous images of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, she is shown bestowing a pearl necklace called a menat upon her lover. The menat is not only an ornament worn around the neck, but a

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musical instrument that inaugurates the resurrection of the dead. Isis similarly brings Osiris from the dead through her healing sexual powers. The sistrum, or sesheshet, which is like a rattle or gourd, serves a similar function: to transmit vital energy to her lover that is necessary to his spiritual rebirth. Hathor, mistress of the menat, is “the female element that puts into motion the intrinsic forces of all manifestations of the divine.”85 The ngoni similarly stirs the griot’s desire so that nyama may be ejaculated from his throat: what the Greeks called eros is indispensable to this process. This is why the lyrics and the music are “inseparable,” as Jones puts it. If women alone are depicted playing the lute in the Egyptian pyramid texts, Hare points out that in Egyptian art more generally “[t]he objects of erotic attention seem to be exclusively women.”86 Charry notes that only women are depicted playing the lute in ancient Egypt, but it is likely that these images merely signify the sexism of the artisan. “There is, obviously, a close relationship between the economic structure of the funerary industry [in ancient Egypt] and the construction of the epistemological subject,” Hare states. “[T]ombs and their accoutrements were overwhelmingly created for men . . . As a consequence, the epistemological position upon which these artifacts are centered is male.”87 In regards to the concept of heka, what is more significant is the Egyptian conception of the instrument as aphrodisiac.

Nyama and the apparition of the inapparent The concepts of nyama and heka suggest an occult materialism of the body, which is nonetheless not a metaphysics, at least not in any post-Platonic sense. The Mande see nyama “as both natural and mystical,” McNaughton states, “a special energy or occult power which most Westerners would consider supernatural.”88 But this also means that the world of the griot is a frightening world of spirit without presence, a world where ghosts are real and “man” is the chief ghost of all. In research I conducted among the Umarian Tijaniyya of Northern Mali and Burkina Faso in 1996–7, I learned from Tukulur-Peulh and Dogon adepts of their belief that images of the dead could be summoned from a collective archive through the occult power of certain sounds. In many cases, conjuration practices occur during group prayers in which adepts utter the name of the dead person they wish to summon. In March 2008, I conducted further interviews with the Umarian Tijaniyya of Alawar, Senegal, which is the birthplace of Al Hajj Umar Tall. The Tijaniyya of northern Senegal, who are predominately Peulh, confirmed what I had learned previously about occult

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views of the archive among the followers of Al Hajj Umar Tall today.89 In both cases, this power was credited to the teaching of the ancient Egyptians, should the adepts who utter the name of the person summoned be sufficiently pure of heart.90 Mohamed Abdoulaye Maïga, whom I interviewed in Ouagadougou in August 1997, informed me of the following: [T]here are certain sounds that exist, pure sounds that have been passed down through the centuries. These sounds have no real meaning in themselves. They are devoid of sense . . . You will find these sounds in the Quran, but they are much older than the time of Muhammad. They originate before the founding of Christianity, even Judaism. The Egyptians taught these sounds to the Jews, who passed them down in their turn . . . If uttered by the person disciplined in Islam, one may evoke images of the dead, even conversing with the dead . . . God loves all people the same, of course, but those who follow his commandments receive higher favors. If such a person utters these sounds, he can gain access to the archive wherein the totality of human history resides. This archive contains everything that has ever happened and that will happen in history, the past as well as the future . . . Everyone who has ever lived or who will ever live also exists within this archive. I mean their psychic bodies, of course, our doubles. Not our physical bodies . . .91

The elocutionary word for the ears (“spirit” in deconstructive thought) is not identical to the signatory word for the eyes (“specter” in deconstructive thought). The spoken word is an invisible wind that blows over the fine hairs of the ears. When the double appears, it is a spectral image generated by the power of the breath, in Tukulur-Fulfulde nyaama. The specter can actually be seen, or so the conspirators believe, but it is not present in any ontological sense. The Umarian Tijaniya adepts conjure the apparition through the power of the human voice, a ritual in which the son becomes the father of the father. The conjurer births the image that wells up from inside himself, or from the coil of the human body. Although the thing that he sees cannot be seen, for vocalized wind (or spirit) is not a figurative image (or specter), he must accept on faith this impossible event, what Derrida calls a “phenomenological conjuring trick” or “the apparition of the inapparent.”92 Those who allegedly see the specter swear to keep silent, thereby affirming their role as authoritative guardians of the archive from which the specter is summoned, the maternal house of blood. The archive (from the Greek arkhē) “names at once the commencement and the commandment,” Derrida observes, “the order of the sequential, or the there where things commence” and “the order of the jussive, or the there where men and gods command.”93 However, a veil is always drawn upon the maternal

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dwelling or earth cavern and its secrets, which may not be disclosed on penalty of death. Elsewhere, I have referred to this aspect of conjuration as “the truncheon effect.”94 There is no theology, no possibility of belief, without the secret. The specter (mbeelu or sometimes rahwan in Fulfulde) may or may not appear: “One will never be able to prove that it happened,” Derrida observes, “but only swear that it did.”95 It is always possible that faith in the specter’s apparition, or the appearance of the invisible ghost, amounts to simple conspiracy. It is certain, in any event, that those who forcibly remove the veil are destined to find nothing, for there is absolutely nothing behind the sound. Maïga’s description of Umarian Tidjaniya conjuration rites emphasizes the importance of sound apart from its semantic meaning. The sound uttered by Sufi adepts is not wholly without meaning though its meaning seems to reside in the tone: “These words have no real meaning in themselves,” Maïga insists, but are “pure sounds.”96 The concept of a “pure sound” is paradoxical; however, Maïga’s description resonates with the findings of Sahelian researchers like Judith T. Irvine, Stoller, Pacéré, Hoffman, and others. Stoller insists that, for the Songhay, “[sound] is believed to have an existence separate from the domains of human, animal, and plant life.”97 “Sounds carry forces which are not only good to think, but good to feel.”98 Zahan similarly describes nyama as a kind of “vibration” that can be felt from deep inside the body.99 Irvine, whom Stoller cites from an unpublished paper, also argues that words in West Africa “do not just have meaning.”100 Irvine’s views are echoed by Hoffman, who points out that the manner of speaking may be more important in the Mande context than the actual words themselves: “We may choose our words, but we cannot control how they are understood, or what effects they have once they are spoken . . .” Hoffman states. “What cannot be communicated by the word itself, it is hoped, will be transmitted by the way the word is spoken, by the context in which it is used, by the expressiveness with which it is uttered.”101 Stoller also argues that the occult word in the Sahel should be defined as “an energy which should be apprehended in and of itself rather than only as a representation of something.”102 Maïga’s description of the word as “pure sound” is non-Platonic, but he also affirms his belief in the iterability of these ritually transmitted sounds. The Umarian Tijaniya’s emphasis on the integrity of those who utter them insures that the adept’s repetition of the pure sound will not entail a mechanical parody of it, but an authentic enactment, a true affirmation. The meaning of the sound lies not only in its esoteric tone, but the religious belief or enunciation of the speaker. The sound must be felt as a vibration from deep inside the body, as a physiological trembling of the entrails.

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Conclusion Recent anthropological and cultural critics of the nyamakala have tended to refrain from interpreting gathered data about nyama, instead contenting themselves with an objective presentation of the facts. With some exceptions this same tendency can also be observed in the work of prominent Egyptologists. Given the vast cultural differences that must be negotiated between the West and the Egypto-African setting, this would seem an eminently safe route for scholars to take. However, the unadorned display of empirical evidence typically rests upon the appeal to logos, almost always underwritten by the logic of the thesis. In Aristotle, reason is irrefutable brute fact that always trumps personal authority, as well as the audience’s empathy for the matter at hand. To better understand the Sahelian context, it may be worth remembering that the logic of thetic argumentation already implies an ethos, or an “ethics,” behind which sits the dwarf of certainty. There is no speaking of nyama that is not already a theory of nyama. At present, North American and European scholarship on the griot seems to have reached an impasse, hamstrung by the inherent ethnocentrism of its critical methodologies. Deconstruction cannot in itself deliver the occult secrets of African concepts of the word like heka and nyama, but it can help to circumvent the more obvious limitations of post-Platonic and logocentric thought. Its success, in this regard, lies less in its novelty as literary theory than its lack of novelty, the fact that it echoes forgotten ways of thinking about language that prevailed before the Platonic “error of truth” was first articulated.

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The Sahelian Specter

Though scholars today continue to debate the historical origins of alphabetic literacy, it most likely arose in ancient Egypt and only later evolved into the less pictorial but far more efficient alphabets, such as the Hieratic, Protosinaitic, Phoenician, and early Greek writing systems.1 Writing in ancient Egyptian included at least three distinct types of signs: the logogram, a sign that is a visual image of the thing that it signifies; the phonogram, a sign that is derived from a logogram but that signifies a sound rather than a visual object; and the determinative, a sign that is also derived from a logogram but that clarifies a word’s meaning in cases where one cannot be certain.2 We will not survey here the historical development of writing practices in ancient Egypt, other than to note their basis in circumcision, scarification customs, and other forms of ritual cutting, and to shed light on the deconstructive concept of the specter in comparison with Egypto-African concepts of the word, and in relation to blood ideologies in the Sahel.3 An alphabetic sign is typically defined as a sign that refers to a sound, rather than to a visual object. Theorists of orality-literacy contrasts like Jack Goody, Walter J. Ong, and Eric Havelock have long debated the transformative role of alphabetic literacy in human history, especially among the early Greeks, who are credited with the technological breakthrough of the alphabetic transcription of vowels. Though helpful in conceptualizing differences between oral-aural and literate societies, the views of theorists like Ong, Havelock, and Goody tend to be based in logocentric assumptions about human language that sharply contrast with those of Derrida.4 Ancient Egyptian beliefs about the written word’s autonomy, what I have referred to as an “occult materialism” of the word, significantly differ from logocentric ideologies of the written word. As Derrida explored in great detail in one of his early books, Plato imagined that the written word was a copy of the spoken word, which in its turn was said to be a copy of the Ideal word that is “written on the soul”: for this reason, Plato believed that writing was an inherently less truthful form of communication than speaking and a “dangerous supplement” to the spoken 33

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word.5 Chomsky, too, argues that the written word is a mere copy of the spoken word, and that it stands at a third remove from a truer “word” that he imagines is inscribed on the human interior, for him a mysterious fluid in the brain.6 In contrast to deconstructive orientations to language, Platonic and neo-Platonic ideologies of the word like Chomsky’s are of little use in theorizing ancient Egyptian views of language, except perhaps to shed light on what the Egyptians clearly did not believe. Neo-Cartesian prejudices about language as an innate human faculty played absolutely no role in the daily lives of the ancient Egyptians and were by no means construed as self-evidently true. The ancient Egyptians did conceive of the word as a bodily fluid, as do adherents to the linguistic views of Chomsky, but they did not conceive of the word as an inert doppelganger of an organic secretion that is hidden in the brain. Difficult though it may be, contemporary readers of ancient Egyptian texts must set aside all neo-Cartesian prejudices about human language as an innate idea in order to fully appreciate what Egypto-African peoples thought about the words that they spoke and wrote, not only in centuries long past but in the Sahel today.

Augustine and the Egyptian trace In an influential scholarly study published in 1916, Alan Gardiner established historical links between ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the early PhoenicianCanaanite alphabet and thereby demonstrated the Egypto-African basis of alphabetic literacy. As Gardiner observed, “the hieroglyphs live on [today], though in transmuted form, within our own alphabet.”7 But, the ancient Egyptian and pictorial basis of the modern alphabet is either ignored or forgotten by the many diverse cultures that borrowed from the Egyptians. Even today, it is possible to recognize the eye in the alphabetic letter of the “O,” or perhaps the figure of the crawling snake in the letter “N,” but such knowledge is typically repressed, if not deliberately elided. Inscribed letters for the ancient Egyptians were not just things that point to other things, as the sign later came to be defined in the West. They were amulets that were believed to be imbued with occult energy, even as they retained their signifying function. Though the pictorial image is finally purged from ancient writing systems, awareness of the sign’s occult autonomy does not entirely disappear from the ancient world, especially in Judaism. In the third century CE , Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine deeply impacted evolving semiotic thought in the Christian West. In the view of Augustine, who

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was steeped in the teachings of Plato, the sign is construed as a thing that signifies but that is not significant in itself, nor is it endowed with occult energy. The function of the sign for Augustine is merely to signify, or to point to something other than itself. In effect, the sign’s meaning is exhausted by its signifying capacity. As the historical heir to Plato’s phonocentric views of language, Augustine feared that the early Christians, like their Jewish counterparts, might become “slaves to the sign,” or that they might worship the good things of God’s creation rather than God himself. Augustine viewed Judaism as a form of heresy because Rabbinic hermeneutics were ensconced in latently Egyptian and “idolatrous” concepts of the written word. Augustine argued instead that Christians who truly understood the scripture’s meaning (for him, the written word that points to Jesus Christ, or the Logos) could dispense altogether with revealed scripture, if they wished, except as a tool to teach others.8 In Judaism, the sign is significant not merely because it signifies, as in the case of Augustine, but because of what the sign is in itself, although not as a metaphysical ding-en-sich, but as a manifestation of divine ruah, the Hebraic counterpart of the Egyptian word for “breath,” which is heka. Ancient Egyptian beliefs about the autonomy of the written word influence early Hebraic theology, even as the written letter in Hebrew is voided of pictorial reference to the world of things. The sign ceases to be a visual image in Judaism in contrast to the sign for the ancient Egyptians, but it does not lose its autonomous character. Early Judaic concepts of the word, which developed in the historical backdrop of ancient Egyptian civilization, were not based in Greco-Roman notions of the Logos as an Ideal Word. The ultimate reference of the sign for Augustine was the Ideal word written “on the fleshly tablets of the human heart” (2 Corinthians 3:3). As the Egyptologist Jan Assman has observed, Judaism is a “counter-religion” that requires reference to its historical antecedent, or to the religion that it dogmatically rejects, as a basic condition of its coherence. Even the Ten Commandments are not fully comprehensible without reference to the doctrines that they stigmatize, which were those of the ancient Egyptians.9 Freud and many others have written on the impact of the second commandment of the Mosaic Law, or the ban on graven images, and its role in the historical development of alphabetic literacy.10 Though fascinating, that debate is not relevant to the concerns of the present study. Whether or not alphabetic literacy arose due to the Mosaic ban on graven images, or whether the bias against pictorial images resulted from some other historical occurrence, the prejudice against pictorial images indeed played a significant role in the historical development of alphabetic literacy. Unlike the early Christians, neither the

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ancient Egyptians nor Israelites rejected belief in the word’s occult autonomy, whatever their divergent views about the relative value of pictorial forms of writing. It should not surprise us then that beliefs about the word’s autonomy may have also impacted the diverse cultures of Africa that came into contact with the ancient Egyptians.

Hauntology and the Sahelian trace In Specters of Marx, Derrida coined the word “hauntology,” which is a playful variant on “ontology,” or the branch of philosophy that addresses questions of being. Derrida coined this term in his discussion of the concept of the specter, Derrida’s word for the visual sign that is seen with the eyes, rather than the word that is spoken with the mouth and heard with the ears. Unlike the oral-aural word that Derrida calls “spirit,” and which is closely akin to the ancient Egyptian notion of breath as heka, the Hebraic ruah, and the Mande nyama, the specter for Derrida may be characterized as an artifact that is inscribed on flat surfaces like skin, bones, papyrus, paper, electronic screens, and other blank slates. In contrast, what Derrida calls “spirit” is a capricious wind that circulates in the air. Specter is no less capricious than spirit though it assumes a spatial character and is typically more enduring than its spoken counterpart. For Derrida, as for the ancient Egyptians, the sign is a living-dead word that is independent of human intentionality. The sign is not a mystic seed that the Father God benevolently planted in the human brain, as in Plato’s Timaeus, and it is far too elusive to be “contained within the small container of the human head.”11 In Capital, Volume One, Marx evokes an image of a dancing table in order to illustrate the concept of the commodity form that apparently comes to life of its own volition. Derrida links Marx’s reading of the dancing table to the stone tablets of Moses where the Divine Law of YHWH is inscribed.12 Against the Augustinian notion that the sign is nothing more than an object that signifies, Derrida’s specter is a sign that signifies but is also haunted. The specter is associated with death because of the scribe’s absence, but it also enjoys a life of its own, long after the death of the writer who first conjured it into existence. The deconstructive concept of the written sign as living-dead specter suggests that the sign is not a dead object that awaits its future resurrection in a church setting, as Father Ong has suggested. In Christian theology, the written word is the crucified sign that dies and returns back to life once it is given a voice, breath, or spirit among those gathered to hear scripture read aloud. For a logocentric theorist like Ong, each reading of scripture in a church service reenacts

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the resurrection of the Word or Logos. The Christian theology of the Word implies that the written word is merely dead, an artifact that awaits its return from the tomb, not a living-dead specter in any Egyptian or deconstructive sense. NeoAdamic and Augustinian ideologies of the Word suggest that the sign is a dead thing that points to something other than itself, but that it is otherwise insignificant. These Eurocentric and onto-theological approaches to the written sign, often described as matters of “hard science,” will not prove terribly helpful in reading Egypto-African texts like The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Coming Forth By Day. However, the same is true for the late medieval Timbuktu chronicles from the Sahel like Al Hajj Mahmud Kati’s Tarikh al fattash and Al Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan. The Derridean concept of the specter is prefigured in ancient Egyptian literature by the letter “ka,” typically represented as a hieroglyphic image of two hands clapping. The “ka” is a visual double, like an image in a photograph or mirror. In the literature of the ancient Egyptians, the “ka” circulates independently of the human body that it reflects, living on posthumously after the death of the person that it doubles. While dreaming, the “ka” may also depart from one’s body in order to haunt the dreams of one’s family members, friends, lovers, and so on. It is the “ka” that is conjured in occult oath-swearing ceremonies where the double is summoned from the collective archive by the power of the human voice. Though an alien if not taboo notion in the Christian West, the concept of the “ka” is well known in West Africa today, especially in Sufi brotherhoods like the Umarian Tijaniyya. Equivalent West African concepts include the Fulfulde term mbeelu, the Tukulur notion of the rahwan, and the Mande equivalent ja. In a note to The Epic of Son-Jara, Johnson describes the Mande ja as a kind of “spiritual wraith” that may wander away from one’s body while one is sleeping. The ja is “visible as one’s shadow in the sunlight” and can be seen in mirrors; it is also the image of oneself that appears in photographs.13 Among the Umarian Tijaniyya of the Sahel, it is widely believed that the local founder of the order Al Hajj Umar Tall appears to Sufi adepts, especially those who deliberately conjure him. Religious leaders among the Umarian Tijaniyya do not believe that Tall is still alive although some adepts do indeed make this claim. The more orthodox view among the Tijaniyya is that it is Tall’s double or rahwan that appears before them. Derrida emphasizes that liquid is the “element of the pharmakon” and for this reason a secret link that unites speaking and writing.14 In Platonic terms, the spoken word issues from the primal elements of wind (breath) and water (saliva). The written word, in contrast to the spoken word, unites the elements of dirt

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(earth), from where the dye is extracted, and water that is infused with the substance of the dye to produce the ink of the scribe. In his “Circumfession,” Derrida confesses his dream of writing with a pen that is dipped in blood rather than ink, but both finally amount to the same thing, once they are rethought in terms of Plato’s four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.15 For the ancient Egyptians, as for the Israelites, the world comes into being with a divine act of speech: Everything that exists is therefore imbued with God’s divine breath.16 It is this occult substance that gives to both the spoken word and the written word their autonomous character. The ancient Egyptians buried their dead with written scrolls, or books of the dead that were cast into the sarcophagus, containing spells that would guide the dead on their journey to Duat, or the underworld, in their quest to become transfigured in the afterlife; however, few ancient Egyptians could read hieroglyphs, a skill that was a scholarly luxury.17 Those who could not read their papyrus scrolls of the dead consumed them as liquid elixirs, mixing the ink with water and then drinking them. Whether the occult word entered the body via the mouth, ears, or eyes hardly mattered for the ancient Egyptians, so long as the word indeed entered into the body, where it commingled with the body’s other toxic fluids. The liquid word entered the human body as a powerful force, and it was irrelevant if those who drank the inscribed word as an elixir were alphabetically literate. Though such practices may seem bizarre in the post-Platonic world, or in cultural settings where the memory of the ancient Egyptians has long been repressed, they are not uncommon in West Africa, for instance, among Sufi brotherhoods like the Muridiyya of Senegal, who are known to consume Surahs from the Qur’an as a medicine that is believed to achieve lasting effects in the world. Amulet writing in the Sahel typically involves the transcription of a Qur’anic Surah that is written on a sheet of paper and then washed into a vial and drunk like a medicine.18 Early European explorers to the region such as Mungo Park, René Caillie, Heinrich Barth, and many others noted such practices in their travelogues, often with astonishment.19

Orality-literacy contrasts in the Sahel In theorizing orality-literacy differences, Ong appeals to what he calls “primary” and “pristine” orality, by which he means a form of cultural consciousness that has never known literacy. Ong also states that “[t]oday, primary oral culture in the strict sense [of the term] hardly exists.”20 In contrast to Ong, Derrida points

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out in Of Grammatology that the very idea of a culture “without writing” is both paradoxical and meaningless.21 For Derrida, there has never been a “primary oral culture,” as Ong implies. The nostalgia of prominent orality-literary theorists for “pristine orality” replays the Eurocentric phallologocentricism of philosophers like Rousseau and Lévi-Strauss, whom Derrida critiques in Of Grammatology. But as Ong, Havelock, and Goody have also observed, Derrida does acknowledge that the technology of alphabetic writing is a recent historical innovation that indeed transformed countless ancient cultures in many far-reaching ways. “It is true, and one cannot ignore it,” Derrida states, “that the appearance of certain systems of writing three or four thousand years ago was an extraordinary leap in the history of life.”22 Like Ong, Frantz Fanon also argued that contact with European society “destroyed the basic structures” of indigenous African culture, a hasty thesis that has sometimes been adopted by Marxian and other radical scholars of the Sahel. Fanon advanced this unsubstantiated argument with reference to Madagascar, a country he never visited.23 In the case of the Sahel, however, such a thesis is untenable. Most scholars of the region, both African and Western-based, maintain that “[t]he French came, conquered, and then transferred political power a few generations later, leaving the traditional social structure largely intact and, in some cases, considerably strengthened.”24 To combat modernizing theses like Fanon’s, the Burkinabe poet Titinga Pacéré has evoked the earthy Mossi proverb, “If a woman tumbles to the ground, it doesn’t mean her vagina falls out too.”25 In his preface to “Saglego: or, Drum Poem (For The Sahel),” Pacéré also cites the drum zabyoure (or performed phrase in Mossi drum-language) that “The tamarind tree may fall upon the earth, but its good taste will remain forever.” Pacéré interprets this drum-aphorism as follows: “In contemporary culture, this phrase refers to African culture in the aftermath of colonization. Despite subjugation and ‘defeat,’ its profundity and integrity remain unaffected.”26 English and French were not only spoken languages in the late eighteenth century, as was also true of indigenous Sahelian languages; they were typographic languages with hundreds of thousands of written books, including extensive word lists, dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias. As Ong notes, European languages at this time were “grapholects,” or languages containing recorded vocabularies of over a million words. However complicated the syntax, the unwritten languages of the Sahel could not have included more than a few thousand words, and the majority of these words had no known etymologies. According to Ong, a grapholect is as “a transdialectical language formed by deep commitment to writing. Writing gives a grapholect a power far exceeding that of

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any purely oral dialect.”27 At the time that the French took Timbuktu in the late nineteenth century, the primary difference between Sahelian and European peoples in writing technologies was not the possession of chirographic and alphabetic forms of literacy, but the impact of moveable-type print, which developed more than 400 years before Mungo Park’s arrival in West Africa. Literacy was not particularly startling or new to West Africans in the early nineteenth century, although European print-technologies did cause some surprise and consternation in the region. Even today, most Sahelian Muslims memorize large portions of the Qur’an,28 and it is commonly felt that the cash purchase of the Qur’an as written text is distasteful, making it difficult to find printed copies outside of major urban centers like Ouagadougou, Niamey, and Bamako.29 From its earliest inception, Islam like Christianity has rejected Jewish hermeneutics for fetishizing the Law, implicitly endorsing the Pauline critique of Judaism (2 Corinthians 3:3), which is said to promote worship of the “dead letter” of the Law and thereby violate its true spirit or intent. However, Islam equally rejects Christian hermeneutics for fetishizing the historical personage of Jesus Christ as an archetype (ta’wil) of the Incarnate Word.30 Both Muslim and non-Muslim Sahelian peoples tend to prioritize the temporal, aural word over the spatial and written word, according to their own highly evolved language ideologies. This does not imply, however, that Sahelian orientations to the word are phonocentric in any Platonic sense. In the Sahel, the word is first and foremost experienced as a powerful force, “a dimension of experience in and of itself.”31 As J.T. Irvine puts it, in West Africa, “[words] are breath and vibrations of air, constituted and shaped by the body and motives of the speaker, physically contacting and influencing the addressee. So informants liken the effect of a griot’s praise-song to the effects of wind upon fire (both metaphorically and literally, since air and fire are supposed to be basic constituents of the body).”32 The word in this sense must penetrate the very body of the addressee. On occasion, the words of the griot may even result in trance possession, setting free bodily fluids and releasing muscular tensions.33 Drawing from his research among the Songhay of Southern Niger, Stoller describes the word in this context as “an energy which should be apprehended in and of itself rather than only as a representation of something.”34

Major Denham’s reading lesson The Sahelian notion of the word as an occult energy, which is also evident in the Tarikh al fattash and the Tarikh al sudan, sharply contrasts with the views of the

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first European travelers in the region like Park, Alexander Gordon Laing, René Caillié, Dixon Denham, Heinrich Barth, and many others. The writings of Major Dixon Denham offer a particularly revealing case in point. Although appointed to serve on the same mission, Denham’s traveling companion Hugh Clapperton is better known than Denham today, since it was Clapperton who finally negotiated a settlement with the Kano ruler Muhammad Bello bringing an end to the West Africa slave trade.35 Like many other European travelers of his era, Denham dreamed of being the first white man to visit Timbuktu, but his mission with Clapperton led to other regions in the Sahel when Alexander Gordon Laing, rather than Denham, was awarded the Timbuktu mission.36 As Denham, Clapperton, and other British traveling companions venture deeper into the Sahel from North Africa, they encounter many indigenous peoples who have already come in contact with Europeans, especially Captain George Francis Lyon, the British author of a travelogue entitled A Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa in the Years 1818, 1819, 1820.37 Like most Sahelian travelers, Denham carries with him the books of previous voyagers; and, in one revealing instance, he produces Lyon’s book for perusal by a Berber slave-trader and travel-guide, who is astounded to discover representational images of people he knows in Lyon’s volume. Denham’s description of this exchange is worth quoting at length: I now for the first time, produced Captain Lyon’s book in Boo-Khaloom’s tent, and on turning over the prints of the natives he [Boo-Khaloom] swore, and exclaimed, and insisted upon it, that he knew every face: – “This was such a one’s slave – that was his own – he was right – he knew it. Praised be God for the talents he gave the English! They were shalter, clever; wolla shalter, very clever!” Of a landscape; however, I found that he had not the least idea; nor could I make him at all understand the intention of the print of the sand-wind in the desert, which is really so well described by Captain Lyon’s drawing; he would look at it upside down; and when I twice reversed it for him, he exclaimed, “Why! Why! It is the same.” A camel or a human figure was all I could make him understand, and at these he was all agitation and delight – “Gieb! Gieb! Wonderful! Wonderful!” The eyes first took his attention, then the other features: at the sight of the sword, he exclaimed, “Allah! Allah!” and on discovering the guns instantly exclaimed, “Where is the powder?” This want of perception, as I imagined, in so intelligent a man, excited at first my surprise; but perhaps just the same would an European have felt under similar circumstances. Were an European to attain manhood without ever casting his eye upon the representation of a landscape on paper, would he immediately feel the particular beauties of the picture, the perspective, and the distinct objects? Certainly not: it is from our opportunities of contemplating works of art, even in common walks of life, as well as to

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy cultivation of mind, and associations of finer feelings by an intercourse with the enlightened and accomplished, that we derive our quick perception in matters of this kind rather than from nature.38

Denham makes a number of important discoveries about his own hermeneutic prejudices in this encounter. First, he learns that, while some images may be more recognizable than others to his foreign interlocutor, representational images themselves may not be natural copies of the real but a matter of arbitrary cultural convention. In effect, Denham discovers his own previously unexamined belief that the representational sign enjoys a privileged, even supernatural relation to the real object that it signifies. Denham is therefore compelled to reevaluate his assumption that the representational sign functions much like a proper name that is magically linked to its referent. Denham’s initial surprise turns to fear when, upon journeying deeper into the Sahara, news of Lyon’s book spreads among the people of Marzuq (a town that is now in Southern Libya) and causes a near panic. “It [Lyon’s book] produced very different effects [compared to Boo-Khaloom’s reading], but in all astonishment and suspicion . . . I repeatedly assured [my interlocutors] that [the drawings] in the book were not mine, that the person who wrote them was far away,” Denham states.39 “[But] it would not do; they shook their heads, and said I was cunning, and would not show them [my own ability to draw]. Then they changed their tone, and very seriously begged that I would not write them, that is, draw their portraits; that they did not like it; that the sheikh did not like it, that it was a sin; and I am quite sure, from the impression, that we had much better never have produced the book at all.”40 Denham had formerly assumed that all people everywhere possess the innate ability to ascertain the “natural” relation between word and thing because the representational sign, which is a lifeless copy of what it depicts, accurately mirrors its more real referent in the world of sensory appearance. Denham’s vision of the world is reflexively Platonic, and he imagines this Platonic way of seeing to be universal. In other words, Denham assumes that the representational images in Lyon’s book accurately mirror real objects but are lifeless and reified objects that extend into space. The representational image copies the real person it depicts, but it cannot harm that person since it is not really alive but is merely an inert artifact. Denham need not worry about the representational image in the way his interlocutors do because he imagines that signs of this order are merely “dead letters” in the Pauline sense (Romans 7:6). It is nonetheless remarkable in comparison with other Sahelian travelogues of the era that Denham is able to recognize that his own orientation to signs is arbitrary rather

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than natural. Denham grasps that he is not in possession of the “truth” as he once imagined, but that there may be other ways of imagining one’s relation to the real. In the Sahelian context, “the real” circulates in discourse that is already present in the world of senses without necessarily replicating an extra-sensory double.41 The “real” is a dangerous liquid ejaculated from the mouth into the ear of the other, but it may also coagulate as dried ink on the flattened surface of paper. This is why Denham’s Sahelian interlocutors fear that Denham is a sorcerer. They do not perceive Denham as a disinterested or scientific observer but a dangerous magician who may do them real damage. Although Denham fails to appreciate the irony, the views of his Sahelian interlocutors are probably closer to the truth than his own, not only because Denham is a representative of a powerful nation seeking to colonize the region, but also because his assumptions about images are also grounded in a theological orientation to the sign that is neither more nor less verifiable than that of his interlocutors. Certainly, Denham’s own views imply the existence of an absent metaphysical ground that lies behind the real object that the drawn image represents. In contrast, the Sahelian view suggests that the spatial sign is a living-dead double that circulates in the external world in powerful, autonomous, and sometimes deadly ways. This word can do great harm as a material force that is not believed to be any less dangerous merely because it has undergone reification in the dimension of space. For this reason, Denham’s interlocutors are apprehensive about the image’s ability to harm them. In fact, Denham is lucky to escape with his life after he reveals himself to be a “sorcerer,” unlike his colleague Alexander Gordon Laing who was murdered not far from Timbuktu, but not before his writing hand was brutally and repeatedly maimed.

Specters of the Askiyas Situated in the Northwest African context, the concept of the “specter” in Specters of Marx is a helpful tool in reading historical documents like the Timbuktu chronicles. Sephardic Jewish beliefs about the word’s autonomy, amply documented in influential texts like the Zohar, are coterminous with beliefs about the occult word in the Sahelian context, and that are finally linked to ideologies of blood’s occult power. The liquid that unites the binaries of speaking and writing is the body’s mysterious fluids, the blood of the mother that we absorb as “sponges” prior to our birth, as Maurice Blanchot has put it.42 For Derrida, we are literally things that are made of our mother’s blood. While there

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are countless texts from Northwest Africa demonstrating the relevance of the Derridean concept of the specter, I draw attention here to the two most prominent Timbuktu chronicles from the region, Al Hajj Mahumd Kati’s Tarikh al fattash and Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan, as well as Thomas Hale and Nouhou Malio’s The Epic of Askia Mohammed. (All of these texts are available in English translation.) In Scribe, Griot, Novelist, which also contains the first full-length transcription of the griot epic of Askiya Muhammad, Hale observes that the Tarikh al fattash and the Tarikh al sudan are “the building blocks on which rests our knowledge of the early Sudanic empires, Ghana, Mali, and, above all, Songhay.”43 I concur with Hale’s assessment of the importance of Kati’s and Al-Sa’di’s Timbuktu chronicles, only I would add that Hale and Malio’s own transcribed griot epic, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, may also be considered as yet another “building block” for understanding West African culture, especially the culture of northern Mali and Niger. Hale argues that the primary concern of The Epic of Askia Mohammed is class standing in the Sahel, or establishing a class hierarchy, rather than blood.44 These seminal texts forefront occult beliefs about blood that establish differences between the nobility and the “polluted” members of the nyamakala. While I do not disagree with Hale in this regard, I emphasize here that blood is the primary vehicle that determines one’s class standing in northern Mali. Hale notes that caste of the nyamakala are almost always believed to have a “captive” or slave origin.45 This is not an incidental fact. Polluted bloodlines are almost always offered as a justification for enslaving and seizing the property of all those who are deemed inferior on the basis of their unclean blood.46 There has been a growing awareness in the Anglophone world of the historical significance of the writings of Timbuktu, Jenne, Ouadane, and other towns in the Sahel, especially since the publication of Hale’s Scribe, Griot, Novelist in 1990 and Hunwick’s Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire in 1999. One ironic consequence of the Ansar Dine’s failed jihad in northern Mali is that it drew further international attention to the long neglected manuscripts of Timbuktu. It is nonetheless significant that it took nearly a hundred years for the two most important Timbuktu chronicles, Kati’s Tarikh al fattash and Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan, to appear in English translation after they had already appeared in French. Extant texts at the various libraries of Timbuktu and Jenne include writings in Arabic, Spanish, and Ajami (or African languages like Fulfulde, Songhay, Woolf, and Mande transcribed in an Arabic alphabet). The original Arabic versions of these texts are also available in the Octave Houdas and Maurice Delafosse translations, as well as their French translations and copious notes. Many scholarly debates have taken place regarding the authorship of the Tarikh al

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fattash (for instance, regarding Sekou Amadou’s infamous forgeries, altering a number of pages of the Tarikh al fattash).47 The Tarikh al fattash that has come down to us, although credited to Al Hajj Mahmud Kati, was written by at least three different men. In fact, it is a mere abridged volume of a massive literary work that covers an entire bookshelf of the Kati family library. Both scribes and griots discussed in this chapter describe the rise and fall of the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas of northern Mali in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.48 The Timbuktu chronicles of Kati and Al Sa’di, as well as The Epic of Askia Mohammed refer to pre-Islamic legends of a great fish that ruled the Songhay people before the arrival of the first Arab Muslims in the region. In the Tarikh al sudan, two brothers from Yemen kill the fish ruler at Kukiya, the ancient capital of the Songhay people. Al Sa’di writes, “Kukiya is very ancient, having existed since the days of the Pharaoh.”49 The Tarikh al fattash similarly records the Yemeni origins of the two brothers who kill the fish, although Kati also mentions a third relative, the brother’s uncle from Medina who fled to Songhay after a disagreement with his mother and maternal aunt.50 In the Tarikh al fattash, the great fish is named Raura ibn Sara, a djinn who has fear of only one man in the world, the Prophet Solomon (Suleyman in the Islamic tradition).51 In the Bible, the Qur’an, and related texts, the Prophet Solomon is known for his vast knowledge of Egyptian sorcery. The Bible, for instance, records that “Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt” (1 Kings 5:10). In Nachmanides’ Commentary of Genesis, Solomon’s knowledge of Egyptian sorcery is said to exceed the knowledge of all previous sorcerers in human history. Both Timbuktu chronicles underscore links between Kukiya and the Egypt of the ancient Pharaohs. The Tarikh al sudan retells the biblical tale of the famous contest between Moses and the Pharaoh’s sorcerers, suggesting that the Pharaoh’s sorcerers whom Moses defeated hailed from Kukiya. Even today, the legend of this contest remains very much a part of local folklore in northern Mali, especially in Timbuktu, Gao, and Kukiya.52 The tale of the djinn that rules his underwater kingdom is also retold in Hale and Malio’s The Epic of Askia Mohammed, where the great fish is described as the father of the Askiya Muhammad. In this case, however, no Arab Muslims are reputed to have killed the fish king. Instead, the djinn mates with Kassaye, the witch queen, and then gives his ring to Mamar Kassaye (or the Askiya Muhammad), enabling him to kill his Uncle Si (or Sunni Ali Ber) and assume the throne. When the young askiya puts his father’s ring on his middle finger, the water opens up before him, and the boy sees the vast underwater kingdom that is ruled by his father. In fact, Malio states repeatedly that it is putting the ring on his finger that enables

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the boy to assume his power.53 In the Tarikh al sudan, Al Sa’di similarly notes, “The devil would appear to [the Songhay] at certain times on the surface of the river in the form of a fish with a ring in its nose, and they would gather around it and worship it.”54 All of these tales of the fish king and its powerful ring are also echoed in the literature of the ancient Egyptians, namely the Osiris legend. In the Egyptian monomyth, Osiris’s brother Seth tricks Osiris into climbing into a sarcophagus and then dismembers Osiris’s body and strews his various body parts along the banks of the Nile. Later, Isis and Anubis gather Osiris’s body parts and “re-member” him before he is brought back to life through Isis’s sexual healing powers. Horus is the son who is conceived by Isis and Osiris and then challenges Seth to combat for rule of the Nile. In many retellings of the Osiris story, the last body part of Osiris that is reattached is his phallus, which has been swallowed by a great fish that swims in the Nile. The sign of the ring, which is the remaining foreskin after the act of circumcision, is interchangeable in this case with the phallus. It is also the sign of the covenant. The Songhay stories of the great fish may be construed as generic variants on the Osiris story. If they do not provide conclusive evidence of the influence of ancient Egypt upon the culture of the Djoliba, they certainly reflect common cultural concerns. In The Epic of Askia Mohammed, for instance, the young askiya battles his Uncle Si, whom he defeats with the help of his father’s ring and spears, as well as the cunning of his mother Kassaye. Though only recorded in 1980 and 1981, Hale and Malio’s version is in a certain sense more influenced by ancient values than the Timbuktu chronicles of Kati and Al Sa’di, given its faithfulness to pre-Islamic sorcery practices in the region. However, the chronicles too remain faithful in their own way to ancient Egyptian and occult notions of the word that bluntly contradict orthodox Islamic doctrines of the Heavenly Book, which arguably reflect the historical influence of Hellenic civilization upon Islam. There are many places in the Timbuktu chronicles and the Epic of Askia Mohammed where historical intersections between Songhay and ancient Egyptian culture are evident, but few are as revealing as the scribes’ and griot’s references to the great fish and his ring. These references provide evidence of the ancient nature of Sahelian society, and they also reveal a great deal about the region’s most basic cultural values. The great fish in all these tales is literally a water sprite, the incarnation of nyama (in Songhay, naxamala). Like its Egyptian counterpart heka, the spoken word in the Sahel comprises both wind and bodily fluids. For this reason, the local name of the Niger River is the Djoliba, or the “River of the Griots.” To worship this djinn is to acknowledge the primary place of the occult word, not merely as a doppelganger of yet another word that is transcendental,

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but for what it is in itself. In the Egyptian monomyth, it is the occult power of Horus’s sperm that finally defeats Seth, the heka of Horus’s body. But, all of these tales emphasize the fish’s magical ring. In the biblical narrative, the Prophet Abraham circumcises himself and his sons Ishmael and Isaac as a sign of the covenant that Abraham makes with God. The foreskin is later taken and rolled into a ring of flesh that serves as a token of the covenant. Even in Egypt today, as well as among many Sephardic Jews, the foreskin is often converted into a ring of flesh and then preserved by the boy’s mother until the day that the boy marries and gives his ring of flesh to his bride as a symbol of the vow that he makes to her. Derrida, John Caputo, and others have explored the relation of the ring of flesh that remains and the Abrahamic covenant.55 The circular form of the ring is a symbol of the eternal as well as the ouroboros and is evocative of the spoken vow that must be repeated over and over again. The ring is a sign of the promise or the “Yes” that must be reiterated. The making of covenants is not a matter of correct perception, but upholding one’s solemn vows. Truth’s opposite is not incompetence, as it is for Descartes and Chomsky, but adultery, or vow-breaking. This theme is at the heart of both Kati’s and Al Sa’di’s chronicles of the rise and fall of the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas. Both scribes emphasize that the Askiya Muhammad was a great man because he faithfully upheld his solemn oaths, whereas the grandsons of the Askiya Muhammad were faithless adulterers whom the Songhay people could no longer trust. The scribes insist that it is the failure of the heirs of the Askiya Muhammad to keep their sacred promises, not merely the superior military prowess of the invading Moroccans, that leads to the empire’s demise. In a particularly revealing episode in the Tarikh al fattash, a Timbuktu qadi named Mahmud ibn Umar rebukes the Askiya Muhammad for forgetting his promises to the qadi. The Qadi Mahmud humiliates the Askiya Muhammad, the sovereign lord of the Songhay people, by repeatedly ignoring his orders. However, when the Qadi Mahmud reminds the Askiya of the promises he once made to him, but then failed to honor, the Askiya Muhammad humbles himself and begs the qadi’s forgiveness.56 The author of the Tarikh al fattash offers this anecdote as an example of the Askiya Muhammad’s piety and greatness. During his hajj to Mecca, the Askiya Muhammad also makes a solemn oath on the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad to one of his traveling companions, the Mori Hawgaru. The Askiya promises the Mori Hawgaru that his ancestors will never be enslaved or taxed.57 The author of the Tarikh al fattash later notes that the heirs of the Askiya Muhammad fail to keep the Askiya’s promises to the Mori Hawgaru and suggests that it is the failure to honor the Askiya’s solemn vow that leads to the empire’s demise:

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy I saw with my own eyes how a great number of those who descend from the Mori Hawgaru or from families descending from him were for sell at the market at Timbuktu: these people were sold even though they loudly protested that they descended from the Mori Hawgaru . . . And I suppose it was the curse of the Askiya Muhammad that brought about [the ruin of the Songhay Dynasty], either entirely or in part, due to the fall of his descendants into baseness and depravity.58

On the one hand, the author of the Tarikh al fattash notes that it is the failure to uphold the Askiya’s solemn oaths that leads to the fall of the Songhay Dynasty. On the other hand, it is literally the curse of the Askiya Muhammad, or his occult breath, that possesses the power to bring this catastrophe about. In a similar incident recounted in the Tarikh al fattash, the very words of the Askiya Muhammad cause a Mossi fetish to be smashed to pieces.59 For the Songhay, one generation must uphold the promises of the previous generation. In Songhay culture, metal chains of rings symbolize the generational continuity in vowkeeping, the promises of the father that are to be upheld by the son, whose own vows are to be upheld in their turn. In Hale and Malio’s Epic of Askia Mohammed, the Mori Hawgaru incident is echoed when Mamar Kassaye (or the Askiya Muhammad) stands before the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad and then lowers himself into the tomb with iron chains, enabling him to reach for onion shoots that sprout from the Prophet’s grave. The Askiya uproots the onion shoots and then eats them.60 The iron chain symbolizes the generational continuity of promise-keeping, from father to son. It is the Askiya’s faithless sons and grandsons who finally break the chain, leading to the destruction of the Songhay Dynasty. Whereas Malio depicts the Askiya as a man who relies upon his iron rings to great effect, the authors of the Timbuktu chronicles emphasize that it was the failure of the sons of the Askiya to honor their vows, more than any other factor, that led to the kingdom’s eventual demise. Among the Songhay today, the chain of rings remains an important cultural symbol. Many Songhay women wear a ring in their nose that reminds them of the ring in the belly of the great fish. Songhay sorcerers are also known to swallow metal chains and then vomit them up for display during occult possession ceremonies. Jean Rouch filmed these ceremonies in his Les magiciens de Wanzerbe, guessing that the sorcerers’ chains were made of copper. Stoller notes, “At the moment of death, the dying sohanci will vomit his chain – some sohanci have more than one – onto his chest and ask his successor to swallow it. Thus is power passed from generation to generation.”61 The Tarikh al fattash attributes the fall of the Songhay Dynasty to the adultery of the heirs of the Askiya Muhammad. But adultery in this case does not merely

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refer to the sexual immorality of the Askiyas, but their vow-breaking, their impious refusal to honor their sacred oaths. The author of the Tarikh al fattash states, What caused the ruin of the state of Songhay and compelled God to throw it into disorder, what brought divine punishment upon its citizens – which they had mocked up to this point – was their failure to observe the laws of God, the inequity of the slaves, as well as the pride and arrogance of the great ones. At the time of Ishaq, the town of Gao had reached the extreme limits of immorality. The most grave crimes and most disagreeable acts against God were overtly committed there. The worst forms of baseness were commonly displayed both far and wide. Things had reached such a point that an officer of adultery was formally appointed. A special drum was made for this official before whom those interested were reciprocally summoned.62

The view is reiterated in Al Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan, which also emphasizes the infidelity of the Askiya Muhammad’s heirs, or their failure to honor their sacred vows and the sacred vows of the Askiya Muhammad. “As their kingdom came to an end,” Sa’di writes, “[the sons of the Askiya] exchanged God’s bounties for infidelity, and left no sin against God the Most High that they did not commit openly . . .”63 Al Sa’di adds that the curse of the Askiya Muhammad causes his son Yusuf-koi to lose his penis. This curse passes onto Yusuf-koi’s grandson who also loses his penis as a result of the family’s infidelity. “When the Askiya Muhammad heard of [his son Yusuf-koi’s infidelity], he became enraged and cursed him, praying that his male member should not accompany him to the other world,” Al Sa’di writes. “God the Most High answered his prayer for Yusuf ’s member was detached from his body as a result of an illness.”64 Though the results of the Askiya Muhammad’s curse are obviously fantastic, they offer a dramatic illustration of the scribe’s disdain for the socially destabilizing sin of adultery (or “zena”), the failure to honor one’s sacred vows. Arguably, the selling of the Mori Hawgaru’s ancestors into slavery is an even more egregious instance of adultery than marital infidelity since the Askiya Muhammad’s vows to Mori Hawgaru were made on the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad. The disregard of the Askiya’s vow implies a lack of regard not only for the Askiya Muhammad, but also for the Prophet Muhammad.

The Sahelian leviathan The Timbuktu chronicles and the The Epic of Askia Mohammed sharply differ in their depictions of the djinn who rules his underwater kingdom. In the griot

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epic, the djinn is described as an attractive man who makes love to Kassaye, the mother of the future king. “A man came who was wearing beautiful clothes,” Malio states. “He was a real man, he was tall, someone who looked good in white clothes, his clothes were really beautiful.”65 Though most griots in the Sahel are Muslims, they are also “polluted” members of the nyamakala who are deeply invested in pre-Islamic traditions, customs, and beliefs. The fact that the oral epic offers an attractive image of the djinn reveals a great deal about the attitudes of the griot to the Sahel’s pre-Islamic past. In contrast, the Timbuktu chronicles depict the djinn as a demonic figure or “devil” that the brothers from Yemen justly kill. In the Tarikh al fattash, the djinn is described as a “giant whale,” whom the Arab brothers kill, with the use of a “dame” (or magic charm).66 The fact that the Muslim brothers use occult magic to attack Songhay paganism is an irony that goes unnoted by the author of the Tarikh al fattash. The djinn is also described as an “Afrite” (from the Arabic ifrit), or an evil or malicious djinn. In their annotation on the text Houdas and Delafosse note that an Afrite is a “demon who tricks people and brings them harm.”67 The Afrite in the Tarikh al fattash fears only the Prophet Solomon, who the Qur’an proclaims is lord and master of the djinn (Qur’an 34:13). As previously noted, the Tarikh al sudan records that “the devil would appear before [the Songhay] at certain times on the surface of the river in the form of a fish with a ring in its nose . . .”68 In this version of the fish tale, the older of the two Arab brothers believes that the Songhay live “in manifest error” and therefore secretly fashions an iron harpoon and kills the fish. After killing the fish, the Songhay people submit to the Arab man who killed the fish as their ruler.69 In The Epic of Askia Mohammed, however, the Arab brothers from afar do not kill the djinn. Instead, Malio suggests that the djinn remains sovereign ruler of the Djoliba to this day. The underwater kingdom that the djinn rules is nothing short of fantastic: “Under the water there are so many cities,” Malio states, “so many cities, so many cities, so many villages, and so many people.”70 The chief of this underwater kingdom gives to Mamar Kassaye his ring of power, a saber and shield, two lances, and a pure white stallion. With these implements, the young askiya slays his Uncle Si while his uncle prays as a Muslim and assumes the Songhay throne. Wittingly or not, Malio inverts the telos of the fish tale of the Timbuktu chroniclers. The great fish is an important symbol, not only for the ancient Egyptians, but for the still intact civilization of the Djoliba that dates long before the time of Christ. The work of anthropologists like Roderick and Susan McIntosh at Jenne, Douglas Post Park at Timbuktu, and others have verified the antiquity of Sahelian civilization, as well as the cultural continuity of the lifestyles of modern

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Sahelian peoples and those who lived in the area more than two thousand years ago.71 The fish is a symbol of magic and the living embodiment of nyama or occult power, but it is also a leviathan, literally a “giant whale” that rules the Songhay people from Kukiya and then Gao.72 The Arabs demonize the fish because it is a symbol of the sovereignty that they wish to usurp. What the scribes’ and griot’s references to the fish show is that Mali existed as a sovereign nation long before the coming of Islam to the region. In fact, Mali was a sovereign state for centuries prior to its Islamization. The concept of the republican nation-state did not miraculously emerge during Europe’s Enlightenment, following the publication of works like Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, Jean Bodin’s Les Six livres de la République, and Rousseau’s The Social Contract. The Timbuktu chronicles demonstrate that the very conception of the republic, the monstrous “leviathan” made famous by Hobbes, was well-known in the Sahel long before it was discussed in Europe. It is no coincidence that Bodin, one of Europe’s first republican theorists, was also a renowned expert on demonology and sorcery. Bodin’s most important work on sorcery was entitled De la démonomanie des sorciers, published in 1580, a book that explores the concept of “the devil’s pact” (viewed by some as a precursor to Goethe’s Faust). As Derrida has suggested in Specters of Marx, political affiliations depend upon acts of conjuration or “devil’s pacts” that are inherently conspiratorial. In Derrida’s reading of Hamlet, the conspirators Horatio, Marcellus, and Hamlet collectively swear together on the sword of the dead king and thereby conjure his ghostly double into existence. The ghost of the king is a monstrous projection of their devil’s pact, a res publica and one entity. The great whale of the Tarikh al fattash is not so different from the monstrous leviathan depicted on the cover of Hobbes’s book, The Leviathan. But this means that French imperialists did not import the concept of the republican leviathan into West Africa, and that those who lived in the Sahel later adopted it in the era of decolonization. The idea of the republican nation-state is much older than Europe. The republican nation state is probably an African idea. As the Timbuktu chronicles show, it is certainly a Songhay idea. Hale, Stoller, Paré, and others speak of the region’s “sahelité” or “deep Sahelian culture” to emphasize the intact and ancient nature of the civilization of the Djoliba, including the many Tuareg and Arabs who have lived in the area for over a thousand years. In the Tarikh al fattash, the Arabs demonize the leviathan as a symbol of occult sorcery, even the embodiment of Satan,73 but it may more justly be construed as an historical image of the region’s sovereignty, not its misguided orientation to religion. Calling the fish “an evil djinn” or an incarnation of the devil has long been a ruse of external imperializing agents, for whom the

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very notion of a sovereign African state remains intolerable. In fact, the tales of the fish djinn that are recounted in the Timbuktu chronicles encode the basic political situation of the region today and document Arab Islamists’ views that black African peoples in the Sahel are in need of a benign intervention on their behalf. For more than 1,000 years, Islam has provided the cover for the exercise of violence and the assumption of territorial sovereignty. The killing of the great fish marks the advent of the Islamic era in the Sahel, as well as the coming of Arab peoples to the region. In the Timbuktu chronicles, it is the Islamic religion that authorizes the killing of the leviathan and the right to assume the throne. In 2013, Iyad Ag Ghali and the Ansar Dine relied upon nearly identical rhetorical strategies when they took control of Gao, Timbuktu, Niafunke, and other cities of the north. After seizing control of Timbuktu, the Ansar Dine jihadists claimed that they were compelled to do so on behalf of local black heretics who, like the Songhay once ruled by the great water djinn, are said to live in a condition of “manifest error.” (Hunwick notes that this expression originates in the Qur’an and implies “rejection of divine grace.”74) In his first public radio address from Timbuktu, Ag Ghali stated that he and his Wahhabi followers were “not an ethnic group or tribal or racist group, but an Islamic Jamaat [or assembly], whose loyalty extends to all Muslims in one single Brotherhood.” In this same address, however, Ag Ghali commanded Timbuktu’s inhabitants “to continue to supply the city with basic foodstuffs, fuel and medicines, for ‘Allah will aid the slave as long as the slave aids his brother.’ ”75 Ag Ghali used the Arabic word for slave abd, which also means black. The Ansar Dine paradoxically imagined the black people of Timbuktu to be their brothers as well as their slaves. As “Arab” notables, they claimed that they were behooved to make this benevolent intervention on behalf of their less fortunate brethren. The Ansar Dine sought to correct the manifest errors of their black kinsmen, beginning with the demolition of the tomb of Sidi Yahia. However appalling the actions of Ag Ghali and his followers, the Timbuktu chronicles show that they were hardly unprecedented. The Tarikh al sudan also records that Tuaregs of the region in the sixteenth century “profess the religion of Islam and are Sunnis, wag[ed] jihad against the blacks.”76 Al Sa’di also documents that the Tuareg jihadists of this era “perpetuated many gross acts of injustice and tyranny” against the black citizens of Timbuktu. These acts included “dragging people from their homes by force, and violating [local black] women.”77 The Tuaregs of the sixteenth century, not unlike Ag Ghali and the Ansar Dine in the twenty-first century, claimed to profess “Sunni” Islam in opposition to the “heretical” Islam of local inhabitants, even as they themselves engaged in occult practices and harassed the impoverished black peoples in the

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region in the name of Islam. As stated previously, the Tarikh al fattash emphasizes that the white notables from Arab lands killed the great fish with the use of a magic charm. The brothers therefore relied upon Islamic magic to attack Songhay magic. The same can be said for the Songhay scribes who wrote the Timbuktu chronicles. Al-Sa’di, Kati, and Kati’s heirs do not simply reject occult sorcery: They pit Islamic sorcery against West Africa sorcery and blur the lines so frequently between the two that it is often difficult to tell one from the other. Hunwick notes that Al Sa’di came from the Arab tribe of the Banu Sa’d, but Al Sa’di did not claim to descend from the family of the Prophet Muhammad.78 “Although [Al Sa’di] claimed Arab descent,” Hunwick states, “Songhay was the lingua franca of the Middle Niger region, and it is likely that he grew up speaking Songhay as his first language.”79 The father of Al Hajj Mahmud Kati was an Arab who migrated to the region from Spain, but Kati’s mother was a black Songhay woman of Soninke descent.80 The authors of both chronicles were native Songhay speakers, who were born among Songhay peoples and lived in Songhay lands all their lives. Citing I.M. Lewis, Hale argues that the scribes’ use of magic “depend for their validity on Moslem sources and goals.”81 Hale’s point is valid; however, it also points to a basic contradiction that runs through both texts, a discrepancy between generic form and content that is characteristic of the Timbuktu chronicles. This contradiction shows that what is at stake in conflicts between black and white ethnic groups in northern Mali has seldom been sorcery or religion, but political and economic power. Early Arab Muslims wished to assume power and convert the local black population into their slaves. Islam provided the alibi for their actions. The situation was no different in 2013 when the Ansar Dine instituted hu’dud laws in Timbuktu, or the whipping, stoning, and amputation of the limbs of Timbuktu’s black citizens. Demographically outnumbered, the white notables of both eras could only succeed if they were able to convince the local black population of their divinely elected status as white nobles and their God-given right to rule over Songhay lands and own black slaves.

Nyama and violence The ancient Egyptians characterized heka as a lethal force that could inflict harm upon one’s enemies. As The Egyptian Book of the Dead shows, evil sorcerers would sometimes deliberately eat human feces or consume other bodily fluids to increase the power of their incantations. In such cases, sorcerers construed the body’s fluids as a lethal weapon with the capacity to sicken or kill their personal

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enemies. The Timbuktu chronicles reveal similar attitudes about the body’s fluids and their capacity to inflict harm upon one’s enemies in spite of the scribes’ sincere commitments to the Islamic religion. Derrida similarly notes the capacity of ruah to metamorphosize into ruah raa (or evil spirit), as well as the difficulty in distinguishing between “good blood” and “bad blood.” For Derrida, the word (i.e. blood) is always already divided or “bifid.”82 Derrida and Freud link descriptions of ruah/ruah raa to biblical descriptions of YHWH as a volcanic deity that is ready to erupt at any moment. If Qur’anic Surahs are often consumed in the Sahel to achieve beneficial results, the written word also has the power to bring harm to one’s enemies. Both the written word and the spoken word can even kill an enemy, especially if they are wielded by a person endowed with exceptional occult powers. The Timbuktu chronicles record numerous instances of an uttered word’s capacity to kill one’s enemies, especially if one’s enemy was an infidel. In both Timbuktu chronicles, Sunni Ali Ber is depicted as an infidel and enemy to the scribes, jurists, and other pious Muslims of Timbuktu. The author of the Tarikh al fattash suggests that Sunni Ali Ber was finally killed when two holy Muslims, both relatives of the Mori Hawgaru, cursed him after they were unjustly imprisoned. “Make him perish this very instant!” one of the holy men cried. Then the other holy man added, “And see that he perishes in a state of infidelity.” The Tarikh al fattash notes that, “At this very instant, the shi [Sunni Ali Ber], who was staying at the land of al-Hajar that was named Konna, was unexpectedly struck dead by God.”83 As an especially pious Muslim, the Askiya Muhammad is endowed with the ability to harm his enemies with his spoken word, even when he has gone blind and has been removed from power. When the son who deposes the Askiya Muhammad dares to appropriate the wives and concubines of his father, the Askiya Muhammad’s curse causes his son the public humiliation of having his genitals exposed after he tumbles from his horse.84 As noted previously, the Askiya Muhammad’s mere words also have the power to destroy the idols of his enemies.85 In the Tarikh al sudan, Al Sa’di records a particularly striking instance of the occult word’s capacity to kill one’s enemy. In this case, the Askiya Dawud and a Songhay sorcerer conjure the double of an enemy, who is then killed. The enemy in this case is the Askiya Dawud’s own brother, the Aribanda-farma, who is killed because the Askiya Dawud views him as a possible rival to the throne. Al Sa’di describes this incident in vivid detail: Dawud took the matter to a man well versed in witchcraft, and he performed sorcery for him against the Aribanda-farma. At his request, Dawud brought a

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large jar with water in it. The sorcerer uttered some incantations into it and called the Aribanda-farma by name, and the latter replied. The sorcerer said, “Come forth to me,” and there emerged from the water, by the power of God the Most High, a man resembling the Aribanda-farma in shape and appearance. Then the sorcerer put manacles on his legs and plunged a spear into him, saying “Go!”, and the man immersed himself in the water. Dawud then went to Gao, and had scarcely reached there when the aforementioned Aribanda-farma died.86

The Askiya Dawud is reputed in both chronicles to be a pious Muslim, although in this instance he performs an obviously diabolical act of sorcery. Al Sa’di claims that this act succeeds through “the power of God the Most High.” In the Tarikh al fattash, the Askiya Dawud is described as engaged in occult possession ceremonies; however, he also claims to Arab Muslims who are visiting Gao that he is merely pretending that he is possessed before his Songhay subjects, who are animists.87 Hale comments that the Askiya Dawud “may have adopted two forms of behavior, one to please his distinguished visitors and the other to satisfy his subjects.”88 However, in the Tarikh al sudan, the Askiya Dawud’s murder of the Aribanda-farma through the use of occult sorcery suggests that the Askiya Dawud did not merely pretend to perform acts of occult sorcery. The evidence here suggests that the Askiya Dawud not only believed in the power of occult sorcery; he also relied upon it when necessary to achieve obviously impious ends. The scribes too relied upon sorcery to bring physical and spiritual harm to their personal rivals. In a particularly revealing incident noted in the Tarikh al fattash, a disciple of the author uses his skill as a writer – in effect, as a magician – to kill an obese and unscrupulous eunuch who once stole the elderly scribe’s property and then shoved the old man to the ground. The eunuch is described in the Tarikh al fattash as “evil, obese, and dishonest.” To drive the point further, the scribe adds that the eunuch Alu, who served as Kabra-farma, was “an ignorant official who was both arrogant and mule headed.”89 After the eunuch Alu steals the property of the scribe and knocks him to the ground, the scribe’s disciple (or talib) is so angry with the eunuch that he verbalizes his desire to kill him. However, the talib corrects himself when he recalls that the Qur’an teaches that it is immoral to kill a fellow Muslim. To this, the elderly scribe replies, “God said ‘whosoever kills a believer [will be punished by hellfire].’ God did not say ‘whosoever kills the impious [will be punished by hellfire].”90 Once the talib is instructed that it is licit to attack the boorish eunuch, he relies upon his skill as a writer to kill him. Neither scribe reflects upon the eunuch’s possible motives as

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a black man who has been castrated by white nobles in order to serve their needs. According to the Tarikh al fattash, the use of writing as a form of sorcery to kill the black eunuch is quite effective: [T]he talib [disciple] took out a sheet of paper on which he wrote something and marked it with certain letters. Next, he folded this paper and sewed it inside a piece of black cloth that he attached to the neck of a goat. After doing this, he took a lance and buried it into the breast of the goat, who fell dead. A year later, on the very day that the talib had killed the goat with his lance, God caused the Kabra-farma to die in the exact same manner, since he was stabbed in the breast by the Balma’a Sadiq, so it is clear that the Kabra-farma died by divine means.91

In the Tarikh al fattash, the death of the eunuch Alu is attributed to “divine means” despite the morally questionable nature of the action performed. Though most Sunni Muslims would consider the talib’s actions to be immoral, this incident shows that the Timbuktu scribes tend to think of writing as an act of power, not merely as a tool to objectively record historical events. For the scribe and his talib, the act of writing is a deliberate act of violence. Writing’s function here is to intervene in history through the use of force. The killing of the eunuch Alu that is described in the Tarikh al fattash as a divinely sanctioned act is also one of the main catalysts that sets in motion the chain of events resulting in civil war between the sons of the Askiya who vie for the throne. The killing of Alu arguably culminates in the very collapse of the Songhay Dynasty. I note here that both the scribe and the griot imagine their verbal interventions to be controlled acts of violence. It is no accident that griots are often circumcisers who are associated with razors and are ever-present during name-giving ceremonies.92 If the griots are “writers” too, there is also a sense in which the Timbuktu scribes sometimes function as Songhay griots: The scribe and the griot are both “wordsmiths,” in Hale’s apt formulation, who traffic in the dangerous substance of nyama. It has long been the role of the griot in the Sahel to serve as an official diplomat or spokesman in negotiating with foreign powers or foes. Hale notes that Al Hajj Mahmud Kati is selected to serve as spokesman for his sovereign in his battle for the throne, in this case with the son of Sunni Ali Ber, the Shi Baru.93 The scribes are men who are skilled in the use of words, both spoken and written. Hale also notes that the Timbuktu chronicles, like the Qur’an, were most likely intended to be read aloud and heard with the ears, rather than silently read with the eyes.94 Like the griot whose powerful word is feared by his auditors, the scribes do not then present us with quasi-scientific or objective depictions of the Songhay past that are aimed at disclosing historical truth. Instead, the chronicles

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function as powerful interventions in Songhay history. They are decisive actions that have the power to shape how their readers see the past and act in the future. For the Timbuktu scribes, the chronicles that they wrote are significant not only because they recounted the history of the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas, but because of their very objective character, or what they are in themselves. Indifference to industrial printed books of the West in the Sahel, often noted in the travelogues of Europeans to the region,95 likely resulted from the fact that the typographic books of Europe failed to bear the signatures of the scribe, what Derrida calls the “here-now” of the scribe.96 As an artifact, the Tarikh al fattash is a magical talisman in its own right. Like the amulets worn by the griots before they go into verbal combat against one another, the hand-written book is a powerful object that is imbued with the nyama of the scribe. As true of the books of the dead in ancient Egypt, the Timbuktu chronicles are also actually read, but one does not need to be able to read them to be able to benefit from possessing them. Just having such books in one’s house may benefit all those who are fortunate enough to be in their proximity. In fact, merely uttering the name of a scribe like Al Hajj Mahmud Kati may imbue those who speak it with some of Kati’s baraka (in the Sahelian context, yet another synonym for nyama).97

The fecal epiphany In The Epic of Askia Mohammed, the Askiya Muhammad’s heir Soumayla Kassa fails to uphold local beliefs about the power of blood. In contrast to the scribes, the griot Nouhou Malio suggests that it is the Askiya’s disregard for ties of blood nobility that causes the collapse of the Songhay Dynasty. The griot’s views about the reasons for the empire’s demise seem to differ from the scribes’, who emphasize the failure of the Askiya’s heirs to honor the vows that they are bound to uphold. However, the scribes also share the griot’s anxieties about ties of blood nobility and often articulate their concerns about maintaining traditional caste distinctions in the Timbuktu chronicles. Though the scribes emphasize the impiety of the Askiya Muhammad’s heirs, as well as their failure to uphold the basic teachings of Islam, the scribes are equally concerned that noble families do not pollute their bloodlines with the toxic nyama of lower caste blacks. In Hale and Malio’s account, the final Askiya, Soumayla Kassa, is depicted as a bold and courageous man, but one who brings disaster to his people through his scandalous indifference to ties of blood nobility. Johnson observes in his preface to The Epic of Son Jara that the hero of the West African griot epic will deliberately

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violate a taboo in order to unleash chaos upon his society. It is through harnessing the chaos that his actions unleash that the hero of the griot epic becomes a hero. If the hero over-reaches, Johnson observes, he may himself be consumed by occult power or nyama.98 Unlike Sundiata Keita in the Mande epic, Soumayla Kassa is unable to control the chaos that his actions unleash because he fails to respect the power of occult blood. Earlier in the epic, Mamar Kassaye (the Askiya Muhammad) attacked the tribe of a woman who had once nursed him. Consequently, he was defeated. Even so, Mamar Kassaye learned from his error and desisted from further attacks on his nursemaid’s tribe. In doing so, Mamar Kassaye showed his deep respect for the occult power of the body’s fluids, or the milk that he consumed as a child. In contrast, Soumayla Kassa demonstrated flagrant disregard for the power of noble blood and thereby ushered in the fall of the empire. Soumayla Kassa favors a son of ignoble blood, a young man named Amar Zoumbani, in disregard of traditional caste distinctions among the Songhay. His son of ignoble blood is born from a slave woman whom the Askiya (Soumayla Kassa) does not even bother to marry. Later, Soumayla Kassa marries a woman of pure noble blood named Sagouma, who happens to be the owner of Amar Zoumbani’s enslaved mother (and, by extension, Amar Zoumbani as well, who is the heir apparent of the Askiya). After Sagouma’s brother offends Amar Zoumbani by drawing attention to the fact of his polluted blood, Soumayla Kassa kills the brother of Sagouma in a fit of anger. In retaliation, Sagouma kills her own children who Soumayla Kassa fathered and flees to Morocco, where she finds a man who is willing to assemble an army and attack the Songhay at Gao. When on the run from the Moroccan army from the north, Soumayla Kassa and Amar Zoumbani eventually run out of water and suffer from thirst. The young man happens upon a clay pot that brims with fetid water. Malio tells us that Amar Zoumbani “jumped down from his horse. / Then he plunged his mouth into the clay pot. / He drank, he drank, he drank, he drank until he had quenched his thirst.”99 After drinking from the pot of fetid water, Amar Zoumbani offers the water to his father, Soumayla Kassa. The older man is astounded. He asks his son five times if he drank from the dirty pot of water. When Amar Zoumbani confirms that this is indeed the case, Soumayla Kassa at last realizes the error that he has made in favoring his ignoble son, a mere slave of impure blood. The father now insults the son and, in doing so, effectively repeats the actions of the brother of Sagouma, whom he killed for once insulting his ignoble son. Soumayla Kassa states, “You have returned home, Amar Zoumbani, you have returned home, you have returned home.”100 Leaving nothing to chance, Malio interprets

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the meaning of Soumayla Kassa’s words for his auditors: “What does this mean, [Amar Zoumbani] has returned home? / The fact of being a captive, that is the insult that he made to him. / . . . He insulted him as a captive. / The fact of drinking his own mother’s breast milk. / That is the insult which he gave to him.”101 Soumayla Kassa now sees his son Amar Zoumbani for the polluted slave that he is and thereby awakens to his folly.102 The fecal epiphany of Soumayla Kassa is the most important moment of Malio’s griot epic, its main lesson. Malio’s intervention is aimed at upholding traditional distinctions between men and women of blood nobility and the nyamakala. Although Malio is not a Wahhabi jihadist like Iyad Ag Ghali and the Ansar Dine, his conservative views about the priority of blood nobility are essentially the same as the Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg notables who took control of Timbuktu in 2013 and then instituted hu’dud laws on behalf of the local “slave” (i.e., black) population. The views of Malio about the importance of noble blood are also similar to the scribes who wrote the Timbuktu chronicles. However, the Ansar Dine and the Timbuktu scribes encode their beliefs about the power of occult blood with reference to the blood of the Prophet Muhammad. In contrast, Malio associates the power of occult blood with the djinn who rules the underwater kingdom of the Djoliba. In The Epic of Son Jara, the griot Fa-Digi Sisoko establishes a genealogy linking the Mande hero Sundiata Keita with the Prophet Muhammad, through Bilal, extending back to the Prophet Noah and the first man, Adam. However, the Soninke nobles who founded the Ghana, Mande, and Songhay Dynasties are commonly believed to issue from the same noble bloodlines. Though belief in blood nobility is far older than the coming of Islam to the Sahel, archaic ideologies of blood are conflated in this case with the bloodline of the Prophet Muhammad and his family members. The Timbuktu chronicles offer ample textual evidence of local beliefs about the occult power of blood, and they attest to the scribes’ views that the disregard for centuries’ old ties of blood nobility indeed contributed to the collapse of the Songhay Dynasty. In other words, the scribes are at one with Malio in their disapproval of the Askiya Muhammad’s heirs in failing to maintain rigorous distinctions between blood nobles and the slave caste of the nyamakala. The Tarikh al fattash documents the disdain of Songhay notables and elders, as the dynasty begins to disintegrate from within. In the waning days of the dynasty, the Barei-koi, the Hugu-koray-koi, and various army chiefs collectively state, “As for the sons of the Askiya Dawud, we will never accept any of them as rulers over us because of their wickedness, cruelty, and disregard for the ties of blood.”103 The Askiya Ishaq similarly upbraids a Songhay man for entering into marriage with

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women of unclean blood. “Did not my grandfather, the Askiya Al-Hajj Muhammad,” he states, “impose upon the people of Aganda an injunction against entering into marriage outside the bosom of their own family?”104 In fact, the Tarikh al fattash even notes that the Askiya Muhammad was the only askiya “who was born of a legitimate wife.”105 After the dynasty collapses, the author of the Tarikh al fattash laments the ascendency of “the lowest rabble” to positions of political power in Timbuktu. In a particularly telling passage, the scribe writes,106 “Timbuktu became a body without a spirit. Its life was turned upside down, its conditions of existence changed, as did its customs. The lowest elements of the population became the most elevated, and the most elevated became the lowest. The worst rabble lorded over the nobility.”107 This passage reveals the scribe’s scorn for the polluted slave caste. It may also have been the inspiration, along with Césaire’s Cahier, for Ouologuem’s haunting references to the black-rabble (or “négraille”) in The Duty of Violence. Unlike the Timbuktu scribes who are ruthlessly parodied in his novel, Ouologuem places the “worst rabble” at the very heart of his ethical appeals for justice in the Sahel, and he reveals the fraudulent nature of the notables’ claims to divine election as “black Jews.” What the Timbuktu scribes lament, Ouologuem celebrates.

The tombs of Timbuktu and the work of mourning Besides burning many manuscripts of Timbuktu, the jihadists who declared the independent state of Azawad in northern Mali also destroyed the tombs of many of Timbuktu’s saints. Tomb-smashing is a defining feature of the Wahhabi movement, and so it should have surprised no one that the Ansar Dine targeted the tombs of Timbuktu saints. Unlike the Wahhabi influenced jihadists who seized control of Timbuktu, the scribes who wrote the Timbuktu chronicles believed it was their duty to venerate the tombs of the saints. They also believed that uttering vows at the tombs of Timbuktu’s saints would bestow great blessings upon those who did so. The vow made at the tomb of the saint was made before a dead witness. Then and now, vows uttered at the tombs of saints are intended to bind those who make them in many powerful ways. The author of the Tarikh al fattash suggests that the failure of the Askiya Muhammad’s heirs to honor the vows of the Askiya to the Mori Hawgaru was one of the main reasons for the fall of the Songhay Dynasty. The Epic of Askia Mohammed also emphasizes the importance of the Askiya’s visit to the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, where the Askiya Muhammad descends into the tomb with the help of

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iron chains and eats onion shoots that grow on the grave of the Prophet Muhammad. No such incident occurs in the Timbuktu chronicles, although the Tarikh al fattash similarly notes that the Askiya Muhammad ate a hair from the head of the Prophet Muhammad, which he stole from an Arab merchant during his hajj to Mecca. Far from criticizing the Askiya Muhammad for his act of theft, the author of the Tarikh al fattash proclaims, “What a clever trick, and how very profitable! What a celestial favor! How abundant [the Askiya Muhammad’s] blessings!”108 Both the Tarikh al fattash and The Epic of the Askiya Mohammed emphasize that the Askiya Muhammad ate the bodily remains of the Prophet Muhammad, and, in doing so, he received a great blessing. They also emphasize the importance of the Askiya’s oath swearing on the grave of the Prophet Muhammad. (In the griot epic, the iron chains of the Askiya, like the chains vomited up by the Songhay sohanci of Wanzerbe, suggest the oaths that must be upheld over many generations.) The acts of swearing an oath on the grave of a dead Muslim saint and then consuming the remains of that saint may strike many in the post-Platonic West as odd, despite the fact that some two billion Christians regularly participate in the ritual of communion. Certainly, they seem abhorrent to Wahhabi Muslims in Africa and the Middle East. However, there is a paradoxical logic inherent in such acts. Respect for the dead, for the remains of the dead, as well as for the unborn generations to come, are also major themes in the writings of Derrida. What Derrida calls the “work of mourning” is not a matter of sentimentalizing the dead but enacting justice towards the dead, the ethics of deconstruction. In Specters of Marx, Derrida reminds his readers that they must continue to respect “those who are no longer or those others who are not yet there, presently living, whether they are already dead or not yet born.”109 Derrida insists that no true justice is possible “with the principle of some responsibility, beyond all living present, within that which disjoins the living present, before the ghosts of those who are not yet born or who are already dead . . .”110 The Tarikh al fattash lists more than a dozen tombs of saints in Timbuktu, noting the miraculous effects that are achievable should one swear an oath on the grave of the dead saint, who thereby becomes the binding witness who is present at the vow’s utterance. A vow made before a dead witness is arguably more binding than a vow that is made before a living one because it demonstrates the awareness of the person who swears the oath that the death of the witness will in no way nullify the vow. The vow binds whoever makes it for as long as he or she lives. For the Songhay, it may also bind the ancestors of those who make the vow. In the Tarikh al sudan, Al Sa’di insists that visiting the tombs of saints of

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Timbuktu is a religious duty, even for those who live at great distances from the tombs. 111 For those who utter sacred vows on the graves of Timbuktu’s dead saints and remain faithful to their vows, many great blessings may be bestowed upon them. The author of the Tarikh al fattash states, “None of the vows that are made at [the tomb of the Qadi ‘Uthman Darame] are fruitless. I have verified with my own eyes, having made prayers to God near this tomb, which God granted to me.”112 The tombs of the saints of Timbuktu are believed to cure leprosy and other illnesses. On a tour of the tomb of Al Hajj Mahmud Kati in 2005, I was informed that a pool of water was once found in Kati’s grave and that the citizens of Timbuktu commonly gathered at Kati’s tomb to pray for rain, hundreds of years after Kati’s death. For centuries, Timbuktu’s inhabitants believed that the opening of the tomb of Sidi Yahia would mark the end of the world. As Andy Morgan notes, the Ansar Dine who smashed Sidi Yahia’s tomb [in Timbuktu] wanted “to destroy the mystery” of Sidi Yahia’s tomb.113 However, the Wahhabi efforts to “destroy the mystery” did little more than demonstrate their own bigotry. The Tarikh al fattash notes the many uses of the tomb of Sidi Yahia, far exceeding the apocalyptic narratives that are associated with the tomb. “The effectiveness of the tomb of Sidi Yahia has been verified,” the author of the Tarikh al fattash states. “I have seen and heard from a great number of persons, who have given proofs of it and seen its effectiveness.”114 The mud structures above the tombs of Timbuktu’s saints may of course be smashed, but it does not follow that the cultural practice of oath-swearing upon the tomb of a dead saint will thereby be eradicated. The Ansar Dine similarly banned the music of Ali Farka Touré in his hometown of Niafunke. In doing so, they did not succeed in bringing Malian music to an end. Today, Vieux Farka Touré, who is the son of Ali Farka Touré, performs to great acclaim all over the world, as do many other Malian musicians. Now that the Ansar Dine have been driven from Timbuktu, its citizens will no doubt continue to swear oaths at the tombs of the saints, just as they will continue to perform and enjoy traditional Malian music. They will do so because such practices bring real and lasting benefits to the lives of Mali’s citizens. What makes practices like swearing oaths upon the tombs of saints difficult for Western peoples to understand is that they are not underwritten by the phallologocentric logic of Platonism. In Specters of Marx, Derrida rejects Christ’s teaching that enjoins his disciples to “let the dead bury the dead.” Derrida states, “It will always be a necessity that still living mortals bury the already dead living. The dead have never buried anyone, but neither have the living, the living who would be only living, the immortal living. The gods never bury anyone.”115 Rather

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than leaving the dead to bury the dead, Derrida urges his readers to perform the indispensable work of mourning, which means they must occupy themselves with the remains of the dead. The “remains” are in this case literally the remnants of those who have died, the bones that lie in the tombs of Timbuktu but also the hair of the Prophet Muhammad that the Askiya Muhammad once consumed, and the words that remain after the death of the scribe who wrote them. To be occupied with the remains of the dead suggests the act of reading and writing. To read the Tarikh al sudan and the Tarikh al fattash is to perform the work of mourning, to occupy oneself with the remains of scribes like Al Sa’di and Kati. “I lose a loved one,” Derrida states, “[But] I fail to do what Freud calls the normal work of mourning, with the result that the dead person continues to live in me, but as a stranger. By contrast, in normal mourning, if such a thing exists, I take the dead upon myself, I digest it, assimilate it, idealize it, interiorize it . . . In the work of mourning, the dead other (it may be an object, an animal, or some other living thing) is taken in me: I kill [the dead] and remember it . . . I interiorize it totally and it is no longer other.”116 At the conclusion of Specters of Marx, Derrida enjoins his readers to speak audible words to the specter, to address the dead and the unborn as if they were living. In the last sentence of Specters of Marx, Derrida cites Shakespeare’s character Marcellus, who tells his friend Horatio, “Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.”117 In this case, Marcellus refers to the ghost of the dead king, Hamlet’s father. The scholar Horatio is asked to do something that seems utterly foolhardy to him, to speak to a man who has died and cannot hear his words. But Derrida suggests that it is the naïveté of the soldier Marcellus that enables him to believe that he can do the impossible. Marcellus is naïve enough to really believe in living dead ghosts, whereas the highly educated Horatio is less credulous. In Derrida’s reading of Hamlet, the scholar Horatio must find a way to overcome his skepticism and speak to the living-dead ghost. To utter a vow at the tomb of a dead saint, as performed in Timbuktu for many centuries, implies that one must address a dead man. Not only do the living citizens of Timbuktu continue to speak to the dead, they also swear oaths on the graves of the dead that bind them for as long as they live. The scribes of the Tarikh al fattash and Tarikh al sudan assume that it is not only a duty to speak to the dead, but that those who engage in the necessary work of mourning the dead will enjoy great spiritual benefits. Derrida rejected Hellenic practices of cremation in favor of burial in the earth, stating his preference for ancient Egypto-African forms of burial. The Egyptians mummified the dead so their remains might endure as empirical artifacts for as long as possible. Derrida criticized cremation practices as a

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suicidal form of auto-immunity, a logocentric manifestation of the death drive, the longing to disappear entirely from the world after one’s death. In Plato’s Phaedrus, the immortal soul is akin to an oyster that is hidden inside an oyster shell. Once the hard oyster shell is destroyed, its external contents may be cast aside although the soft inner soul is believed to never perish. In ancient Egypt, however, there is no timeless and ideal realm of Platonic forms. There is no transcendental world of being. There is only the world of the here and the now. The ancient Egyptians buried the dead with boats, for they believed that the underworld was an extension of the sensory world that they inhabited. They imagined that the books of the dead that they orally consumed would guide them on their journey down the Nile to the underworld of Osiris. The remains of the body for the ancient Egyptians were one part of the “soul” of the dead. Other parts included the dead man’s name, shadow, maternal heart, “ka” (or double), and other elements to be “re-membered” after his death. Although the Egyptians were unaware of the timeless and ideal realm of Platonic forms, they were certainly aware of the realm of nothingness that Plato in the Timaeus called the “Khora.” As the Egyptologist Hornung notes, the ancient Egyptians fought hard against nothingness. They fought against becoming nothing themselves. The Egyptians wanted to linger in the world as long as possible, and for this reason they engaged in highly sophisticated mummification practices. Such practices were intended to ensure that their bodily remains would not simply disappear from the world. Hornung’s views on ancient Egyptian conceptions of nothingness are worth quoting at length: [F]or the Egyptians the entire extent of the existent, both in space and time, is embedded in the limitless expanse of the nonexistent. The nonexistent does not even stop short at the boundaries of the existent, but penetrates all of creation . . . No wonder then, that Egyptians encounter the nonexistent wherever they go. If they dig a foundation trench, the ground water in it reminds them of the state before creation, and they pour sand to make a new “primeval hill” so that the existent may emerge from the primeval water, which is present in the ground water . . . . [I]n Egypt, the nonexistent is felt to be present everywhere and all the time, it is not confronted in an intellectual, abstract fashion, but engages man directly . . .118

Ancient Egyptian conceptions of non-existence suggest that Egypto-African peoples have long reflected upon the problem of time and its relation to death, but without reference to Plato’s supersensible realm where the soul is imagined to exist throughout all eternity. In The Golden Ass, which was published about a

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hundred years after the death of Christ, the neo-Platonist author Apuleius entertainingly dramatizes the birth of the Platonic idea of the immortal human psychē in his classic re-telling of the story of Cupid and Psyche. He does so against the backdrop of the ancient culture of African sorcery that he stigmatizes and associates with animality.119 Although the Platonic ideal of the soul is slow in reaching the Sahel, it enters into the Abrahamic traditions with the advent of Christianity, after the Hellenization of Palestine in the era of the biblical Apocrypha. The Platonic concept of the soul as an eternal form that is distinct from the human body seems a natural concept to peoples of Western origin rather than an historical and ideological one. This may be one reason why the veneration of the tombs of the saints is so difficult for Westerners to understand. In the US and Europe, the Platonic concept of the immortal soul is often taken for granted, as a natural rather than ideological construction. The Wahhabi bias against the veneration of the tombs of the saints reflects their deep animosity against ancient Egypto-African beliefs, but it paradoxically reflects the influence of Hellenic civilization upon Wahhabi interpretations of Islam. The logocentric doctrine of the Heavenly Book was widely embraced about 300 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, around the time that the entirety of Plato and Aristotle was translated into Arabic and disseminated across the Islamic world. As true of the Christian religion, it is difficult to imagine an unadulterated form of Islam that does not in some way reflect the influence of the Greek philosophers. While West Africa does not entirely escape the influence of the Greeks, as evident in occasional references to “the second sight” in the Timbuktu chronicles,120 Sahelian orientations to Islam, as documented in the Timbuktu chronicles, provide ample evidence that an authentically EgyptoAfrican and non-Hellenic form of Islam does exist and will no doubt continue to exist, despite the bigoted actions of a few Wahhabi fanatics. Gao’s most important tomb is the tomb of the Askiya Muhammad, a mosque that is not coincidentally built in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid. The body of the Askiya Muhammad is said to lie somewhere inside this vast mud structure, although local inhabitants steadfastly refuse to reveal the secret of the whereabouts of his body, as well as the whereabouts of the remains of his heirs like the second greatest Askiya, the Askiya Dawud.121 (The recent actions of the Ansar Dine jihadists in Timbuktu show that the reason for their reticence is well-founded.) The very architecture of the Askiya’s tomb, which is both a mosque and a pyramid, is a monument to the greatness of the Askiya Muhammad, not only as a man who faithfully kept his promises, but also as a man who once ruled over an ancient people that had succeeded in creating a satisfying synthesis of Egypto-African and Arab Islamic

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beliefs, albeit one that failed to resolve the socio-political problem of class divisions based on blood.

Conclusion Derrida’s concept of the specter, which is articulated in Specters of Marx and elsewhere, is a useful tool in facilitating greater understanding of Sahelian society, particularly on behalf of external observers. However, West African peoples themselves may find deconstruction to be a useful tool in explaining their culture to foreign interlocutors. I have not intended here to suggest that deconstruction may provide the magical key to unlock the complex secrets of the Sahel, merely that it offers one helpful strategy for interpreting the living culture of the region, one that may resonate with local beliefs far more than the neo-Cartesian approaches of Western academics. Though sometimes stigmatized as “pretentious gibberish,” deconstruction offers an arguably African and respectful means of understanding the Sahel.122 It was Mungo Park who introduced the word “mumbo jumbo” into the English language in order to poke fun at West African belief systems.123 Attacks on Derrida as a writer of “gibberish” should be read with this historical context in mind. The strength of deconstruction derives from the fact that it was not merely cooked up in the brain of Derrida, but that it provides a critique of Greco-Roman phallologocentricism by drawing upon resources that are far older than Western civilization. In fact, the Greeks borrowed heavily from the ancient Egyptians, as they themselves often acknowledged. By relying upon the conceptual tools that are provided by deconstruction, one may better understand important cultural documents from the region like the Timbuktu chronicles as well as the griot epics of Askiya Muhammad, Sundiata Keita, Al Hajj Umar Tall, and others. Deconstruction may also facilitate a deeper understanding of current events in the region by helping to situate such events in their proper historical and cultural context.

4

The Duty of Violence

Much has happened since I interviewed Yambo Ouologuem at his home in Sevare, Mali in 1997,1 most notably the failed jihad in northern Mali, followed by France’s expulsion of the Arab and Tuareg militants who had taken control of Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal under the leadership of the Iyad Ag Ghali and the Ansar Dine. When I put together my book on Yambo Ouologuem back in the late 1990s, my editor at Lynne Rienner Publishers urged me to come up with a title that might attract more readers than previous titles in the Three Continents Press series, which was inaugurated by the late Donald Herdeck.2 I had planned on entitling my own book Critical Perspectives on Yambo Ouologuem, which was similar to other titles in the Three Continents series such as Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe, Critical Perspectives on Dennis Brutus, and so on. In fact, my editor originally suggested the title Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Warrior. I had always associated the term “warrior” with Native American culture and therefore rejected it. However, I remembered something Al Hajj Sekou Tall said to me when we journeyed together to meet Ouologuem from Ouagadougou to Sevare in February 1997. Tall had called Yambo a “militant,” which I took at the time to mean a devout Muslim, who was deeply committed to the cause of spreading the Islamic religion. This conversation took place about four years before 9/11. At that time, being called an Islamic “militant” did not mean quite the same thing that it has come to mean today. When Al Hajj Sekou Tall called Ouologuem a militant, he meant it as a compliment, an unambiguous acknowledgment of Ouologuem’s sincerity and piety as a Muslim. The jihad of Al Hajj Umar Tall, who had founded the Umarian Tijaniyya, happened in the late nineteenth century and seemed a faint echo from the past. For this reason, I agreed to the proposed title change of my book provided that the word “warrior” be changed to “militant,” which was the term actually used in Mali. Later, in the aftermath of 9/11, I came to regret referring to Ouologuem as a “militant” in the book’s title due to the possible misunderstandings it might engender, despite the fact that this is how the 67

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Tijaniyya in Mali and Burkina Faso themselves referred to Ouologuem at the time of my book’s publication. (One reviewer in Pakistan was disappointed at Ouologuem’s obvious lack of “militancy” and felt deceived by the book’s title. Another complained that Ouologuem had been unfairly “labeled” a militant with this title.) During a visit to Bandiagara in June 2014, I sought to speak with the local Peulh chief and inheritor of the staff of Al Hajj Umar Tall but was dismayed to find that nearly everyone I had met on my visit to the area in 1997 was now dead. Ouologuem was still alive, I was told, but he lived in total seclusion and was quite elderly. I sent my regards but did not trouble him. As had once been the custom, the eldest member of the Tall family no longer served as chief of Bandiagara. (Though Bandiagara is a Dogon village, the Peulh descendants of Al Hajj Umar Tall were appointed chiefs during the early era of French colonization in the region.) Al Hajj Sekou Tall’s generation, the generation of Amadou Hampâté Bâ, had now passed and seemed a faint memory to those whom I spoke. Moreover, the recent Tuareg war for the independent state of Azawad had devastated the local economy, which is dependent on tourism in the Dogon country. Nearly everyone I spoke with in Bandiagara was bitter about the Tuareg takeover of the north, as well as France’s dishonest handling of the Kidal region, which had left many in Mali feeling betrayed. Once again, I had reason to regret that those who might come across the title of my first book on Ouologuem might imagine that he somehow would support local Islamists like the Ansar Dine, MOJWA , or AQIM . While it is true that some Peulh (or black Arab) Tijaniyya in Mali joined forces with the Tuareg separatists (and paid a steep price following the French military invasion), the Wahhabist jihad of Iyad Ag Ghali and his kinsmen were a manifestation of almost everything that Ouologuem – who is a member of the Tijaniyya but also a black Dogon man – had always targeted in his various writings and public statements. If Ouologuem is an “Islamic militant,” he is certainly not an Islamic militant in the same sense as Iyad Ag Ghali and his followers. When I first met Ouologuem in 1997, there were many aspects of daily life in the Sahel that I struggled to understand, especially those involving witchcraft and sorcery. During my interview with Ouologuem, he had said to me, “When I talk to people like you I have to keep things very simple.” Only later did I come to fully appreciate what he meant, for I indeed had much to learn about life in the Sahel. Prior to 9/11, I tended to see Ouologuem as a devout Muslim writer, a pious Sufi seeking to purify Islam by appealing to its inner heart; however, I was not sufficiently attuned to Ouologuem’s identity as an African writer and man.3

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At the time, it made more sense to me to situate The Duty of Violence in the greater context of Islamic religious practices and beliefs than to delve into the complexities of what Hale and Stoller have called “deep Sahelian culture.” What was missing from my initial reading of The Duty of Violence was greater reference to pre-Islamic belief systems in West Africa, which have certainly influenced Ouologuem’s writings. This is not to say that I was mistaken to argue that Ouologuem was a devoted Muslim novelist at the time he wrote The Duty of Violence, merely that Ouologuem’s approach to Islam was also informed by West African traditions, many that are regarded as heretical in places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan. In fact, the penalty for sorcery in Saudi Arabia is death.4 In The Duty of Violence, there are many references to sorcery that I had elided in my eagerness to interpret Ouologuem as a devout Muslim writer, rather than a writer who was hostile to Islam, as he was widely viewed at that time. As a case in point, Ouologuem told me during my second interview with him in 1997 that he sometimes conjured the dead, including prophets like Muhammad and Jesus. In fact, he spoke to the dead after he summoned them through the evocation of certain mystical sounds. I later learned that local Umarian Tijaniyya believed that these sounds predate the coming of Islam to the region and were said to originate from the time of the ancient Egyptians.5 Ouologuem’s novel includes a detailed description of an act of conjuration, one that can hardly be considered Islamic. In this case, a loathsome sorcerer performs an act of conjuration during which bizarre apparitions appear from the open vulva of Raymond Kassoumi’s mother, who is then brutally murdered.6 As explored in the previous chapter, in Al Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan the Askiya Dawud and a local sorcerer chant the name of the Askiya’s brother while pounding upon a calabash that floats in water. After they succeed in summoning the spiritual double of the Askiya’s brother, they shackle the double at the ankles and then drive a spear through its heart. In the Tarikh al sudan, we are told that the man who had been conjured in this way instantly died although he lived many miles away.7 In my book Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant, I had described such practices as a form of Tijaniyya spirituality and emphasized their more benign aspects, not mentioning that many Muslims outside the region would view such practices as heretical, if not evil. In fact, both Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan and Kati’s Tarikh al fattash are filled with similar anecdotes that would horrify the Wahhabi fundamentalists of Saudi Arabia. Years ago Ouologuem stated to me that “the worst enemy for blacks today are racist Arabs who have been satanically blessed with oil.”8 Besides local notables, the targets of Ouologuem’s critiques – both in The Duty of Violence and in my

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interviews with him in 1997 – were Wahhabi Muslims of Arab origin, who are racist against black Africans and who view Sahelian articulations of Islam as heretical. The Saifs or “black Jews” in The Duty of Violence are not Jews who hail from Palestine but local notables who claim to be elected because of their special Arab blood, regardless of their skin color. This category of Muslims includes not only the Tukulur Peulh such as Al Hajj Umar Tall and his descendants like Al Hajj Sekou Tall, who also claim a blood link to the Prophet Muhammad, but many other ethnic groups in the region who profess to be Muslims, including the Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg who took control of northern Mali in 2013. In Western media accounts of the Ansar Dine’s jihad in northern Mali, there has been much discussion of Al Qaeda and Iyad Ag Ghali’s indoctrination into extremist Wahhabi ideology during his tenure in Mecca, when he served as Mali’s ambassador. What has not been sufficiently recognized is that Iyad Ag Ghali believed that he was authorized to launch his jihad in the newly proclaimed state of Azawad because of his special status as a blood descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, or that he at least used this dubious claim to legitimize Arab and Tuareg acts of violence against black Muslims. In this sense, Ag Ghali acted no differently than the Saif ’s in Ouologuem’s The Duty of Violence. Ag Ghali is merely the latest avatar of what Ouologuem once called the “black Jew” in the Sahel, the nobleman who cynically manipulates archaic beliefs about occult blood in order to legitimate his exploitation of the négraille (or the “blackrabble”), whom he considers to be his chattel. In the south of Mali, but also Senegal, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere in the Sahel, few black Africans are persuaded by Arab and Tuareg claims to blood nobility or Ag Ghali’s appeals to Arabist interpretations of Islam that are openly contemptuous of black African traditions long predating the coming of Islam to the region. It is true that the Arab-centric Wahhabi’s have made some inroads in places like Bamako. You will sometimes see women wearing the black veils of the Wahhabi on the streets of Bamako, jostled next to the anti-Wahhabist disciples of Shakyh Amadou Bamba called the Murdiyya (at least in those neighborhoods with a strong concentration of Senegalese). But both groups are anomalies in Mali. The vast majority of Malians, including many Tuareg men and women in Bamako, rejected the jihad of Iyad Ag Ghali, recognizing it for what it was: a species of neo-Arabist imperialism claiming to bring true Islam to the region. If Ouologuem is an “Islamic militant,” he is therefore a militant for a form of Islam that has nothing in common with the Islam of those who smashed the tombs of the saints in Timbuktu, who banned the music of Mali’s musicians, and who burned the manuscripts of Timbuktu.

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Ouologuem is a militant for an Islam that is equalitarian and deeply respectful of Africa’s pre-Islamic past. Most importantly, Ouologuem militates for an Islam that rejects the ancient ideology of blood nobility, and he fearlessly militates on behalf of the négraille, who have long endured the historical injustices of the notables.

The heart of the mother The most important panel in The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Coming Forth By Day is the fateful scene of the Judgment of the Dead, where the heart of the scribe Ani is weighed against the feather of maat (sometimes translated as “Truth,” or “Rightful Order”). Behind the scene of judgment stands the ibisheaded god Thoth, who was the inventor of writing, and who will inscribe Ani’s name into the book of life if Ani is judged to have been a man of his word. Should Ani fail to pass the test, the heart of his mother will be tossed to the dog Ammit, the devourer. Ani swears that he has upheld his vows, that he has not lived as an adulterer (or vow-breaker) but as a man who kept his sacred promises. The heart that is weighed against the feather of maat is the heart of the mother, which is one part of Ani’s “soul” (and is not to be confused with the psyche of Plato). In the fateful scene of judgment, the heart of Ani’s mother is light as a feather, the visual sign of the spoken word. In the opening lines of his book of the dead, Ani pleads, “O my heart which I had from my mother! O my heart which I had from my mother! . . . Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not be opposed to me in the tribunal, for you are my Ka which was in my body . . .”9 The feather of maat represents the spoken word that is invisible. This is the word that rides upon the wind like the feather. The truthful word, or the uttered vow that comprises the body’s maternal fluids, is not weighed down with corrupt filth. Ani’s heart is not his own heart, but the heart of his mother, for Ani is a fleshly and leaky sponge that is made of his mother’s blood. His body is not a shell encasing an oyster that may be cast aside now that he is dead. Ani is rather a living dead thing made of maternal fluids. The heart of his mother is an essential feature of his “soul.” Like his name, the heart of his mother must be re-membered after his death. In contrast, the filthy heart is not the heart that is as light as a feather. It is the impure, polluted, and corrupt heart. This is why Ani’s book of the dead includes a chapter entitled “Chapter for not eating feces or drinking urine in the God’s domain.” Ani swears, “I detest what is detestable, I will not eat feces, I will not drink urine . . .”10 The man who has consumed the fluids of the body to

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increase his occult power is a man with filth in his heart. He has deliberately made his heart filthy in order to increase his occult power. Among the Songhay too, sorcerers often associate the filthy heart with the notion of hardness, an essential characteristic of the sorcerer. In his memoir, In Sorcery’s Shadow, Stoller documents Songhay beliefs that one’s power as a sorcerer is passed on through the breast milk of the mother.11 One of the most important themes running through Stoller’s memoir is the high premium that Songhay sorcerers place on the “filthy heart.”12 “A man on the path never knows what another will do to him” a sohanci warns Stoller. “A man on the path must be hard; he must be prepared.”13 The filthy heart is the heart that harbors malice towards one’s neighbors. It can bring misfortune to others and the desire for repentance. In the latter case, the filthy heart must be cleansed.14 After performing an act of sorcery that seems to cause misfortune to others, Stoller is astonished at the response of his Songhay friends who are certain that he harbors great violence and filth in his own heart. “Since you are young,” Stoller is warned, “you do not know what your heart is capable of doing.”15 Songhay beliefs about the heart that Stoller documents uncannily echo those that are recorded in The Egyptian Book of The Dead, as well as biblical narratives of the Pharaoh who “hardens his heart” against the Hebrew slaves, despite the dire warnings of the Prophet Moses (Exodus 8:32). However strange ancient Egyptian beliefs about the heart of the mother may seem in the post-Platonic West, the various African and Middle Eastern cultures that came into contact with the ancient Egyptians share many of the scribe Ani’s assumptions about the occult word and its maternal composition. Before Plato’s invention of the Ideal World of Forms, the real world for the Egyptians and other ancient peoples in the region was the world of the five senses, what Plato viewed as the ephemeral realm of becoming. In this “unreal” world, the spoken word issued from the abyssal coil of the human body and consisted of the fluids of the mother who gave Ani his occult blood. The gift of the blood from the mother’s heart is the gift that can never be repaid, for Ani would not exist without it. In Derrida’s Specters of Marx, this blood gift is simultaneously associated with the Hamlet complex, the mother tongue, and the maternal debt. The maternal blood source is what we always remember to forget, Derrida suggests, though we remain utterly dependent upon it.16 In his “Circumfession,” Derrida also alludes to “the feminine figure of Yahweh who remains so strange and so familiar to [him].”17 By way of contrast, in the Christian West, God is most often associated with God the Father, who is represented in the temporal realm by his son, Jesus Christ. But in Judaism before the Hellenic colonization of Palestine, the ark of the covenant that houses the Mosaic law is also the throne of the mother, and the

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Law, the law that is spoken with the mouth and heard with the ear, is inextricable from the occulted bodily fluids of the mother. Among the Songhay of northern Mali, it is not the son who receives his father’s blessing after his death, but the oldest son of the father’s sister. In this, the Songhay’s views are comparable to those of Freud, who argued that maternity may always be verified through direct observation, whereas paternity is a matter of discursive reconstruction. What is at stake for the Songhay father is making certain that the child who receives his blessing actually shares his same blood. The presumption is that the father may only hope that the son of his wife is truly his own son. The more conservative view is that it is safer for the father to assume that the son of his maternal sister will bear his same blood. Occulted spirit for the Songhay consists of the blood of the mother. The inherent logic in Freud’s view is that the maternal is a natural fact because it is a matter of direct observation. This same logic is also at work in messianic varieties of the Abrahamic faith, including post-Babylonian Judaism, Christianity, and Shi’a Islam. As a righteous remnant, ancient Jews from a Davidic bloodline upheld the view that they must remain a people who are set apart, if the Messiah was to come at all. This is why even today orthodox Jews often insist that one cannot be a Jew unless one’s mother is also a Jew. This is also the basis of kosher laws in Judaism as well as the shared anxiety that one’s blood may be polluted with the unclean blood of an animal. In Plato, the Khoral realm of the abyss is similarly associated with the maternal. The Khora is alternately described as a wet nurse, an empty receptacle, and womb where the good seed is planted. But in ancient Egypt the occulted blood of the mother is not simply nothing, as it is for Plato. The heart of the mother, which is weighed against the feather of maat, is exalted as a blood source, an essential reservoir that one must draw from in order to live. Achebe notes that in traditional West African society, woman is both a uniquely venerated and oppressed figure. Although the supreme mother is exalted in Sahelian folklore, she tends to suffer more than everyone else in daily life.18 Achebe describes the situation of Igbo women of the lower Niger Delta, but his observation applies to West African women in a general sense. Achebe also notes that this same dynamic is replayed in the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis and is not a uniquely African problem. Ouologuem too depicts the mother as a person who endures outrageous forms of oppression on a dayto-day basis despite the important place that she occupies in traditional West African society. In The Duty of Violence, Ouologuem amplifies the suffering of mothers in scenes of horrific violence, rape, and bodily mutilation. The extremely graphic nature of Ouologuem’s depictions of human suffering, especially the

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suffering of women and children, has led some of his critics to wonder if Ouologuem may be a Sadist, or if he depicts an image of a world that is totally beyond redemption.19 The textual evidence of The Duty of Violence, however, suggests that Ouologuem is deeply concerned with the sufferings of the oppressed, particularly the suffering of mothers and their children. Ouologuem awakens his readers to the terrible suffering of the négraille of West Africa in order to shock his readers out of their complacency and indifference. In an opening section of The Duty of Violence, Ouologuem describes a scene where French soldiers force local blacks to march along a dusty road, whatever their physical condition. Ouologuem writes, A woman is found squatting. She is pregnant. They jostle her, propelling her onward, kicking her from behind with their knees. Still marching, she gives birth while standing up. The umbilical cord is barely cut and tossed aside, when the baby is kicked to the side of the road: the march goes on as before. The haggard mother hobbles for a bit, delirious, reeling, and wailing in her misery, before she finally collapses a hundred meters down the road, where she is soon trampled.20

The image of the haggard mother and her slaughtered baby is breathtakingly shocking. Ouologuem pushes his reader hard to awaken to the terrible suffering of black African mothers during the era of European imperialism. He similarly depicts images of human suffering during the era of Arab colonization, before the arrival of the French. Such images do not provide evidence that Ouologuem wishes to merely titillate his readers, or shock them for shock’s sake alone. Ouologuem does everything in his power to awaken us to the plight of the négraille. Even as the elected nobles venerate the mother as the source of their pure blood, Ouologuem shows that the region’s nobles treat actual mothers as human trash. One of the novel’s most important characters is the mother of the main character Raymond Kassoumi, named Tambira. Ever ready to do anything on her children’s behalf, Ouologuem describes Tambira as “a fool [who is] worn out by mother love.”21 On her wedding night, Tambira is given over to the noble Saif overlord who claims his droit de seigneur and violently rips open the work of Tambira’s exciser. Later, Tambira consults a sorcerer on behalf of her children, whom she hopes will escape the life of servitude that she and her husband have endured. In Ouologuem’s account, Tambira is forced to surrender herself to the corrupt sorcerer, who demands sex from her in payment for his services, and then she is raped again and at last killed by two of Saif ’s thugs. Tambira’s body is finally dumped into a latrine, where it is retrieved the next day by her loving

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husband, who must bury his wife without recourse to justice. Ouologuem depicts Tambira as a woman who suffers simply because she is a black mother who loves her children. As readers, we are horrified by Tambira’s suffering, but it is impossible to doubt that her love for her children is real. The sacrifice of Tambira for her children is limitless. Yet, Tambira is rewarded for her unconditional maternal love as if she were a piece of human waste, fit only to be tossed into a filthy hole that is filled with feces, urine, and maggots.

The tears of the mother The opening sentences of The Duty of Violence allude to Hagar, the Egyptian wife of the Prophet Abraham, who searches for water to save her son Ishmael from dying of thirst. In the biblical account and in Islamic oral traditions, the Prophet Abraham abandons Hagar and Ishmael in a barren land with a few figs and a jug of water. Abraham does so at the behest of his first wife Sarah, who is jealous of Hagar and fearful that her own son Isaac will not receive Abraham’s blessing. After praying to God, Abraham complies with Sarah’s request that he deposit his Egyptian wife Hagar and their oldest son in the middle of nowhere. Hagar and Ishmael’s meager resources are soon exhausted. In desperation, Hagar runs about the desert, searching for water to save her beloved son. With tears in her eyes, Hagar looks over at her dying child and beholds the Angel Gabriel standing before Ishmael. Hagar approaches her child and finds that a well of water springs from the ground near his feet. The well that Hagar finds becomes known as the well of Zam-Zam. Hagar and Ishmael live near the well of water, where the Prophet Abraham later comes to visit them and builds an altar to the Lord. The site of the well of Zam-Zam is the future site of the holy city of Mecca, and the altar that is built comes to be known as the Ka’ba. During the hajj to Mecca, millions of Muslims each year reenact Hagar’s desperate search for water, men and women alike, following in Hagar’s footsteps in performing the rites of Sa’y. During this rite, those who have made the hajj pray on the steps of Al-Marwah that God may “bestow true vision” upon them.22 The opening sentences of The Duty of Violence allude to the well-known story of Hagar’s desperate search for water and announce the novel’s ethical concerns for the négraille: Our eyes drink in the sun’s rays and unexpectedly brim with tears. Maschallah! Wa bismillah! . . . The bloody adventure of the black-rabble [négraille] – shame upon these worthless wretches! – could easily be recounted from the first half of this century; but the true history of the Blacks begins much earlier with the Saifs,

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy in the year 1202 of our era, in the Africa Empire of Nakem, to the South of Fezzan, long after the conquests of Okba ibn Nafi al-Fitri.23

Ouologuem of course fictionalizes historical events in the region, calling Mali’s notables “Saifs” rather than sharifs and inventing fictional characters, kingdoms, and cities. He does this through creating anagrams like the word “Nakem,” which is a clever inversion of the word Mecca. What Ouologuem suggests is that the Kingdom of the Saifs (i.e., Arab notables) is the complete inversion of Mecca in the days of the Prophet Muhammad. In his novel and in interviews published after his novel’s appearance, Ouologuem underscores that the suffering of blacks in the Sahel begins with the coming of white Arab sharifs, or notables to the region. Even as he links the oppression of blacks in the Sahel with the coming of Arab Muslims, he appeals to deeply ethical Surahs in the Qur’an that urge Muslims from all walks of life to be compassionate towards those who suffer. A favorite Surah for many Umarian Tijaniyya Sufis reiterates the novel’s most basic ethical message: “Moses said to his servant: ‘I will journey on until I reach the land where the two seas meet, though I may march for ages’ ” (18:60). Umarian Tijaniyya Sufis in the Sahel typically interpret the Qur’an’s reference to the “two seas” to allude to the story of Hagar in her desperate search for water. When Hagar is at her most desperate, and on the verge of death, “God opened Hagar’s eyes, and she saw a well of water” (Genesis 21:19). For Sufis, only the “eye of water” may see water, the true source of life. It is only when Hagar’s eyes brim with tears of compassion for her dying child that she is able to see the water source that saves their lives. In The Duty of Violence, Ouologuem too evokes the Sufi notion of the “eye of ice” that cannot reach that heart, contrasting it with the “eye of water” that does reach the heart.24 Ouologuem urges his readers to look upon the négraille with the eye of water, not the eye of ice. This is something that notables of the region always fail to do. Though Arab sharifs bring Islam to the Sahel, Ouologuem shows that they are deaf to its most important teachings. The tears of Hagar as well as the tears of Tambira in Ouologuem’s novel are for their suffering children, not for themselves. The irony of Hagar’s tears is that she is only able to see the true source of life once her vision is clouded with tears. The more blurry Hagar’s vision becomes, the better she is able to see the water source that saves her life and the life of her child. This theme resonates with Sufi teachings that appeal to Islam’s inner heart; however, the Qur’an’s moral teachings echo ancient religious beliefs in the Egypto-African setting that long predate the era of the Abrahamic religions. The eye of Horus, one of ancient Egypt’s most

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beloved cultural symbols, is also an amulet that is worn to fend off the evil eye, in effect the eye of ice that cannot reach the heart. Contemporary Islamic versions of this amulet include the hand of Fatima, often depicted with a blue eye in the center, which is sometimes worn as a necklace providing protection from the evil eye. The ancient Egyptians believed that it is the tears of God that bring the world into being. The tears that fill the eyes of God, brimming over and thereby bringing the world into existence, are a powerful and life-sustaining substance. For the ancient Egyptians, the tears of compassion that we shed for others are in fact divine tears. The creation myth of the weeping deity suggests that human beings are most like God when they weep tears of compassion for those who suffer. In the Sahelian context, nyama not only refers to sperm, blood, sweat, urine, or feces; it also refers to human tears. Tears are also a defining theme in the writings of Derrida. In The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, John Caputo explores the theme of weeping throughout Derrida’s works, which he connects with what Derrida calls “the work of mourning.” Caputo compares the writings of Derrida on the theme of weeping with yet another well-known African writer, St. Augustine of Hippo, whom Derrida greatly admired despite obvious differences in their religious beliefs. “The eyes for Derrida are in the end organs not of sight but of passion,” Caputo notes. “Derrida is interested in eyes that are clouded over by tears of mourning . . . All these great weeping women [like Augustine’s mother St. Monica] – above all women – help ‘unveil the eyes.’ ”25 In his Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida writes, Now if tears come to the eyes, if they well up in them, and if they can also veil sight, perhaps they reveal, in the very course of this experience, in the coursing of water, an essence of the eye, of man’s eye, in any case, the eye understood in the anthropo-theological space of the sacred allegory. Deep down, deep down inside, the eye would be destined not to see but to weep. For at the very moment that they veil sight, tears would reveal what is proper to the eye.26

Caputo demonstrates the importance of this deconstructive theme that runs throughout Derrida’s works. In one of his books on the idea of the university, for instance, Derrida argues that, “the university must not be a schlerophthalmic and hard-eyed animal.”27 The word “schlerophthalmic” means “scarred-eyed,” like the cold and deadened insect eye that fixes its gaze upon an object without ever blinking. Derrida himself once suffered a debilitating illness during which he could not close one of his eyes for a number of weeks. This illness taught Derrida an important lesson: We need to blink in order to coat our eyes with

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water, so that they do not dry out and become scarred. Perhaps blinking is an art that we need to cultivate, Derrida provocatively asks? “What is terrifying about an animal with hard eyes and a dry glance is that it always sees,” Derrida states. “Man can lower the sheath, adjust the diaphragm, narrow his sight, the better to hear, remember, and learn.”28 But, an eye that is wet with human tears is not an eye that can ever see in a clear or focused way. If we lower the sheath of our eyes and coat our eyes with tears, we may even lose sight of the object that we see, which is finally not an object at all but a human being whose essence is forever hidden from us. Hegel once called the eyes “windows to the soul,” and yet Hegel did not mean by this that we ever directly observe the soul of another human being: All we will ever see in the eyes of another person is our own reflection two times over, the traces of ourselves that are deposited on the lens of the eyes of the other. To see with the eye of water is to see with the only eye that ever really sees anything at all, the eye of water. Derrida too suggests that only the eye of water can see water, or the true source of life. One reason the thought of Descartes is so often criticized in West Africa is its basis in the naïve metaphysics of correct perception. Cartesian and NeoCartesian claims to enjoy ethical competence, or to possess correct moral perception, are seldom about rational, scientific, or self-evident truth. More often than not, they are about power. Descartes and those inspired by him not only believe that they enjoy correct perception, they imagine that they possess the truth as a matter of certainty. This is what Chomsky calls “unconscious knowledge.”29 In his Discourse on Method, Descartes emphasizes that the aim of the deductive method is not to doubt for its own sake, but to stand on the bedrock of absolute certainty, to banish all doubt whatsoever from his thought. Descartes does not claim to see external objects on the horizon with the two eyeballs that are lodged in his skull, but with the transcendental eye of reason that exists in the timeless realm of being. Nietzsche refers to this mythical inner eye as a great “Cyclops eye,” the eye of reason that has the power to transform the philosopher into a walking and talking phallus. Naïve belief in the existence of the great Cyclops eye is, for Derrida, a delusion that is especially prevalent among European peoples, a reflexive “white mythology.”30 In contrast, the non-rational seeing that is described by Derrida and Ouologuem is a paradoxical form of blindness. To truly see, in this case, one must not gaze upon those who suffer with the unblinking eye of an insect, for a human being is more than an inert object on the horizon. “[The] Cyclops eye sees nothing,” Derrida writes, “nothing but an eye that it thus prevents from seeing anything at all. Seeing the seeing and not the visible, it sees nothing. This seeing eye [only] sees itself blind.”31

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Ouologuem and the messianic remnant Ouologuem’s deconstruction of regressive ideologies of blood election in the Abrahamic traditions is less equivocal than Derrida’s. As a Sephardic Jewish man who was born in Algeria and suffered the loss of his French citizenship when he was a child, Derrida upholds the Zionist state of Israel as an exceptional case in world politics, a matter of political necessity.32 In effect, Derrida reiterates Theodor Herzel’s views that Jews have the right to their own state in order to preserve their existence in the post-Enlightenment era of the republican nationstate, or as a matter of political realism. Derrida’s political realism about Israel leads him to deconstruct the Kantian concept of the citizen as a latently Christian idea, but Derrida refrains from deconstructing Israel’s Law of Return, which is an overtly theological doctrine that denies Palestinians basic human rights, including the right of return encoded in international law. In contrast, Ouologuem is a black Dogon man who identifies with the négraille of West Africa and who has no interest in upholding doctrines of blood election. His sympathies instead lie with all those who have suffered at the hands of their white noble oppressors, and he therefore offers a far less compromising critique of the ideology of blood election than Derrida. While Ouologuem alludes to the tears of Hagar and draws attention to the suffering of the négraille, he does not offer his readers a hypostatized notion of human tears as an occulted bodily fluid. He also does not single out Jewish people as unique bearers of the ideology of blood election but instead criticizes the pervasive nature of occult beliefs about blood election in all of the Abrahamic traditions, including Christianity and Islam. Ouologuem’s critique of messianic doctrines of blood election is made explicit in an exchange that occurs in his novel between the cunning Saif and the French Bishop Henry. After two thugs murder a local blacksmith at the Saif ’s behest, Bishop Henry calls on the Saif to confront him about the crime. Bishop Henry suspects that the Saif is behind the murder, but he is unable to prove his suspicions. In fact, the Saif is an expert at quietly assassinating all those who stand in his way. Aware that Bishop Henry knows what really happened to the blacksmith, the Saif slyly defends his decision to murder the blacksmith by making a subtle theological argument that implicates the French Bishop too, who only seems to be a more pious man than the Saif. The remarks of the Saif are worth citing at length: “The mystery of Israel,” [Saif] observed, “resides in its refusal to accept the gospel. Still, it is not for us to pass judgment. For the Church, with its ecclesiastical

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Sorcery, Totem, and Jihad in African Philosophy hierarchy and dogmas, might be viewed by some as hypocritical: the first shall be last.” The Saif then gave a brief discourse on the subject of his Jewish ancestry, before he remarked with an evil smile that “Israel was here, after all, to call the Church to vigilance . . .” When he was certain that the Abby had grasped his point, he quickly dissimulated: “Vigilance in the matter of individual conversion,” he said, warming to his subject. “For it is erroneous to speak in broad terms of any whole scale rejection or acceptance of Jesus Christ by all the people, for salvation is essentially an individual affair. Thus, to speak of Israel’s ‘defiance’ of the Church, or its rejection or acceptance of the Church, is to speak in terms that are far too general, if not erroneous. “Vigilance is also required against the danger that the Church become an end in itself. “And, finally, vigilance is necessary with respect to the very idea of a ‘remnant,’ lest we fall into the error of imagining that man’s fidelity play any part in ushering in the Kingdom of God. This is certainly not the case, for the grace of God does not require the help of man to be enacted. But, this notion of the ‘remnant’ that is introduced in the Old Testament is also present in the New Testament, as well as in the doctrines of the Church. It constitutes a bond between the Old Testament and the New, marking their essential unity. It also remains the unifying element between the pre-Christian and post-Christian Church. “Your mission to convert the idolatrous Muslims and Black Jews of the Nakem,” the Saif concluded, “confronts the Church with the timely question of why it bothered to come here in the first place, if not of its very existence.”33

Ouologuem in these passages reveals the insidious logic of messianic doctrines of occulted blood and demonstrates how such doctrines may be used to justify the most outrageous forms of social oppression. His scathing critique of doctrines of blood nobility is not limited to local Arab, Tuareg, Soninke, Wakuri, Peulh, and others who claim an elected status on the basis of their occult blood. His criticisms also include Jews, Arabs (both Sunni and Shi’a), Catholic and Protestant Christians, all the Peoples of the Book who affirm messianic doctrines that are predicated on the regressive ideology of blood election. Anti-Semitic Christians have often criticized and sometimes enacted violence against Jews for asserting their elected status as a righteous remnant from the “stem of Jesse.”34 Although many Jews across the globe do not uphold the doctrine of the righteous remnant as an indispensable feature of their religious identity, the claim to occupy an especially chosen status has been an historical source of irritation for anti-Semitic Christians because it implies for them that Jesus Christ was not the

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anointed messiah. But Ouologuem suggests that Christians are not so different from Jews when it comes to doctrines of blood election. In fact, Jews and Christians are in Ouologuem’s reading merely two different inflections of the same occult belief system. The Gospels clarify the Davidic blood lineage of Jesus not only because Jesus was the incarnation of the Father God but because doing so offered evidence that Jesus was truly the messiah. In other words, Christians do not disagree with Jews about the importance of occulted bloodlines; they merely disagree in their views about the historical identity of the messiah. In The Duty of Violence, Ouologuem’s criticism of Christians is directed towards the French Catholics who colonized the Sahel in the late nineteenth century, but it extends more broadly to the Christian religion in its many sects across the globe (i.e., about one third of the world’s population). Christians who claim that they are the spiritual heirs of Abraham, but not his genealogical blood heirs, nonetheless believe that Jesus Christ indeed issued from a particular Davidic bloodline. In effect, the Saif tells Bishop Henry that French Catholics are no different in their beliefs from the Black Jews of Nakem. They both believe in mystifying doctrines of special blood, and they both believe that such doctrines give them the right to dominate all those whom they both regard as idolatrous pagans. The implicit irony is that, by upholding such views, French Christians like Bishop Henry are neither more nor less pagan than the négraille animists whom they oppress. In the case of the Christian religion, Jesus Christ is the noble representative of the father, whose blood and body Christians consume in the act of communion. By eating and drinking the bodily fluids of Jesus Christ, Christians make themselves subservient to their Lord. The same dynamic underwrites the reenactment of the battle for domination between Seth and Horus among the ancient Egyptians. In the holy rite of communion, the blood of Jesus Christ commingles with the blood of the communicant, who debases himself in order to proclaim the Lordship of Jesus, as sovereign master. Jesus is the representative of the father in heaven. In the rite of communion, the Christian believer makes him or herself subordinate to Lord Jesus Christ through consuming his blood and eating his flesh. The act of communion is effectively an act of self-debasement before Lord Jesus. It was for this reason that the Neo-Platonist and African novelist Apuleius ridiculed Christianity as a religion of occult sorcery, a religion that he believed required the Christian to turn him or herself into an ass.35 By eating the bodily fluids of Jesus Christ, the representative of the father god, the Christian believer debases himself and becomes a polluted figure, not unlike Amar Zoumbani, the first griot, and the nyamakala. Ouologuem’s point is that

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both the “black Jews” of West Africa and French Catholics uphold similar beliefs in order to justify their oppression of impoverished blacks like the Dogon, Bella, Bozo, Sorkho, and others. For Ouologuem, the archaic notion of the Davidic remnant, which is also linked to Egypto-African beliefs that predate all the Abrahamic faiths, constitutes “a bond between the Old Testament and the New and marks their essential unity.”36 This doctrine, Ouologuem suggests, is “the unifying element” that is shared by Judaism and Christianity. The Islamic religion likewise affirms the messianic status of the Prophet Jesus while rejecting the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. Though more often associated with the Shi’a worldview, belief in uniquely elected bloodlines is hardly absent from Sunni interpretations of Islam, especially in Wahhabi strongholds like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. Many of the Wahhabi Arabs who enjoy smashing the tombs of Muslim saints also believe that they are a chosen race because of their noble bloodlines that extend to the family of the Prophet Muhammad. The scribes and the nobles they admire fervently believed in the archaic idea of the pure-blooded nobleman and used this mystifying notion to lord over the black people of the Sahel like the Bozo, Sorkho, Bambara, Dogon, Mande, Mossi, Wolof, and many others. Ouologuem is a unique figure in Mali’s history because he was the first to reveal this ideology for the historical fraud that it is. In Specters of Marx, Derrida coins the term “messianicity” as a conceptual retooling of the Heideggerian notion of the Zusage, or belief in the truth that is always already deferred and prior to all questioning.37 Unlike Ouologuem, however, Derrida himself is either oblivious or indifferent to the problematic nature of messianic doctrines and their historical links to post-Babylonian Judaic beliefs about the necessity of preserving an especially chosen blood remnant. Derrida’s oscillating use of the terms “messianism” and “messianicity”38 also tends to reinscribe archaic doctrines of blood election that strengthen this “unifying bond” in ways that many peoples across the globe (i.e., those who do not profess belief in the Religions of the Book) would find deeply problematic, including the Dogon animists of northern Mali, who absconded to the escarpments near Bandiagara about 800 years ago because they did not wish to convert to Islam. But it also extends to about half of the world’s population, who are neither Jews, Christians, nor Muslims. What Ouologuem calls “the unifying link” in the Abrahamic traditions is an archaic and indefensible religious doctrine that reinscribes oppressive ideologies of blood election at the expense of those deemed impure and therefore fit only for slavery, concubinage, and worse. Though it may seem that Ouologuem singles out Jews, his critique applies to all

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those who uphold doctrines of occult blood election, including those who defend Arab monarchies based on blood descent like the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Israel. However, Ouologuem’s primary concern is with the Republic of Mali.

Tall, Ogotemmeli, and circumcision In February 1997, Al Hajj Sekou Tall introduced me to Yambo Ouologuem in Mopti-Sevare, Mali. At the time, I was mostly interested in interviewing Ouologuem and did not realize Tall’s own importance as a cultural figure in the region. In Burkina Faso, Tall was well known as a public educator and intellectual, who was often asked to speak at cultural events, conferences, and celebrations.39 In Bandiagara, Mali, Tall was next in line to inherit the staff of Al Hajj Umar Tall and become local chief when he died in 1998. Tall was the grandson of Al Hajj Umar Tall and cousin of Amadou Hampâté Bâ. Though Bâ is better known outside the region, Tall was considered by many in the Sahel to rival Bâ in importance. Generationally, Tall was old enough to have been Ouologuem’s father, but he was also a Tukulur Peulh (or “black Arab”) man, whereas Ouologuem is a black Dogon man. In fact, Tall thought of himself as a white man whereas Ouologuem has always insisted that he is “merely” a black.40 Tall also claimed that, as a Tukulur Peulh man, he descended from the family of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the “Arab” Prophet Abraham (from the land of Ur) and his black African wife Hagar (from Egypt). Like Tall, Ouologuem was initiated into the Umarian Tijaniyya brotherhood and has been an active member of this Sufi order for most of his adult life. Despite important differences in their views, both Ouologuem and Tall were born and raised in Bandiagara, Mali, and they grew up sharing the same religious beliefs. The Dogon are a traditionally animist and extremely poor people who live in conditions that seem remarkably primitive to the many Western tourists who visit the Dogon escarpments each year. Ouologuem’s family members were not notables like the family of Tall, but they were among the elite of Bandiagara and therefore associated with Peulh notables, including the members of the Tall family. While Ouologuem and Tall disagreed on many important topics, it is important to remember that their occasional disagreements were articulated within a framework of shared beliefs, concerns, and cultural traditions. In Conversations with Ogotemmeli, the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule documented the views of Ogotemmeli, a prominent Dogon sage, regarding the

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ancient practices of circumcision and excision. Despite Ouologuem’s Dogon identity, Tall’s conservative views about genital cutting tended to be closer to those of the Dogon Ogotemmeli’s than to Ouologuem’s. In fact, Tall vigorously defended the West African practice of excision, as well as other forms of tribal cutting, which he claimed were the only real guarantee of the individual’s human rights. Ogotemmeli also believed that ritual circumcision for boys and ritual excision for girls were indispensable customs, and he suggested that all Dogon children must undergo these rites in order to become fully mature men and women. In West Africa, the clitoris is typically associated with the termite hill, which is a symbol of the earth’s clitoris. In Sembene Ousmane’s film Mooladé, the termite hill is filmed in juxtaposition with a traditional Sahelian mosque that is architecturally similar to the termite hill. Though he was very much opposed to excision, Ousmane illustrates in Mooladé the ancient nature of this custom, which was practiced for centuries in West Africa before its Islamization. In Ogotemmeli’s account, the termite hill (or earth’s clitoris) rose up in defiance against God, who was lonely and longed to have intercourse with the earth. Consequently, God “cut down the termite hill, and had intercourse with the excised earth,” Ogotemmeli informs Griaule. “But the original incident was destined to affect the course of things forever.”41 Whereas Tall defends excision practices against European efforts to stigmatize them, Ogotemmeli emphasizes the founding nature of such practices, which he suggests are essential to Dogon identity. “[E]ach human being from the first was endowed with two souls of different sex, or rather with two different principles corresponding to two distinct persons” Ogotemmeli states. “In the man, the female soul was located in the prepuce; in the woman, the male soul was [located] in the clitoris.”42 For a boy to fully become a man, Ogotemmeli told Griaule, the female soul in his prepuce must be removed from his body. Similarly, for a girl to become a fully mature woman, the male soul in her clitoris must be removed from her body. As true of the ring of flesh that remains in the Osiris monomyth and its Sahelian counterpart (as narrated in the Timbuktu chronicles and The Epic of Askia Mohammed), the excised genital flesh in Ogotemmeli’s account is transformed into a powerful fetish object: The circumcised foreskin becomes an autonomous lizard called a nay, symbolizing “the need for the man to suffer in his sex as a woman does.”43 The excised clitoris, on the other hand, is transformed into a scorpion, the protector of the twins in the Dogon zodiac.44 In Ogotemmeli’s view, circumcision and excision are the “remedy” to the danger that the dual soul poses to traditional Dogon society and a means of eliminating gender ambiguity in both sexes.

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A defender of the Tijaniyya faith of his grandfather Al Hajj Umar Tall, as well as a defender of ancient Tukulur Peulh traditions and culture, Tall affirms genital cutting as an indispensable aspect of both his tribal and religious identity. “For those who convert to Islam [like the followers of Al Hajj Umar],” Tall states, “they will not experience fewer constraints because of their new faith, but more . . . In such cases, these folks obey an ‘authority’ they once called ‘God of the Earth,’ ‘Admiral Mouminina,’ or ‘Chief of Believers.’ To disobey [the God of the Earth] is equivalent to disobeying God.”45 It is worth noting that Tall’s views are at variance with the Wahhabi doctrines of the Ansar Dine of northern Mali and others like them. Being a Muslim for Tall does not mean divesting himself of his dual identities as a Tukulur Peulh and Muslim man. Instead, Tall embraces both aspects of his African identity. He also links ancient rites of genital cutting with the question of the law and his own social duties and limitations as an adult. Far from imagining that excision violates the human rights of African women, Tall argues that excision is “at one” with the most basic questions of human rights. For Tall, excision is the only real guarantee that young women in Peulh society will be granted the civil rights that they deserve as adults. Tall states, Circumcision and excision [taadordy in Fulfulde; ban’ngo in More; soly in Bambara, etc.] warrant promotions for the young (girls and boys). Besides these two practices, there is teeth-sharpening, tattooing and scarification of the skin at precise places on the body (the stomach, shoulders, temple, lips, forehead, cheeks), all of which function as symbols and remain the only true means to concretely and solemnly consecrate the promotion of the individuals selected; that is, they guarantee the appurtenance of the group as a collective body, or as a socially ratified entity. Ritual promotion is at one with the question of Human Rights. Such rights are concretized within these contexts to the child’s advantage, especially the right of education.”46

Tall forcefully defends genital cutting against the views of European champions of human rights, who have encouraged West African peoples to abandon circumcision and excision as acts of meaningless violence. Tall states, “From the moment she undergoes excision, the young girl gains the right to insert herself into the realm of womanhood, enjoying all the benefits therein entailed.”47 For Tall, it is the failure to maintain genital cutting in West Africa that has led to the disintegration of traditional social structures that once kept the dangers of selfish individualism in check. Tall even suggests that the decline of traditional customs like excision and circumcision has resulted in the outbreak of violence

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in the region, the tyranny of lawlessness, juvenile delinquency, and other forms of civil unrest. “As the disobedience and transgression of traditional laws and practices have increased,” Tall states, “so we have seen increased migrations, conflicts among clans, ethnic groups, or tribes . . .”48 The concept of the self that Tall articulates in his defense of genital cutting is coterminous with Western conceptions of the self predating the era of Descartes. Like his grandfather, the famous jihadist Umar Tall, Sekou Tall too was trained in Hellenic philosophy and metaphysics.49 Tall’s writings include allusions to some of the most important philosophers in the Western tradition. Although his Western readers may disagree with Tall’s conservative views about excision, it would be fatuous to suggest that he had not carefully thought through the philosophical and political implications of his views, or that he sadistically enjoyed traumatizing young girls. Though controversial in the West, Tall’s views about genital cutting resonate with regional beliefs that are similar to those of the ancient Egyptians and that predate the advent of Western metaphysics. They certainly predate the advent of Cartesian epistemologies of the self. Genital cutting in the Sahel indeed traumatizes the child, but the violence of the nyamakala who perform this rite is anything but arbitrary and childish. In Tall’s view, genital cutting is instead a highly responsible adult act that assigns to the child a particular identity and guarantees the child specific rights within his or her society. Tall does not suggest that there is any guarantee that such acts are ethically “correct” in any Cartesian or neo-Cartesian sense. Ethics for Tall do not imply the correct representation of a hypothetical fluid hidden in some obscure cavity of the human brain. For Tall, there is no guarantee that the decision to cut the child is the “right” one. The child who undergoes circumcision or excision is cut in the absence of certainty, and yet the performance of this duty is nothing if not responsible. The adult circumcisers carefully and deliberately cut the child to show that they take lifelong responsibility for the child and claim the child as one of their own. The shibboleth of the cut marks the child’s inclusion in the particular tribe claiming him or her as their own and the child’s exclusion from all other tribes in the vicinity. The concept of the self that Tall articulates in defense of genital cutting has little in common with Cartesian notions of the self as a metaphysical, isolated, and self-contained entity, although Tall’s notion of the self is indeed comparable to Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, the self that necessarily and always implies being-there with others. Against neo-Cartesian articulations of the self, Tall insists, “We recognize and affirm that Man is nothing without the other . . . Those who lack the capacity for reflection and adaptation, the capacity to change and

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then return to themselves, to their ‘ground of being,’ inevitably cling to the myth of a pure identity.”50 Here, Tall refers to what Derrida has called “the white mythology” of the Cartesian cogito, the metaphysical “I” that always fails to pose the abyssal question of the “is” in Descartes’s cogito. In other words, the question of the meaning of being remains unasked in the philosophy of Descartes. For his part, Tall insists that no true identity is possible for human beings unless it is other-directed. “To be a man,” Tall states, “one must possess the ability to orient oneself towards one’s other, to accept the existence of the other, to accept the need to exist alongside him.”51 The adult circumciser violently cuts the child in order to open the child to the other, to alert the child to his or her relationship, duties, and responsibilities to the other. This dynamic is as true in Judaism as it is in traditional Sahelian society. Tall defends circumcision and excision as profoundly humanizing rites of socialization that help children understand that they are nothing without the other, that there is no such thing as a placeless self in any Cartesian sense. “The African,” Tall insists, “considers his other as a Man and nothing other than a Man because he is deeply aware and convinced that his own self-development is bound up with that of his neighbor.”52 Far from being an irresponsible and childish act, the incision made during the rite of genital cutting marks the lifelong responsibility of the adult for the child to whom he is bound. It is the sign of the covenant made between the adult and the child, the pledge that is made on the child’s behalf.

Ouologuem and The Duty of Violence Though Ouologuem like Sekou Tall is an Umarian Tijaniyya Muslim from Bandiagara, Mali, Ouologuem characterizes genital cutting as a brutal rite that causes the needless suffering of West African women. Ouologuem describes the genital mutilation of Tambira, the mother of Raymond Kassoumi, in horrifying detail, and he insists that the practice of infibulation (the most extreme form of genital cutting, which includes sewing up the vagina) was rare in West Africa before the coming of Arab Muslims to the region.53 Ouologuem does not suggest that female genital cutting never took place in the Sahel prior to the arrival of Arab Muslims. What he observes is that genital cutting became far more violent and terrible with the coming of Arab Muslims to the region. In his description of the rite, Ouologuem shows how genital cutting has been used to make black women more submissive to Arab notables and to enhance the notables’ Sadistic pleasures in violating black women. Ouologuem underscores that local notables

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deliberately instituted such practices in order to control the sexuality of black African women, while they themselves led lives of total debauchery. Besides practicing infibulation, the Saifs in Ouologuem’s account instituted Sadistic punishments for adulterous women, including their public humiliation and torture, such as forcing women who were accused of adultery to take “a vaginal douche of peppered water . . . in which swam red ants.”54 With characteristic audacity, Ouologuem describes genital cutting in shocking detail: The matron asked Tambira to sit with her legs crossed upon a big mortar that had only recently been rolled into her hut. And, while the first matron held Tambira immobile, the second cut into her clitoris – ba’al ma yallah! – with a soiled knife, excising it, and then sewing both lips together, pressing them with fingers, holding them tightly in place, and then clasping them together by way of thorns. Considerately arranging in this “stichwork” to leave a small orifice for Tambira’s natural needs, she next introduced a small grooved stick that was coated in black butter . . .55

After agents of the Saif brutalize Tambira in this fashion, Ouologuem describes the Sadistic pleasure the Saif takes when he claims his droit de seigneur with Tambira on her wedding night. To appease the Saif ’s appetite for violence and suffering, Tambira hides a sack of sheep’s blood beneath her buttocks, which she lets flow at the appropriate moment.56 However terrible, Ouologuem’s descriptions of Tambira’s infibulation and rape are not included in The Duty of Violence to give the reader a pornographic thrill. They are included to illustrate how the Arab notables used their bogus claims to blood election in order to perpetuate the most horrific forms of violence against black African women. However, Ouologuem does not make a case for the eradication of all forms of genital cutting. Ouologuem instead draws attention to the Arab nobles’ unjust and excessive use of violence. He also draws attention to the terrible suffering of black women at the hands of the notables. In the Sahel today, men and women continue to be cut and affirm the practice of circumcision as an indispensable feature of their cultural identity. Ouologuem does not suggest that such practices should be eradicated because he views them as human rights violations. As stated previously, circumcision and excision practices were not introduced in the region with the coming of Arab Muslims but are far older than Islam. Although Christians view circumcision as dispensable, this thought for most remains unthinkable in the Sahelian setting. To deliberately cut into the flesh of others to traumatize them in the act of naming and thereby offer them one’s lifelong pledge of responsibility is, in the

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views of many, to thoughtfully enact violence against the other, to perform what Ouologuem has called “the duty of violence” on the other’s behalf. For Ouologuem as for Tall, there is no such thing as a public sphere that is free of irrational violence. In some circumstances it is even one’s moral duty to carefully enact violence against the other. Rather than embrace any idealized realm of nonviolent interaction with the other, Ouologuem and Tall encourage their readers to be more thoughtful violence-doers in the public sphere; or, they urge them to be aware of the difference between careful and thoughtful violence-doing as opposed to unnecessary, cruel, and excessive violence-doing. In this sense, Ouologuem and Tall’s views are comparable to those of Heidegger, who spoke of human technology as “the violence-doing of the knowing.”57 Against quasiCartesian notions of individual identity, the notion of the individual that one finds in the writings of Tall and Ouologuem does not promote “the myth of a pure identity” but is instead inherently other-directed. Tall insists that Africans did not need to learn humanism from studying great European philosophers; rather, African society has always been a humanistic one. But Tall also affirms traditional and commonly stigmatized rites like excision, tribal cutting, and scarification because he believes that they bind the individual to the other and therefore create the necessary conditions for the emergence of a society where one may lawfully, peacefully, and rationally interact with one’s other. Ouologuem’s views do not contradict those of Tall although Ouologuem suggests that the suffering that has been caused by the law’s violent application in West Africa can and should be mitigated. If it is a duty to execute the law and thereby perform an act of violence against one’s other, it is also a duty to ensure that those upon whom one enacts one’s duty of violence do not needlessly suffer from the law’s forceful execution. For this reason, Ouologuem draws attention in The Duty of Violence to the historical failure of Sahelian Muslims to construct a more just and humane society, wherein the négraille might be delivered from so much unnecessary suffering. As opposed to neo-Cartesian notions of rational communication, the respective views of Tall and Ouologuem satisfyingly resonate with long-standing conceptions of the law in the history of African Islamic society in ways that those of neo-Cartesian theorists like Habermas and Chomsky do not. Ouologuem’s suggestion that the law might be more fairly and humanely executed in West African society has perhaps never seemed more urgent than in the aftermath of the failed jihad of Ansar Dine militants who sought to implement sharia law in northern Mali in brutal, excessive, and inhumane ways. It goes without saying that Ouologuem’s ethical call to reevaluate extreme and Sadistic uses of violence applies not only to the imposition of hu’dud

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laws in places like Timbuktu and Gao, but also the unnecessary and excessive traumatizing of black women and children in Mali and elsewhere in the region.

Conclusion The Egypto-African themes explored in this chapter long predate the historical emergence of Judaism as a historical religion. For this reason, debates about the so-called “Jewish” basis of psychoanalysis and deconstruction are typically misguided, when not indefensibly Eurocentric. The Osiris rite performed in ancient Egypt is far older than the Oedipus myth. It also predates the biblical tale of the rivalry between Jacob and Esau. The deconstructive theme of the trace is also far older than deconstruction, far older than all of the Abrahamic traditions. Deconstruction may nonetheless serve as a helpful tool in facilitating understanding of Egypto-African orientations to the spoken and written word like those that prevail today in the Sahel. In theorizing the concept of the Abrahamic, Derrida similarly emphasizes the importance of the hyphen that links the Judeo-Christian and the Judeo-Muslim. The hyphen in Derrida’s writing is the violent cut, trace, or incision made during the deliberately traumatizing act of circumcision.58 Derrida’s notion of the trace is evocative of the mark-making of the Egyptian God Thoth, who is credited with the invention of writing as well as dice. Thoth is the woodpecker god who leaves the mark of his beak in the wood. Following the teachings of Al Hajj Umar Tall, the Tijaniyya of West Africa similarly believe that the entire meaning of the Qur’an is contained within the small dot under the letter “ba” of the Bismillah, the first word of every Surah in the Qur’an (with some exceptions).59 The dot is the trace, cut, nick, or incision. It is also a sign of the Law. To assert the indispensable nature of the Egypto-African trace, or the necessity of enacting one’s duty of violence on the other’s behalf, is not tantamount to justifying the excision of women in West Africa although it does suggest that Western-based critics of excision would do well to seek to first understand the cultural logic inherent in such customs before reflexively rejecting them as human rights violations. For Ouologuem, there has certainly been far too much violence in the region beginning with the coming of Arab Muslims about one thousand years ago and French Christians in the late nineteenth century. Ouologuem makes clear his view that black women in West Africa have suffered more than anyone because of the Arab notables’ and French Christians’ arbitrary and excessive use of violence. But, as a thinker who was trained in Umarian Tijaniyya theology as well as European philosophy, Ouologuem also suggests that the concept of liberty does

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not mean freedom in the form of lawless and non-violent anarchy, as advocated by neo-Cartesian theorists like Chomsky and Habermas, but rather the experience of human freedom within the confines of laws that are violently enforced, the freedom that results from entering into binding social contracts imposing real limitations and prohibitions upon one’s self. Ouologuem and Tall suggest that a responsible adult must sometimes be willing to enact the duty of violence on the other’s behalf, not in order to cruelly traumatize the other, but to ensure the other may enjoy basic liberties and rights within the framework of the law.

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Nyama, Fratricide, and Reconciliation

Foreign policy analysts like Chomsky, Keenan, and others have laid the blame for regional conflicts in northwest Africa upon the machinations of US foreign policy makers, who in their view have destabilized the region through the establishment of AFRICOM , Dick Cheney’s business ties with Algeria, the US’s “humanitarian” bombing of Libya, and similar interventions. I do not question here that the actions of the US , France, and various Arab governments played a significant role in shaping the recent crisis in Mali. However, Mali’s centuries-old manuscripts, griot epics, novels, films, and other cultural documents also suggest that internal social and political problems in Mali itself are also to blame for its periodic historical crises. It is not that Malians are unaware of the role of external states like the US , France, and Algeria and their Machiavellian designs upon the region; it is rather that Malian representations of past and present conflicts also underscore the ethical, social, and political responsibilities of local citizens for the fate of the nation. One powerful theme that recurs in many local documents is that political rivalries among those who should be fraternal allies, rather than foes, has sometimes left Mali vulnerable to powerful military states outside the region. Careful attention to such documents may reveal much about what Malians themselves believe is the cause of their own civil conflicts throughout history, including what may be done to resolve future conflicts and to ensure their paucity. Rather than draw attention to the political and economic motives of external foreign powers, the artists, historians, griots, and film-makers of Mali more typically emphasize the long history of fratricidal conflict in the region with reference to ancient beliefs about totemic cutting, vow-making, sorcery, social caste, and jihad. It is difficult to understand Mali’s ancient history of intra- and inter-tribal conflict without reference to local beliefs about nyama, the Mande word for “spirit” or an occulted bodily fluid with the power to shape one’s familial, social, political, and even biological identity. The region’s cultural documents show that it is belief in the occult power of blood that determines one’s caste standing in Mali and that gives rise to fratricidal conflict, rivalry, and warfare. In the oral 93

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epics of Mali, the blood genealogies of its greatest cultural heroes, including Sundiata Keita, the Askiya Muhammad, Al Hajj Umar Tall and others, are typically traced to the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the Prophets Ishmael, Abraham, Noah, and Adam. In the Book of Genesis, Adam’s son Cain slays his brother Abel because God prefers Abel’s blood sacrifice of an animal to Cain’s agricultural gift. The god of Adam is a god that demands blood sacrifices of His devotees. Though Cain’s blood purity is never in doubt in the biblical account, Cain nonetheless fails to appreciate the true importance of blood sacrifice in the eyes of God. In effect, Cain raises the stakes on Abel’s gift of animal sacrifice by killing his own brother, thereby proving to God that he too is capable of a blood sacrifice. The recurring themes of occult blood and blood purity are defining features of the long history of fraternal conflicts that are recorded in all of the Abrahamic traditions. Belief in the power of blood leads to class division and becomes the basis of conflict between fraternal siblings, one of whom resents that he is stigmatized due to his polluted blood. As this chapter will explore, the question of occult blood in Islamic West Africa is finally inextricable from the question of the birthright. In the Abrahamic traditions, including those of northwest Africa, the legitimate brother is the brother who bears the unsullied blood of the chosen father. It is caste division based on belief in occult blood that leads to warfare between fraternal rivals. The brother who occupies a lower social status typically develops feelings of bitterness against his favored brother, resulting in rivalry, division, violence, and sometimes civil war. At the root of the stigmatized brother’s hostility towards his rival is his conviction that his brother has deliberately humiliated him. In Platonic terms, the thymotic desire for justice compels the humiliated brother to revolt against his hated fraternal rival, often with tragic results. The cultural documents of Mali attest to the enduring nature of these Abrahamic themes in shaping the region’s history of conflict and warfare. This chapter explores three major Malian texts that reiterate these themes and that offer alternatives to the history of fratricidal conflict in the region: Al Hajj Mahmud Kati’s Tarikh al fattash, Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s film La genèse, and Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Timbuktu.

Occult sorcery in the Tarikh al fattash and the fall of the Songhay Dynasty Both the Tarikh al fattash and the Tarikh al sudan emphasize that the Askiya Muhammad’s sons and grandsons failed to honor their own vows, or that they

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were literally adulterers (or “vow-breakers”). This moral failing on their part led to the ultimate decline and fall of the Songhay Dynasty. In contrast, The Epic of Askia Mohammed emphasizes the failure of the Askiya Muhammad’s male heirs to appropriately honor ties of blood nobility, although this recurring theme also plays a prominent role in the Timbuktu chronicles. Because the uttered vow and the uttered curse consist of actual spoken breath from the human lungs, the theme of the dishonored vow in the Timbuktu chronicles is inextricable from the theme of occulted blood, which is only apparently more prominent in The Epic of Askia Mohammed. The author of the Tarikh al fattash observes that the sons and grandsons of the Askiya Muhammad precipitated the fall of the Songhay dynasty through fratricidal conflict that eventually escalated into a full scale civil war, as brother fought brother for control of the throne, after the long and peaceful reign of the Askiya Dawud. As the author of the Tarikh al fattash notes, “This civil war marked the beginning of the decline of the Songhay dynasty, its fall and ruin before the actual coming of the troops of Mulay Ahmad al-Dhahabi.”1 After ascertaining the weakened condition of the Songhay leadership in Gao, the Moroccan pasha Mulay Ahmad dispatched between three and four thousand riflemen under the command of the renegade Christian Jawdar, a Spanish eunuch and loyal subject of Mulay Ahmad, who decimated the much larger but less well-equipped Songhay army in a massive battle that took place on March 1, 1591.2 Historians like Al Hajj Salem Ould note that one major cause of the Songhay’s defeat was their failure to purchase firearms, which they might have easily acquired from the Grand Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.3 Fraternal conflicts among the Askiya Muhammad’s grandsons preoccupied the Songhay and caused them to lose sight of the external threats that menaced them. As the author of the Tarikh al fattash observes, civil war between the many grandsons of the Askiya Muhammad was “the cause for the ruin of the Songhay, for it opened the door to internal conflict, leading to the diminishment of royal power, and severing the cord that held together the mechanisms of government; all of this happened at the same time as the invasion from Marrakesh, precipitating the march of events that led to the final downfall of the Songhay.”4 This view is not limited to the scribes but is also shared by the Songhay elites. When the civil war degenerates to the point that many of the notables feel compelled to take action, they convene a council and summon one of the Askiya Dawud’s sons, the Kan-fari Mahmud, in order to convince him to assume the throne. The notables tell the Kan-fari Mahmud, “You know very well that out of all the sons of their common father [the Askiya Dawud], those that are here now, not a single one of them wants to give up power to one of his brothers. God has

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sown hatred and enmity between them to such a degree that not one of them would hesitate to use force to kill his brother in order to secure the throne for himself.”5 Besides the example of their virtuous grandfather, the heirs of the Askiya Muhammad also have the example of Sunni Ali Ber constantly before them, the example of the hard man who kills to get whatever he wants. Instead of striving to be a pious promise keeper, the hard man strives to be the most ruthless man of all. He is the man who deliberately hardens his heart, like the Pharaoh in the time of the Prophet Moses, who destroys all those who stand in his way. As the sons and grandsons of the Askiya Muhammad fight for the throne, these two paths lie before them. However, hardness of heart is a value from the ancient culture of sorcery, not the Abrahamic traditions. In the coming civil war, the values of the far older world of occult sorcery will supersede those of the Religions of the Book. The author of the Tarikh al fattash traces the “true cause” of the fall of the Songhay dynasty to an obscure incident involving the use of sorcery against an appointed official who served the Askiya Muhammad Bani, the sovereign ruler of the Songhay after the death of his father the Askiya Dawud.6 The scribe who records this unusual incident, probably Ibn Al Mukhtar, the nephew of Al Hajj Mahmud Kati, documents what happened from the notes of Kati and includes them in an addendum to the chapter on the life of the Askiya Muhammad Bani. Because this information is appended to the chapter on the Askiya Muhammad Bani, readers may be tempted to dismiss it as bizarre speculation of marginal significance. However, it is clear that the scribe who edited the text himself truly believes that he presents his reader with factual information regarding the true reasons for the dynasty’s collapse, which he attributes to the exercise of occult sorcery. According to Kati’s nephew Ibn Al Muhktar, Al Hajj Mahmud Kati entered into a dispute with a eunuch named Alu, who was an appointed official of the Askyia Muhammad Bani. The Askiya Dawud, the askiya’s father who is noted in the Tarikh al fattash for his generosity, had given to Kati a plot of land that was left fallow until the Kabara-farma Alu, the eunuch who served the Askiya Muhammad Bani, appropriated the land for his own uses. When Kati confronted the Kabara-farma Alu, the eunuch insulted the elderly shakyh and rudely pushed him to the ground. This incident led to the act of sorcery against the eunuch Alu, which Kati justified on the grounds of the eunuch’s obvious “impiety.” The details of this incident were discussed in a previous chapter, but they are noted again here because they may help contemporary readers of the Tarikh al fattash better understand what Songhay peoples themselves may have thought were the actual causes of the fall of the dynasty. While modern historians like Ould draw attention

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to the Moroccans’ advanced armaments, or the fact that the troops of Jawdar fought with rifles against the Songhay’s spears and arrows, the Timbuktu scribes merely note this difference in military technology without comment. Instead, the editor of the Tarikh al fattash goes into great detail describing the precise nature of the act of sorcery that is exercised against the “mule-headed” eunuch Alu, and admires its highly efficacious results. Exactly one year after Kati’s talib writes a spell that he attaches to a spear, which is then hurled into the heart of a goat, the eunuch Alu is killed in “the exact same manner” as the goat. The author of the Tarikh al fattash claims that this incident is the real reason for the fall of the Songhay dynasty. This claim does not nullify the scribes’ previous claims that vow-breaking and the failure to honor ties of blood nobility were also true causes that led to the fall of the dynasty although it does add a further layer of complexity in helping non-Sahelian readers conceptualize Songhay views about the reasons for the dynasty’s internal collapse. The scribes’ claim regarding the success of this act also suggests the interrelated nature of the various factors that finally resulted in the empire’s demise, or that the askiyas’ impious vow-breaking as well as their failure to honor ties of blood nobility bear an important relation with Kati and his talib’s use of occult sorcery against the eunuch Alu. However, it should be clear that neither Kati, his talib, nor Kati’s nephew (who later appends Kati’s notes to the Tarikh al fattash) suggests that the act of sorcery in retaliation against the eunuch is in any way a moral failing on Kati’s or his talib’s part. Far from apologizing for Kati’s occult act of vengeance, the note that Kati’s nephew Ibn Al Mukhtar attaches to the end of the chapter on the Askiya Muhammad Bani suggests that Kati’s nephew takes great pride in his uncle’s prowess as a man who was willing to harden his heart to take vengeance against a personal rival, a fellow Songhay who is obviously not his political foe.7 Occult belief in the power of nyama as a neutral force in the world, which is neither good nor evil in itself, finally authorizes the attitudes of all three men with respect to the act of sorcery that Kati and the talib perform. Rather than dismiss the remarks of Kati’s nephew as marginal obscurantism, I would suggest here that the occult murder of the eunuch Alu may very well have been the “true cause” of the dynasty’s collapse, or that the vengeful act of sorcery against the eunuch Alu tends to reenact the basic situation encoded in the Osiris monomyth, the biblical conflict between Jacob and Esau, and the legend of the griot’s impure origins. It also replicates the diabolical act of the Askiya Dawud, the father of the warring brothers, who killed his own brother the Arbibandafarma, by summoning his spiritual double and then driving a spear through the double’s heart.8 In other words, whenever brother deliberately uses sorcery

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against brother, no matter how efficacious the act may seem at the time, it generally signals the beginning of hostilities, not the end of them. In the Tarikh al fattash, the eunuch Alu picks a fight with the Balama’a Sadiq over a pagne that he alleges a slave of the Balama’a stole from him. Alu then has the slave seized, flogged, and placed in chains. This act outrages the Balama’a, who kills the eunuch in an act of revenge, just as Kati’s talib killed the goat. After killing the eunuch, we are told, the Balama’a “feared he would be punished for his act by the askiya [Muhammad Bani], so he dispatched an envoy to his brother the Kanfari Sali, the son of the Askiya Dawud . . . to inform him of what he had done and to let him know that he was now in revolt against the Askiya Muhammad Bani, and that he disavowed his oath of obedience to the Askiya Muhammad Bani.”9 Later, the Balama’a kills the Kan-fari Salih when a misunderstanding arises between the two brothers. After he kills the eunuch and his brother the Kan-fari Salih, the Balama’a Sadiq raises an army to attack another of his brothers, the Askiya Muhammad Bani, who mysteriously dies after a long and difficult march with Songhay troops. A situation of total chaos ensues after the Askiya Muhammad Bani unexpectedly dies. Meanwhile, the council of elders conspire to make the Kan-fari Mahmud, the only son of the Askiya Dawud whom they trust, the next askiya, now that the Askiya Muhammad Bani has died. However, the conspiracy of the notables is thwarted when the Kan-fari Mahmud’s brother Ishaq learns of it from a slave, who remains loyal to him. The Balama’a Sadiq arrives on the scene with his army, expecting to confront the army of the Askiya Muhammad Bani. Instead, the Balama’a Sadiq finds the vast majority of the Songhay now aligned against him, under the banner of the Askiya Ishaq. In the confusion that follows, the Balama’a and his army are easily routed. Afterwards, the Askiya Ishaq reigns over the Songhay for about three years before the Moroccans march on them. Regarding this turbulent period, the author of the Tarikh al fattash notes, “It was during [the Askiya Ishaq’s] reign that the decadence of the Songhay government was first made manifest: these were the days of trouble and agitation, culminating in the arrival of the troops of prince of the believers, Mulay Ahmad al-Dhahabi.”10 The addendum of Kati’s nephew Ibn Al Muhktar regarding his uncle’s act of sorcery is not a confessional moment in the manuscript, nor is there any suggestion that Kati and his talib have done anything wrong. Instead, Kati and his talib imagine that they are jihadists of sorts, albeit jihadists who use sorcery to conduct religious warfare, contradictory though their views may seem. Unlike a prophet who keeps his covenant with God, even when conventional morality dictates that he should act otherwise (for instance, when Abraham shows his

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determination to sacrifice his own son), the sorcerer is an oath-breaker who hardens his heart and deliberately breaks his promises to increase his occult power. To curse one’s brother implies annulling the covenant that binds one to the other. The sorcerer uses lethal words to curse his rivals, and, in fact, cursing one’s rival and breaking one’s sacred covenant with one’s brother finally amount to the same thing: they are two aspects of the same phenomenon. The man who curses his kinsmen with his powerful and lethal utterances, as the Askiya Muhammad does to his sons the Askiya Musa and the Yusuf-koi, performs an unmistakable act of sorcery, which few Muslims outside of the Sahelian context would seek to justify on religious grounds, or as an act of jihad.11 If the griot’s words are feared for their occult power even today, so too are the words of the scribes, although the words of the scribes are written on a flat surface rather than spoken with the mouth. In the former case, the word is intended for the ears of one’s rival, whereas the words of the scribe are intended for the eyes. Yet, both are finally manifestations of the same thing. Both are imbued with nyama, and both may be employed as powerful instruments against one’s personal rivals. To conceive of writing as a deliberate act of violence in the manner of Kati, his talib, and his nephew is to adopt an untimely and uncanny view of human language, at least from the perspective of the Western reader. Rather than criticize Kati for his use of writing to enact violence against the eunuch Alu, it is perhaps wiser to ask how it is that Kati is so oblivious to logocentric notions of writing that have come to seem natural rather than historical and ideological in the post-Christian West. For Kati, historiography does not provide an accurate representation of a concealed metaphysical truth inscribed on the human interior. Kati does not wish to write the Truth. Instead, he seeks to annihilate his personal rivals, to harm them with his written words. This animosity on Kati’s part extends to the living and the dead. (For instance, Kati’s remarks on Sunni Ali Ber and his short chapter on the accursed Askiya Musa are intended to bring harm upon men who are already dead. Kati’s references to both are almost always accompanied with curses.) Kati’s aims are not necessarily the same as those of a deconstructive theorist like Derrida, who has characterized deconstruction as a means of striving for justice, although Kati indeed imagines that killing the eunuch Alu through the use of occult sorcery will somehow set things right. In contrast, delivery from the desire for vengeance is a defining theme of deconstruction, linked to the Nietzschean doctrine of the eternal return. Because Kati is unable to renounce his desire for vengeance, Kati and his talib’s deliberate act of sorcery fuels the fire of the already tense political environment that escalates into a full-scale civil war pitting brother against brother.

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The Osiris monomyth, as well as the biblical account of Jacob and Esau’s rivalry, culminates in an act of sorcery, as one rival poisons the other to gain political and social prestige. Many of the askiyas resort to similar acts of occult sorcery whenever their political standing is threatened or whenever they seek vengeance against a kinsman who has wronged them. In this respect, Al Hajj Mahmud Kati merely follows the examples of the askiyas when he attacks the eunuch Alu, the Muslim and Songhay “brother” who mistreated and disrespected him. In doing so, Kati himself becomes yet another conscript in the brewing civil war of brother against brother. When Jacob poisons the soup of his brother Esau with his own bodily fluids, he too inaugurates a civil war with his older brother whom he has wronged. The sin of Jacob is that he uses sorcery against his brother Esau to gain social prestige over him and to humiliate him. Jacob traffics in poison, as do all sorcerers, to harm his personal rival. In the cases of both Kati and Jacob, brother enacts sorcery against brother. While the eunuch Alu is not literally the brother of Kati, they are both Muslims, despite Kati’s claims that the eunuch’s impiety disqualifies him from being considered Kati’s Muslim brother. Although Kati does not feed the eunuch Alu a poisoned meal, his action also sets off a chain of events that culminates in a civil war between brothers and that brings about the demise of the Songhay dynasty. In other words, Jacob’s act of sorcery against his brother Esau is echoed in the act of Kati and his talib, who poison the goat with their lethal nyama, construed here as the occulted bodily fluid of the scribe. The goat that the talib kills is a substitute for the eunuch, according to the economy of exchange that is inaugurated with the Abrahamic sacrifice of a ram in exchange for his son. The fall of the Songhay dynasty begins with an occult act of animal sacrifice, an animal poisoned with the nyama of a Muslim scribe. Although Kati would obviously not put it in these terms, the reflexive practice of occult sorcery among Songhay notables, including the askiyas and their scribes, is the true reason for the civil war among the sons of the Askiya Dawud. This is why Kati and his talib’s occult sacrifice of the goat may indeed be construed as the “true cause” of the civil war that breaks out one year later when the Balama’a Sadiq, another of the Askiya Dawud’s sons, takes it upon himself to kill the eunuch Alu, “in the exact same manner” as Kati’s goat is killed.12 The killing of the goat sets off the chain of events leading to the lethal fraternal conflict, after the Balama’a Sadiq kills the eunuch Alu. By way of contrast, The Epic of Askia Mohammed never infers that the use of occult sorcery is the real reason for the downfall of the askiyas. Instead, the city of Gao is destroyed when a woman from the city reveals its occult secrets to the invading army from the north. In Nouhou Malio’s

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rendition of these events, the actual city of Gao floats into the clouds each morning, so the bullets of the Arma never fail to miss it. An older woman who is having sexual relations with a soldier in the Moroccan army reveals the truth about the levitating city to her lover, enabling the Arma to at last gain control of Gao.13 The message here is that the unveiling of Gao’s secrets brings the city to its knees, not the use of occult sorcery. Sorcery’s betrayal causes the ultimate fall of Gao, not using sorcery to one’s personal advantage, as Kati and the askiyas do. The Epic Askia Mohammed emphasizes that occult secrets should not be revealed. There can be no occult sorcery without secrets. Occult knowledge is by definition secret, and it must remain secret. To reveal the secret of occult sorcery is to destroy its power. Perhaps the most important lesson in the Tarikh al fattash’s account of the fall of the Songhay dynasty of the askiyas, at least for readers after Azawad, is that if the citizens of Mali do not maintain strong bonds with their fellow citizens of all ethnicities and caste standing, if they do not faithfully strive to honor their vows to their fellow citizens, they may set themselves up to be conquered by external forces on the horizon, like the foreign powers that now occupy northern Mali. In the account of the fall of the dynasty in the Tarikh al fattash, the sons of the Askiya Dawud turn their private adversaries into their public foes and are later shocked to learn who their true foes are, the Moroccan Arma that invades northern Mali with a few thousand riflemen and easily subdues both Gao and Timbuktu. The author of the Tarikh al fattash’s description of the Songhay’s initial confrontation with the Moroccan army reveals the horror and shock the Songhay experience when their true foes are finally arrayed before them: “[The askiya and his companions] sat down, astonished to behold people whose faces differed so much from their own. They were surprised by the Moroccans extravagant manner of wearing their hair, which made their faces seem speckled white and black. They were overwhelmed with fear, apprehension, and confusion.”14 The author of the Tarikh al fattash documents the epiphany of the foe’s otherness that the Songhay experience. As Carl Schmitt might put it, the foe reveals his difference to the Songhay, disclosing the real existential threat that he represents to them. Nietzsche has suggested that the true foe, as well as the true friend, may finally amount to little more than metaphysical illusions; however, in the realm of international politics, both today and in the era of the askiyas, the foe remains an illusion upon which the concept of the political is predicated. Vulnerable post-colonial nation states like Mali are therefore well advised to remain vigilant against the real existential and economic threats on the margins of its own republic. As brother tears apart brother, the foe watches and waits. The

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mistake of the Songhay in the era of the askiyas, including Al Hajj Mahmud Kati, was to confuse one’s personal rival with one’s political foe. Doing so made the Songhay vulnerable to actual foes, who later conquered them. More than 400 years ago, the Songhay’s actual foes were Arab Muslims and European Christians, who collaborated to subjugate them with military force. These facts should be considered when weighing the question of the appropriate role of Algeria, France, and the US in northern Mali today. The account of the fall of the Songhay recorded in the Tarkih al fattash suggests that the Songhay would have done well to build stronger and more just alliances with their fellow citizens, including those whom they stigmatized as négraille, and to be ever vigilant regarding their potential foes and their Machiavellian interests. The recent debacle of Azawad suggests that this lesson has lost none of its relevance today.

La genèse, nyama, and reconciliation Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s La genèse, which was released in 1999, retells the biblical story of the fraternal struggle between Jacob and Esau, set in the harsh Saharan terrain of northern Mali. Not only is La genèse set in northern Mali, the characters in the film wear traditional Malian clothes, speak Malian languages, and live in conditions that are similar to those of many rural Malians today. When La genèse was first released, some Western viewers were surprised that Sissoko set his film on the Book of Genesis in West Africa. Some felt that the chief merit of the film was that it estranged well-known biblical tales in the Russian Formalist sense and thereby renewed the viewers’ perception of them. Missing from such accounts was much comprehension of the contemporary relevance of Sissoko’s film in West Africa today, or the fact that it is more a commentary on internal social and political problems in the Sahel than it is a surreal cinematic experience aimed to please Western viewers. Although La genèse is indeed a strikingly beautiful film, the Abrahamic themes that it explores are woven into the everyday fabric of Malian society and are finally inextricable from the deep Sahelian context of the film’s setting. What is uncanny about La genèse is its contemporary relevance, not its ability to renew the Western viewer’s appreciation of exotic tales of tribal conflict recorded in the Bible. Although what Massignon calls “the Abrahamic” is a relatively recent cultural overlay in the Malian context, the themes encoded in the Book of Genesis are coterminous with those of northwest Africa that long predate the arrival of Arab Muslims at Kukiya. They also resonate with the account of the fall of the Songhay dynasty documented in the Timbuktu

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Chronicles, especially the Tarikh al fattash. Though Sissoko’s film was made more than a decade before the Ansar Dine declared the independent state of Azawad in northern Mali, La genèse also offers a prognosis of likely political crises in Mali’s future, as well as concrete proposals for conflict resolution in the region. When La genèse opens, it has been 300 years since the great flood, survived by the Prophet Noah and his kin.15 The film centers on tribal conflicts between the clan of Jacob, nomadic herders of livestock, and the clan of Hamor, sedentary farmers. In the background lurks the hunter clan of Esau, Jacob’s brother. All who remain alive after the great flood are in some way related to one another through their common ancestor the Prophet Noah. As in the biblical tale, Jacob and Esau are brothers of the same father and mother, the Prophet Isaac and his wife Rebecca. They are also grandsons of the Prophet Abraham. In contrast, Hamor is the son of Canaan and nephew of the legendary figure Nimrod, often associated with the Tower of Babel. Sissoko dedicates his film to “the victims of fratricide,” as well as all those who strive for peace and reconciliation. The first voice heard in the film is the voice of Esau, who hides among the rocks with his fellow hunters, preparing his vengeance upon Jacob. Esau speaks of his mortal hatred for his brother and informs the film’s viewers that he has prepared “a poisoned soup” for him. In the biblical account, later depicted in the film, Jacob feeds a bowl of poisoned soup to his older brother Esau, who sacrifices his birthright to appease his hunger (Genesis 25:30). Sissoko’s rendering of the biblical tale draws attention to the poisoned soup, or the fact that Esau does not merely succumb to his hunger but is polluted by drinking the soup. Sissoko also emphasizes the humiliation that Esau experiences after he is poisoned with the soup. For instance, Esau is bitter that his mother Rebecca will not even speak to him after he is tricked into drinking the filthy bowl of soup. Although Sissoko does not comment upon Esau’s marital status, the biblical account emphasizes that Isaac and Rebecca also reject Esau because he marries foreign women of questionable blood origin. Like Soumalya Kassa in The Epic of Askia Mohammed, and the sons of the Askiya Dawud in the Timbuktu Chronicles, Esau does not honor the ties of blood nobility, nor does he strive to maintain the blood purity of future generations. In contrast, Jacob maintains his ancestral blood purity and follows his father Isaac’s example by marrying women from the tribe of the Prophet Abraham. Years after Jacob tricks Esau into relinquishing his birthright, Jacob’s victory over his brother Esau brings him very little happiness. Jacob may have won the fraternal contest with Esau through an act of occult sorcery, but he must now learn to renounce his claims to blood nobility if he hopes to live in peace with the clans that surround him. His brother Esau has lost the terrible contest with

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Jacob, and as a result he feels humiliated and bitter; however, Esau himself must learn to renounce his desire for vengeance against his brother, even though Jacob has clearly wronged him. Sissoko not only shows the basis of the fraternal conflict between Jacob and Esau – that Jacob has wronged his older brother through attacking him with occult sorcery – he also demonstrates what must happen if the brothers hope to resolve their differences. Sissoko’s film demonstrates a wisdom lacking in the Tarikh al fattash, where the scribes and the askiyas alike succumb to the desire for vengeance and are willing to resort to occult sorcery to attack their rivals. The Tarikh al fattash discloses the social contradictions that led to the final demise of the Songhay empire, but the scribes do not suggest any possible resolution to the social contradictions that beset the Songhay, other than the necessity of submitting to their new Moroccan masters. The recurring lesson of the Osiris monomyth is that when brother attacks brother with occult sorcery, his actions humiliate the brother he has wronged and give rise to the desire for vengeance. For the rivals to reconcile, the brother who is wronged must relinquish his desire to be avenged, and the brother who is vainqueur in the terrible contest must acknowledge the wrong that he has done to his brother and relinquish his bogus claim to blood nobility. In Specters of Marx, Derrida refers to the problematic of blood nobility as “the Hamlet complex,” or the abyssal pre-inheritance of the maternal debt; however, Derrida does not envision the necessity, as does Sissoko, in looking beyond the archaic ideology of blood election in preference for a social order based in principles of universal equality under the law without regard for ties of blood (or “birthright”). In Heidegger’s reading, the Nietzschean theme of the eternal return is construed as the overcoming of the resentment against the passing of time or the “it was”: “Revenge is the will’s revulsion against time, and that means, against the passing away and its past,” Heidegger observes.16 “For Nietzsche, revenge is the fundamental characteristic of all thought so far.”17 It is of paramount importance to Nietzsche that one give up one’s desire for vengeance as well as one’s resentment against the traumatizing events of the past. In La genèse, Sissoko similarly suggests that Esau must give up his resentment against his brother Jacob and not dwell on the wrongs of the past. Esau must do this, just as Jacob must give up his claims to blood election, if there is to be any future at all for the two men and their descendants. For viewers in Europe and the US , Sissoko’s choice of the Malian musician Salif Keita to play the role of Esau may seem a novelty of sorts, like the casting of Bob Dylan in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (1973); however, Malian viewers who are familiar with the musical career of Salif Keita are more

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likely to appreciate the nuanced message in Sissoko’s casting choice. As a member of the Keita family, Salif Keita hails from a family of noble descent, the blood heirs of Sundiata Keita, the founder of the Mande dynasty and hero of The Epic of Son Jara. As sovereign ruler of the Mande, Sundiata Keita was attended by his own griot Balla Fasséké, whose job was to sing praise songs to him. Members of the Keita family have never been griots but instead the venerated objects of the praise songs of the griot. When Salif Keita joined the Rail Band in Bamako in the early 1960s, his family disowned him for his violation of this long-standing cultural taboo. Keita’s father especially was upset that Keita would debase himself and dishonor his family by stooping to the level of the nyamakala, thereby relinquishing his caste status. To compound matters, Keita is also an albino. Before the coming of Islam to West Africa, albinos were typically killed as an abomination. Muslims forbade the killing of albinos, who then become known as the fune, or praise singers (griots) for the Islamic religion. Keita’s extremely complex and unusual background both uniquely qualified and disqualified him from pursuing the life of a singer and musician. Keita went on to become a world famous singer and the pride of Mali. Eventually, his family members were reconciled to his choice of a career and took great pride in his success as a “griot,” who did not hesitate to sing traditional praise songs.18 The well-known tale of the Sahel’s first griot, who debased himself by eating the flesh of his brother and was then compelled to sing praise songs to the brother who saved his life, is a variant of the tale of the Osiris monomyth (or “Hamlet constellation”), as is the tale of Jacob’s occult poisoning of Esau. For this reason, among others, it would be difficult to conceive of a more apt choice for the part of Esau than Salif Keita. Sissoko’s casting of Keita in this role also sheds light on the recent conflict in northern Mali, for Keita willingly debased himself for the sake of music. By doing so, Keita demonstrated that Malian music is more powerful than the ideology of blood nobility. Sissoko effectively makes this suggestion by casting Keita to play Esau. Like Ouologuem, Keita rejected the ideology of blood nobility and showed that his “debasement” was no debasement at all, but a necessary first step towards attaining personal happiness and international acclaim as a musician.

La genèse, hostipitality, and the covenant In the opening sequences of the film, Esau prays to God, “the Creator of Heaven and Earth.” He laments the drought that has come into the world, equating

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fratricidal conflict with thirst and the lack of water. Esau asks God, “Why did you create brothers? Must we live forever with this drought and thirst?” Sissoko’s emphasis upon the dearth of water that besets the land suggests that there is no longer compassion for the suffering of others. There are no tears shed on behalf of the other. Jacob, who mourns for his son Joseph, is the exception to the rule, but Joseph merely mourns for his own personal loss. Hence, Esau asks God, “Why as brothers are we condemned to hate one another?” Yet, even as Esau asks God this question, he reminds himself that he must never forget his “duty” to take vengeance upon his brother. Esau conceives of vengeance as a duty, and he vows to get his revenge against Jacob. This is an oath that Esau will break by the end of the film. At the film’s opening, however, Esau remains embittered against his brother Jacob, whom he describes as a “deceitful” person, but also his “scar.” The scar is of course the mark of the covenant on the flesh of both Esau and Jacob: It is the mark that binds them together, even as it also separates them into members of warring clans. Esau is bound to his brother Jacob by the scar that their father Isaac gave them, but he is equally bound to his brother by the hostility that he carries in his heart. Esau boasts, “For [Jacob], I have prepared a poisoned soup.” The pattern that typically prevails whenever one brother attacks another with the use of occult sorcery is that the humiliated brother must avenge himself, performing the same evil act that was done to him. Should Esau succeed, he believes that he will bring Jacob down to his own debased level. Both brothers will then be equally defiled. While Esau lays a trap for him, Jacob mourns the loss of his beloved son Joseph. Though Jacob mourns for Joseph, few of his family members sympathize with him. Jacob has mourned Joseph for twenty months now, and his lamentations on behalf of his lost son seem excessive to his wife Leah. Jacob’s wife complains that Jacob has never loved her, and she urges her daughter Dina to bring Jacob a coat that is smeared with animal blood, so that he will at last accept that his son Joseph is truly dead and bring an end to his mourning. In the biblical account, Jacob favors Joseph because he is the first-born son of Rachel, the wife whom Jacob truly loves, rather than Leah, who Jacob was tricked into marrying. It is the sons of Leah who have sold their brother Joseph into slavery. In Sissoko’s interpretation of these events in the Book of Genesis, Jacob’s rebuke to Leah is so severe that one wonders if he suspects that Leah too was involved in the fraternal plot to get rid of Joseph, perhaps so that the coveted birthright might pass to one of her own sons. Despite Leah’s entreaties, Jacob insists that nothing will prevent him from mourning his son Joseph, least of all the complaints of Leah. Because Joseph is not dead, but sold as a slave in Egypt, Jacob’s mourning may well be a

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ruse on his part, as Esau suggests. Later in the film, we learn that Esau and his hunters know the truth about Joseph, for little that happens in the desert escapes their notice. Jacob’s excessive mourning for his missing son may very well be a form of retaliation against Leah and her sons, or at least an attempt to show them that their treachery will not succeed. If Jacob’s birthright does not pass to Joseph, it will go to no one at all. Jacob proclaims that he no longer has any sons. He disowns them all. Meanwhile, Schechem, the son of Hamor, abducts Jacob’s daughter Dinah. After Schechem kidnaps and rapes Dinah, Hamor knows that he has a real problem on his hands, for the agricultural clan of Hamor and the herdsmen clan of Jacob do not normally intermarry. Hamor calls his son Schechem a “prince of fools” and tries to set things right with Jacob. As in the biblical tale, Schechem falls in love with Dinah and wishes to marry her in earnest, after kidnapping and raping her. While these events unfold, Esau watches and waits for the coming catastrophe. In a dream God tells Esau that He would save the world for the sake of ten righteous men, but “virtue no longer exists in the world,” and so the world is no longer worth saving. Virtue is what exists between friends who have established covenants with one another. Virtue is the love of the friend for the friend, or the brother for the brother. To say that virtue no longer exists in the world is to say that brotherly love no longer exists. The necessary condition for brother to love his brother is that both brothers must honor the covenant between them. They must leave the other to his otherness in order to co-exist. They must also lay down their weapons and remember the scar of their common father. Like the sons and grandsons of the Askiya Muhammad, the sons of Jacob refuse to honor their father’s scar. They have sold their brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and they later break the covenant that they enter into with Hamor’s clan. In doing so, they show their contempt for their own sworn oaths. Esau believes that Jacob has set a trap for the clan of Hamor. Esau suspects the motives of Jacob, who he says is clever and deceitful. Due to the situation of total hostility that prevails among brothers, Esau cannot believe that Jacob’s words are guileless. After the rape of Dinah, Jacob welcomes Hamor into his tent, but Jacob too wonders if Hamor has come to him in peace, or if Hamor may have devised some treacherous plot against him, as he might himself against Hamor. In Acts of Religion, Derrida coins the word “hostipitality,” fusing the words “hostility” and “hospitality,” in reference to the existential situation that occurs whenever the foreign guest is welcomed into the tent of the host.19 Derrida’s point of reference for this term is the biblical tale, also from the Book of Genesis, when three strangers visit Abraham at Mamre, one of whom is the Lord, and bestow a

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blessing upon Abraham for his warm welcome (Genesis 18:1–15). By his hospitable actions, Abraham demonstrates how the foreign guest should always be treated. However, to welcome the foreign guest in the manner of Abraham implies extending credit to the other. Esau cannot extend credit to Jacob, and Jacob similarly finds it difficult to extend credit to Hamor, who for his part is skeptical that there can ever be peace in the land, especially now in the situation that confronts him. Hamor articulates his skepticism with the misogynistic remark, “How can there possibly be peace when a woman is involved?” Nor do the gifts of Hamor’s clan in exchange for Dinah appease her mother Leah, who loudly complains that all of Canaan has now trampled upon her honor by turning her daughter Dinah into a whore. Hamor and his men merely shrug off Leah’s complaints and inform her that it was the will of god that Dinah be raped and forcibly taken in marriage by Schechem. In this, the clan of Hamor acts in a manner that anticipates the actions of the Ansar Dine in Azawad, who similarly “married” local women in Timbuktu, Gao, and elsewhere who caught their eye, even those who had no interest in marrying them. When the sons of Jacob return from tending their herds, they are furious at Schechem’s treatment of their sister Dinah, and, like Leah, they seek vengeance against the clan of Hamor. With Jacob’s participation, an agreement is reached when the men of the clan of Hamor agree to become circumcised in the manner of Jacob’s clan, in honor of the god of Abraham. By agreeing to this pact, the clan of Jacob and the clan of Hamor formally pledge to unite into “a single nation.” The decision to form a new nation with the clan of Jacob will later anger Hamor’s fellow Canaanites, who believe that Hamor and his clan have dishonored the gods of Canaan by undergoing the rite of circumcision in honor of the god of Abraham. For this reason, when the sons of Jacob later dishonor their covenant and slaughter the men of Hamor’s clan, fellow Canaanites feel little pity for the calamity that befalls Hamor, the only male who survives the slaughter committed by Jacob’s sons. The slaughter of the men of Hamor’s clan is the ultimate act of treachery, for Jacob’s sons hereby show their disregard for the rite of circumcision, which they use as a mere tool to gain vengeance. Their act deeply appalls Jacob and further alienates him from them. Jacob’s sons refuse to honor their oaths, even their oaths sealed with the mark of the Prophet Abraham. In Sissoko’s depiction of the circumcision of Schechem and the other men in Hamor’s clan, a blacksmith performs the rite to remove the foreskin with a hammer and chisel upon a stone. In Sahelian society, blacksmiths are highly regarded figures among the nyamakala, or the polluted caste, including griots, hunters, basket-weavers, tanners, and others. Blacksmiths have traditionally

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functioned as circumcisers because they are skilled at handling the toxic amounts of nyama that are released when the foreskin is severed from the penis. By emphasizing the role of the blacksmith, Sissoko associates the rite of circumcision with nyama, the occult power of the body’s fluids also to be found in the breath of the oath-swearer. Blacksmiths are associated with nyama as wind because they work with enormous billows that blow wind (nyama) onto the fire that is necessary for the work they perform. The sworn oath also consists of wind from the lungs; hence, to disavow a spoken oath in the manner of Jacob’s sons is to disregard the occult power of nyama. This is also the mistake that Mamar Kassa (Malio’s name for the Askiya Muhammad) makes in The Epic of Askia Mohammed when he foolishly attacks the tribe of a woman who was once his wet nurse, and it is the mistake of Soumayla Kassa at the epic’s conclusion when he wrongly imagines that his son Amar Zoumbani’s ignoble origins may simply be overlooked. The sons of Jacob effectively make the same mistake in La genese when their covenant with Hamor’s clan is revealed to be a mere ruse, a means of gaining vengeance. Jacob calls his sons “jackals and dogs” after their treacherous act against the clan of Hamor, and he is right insofar as they prove themselves to be incapable of honoring their vows. As Nietzsche has put it, man is the “promising animal.” In Derrida’s reading, Nietzsche meant by this that man is “an animal that is permitted to make promises.”20 If making promises is what is proper to man, even what distinguishes man from animals, Jacob’s sons do indeed turn themselves into jackals and dogs. By showing that they are incapable of honoring their vows, Jacob’s sons compromise their very humanity, merely to gain personal vengeance against the members of a fellow clan – who are also their cousins. At Shechem’s circumcision, Sissoko casts an old woman to play the role of a sorceress who is a witness to the rite. The old woman, who is also a wife of Schechem, laughs merrily as the blacksmith circumcises the men of Hamor’s clan. She also urges Dinah, who watches from the window of a nearby dwelling, to eat the flesh of the foreskin that remains after Schechem is circumcised, so that “devils may devour her.” The ring of flesh that remains is a powerful fetish object for the witch, like the ring of Osiris and the ring of the djinn of Djoliba. As the menfolk seek to recover from their weakened condition, immediately after their circumcision, the sons of Jacob swarm into the camp of Hamor and brutally slaughter them. Jacob’s sons show that they have no honor whatsoever. They have already sold their own brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and they have no scruples about betraying their new brothers-in-law from the clan of Hamor. All the men in Hamor’s village are killed to “put an end

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to Hamor’s lineage,” including all the male babies. In a scene echoing the Tarikh al fattash, where the heartless Sunni Ali Ber grinds a baby into a mortar and then feeds it to one of his horses, a son of Jacob deliberately hurls a spear into the breast of a baby boy who cries in agony.21 The terrible actions of Jacob’s sons force Jacob to leave his tent where he has mourned Joseph for almost two years. “The world has become as it was before the great flood,” Hamor and Jacob agree. “The entire earth is now the prey of ferocious beasts.” There is no longer any virtue among men.

La genèse and the myth of blood purity At the council of the Canaanite kin of Hamor, Jacob asks Hamor to represent him, siding with Hamor against his own sons. Jacob insists that he no longer has any sons at all, and he pledges his support to Hamor, who is “the one good man left in the world.” In their shared sense of injury, Hamor and Jacob now speak with one voice. In Jacob’s eyes, he too has lost all his sons. At the Canaanite council, Jacob’s son Judah proposes that a new treaty must be drawn between the clan of herdsmen and the clan of farmers, one that will ensure that the men of both clans never marry women from the opposite clan. In this way, Judah argues, there may at last be peace between the warring clans. Never again will any man attempt to do what Schechem did – take a woman from the opposite clan to be his wife. However, Judah’s proposal amuses the Canaanites, who regard it as preposterous. To make their point, they seize one of Judah’s own sons, whose mother originally hailed from a Canaanite clan, and ask the boy’s mother how he should be cut in half, vertically or horizontally? Hamor adds, “We’ll keep the blood of the boy that is ours and then give you back the blood that belongs to Jacob.” Judah’s son is not cut in two parts, but the Canaanites have made their point: Good blood and bad blood can never be separated, since the difference between the two is illusory. Judah appeals to the ideology of pure blood, but only when it happens to serve his interests. When the ideology of pure blood conflicts with his personal interests, he would prefer to remain silent. The men of Canaan enjoy a good laugh at Judah’s hypocrisy. Still, Judah will not admit the foolishness of his proposal. He insists that the men of Canaan must have “tricked” him into marrying a Canaanite woman, and that his unrealistic proposal remains valid. Since Judah will not listen to reason, a Canaanite griot performs a song on behalf of Jacob’s sons that reiterates the viewpoint of the Canaanite animists that it is impossible to preserve blood purity, and that covenants made between

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hostile clans must be honored. In his casting choice, Sissoko draws upon legends associating the Sahelian griot with hermaphroditism. Male griots prior to the coming of Islam often subverted established gender binaries, dressing as men of ambiguous gender identity. The hermaphrodite griot, who wears a wooden brassiere and speaks in an effeminate voice, makes Judah extremely uncomfortable by sitting on his lap and flirting with him. The tale the griot tells, which is set to drums, flutes, and dancing, is yet another biblical story, the woeful tale of Onan (whose name later comes to be associated with masturbation or “onanism”). In both the Canaanite griot’s tale and in the Bible, Judah is the father of Onan, whose brother Er has died and left behind a childless widow named Tamar. The griot informs his audience that if Onan impregnated Er’s wife Tamar, as was his marital duty, then the child would be regarded as the child of Er, rather than Onan. To prevent this from happening, Onan spilled his semen on the ground each time that he copulated with Tamar. God was so displeased at the actions of Onan that he caused his death. Later, Judah blamed Tamar, whom he accused of causing the evil that had befallen his family with the death of both of his sons. For this reason, Judah refused to give Tamar to his third son, Shelah. Realizing that she would end up childless, Tamar then dressed herself as a prostitute, also veiling her face so that no one would recognize her. In this way, she tricked Judah into sleeping with her and making her pregnant. In exchange for sex, Judah gives the “prostitute” Tamar a ring, a sign of the covenant that Judah and his son Onan have broken with Tamar. When Judah discovers that Tamar is pregnant, he orders her to be burned alive, accusing her of being a prostitute. But Tamar shows Judah her ring and proclaims that whoever gave her the ring was the one who impregnated her. At last, Judah realizes his fault in not allowing Tamar to marry Shelah, his third son. Judah is at fault because a promise was once made to Tamar when she entered into marriage with Judah’s oldest son Er, and this promise was twice broken, first by Onan and then by Judah. But when Judah happened upon a prostitute in the desert, he gave the “prostitute” his signet ring for a fleeting moment of sexual gratification. The ring of Judah is the sign of the covenant, but Judah has no regard for either his ring or his covenants. Because Jacob’s sons also formed a covenant with the clan of Hamor, they showed their approval that Schechem’s and Dinah’s blood commingle, that the two tribes become one. But since Judah still insists upon preserving his dogmatic belief in blood purity, the ensemble of musicians inform Dinah that she must now abort the baby that she carries by Schechem since her baby may later become the cause of warfare between the two clans, due to the covenant proposed by Judah, forbidding exogamy between pure

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and impure tribes. Sissoko powerfully illustrates why the demand for blood purity made by Jacob’s sons is impossible to fulfill. He also demonstrates the futility, if not stupidity, of separating clans on the basis of blood, the hallmark of messianic ideologies of the blood remnant. Throughout La genèse, Sissoko represents Jacob’s daughter Dinah as an Ophelia-like character, who laughs inappropriately and seems mad. Dinah is driven to madness because she is torn between the two clans. Ever in the middle of their war, Dinah occupies the impossible position of belonging to both clans at once. The growing baby inside her is like a searing hot fire, she cries. She now has no place to occupy. Because Hamor has abandoned the Canaanite gods after undergoing circumcision, he too is an outcast. The Canaanite men no longer trust him. To appease the offense to the Canaanite gods, the Canaanite men attempt to seize the sons of Jacob, bind them, and make of them a blood offering to their gods. Jacob’s sons barely escape with their lives, but a situation of total warfare now exists between the surviving Canaanites and the sons of Jacob.

La genèse and the new republic As the crisis between the Canaanites and the sons of Jacob worsens, Esau watches and waits with his fellow hunters, who are eager to attack and kill Jacob and his sons. However, Esau forbids his men to attack Jacob and urges patience. The revenge against Jacob that Esau desires finally seems to be at hand. Meanwhile, Hamor and Jacob feel that there is nothing left for them but to lie down and die beside their fathers. They agree to leave Canaan together, but before their departure Hamor urges Jacob to leave a story behind for his sons, the story of Isaac, a righteous man. Jacob and Hamor agree that, in past days, fathers and sons lived in peace and harmony with one another. Brothers did not fight against brothers. Unbeknownst to Jacob and Hamor, Esau listens in the shadows and nurses his old grievance against Jacob, skeptical that such an idyllic time ever existed. The tale that Jacob tells his sons comes from an age before the “rift between father and son, before the rift between man and God.” Jacob refers to the time of the Prophet Abraham, who at a ripe old age wished to see his son Isaac suitably married. To achieve his objective, Abraham gave all his valuables to one of his most trusted servants, who traveled to the ancestral homeland of Abraham in search of a wife for Isaac. After a long journey, Abraham’s servant at last arrived at the village of Abraham’s family members, where he stopped at a well to water his camels.

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Abraham’s servant prayed to God and asked Him that the first young woman who happened to give him a drink of water at the well might be a relative of the Prophet Abraham and a suitable bride for Abraham’s son Isaac. Like Hagar at the well of Zam-Zam, Rebecca is the right woman for Isaac because she is the woman who quenches the thirst of Abraham’s servant. In La genèse, Sissoko associates the absence of water with the lack of virtue that besets the land. Rebecca is a good match for Isaac because she is a virtuous woman like Hagar, a woman who brings water to the thirsty, not merely because Abraham’s servant happens upon her by chance. Rebecca gives Abraham’s servant water and says, “Drink, my Lord.” Rebecca is not merely the blood kin of Abraham, but the woman who takes compassion upon the guest and the bearer of water. This is why Abraham’s servant falls to his knees and thanks God when Rebecca appears. Later, Abraham’s servant brings Rebecca to Isaac, and in time the young couple become the parents of Jacob, “That is how we lived, in peace,” Jacob says, “before the world was torn asunder.” Jacob’s outcast brother Esau has been listening in the shadows and can take no more. He reveals himself to all and shouts, “Lies! Lies! Lies!” For Esau, there was never any mythical time of peace before the rift. Since the dawn of time, children have always been born into turmoil, rift, and discord. The rift between father and son always existed and always will exist. “Father turned his back on me, his eldest son,” Esau reminds Jacob. Their mother Rebecca too, the compassionate water bearer, did not hesitate to sever ties with Esau after his humiliation. In Esau’s eyes, Jacob was responsible for the terrible things that happened to him. However, the time has come for Esau to receive the justice that he deserves. Esau swears that things will at last be set right, for – unlike the treacherous word of Jacob – the word of God is unchanging. God keeps His promises, Esau insists, and God has promised that fire shall strike down Jacob and his clan. Esau’s hunters now light the dwelling of Jacob’s clan on fire and slaughter their livestock. Jacob’s youngest son Benjamin asks his father who this angry hunter is and why he wants to kill him. Jacob has no choice but to acknowledge that the hunter is his brother Esau. Jacob admits that he once poisoned his brother Esau with the use of occult sorcery. After eating Jacob’s soup, Esau lost his birthright and was cast off by his parents, Isaac and Rebecca. It was Jacob who wronged Esau, and now Jacob acknowledges the sin he committed against his brother. By acknowledging that he himself first broke the peace between brothers, Jacob takes an important step towards reconciling with Esau. However, Jacob’s recognition of his own fault shocks him and causes him to undergo a personal crisis. He cannot help but acknowledge the truth of Esau’s

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words that “justice would be his share of the inheritance,” and that Esau has good reason to want to kill him. Jacob now asks Esau for forgiveness. An angelic figure appears at the moment of crisis and commands Esau to put away his knife. The angel tells Esau, “Justice is for God alone to will.” If Jacob must acknowledge the wrong that he has committed against his older brother, Esau must give up his wish for vengeance. Esau must learn to forgive his brother. Throughout the night, Jacob wrestles with the angel, who finally blesses him and gives him a new name, Israel, for Jacob was “strong against God.” The next morning, Hamor and Jacob’s sons go to find Jacob, who has disappeared. They find him passed out on the ground. His brother Esau, who is now smiling, watches over him. Dinah too is present, sitting at Esau’s feet and seems to be cured of her mental affliction. Jacob has survived the ordeal and has reconciled with his brother Esau. However, all the cattle are dead and there is nothing to eat Esau tells the sons of Jacob that they must travel to Egypt. Dinah adds that there is a prince in Egypt, a prince that she loves dearly. “When you see the prince,” Dinah says, “tell him you are my brothers, and his eyes will be filled with tears. He will then open his granaries and you may eat.” Dinah refers, of course, to her brother Joseph. After Esau discloses that he knows what happened to Joseph, Jacob commands his sons to go to Egypt. Their own sin against their brother Joseph, like the sin of their father Jacob against his brother Esau, has been brought into the light. There can be no great nation, Sissoko suggests, until the era of fratricidal conflict comes to an end. This is the meaning of Jacob’s new name, Israel, or “one who struggles with God.” Jacob wrestles with the angel, but in doing so brings forth a new nation. Jacob only becomes Israel, a new nation, when brothers practice virtue and become true brothers. As Jacob’s sons leave for Egypt, the film’s narrator reveals that when they arrived in Egypt they indeed found their younger brother whom they had once sold to the desert traders. With tears in his eyes, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and forgives them. Joseph then sends for his father and all the members of Jacob’s clan. The children of Israel leave the land of Canaan and establish themselves in Egypt for many generations.

Timbuktu, fraternal conflict, and animal sacrifice Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Timbuktu (2014) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and won best film at the fortieth César Awards in

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France. The popular success of Sissako’s film drew welcomed international attention to the war in northern Mali and widely influenced perceptions of the war. Sissako was praised for making a timely film that dared to “humanize jihadists” and for presenting an image of the conflict that was more complex than most journalistic accounts of it.22 In Mali, however, Sissako was criticized for omitting the role of the MNLA in the conflict, as well as the historical relation of the Tuareg and their black slaves, the Bella. Some Malians also criticized Timbuktu because Sissako is a citizen of Mauritania, not Mali, and his depiction of the conflict did not seem to those living in Bamako, Sekou, and elsewhere to be sufficiently “Malian.”23 Though it is true that the film’s director is not a citizen of Mali, Sissako was a resident in Mali for many years and has made previous films about Mali (most notably, his moving film about daily life in a small Malian village, La vie sur terre [1998]). The themes explored in Sissako’s Timbuktu also clearly resonate with deep Sahelian themes to be found in the Timbuktu Chronicles, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s La genèse, and many other founding Malian texts. However, it is fair to say that most Malians living south of Kidal, Gao, or Timbuktu would find Sissako’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the conflict in northern Mali to be problematic. Criticisms of the film regarding the omission of the role of the MNLA in the violent takeover of Timbuktu and Sissako’s elision of the historical relation of the Tuareg and Bella are not unfounded. The film’s representation of Islam in northern Mali is also potentially misleading, especially for viewers unfamiliar with the region. Sissako presents two competing images of Islam in his film: the violent, dogmatic, and misogynistic Islam of the Ansar Dine and the more benevolent Islam that is practiced in the local mosques of Timbuktu. As a counterweight to the diabolical Islam of the Ansar Dine, Sissako appeals to a non-violent form of Islam that is arguably a religious fantasy, one that the region’s historical and cultural documents do not fully support. In effect, Sissako attempts to save Islam by disassociating it from the vile actions of the Ansar Dine jihadists. Though his goals are understandable, especially considering the sensitive nature of the themes he explores, the strategy Sissako adopts tends to reinforce a binary thinking about Islam that short-circuits critical inquiry into the ancient, complex, and actual history of Timbuktu’s internal conflicts, which have left Timbuktu vulnerable at times to external agents like the Ansar Dine. To include the role of the MNLA in the founding of Azawad and the historical Tuareg-Bella relation would no doubt undermine the film’s basic message, which is that the crisis in northern Mali might not have occurred at all if the Ansar Dine jihadists had only practiced “true” Islam, like the more pious Muslims of Timbuktu. I am not

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suggesting, however, that Sissako’s film presents a false representation of the events that took place in northern Mali in 2012–13, merely a myopic one. Because Sissako’s Timbuktu indeed impacted international perceptions of the crisis in northern Mali, I adumbrate here some of its most significant omissions and elisions, and I draw attention to those aspects of the film that facilitated a more complex understanding of the conflict, especially on behalf of viewers outside the region. The central conflict in the film centers upon an incident that takes place between a black fisherman and a Tuareg herder of cattle named Kidane, who is played by the Tuareg musician Ibrahim Ahmed. When one of Kidane’s favorite cows becomes entangled in the fishing nets, the black fisherman hurls a spear at the cow and kills it. The fisherman had previously warned the young boy tending the cows to keep them away from his fishing nets whenever the herd crossed the river, but Kidane’s favorite cow wandered away before the boy could retrieve it. Kidane’s herd of cows is modest, and the loss of his favorite cow devastates him. Kidane also feels deeply humiliated that the black fisherman imagines he can kill his favorite cow with impunity. Though ordinarily a gentle and sensitive man, as well as a kind father to his young daughter, Kidane informs his wife that he can no longer take it. In the aftermath of the jihad in Timbuktu, most Tuaregs with no interest in the Ansar Dine jihad have already pulled up their tents and migrated from the area. With a pistol tucked inside his robe, Kidane confronts the black fisherman and, in the scuffle that ensues, the fisherman is shot and killed. Conflicts between the Tuaregs and black fishermen in Timbuktu appear to be about dwindling environmental resources. Though desertification has increasingly become a problem in the Sahel, the harsh desert climate of Timbuktu has existed for centuries. By emphasizing only the environmental aspect of the conflict between the two men, Sissako neglects to provide his viewers with sufficient context to understand the historical relation between the Tuareg and local blacks in the region. If Sissako had shown the actual historical relation between the Tuareg and their Bella slaves, viewers outside the region might have better appreciated the motives of blacks in Timbuktu like the fisherman, who seems merely to kill the cow in a passing moment of irritation, after a long day of work. In Sissako’s depiction of this incident, it is the Tuareg Kidane, rather than the black fisherman, who suffers from feelings of humiliation. Tuaregs have long enslaved local blacks in northern Mali, known as the Bella, and they have often found themselves in conflict with other black ethnic groups in the region, especially the Songhay, who have often accused their Tuareg brothers of racism. This raises the question as to why Sissako chose to depict Tuaregs as the

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“humiliated” segment of Timbuktu’s population and not local blacks. Tuaregs in the region do indeed experience humiliation from the treatment they receive from racist Arabs, especially Tuaregs who do not hail from noble sharif bloodlines. However, Sissako leaves viewers of his film with the impression that Tuaregs more typically experience humiliation at the hands of lower caste blacks like the fisherman. In actual daily life, the context of the violent confrontation between Kidane and the black fisherman is the long and humiliating history of the Tuareg enslavement of local blacks. Ibn Al Muhktar draws upon the notes of his uncle Al Hajj Mahmud Kati to show that the fraternal conflict that led to the demise of the Songhay dynasty began with an act of animal sacrifice, one that is echoed in the act of the black fisherman in Sissako’s film. In the Tarikh al fattash, Kati and the eunuch Alu initially come into conflict over access to local resources, in this case a plot of land that Kati claimed the Askiya Dawud had given him. However, to suggest that the struggle between Kati and his rival Alu was about environmental resources would distort the extremely complex situation that finally led to Kati’s occult act. In fact, the eunuch Alu was a government official, who was aligned with the Askiya Muhammad Bani, and who imagined that he could appropriate Kati’s land with impunity. The eunuch Alu acted in a similar fashion when he flogged and enchained the slave of the Balama’a Sadiq, whose relation with the Askiya Muhammad Bani was strained at best. Killing the goat with the spear in the manner of Kati’s talib marked the beginning of the coming fratricidal war, but the situation that had already developed was toxic. In Sissako’s Timbuktu, the conflict between the Tuareg Kidane and the black fisherman also cannot be attributed to a local competition for environmental resources, not without taking into consideration historical relations between blacks and Tuaregs in Timbuktu. Most of Sissako’s viewers outside West Africa would know little to nothing about the history of slavery in Timbuktu. Sissako elides the Tuareg-Bella relation because he views the conflict in northern Mali in religious terms as a crisis within Islam, rather than a political and economic one. Sissako excludes the participation of the MNLA Tuaregs in the war for northern Mali for the same reason that he excludes the Tuareg-Bella relation. To include the involvement of the MNLA Tuaregs, who were willing partners with the Ansar Dine, might signal that the conflict for Timbuktu was not just about religion, but politics. Tuaregs in the region have long sought to gain political autonomy and independence, whatever the religious beliefs of local Tuaregs. Many Tuaregs are indifferent when they are not hostile to Islam, particularly the pro-Arab and Wahhabi interpretation of Islam of the Ansar Dine. The participation of secular

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MNLA Tuaregs fighting for Tuareg autonomy was excluded from the film because Sissako wished to frame the conflict as a religious crisis taking place within Islam. By leaving out the MNLA , Sissako ensured that his viewers too were likely to see the conflict in strictly religious terms, rather than mundane political ones. In this, Sissako ironically follows in the footsteps of the Ansar Dine jihadists, who themselves insist that the war for northern Mali is a religious one. Though Sissako criticizes the Ansar Dine for their violent dogmatism, he too sees the war for Timbuktu as a struggle to establish “true” Islam, rather than the “false” Islam of the Ansar Dine jihadists. The righteous Imam, who urges the jihadists to fight for their moral purification, not the implementation of sharia law, is the whitest Arab character in the film. The white Arab prayer leader, who is played by Adel Mahmoud Cherif, leads the mosque of black Muslims and intercedes with the Ansar Dine on behalf of local blacks. In Timbuktu, Agadez, and similar Muslim cities of the Sahel, the Imam is typically an idealized figure, one who is worthy of imitation in every way, including external appearance. The white Arab Imam in Timbuktu is the foil to the violent, hypocritical, and hardhearted jihadists. The white Arab Imam of Timbuktu is at one with the Ansar Dine insofar as he insists that the real conflict in the region is a religious one. The white Arab prayer leader, who is the good Imam, therefore militates on behalf of the “greater” jihad, or the struggle to expel the infidel from within. The Ansar Dine jihadists, on the other hand, insist that Qur’anic law must be enforced with the use of violence. The Ansar Dine do not appeal to an interior or spiritual form of jihad, as does the white Arab Imam, but a war that must be waged on the human exterior. Unlike Sissako, most historically black Malians will understandably also be concerned with more overtly political dimensions of the conflict, including the history of race, racism, blood nobility, slavery, and class oppression in northern Mali. If the white Arab Imam’s views are the same ones Sissako’s viewers should adopt, that the internal jihad for moral improvement is the “true” jihad, the jihad that the white Arab Imam urges could arguably take place within the framework of a liberal democratic state with a republican constitution. In this case, the white Arab Imam’s jihad could occur within the privacy of one’s own home or place of worship. For obvious reasons, Sissako’s viewers in the West will be more inclined to sympathize with this more spiritualized form of jihad, despite the fact that the internal jihad urged by the white Arab Imam is regarded by many Muslims as inextricable from actual jihad that takes place in the external world. Historical exceptions to the rule obviously exist, but for many Muslims the relation between both forms of jihad is interdependent. In effect, the white

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Arab Imam is the dialectical mirror image of the Ansar Dine jihadists. Though I have argued here on behalf of a liberal democratic and republican solution to the recent crisis in northern Mali, I have also argued, citing Kant, Rousseau, Ouologuem, and others, that a law that is not backed up with force is no law at all. My own view is that the Ansar Dine jihadists in the film are not mistaken in their view that laws must be enforced in an actual external sense; however, their reliance upon force is excessive, unjust, and hypocritical. Also troubling is Sissako’s depiction of the black Muslim residents of Timbuktu. Black Muslims in Sissako’s film seldom speak on their own behalf. Instead, they are represented in the film by the benevolent white Arab Imam, who intervenes to help his black brothers. Black Muslims do not directly represent themselves other than those occasions when they are asked a direct question by the Ansar Dine jihadists, a question usually requiring a simple “yes” or “no” answer. In contrast to the film’s black Muslims, the Tuareg Kidane speaks for himself before the Ansar Dine authorities, without the intercession of the benevolent white Arab Imam. While many black Muslims in Timbuktu were certainly mistreated during the Ansar Dine’s jihad and indeed experienced severe forms racial oppression, it would be false to say that the black Muslims of Timbuktu were never in a position during the conflict to speak for themselves before the jihadists. Sissako provides no examples of articulate and morally scrupulous black Muslims like the white Arab Imam. Black Muslims in his film do not speak, unless the Ansar Dine jihadists speak to them; and, when they do speak, they are depicted as helpless victims of the jihadists. During the days of the Sa’dian conquest, many of the black Muslims of Timbuktu in the Tarikh al fattash are depicted as men of impeccable integrity and learning, who ultimately win the respect and admiration of their Moroccan conquerors. The author of the Tarikh al fattash observes of Muhammad Baghayogho, who courageously challenged the Moroccans after their take-over of Timbuktu, that “he attained flawless and absolute perfection in both piety and fear of God, in secret and in public, to the point that one could not find his like in observance of the laws of the Lord.”24 In the case of Ahmad Baba, for whom the public library of Timbuktu is named, the famed scholar’s learning was so great that his Moroccan conquerors forcibly drafted him to serve the Pasha of Marrakesh in Morocco as a jurist. In Sissako’s Timbuktu, however, black Muslim characters are the hapless victims of the jihadists, and they seem incapable of speaking for themselves. Though Sissako does not directly address the question of the jihadists’ belief in their status as noble blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, his

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depiction of the social dynamics between Timbuktu’s black Muslims, the white Arab Imam, and the Ansar Dine jihadists also perpetuates stereotypes exaggerating the importance of Arab sharifs in the non-Arab Islamic world. Sissako does not deconstruct the ideology of blood in Timbuktu. Instead, he suggests that the crisis in northern Mali is reducible to a struggle between competing Arab Muslims, who both view themselves as benevolent guardians of the faith on behalf of local Tuaregs and blacks. Neither the Tuareg Kidane nor the black fisherman hail from noble families. Kidane is a darker complexioned and lower caste Tuareg, who has no scruples about playing a musical instrument. Though Sissako does not provide his viewers with adequate historical context to understand the conflict between the Tuareg Kidane and the black fisherman, it is the absence of a strong bond between the two ethnic clans that creates the conditions enabling the Arab jihadists to set themselves up as their judges and executioners. The conflict between the black fisherman and the Tuareg Kidane is arguably a variant on the story of the fall of the Songhay Dynasty recounted in the Tarikh al fattash, where fraternal conflict between the sons of the Askiya Dawud opens the door to the Sa’dian conquerors from the north. Al Hajj Mahmud Kati’s nephew Ibn Al Muhktar suggests that the collapse of the Songhay dynasty began with an act of animal sacrifice. The same is true of the central conflict in Sissako’s Timbuktu although the cow’s slaughter is not depicted as an occult act. The Tarikh al fattash shows that the fraternal conflict between the sons of the Askiya Dawud also begins with the killing of an animal, due to Kati’s resentment of the eunuch Alu’s theft of his land. In the Tarikh al fattash, the goat is a stand-in for the eunuch Alu, an animal that is killed in the place of a man. However, Kati and his taleb believe that killing the goat will ultimately result in the death of the eunuch. It is likely that the Balama’a Sadiq, who lived in the same village as Kati, had learned of the goat’s ritual killing. In fact, a full year had passed before the Balama’a Sadiq murdered the eunuch Alu in the same fashion. Hence, there is no need to appeal to mystifying links between these two violent acts in order to establish a connection between them. What is uncanny about the killing of the goat in the Tarikh al fattash, at least for the post-Cartesian reader, is that Kati and his taleb both viewed the life of the animal as equivalent to the life of a man. In the local economy of exchange, the life of the goat they killed was a fair trade for the life of the eunuch Alu. When the Tuareg Kidane kills the black fisherman, he too seems to believe that the life of the black man he kills is a fair exchange for his slaughtered cow. The Arab jihadists who judge Kidane do not agree with him. They suggest that

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forty cows are a more just recompense for the killed black fisherman; and, in doing so, the jihadists seem to place a higher value on human life than Kidane. Because Kidane cannot possibly give forty cows to the family of the man he killed, his own blood must be sacrificed for the blood of the slain black fisherman. For the Ansar Dine jihadists, the life of a single man is worth the lives of forty cows, whereas the Tuareg Kidane in their view wrongly placed too low a value on the life of the black fisherman. In Europe and the US , the notion that a man’s life may be worth the life of a single cow or even 400 cows may seem preposterous. What is at stake for the Cartesian humanist is not blood, as it is for Kidane and the jihadists, but the immortal soul of the human being, which is something they believe that animals lack. The Cartesian humanist who naturalizes animal sacrifice and treats the slaughter of animals as a rational and therefore justifiable phenomenon would likely be appalled at the notion that an animal life may be exchanged for a human life. The citizens of northern Mali, however, are not post-Cartesian humanists, nor do they imagine that it is unthinkable that an animal life might be exchanged for the life of a human being. In the Sahelian context, the lines of demarcation between human life and animal life are not as certain as they are in the West. The idée reçue that animals lack reason and may therefore be slaughtered on this basis has rarely seemed persuasive in the Sahelian context. Though Sissako’s Timbuktu does not comment directly on the ideology of blood nobility, social relations in the film between the jihadists, ignoble Tuaregs and blacks, as well as animals like Kidane’s slaughtered cow, are underwritten by ancient ideologies of blood exchange, the ancient belief that blood must be shed in compensation for shed blood. In this, their views do not significantly differ from those of the God of Abraham who, in the biblical account of Abraham on Mount Moriah, also accepted the notion that a human life may be exchanged for the life of an animal; and, in the Christian New Testament, the God of Abraham is similarly willing to turn Jesus Christ into a blood sacrifice on the cross. Though Sissako implicitly critiques the blood demands of the Ansar Dine as excessive, his film does not challenge the notion that animal blood may be offered in recompense for shed human blood. What is essential is that blood either be shed or offered in recompense as a matter of justice. The relation among the various clans in Timbuktu is essentially a blood relation. Sissako’s depiction of the conflict between the Tuareg Kidane and the black fisherman is elliptical to the point of incoherence, but it nonetheless remains ensconced in an ideology of blood exchange that has long informed relations between diverse ethnic groups in the region. Sissako’s Timbuktu indeed facilitates understanding of regional conflicts

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between the diverse ethnic groups of northern Mali, but it remains mired in many of the problematic cultural assumptions that have first given rise to such conflicts.

Sorcery, fetishism, and jihad in Sissako’s Timbuktu In the opening scene of Sissako’s Timbuktu, traditional Sahelian fetishes are shot to pieces by the Ansar Dine jihadists. Even so, the senseless destruction of traditional Sahelian culture is not a major theme of Timbuktu. For instance, Sissako chooses not to depict the desecration of the tombs of the saints in Timbuktu, nor the burning of Timbuktu’s ancient manuscripts, nor the destruction of the town shrine to Al Farouk, the legendary djinn and protector of Timbuktu. The Ansar Dine jihadists’ assault on traditional Sahelian culture, as well as their failed attempts to impose Arabist interpretations of the Islamic religion upon Timbuktu’s citizens, is largely reduced in Timbuktu to the jihadists’ efforts to ban traditional Malian music. In fact, Sissako gives far more attention in his film to the jihadists’ banning of soccer than their assault on the artifacts of black Sahelian culture. Sissako does include a local black woman in his film, who is ostensibly tied to the ancient culture of Songhay sorcery. In reviews of the film in Europe and the US , the black sorceress is referenced as a local “eccentric,” not someone who is involved with the occult.25 But, Sissako clearly depicts the “eccentric” woman as a sorceress. What is initially surprising is that Sissako associates the black sorceress so closely with the Ansar Dine jihadists. In Timbuktu, the Ansar Dine seem to fear and respect the black witch, who enjoys the mayhem that they have unleashed on the city. The black witch makes gris-gris, or amulets, that she gives to the jihadists, and she laughs at the jihadists’ hypocrisies, calling them “bastards” to their faces. Though no instances of her practice of animal sacrifice are included in Timbuktu, the black witch tends to her chickens in cages next to the place where she sleeps. The chickens seem intended as future blood offerings though Sissako presents no clear evidence that this is so. Viewers unfamiliar with animal sacrifice practices in the Sahel might even assume the chickens may be the black witch’s pets. A jihadist who is also a filmmaker enjoys spending time at the home of the black witch, where he dances before her with mystic abandon. The black witch watches the dance of the jihadist with a satisfied grin. With the inclusion of these unconventional scenes of interactions between the black witch and the Ansar Dine, Sissako implies that the jihadists are somehow in league with the witch. Certainly, they

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are very comfortable in her presence. Sissako’s depiction of the close relationship between the jihadists and the black witch, however, raises the question why the Ansar Dine jihadists might allow the witch to act with impunity, even as they flog another local black woman for singing in the privacy of her home. In Timbuktu, the jihadists are violent and narrow-minded men who are apparently more comfortable with the practice of occult sorcery than they are with soccer matches or Malian music. In the black witch’s room small mirrors hang everywhere. Later in the film, the black witch muses over a cracked mirror with broken shards on the floor. The witch maniacally chuckles to herself and mutters that she’s “cracked” like the mirror, alluding to past experiences that have traumatized her. The witch also mutters that the jihadists too are “cracked.” What the jihadists share with the black witch is that they are both “cracked.” The image that they see in the mirror has been shattered, or the jihadists and the witch lack a coherent image of themselves, one that they might be able to recognize and affirm. Both the black witch and the jihadists suffer from a debilitating form of auto-immunity. To recover a coherent sense of self-identity, the witch and the jihadists would have to learn to love the image of themselves they see reflected in the mirror. Sissako suggests that the Ansar Dine are idolatrous fetishizers, like the black witch with her broken mirrors. Because the jihadists lack a coherent sense of self, they make the mistake of converting the Qur’an into a fetish object and turn themselves into idolaters, like the “cracked” black witch in Timbuktu, who lacks a true sense of self. In Sissako’s reading, the Islam of the Ansar Dine is a heretical form of Islam. In Islamic theology, the Heavenly Book is also a figure of the heart, the spiritual core at the center of man’s inner being. What the black witch and the jihadists share is that they both have shattered hearts. In traditional Sahelian society, as discussed in previous chapters, the sorcerer is the man who has hardened his heart. What Sissako seems to suggest is that Timbuktu is ruled by men with hard hearts, modern versions of the nominally Muslim militant Sunni Ali Ber in the days prior to the founding of the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas. This would explain why the jihadists leave the black witch entirely free to practice occult sorcery. They tend to prey upon local Muslims who have a heart. All those with hard hearts, like the “cracked” black witch, are less vulnerable to their attacks. This religious theme then reiterates Sissako’s view that the white Arab Imam is a man who practices “true” Islam as opposed to the “false” Islam of the Ansar Dine jihadists. But, in equating witchcraft in the Sahel with the heretical Islam of the jihadists, Sissako implicitly stigmatizes ancient sorcery practices as antithetical to “true” Islam. Sissako’s Timbuktu does not offer viewers a

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sympathetic or even coherent image of Islamic practices in which EgyptoAfrican and pre-Islamic beliefs in the region have been syncretized with Arabian Islam, in this context a more recent cultural influence. It is perhaps for this reason that some criticized Sissako’s film as insufficiently “Malian.” The Islam of the white Arab Imam in Timbuktu is not a regional interpretation of the faith that has been Africanized, or that has satisfyingly integrated local belief systems with Sunni articulations of Islam so prevalent in the Arab world. It is likely that local varieties of Islam in the Sahel, for instance Islam as it is practiced by the Umarian Tijaniyya of Bandiagara, the Muridiyya of Touba, the Qaddriyya of Macina, and many other Muslim brotherhoods, would seem heretical if not abhorrent to both the white Arab Imam and the Ansar Dine.

Conclusion The ideology of blood election must be deconstructed because it is a form of false consciousness, a delusional politics that harms all involved parties. However, the conflict for northern Mali is not about saving “true” Islam from the dogmatism of the Ansar Dine jihadists, as Sissako suggests, nor is it about saving any particular interpretation of the Islamic religion. The true struggle in northern Mali is the struggle to achieve greater freedom, justice, and equality for all of Mali’s citizens under the law, not merely those who claim to be elected blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. The Tarkih al fattash provides essential information providing context to understand the long history of fraternal struggles in the region. Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s film La genèse also demonstrates how fraternal animosity in the Sahel is typically the result of class division based in archaic doctrines of blood purity. La genèse shows how class division based on belief in doctrines of blood purity inevitably causes resentment and feelings of humiliation for those stigmatized as impure. Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s depiction of the local animists in La genèse, unlike Abderrahmane Sissako’s in Timbuktu, unapologetically harkens to pre-Islamic Sahelian traditions that remain extraordinarily relevant in the region even today. In Sissoko’s film La genèse, as in the biblical account in the Book of Genesis, the source of the bitterness between the warring brothers is Esau’s loss of the birthright to Jacob through becoming polluted with Jacob’s bodily fluids and thereby making himself taboo. In Sissoko’s La genèse, the sons of Jacob betray Joseph, just as they betray their new brothers in-law from the clan of Hamor. The sons of the Askiya Muhammad and the Askiya Dawud also betray one another and repeatedly attack one another

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with the use of occult sorcery. These fratricides are structural repetitions of one another. Sissoko emphasizes that it is Jacob’s sons, men who have sworn to uphold the Abrahamic covenant, who are the worst vow-breakers and most fanatical adherents to the ideology of blood purity, not the animist and indigenous Canaanites. Abderrahmane Sissako, on the other hand, stigmatizes jihadists and animists alike as heretics and fetishizers in his film Timbuktu. Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s film is entitled La genèse, or “Genesis,” not merely because it retells the Book of Genesis, but because it also is about new beginnings, or the birth of new republics. For the new republic to be born, Cheick Oumar Sissoko suggests, those who adhere to the archaic ideology of blood nobility must come to recognize the lasting harm it brings to all those deemed ignoble. On the other hand, those who have been stigmatized on the basis of their impure blood must learn to forgive the blood notables who have long oppressed them.

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What Is To Be Done?

During the summer of 2014, the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo found himself at the center of an international controversy after he stated in an interview about Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that he would like “to shoot those bastard Zionists” who had killed so many Palestinian civilians.1 Later, Vattimo apologized for his remarks, which he said were uttered in anger at the two “morons” who interviewed him; however, Vattimo also reiterated that he fully stood by his view that what Israel had recently done in Gaza was a criminal slaughter that was committed against innocent civilians by a rogue state.2 As one might expect, Vattimo was vilified in Israeli and other Zionist media as an “antiSemite” and even as “completely nuts.” To compound matters, Vattimo and Michael Marder had recently published a volume of essays that they entitled Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics, which was similarly vilified by pro-Zionist critics as an “anti-Semitic” and “racist” book. In one especially paranoid review, Gabriel Noah Brahm claimed that Deconstructing Zionism provided the secret “philosophy behind the BDS ” (or the “Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions” movement against Israel).3 As a contributor to Vattimo and Marder’s volume, I found Brahm’s claims particularly comical, since I had not even heard of the BDS movement until I read Brahm’s review. Later, pro-Zionist and reactionary academics like Cary Nelson joined the fray, focusing his attacks upon Judith Butler especially, who was also a contributor to Deconstructing Zionism, as well as staging political events at MLA gatherings and elsewhere to criticize the BDS movement.4 Buried in the controversy over Vattimo’s remarks, his statement that he would like to “shoot those bastard Zionists,” were Vattimo’s thought-provoking observations about Zionist Israel’s ultimate place in history, which Vattimo compared to Nationalist Spain under Franco. In a moment of boldness, Vattimo argued that Europeans should offer military assistance to the Palestinians against the Zionist state of Israel, much as they done on behalf of Republican Spain in the 1930s. Those who support the Palestinians, Vattimo suggested, might even form “international brigades” as 127

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pro-Republican forces had once done in fascist Spain, offering military support for Palestinians rather than mere financial or moral support. Citizens of the West might do far more to put an end to the senseless killing of innocent Palestinians than condemn Israel’s extreme violence from a distance. As an American citizen who has written on Israel and West Africa for some years, and who has also written on deconstruction, I found Vattimo’s remarks to be both courageous and inspiring. As Keenan has shown in The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara, the US has played a prominent role in shaping the events that have recently taken place in northern Mali, especially from the time that AFRICOM was first established after 9/11. I am an American academic who has studied the Sahel for almost three decades, but I am not a citizen of the Republic of Mali. As a US citizen who writes on the crisis in Mali, I too am implicated in what is now happening in Mali, and I do not claim here to offer an objective analysis of the current crisis. Unlike those who claim to speak in the name of “Truth,” my own intervention is an unapologetically partisan one. As I see it, Vattimo is right to suggest that external witnesses to forms of injustice like what took place in Gaza in 2014 may do more than helplessly watch as innocent people suffer at the hands of militant theocracies like the Zionist state of Israel or the Islamist state of Azawad. In the 1930s, Vattimo’s views would probably not have seemed very controversial in the US , as figures like Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Martha Gellhorn, and others joined the fight against Nationalist Spain, a fascist state that was built on the twin pillars of church and throne. Some Americans, like the professor Robert Merriman, who was the inspiration for Hemingway’s Robert Jordan in For Whom The Bell Tolls, even took up arms to fight against Franco’s Spain. In a story on NPR that aired during October 2008 entitled “Robert Jordan, Hemingway’s Bipartisan Hero,” then presidential candidates Barak Obama and John McCain stated in separate interviews that Hemingway’s Robert Jordan was a character who had greatly inspired them in their youth. During his time in the military, McCain stated that “Robert Jordan was everything I wanted to be.”5 In fact, McCain acknowledged that he often thought of Robert Jordan when he was a PoW in the Vietnam War. While imprisoned in a bamboo cage, McCain asked himself how Robert Jordan might have acted under similar circumstances. Still, it is unlikely that either President Obama or Senator McCain would now endorse Vattimo’s views about Israel, or that either politician would find Robert Jordan’s fight on behalf of the Spanish Republic to be applicable to the crisis in northern Mali. Would Hemingway’s “bipartisan hero” Robert Jordan take the fateful step of joining one of Vattimo’s proposed brigades in the fight against anti-Republican

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and theocratic fascism in Israel? Would Robert Jordan feel justified in blowing up a bridge in northern Mali to help defeat the Ansar Dine? These are some of the questions that Vattimo’s recent remarks about Gaza raised for me regarding the recent crisis in Mali and what my own response to this crisis should be. Though Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls may seem an odd point of reference for a scholarly book about Mali, I write here as an American citizen who affirms the Enlightenment ideal of the republican nation state. I also write in solidarity with Mali’s citizens who believe in the ideals of liberty, justice, and equality for all its citizens, not merely those who claim to be noble blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. In my view, Vattimo is right to suggest that the citizens of democratic states with republican constitutions are justified in doing what they can to help dismantle theocratic fascist states like Zionist Israel and Islamist Azawad. To advocate the use of violence in the fight against fascist theocracy, however, is not tantamount to defending prolonged military occupations that undermine the sovereignty of republics like Mali.

Hemingway’s “bipartisan hero” and Mali Borrowing from Massignon and Derrida, one might speak of Franco’s Spain, Zionist Israel, and Islamist Azawad as variant “Abrahamic fascisms.” Nationalist Spain was, of course, a Catholic state that was based in archaic beliefs about royal blood; Zionist Israel remains a Judeo-theocratic state that upholds a concept of the citizen based in archaic beliefs about Jewish blood rather than residence in a particular place; Azawad was a short-lived Islamic theocracy predicated on belief in the jihadists’ noble blood lines from the family of the Prophet Muhammad. All three of these theocratic states were established in opposition to the Enlightenment ideal of the Republic, which they rejected on religious grounds. I have argued here that the Enlightenment idea of liberty, which means freedom within the law and not anarchy, is worth defending with the use of military force in Islamicate West Africa. I have also defended Kant’s visionary dream of a republican nation state system in which “perpetual peace” may someday be realized; or, I have suggested that Kant’s centuries’ old dream of perpetual peace is at least worth striving to realize. However, I have also argued that foreign policy makers in the US must realize where their true interests lie, which is not just in securing natural resources like oil and uranium, but in establishing the long term stability and security of the republican nation state system in Islamicate Africa and the Middle East. Though for some the Republic

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of Mali may seem a relatively obscure state, hardly worth more than a few lines in the weekly news about Africa, I insist here that what is at stake is not the survival of a single West African republic, or that the Republic of Mali is an exceptional case. The argument I make here is rather that the republican nation state system is worth preserving, not merely the Republic of Mali. To ensure its survival, it may be necessary to do more than anxiously hope for the best. It may require that citizens of the West’s republics become actively involved in military conflicts like those that have recently taken place in Gaza and northern Mali. Certainly, the Civil War in Spain was a dry run for a much bigger war that historical figures like Hemingway, Dos Passos, Orwell, and others saw coming. When Hemingway wrote For Whom The Bell Tolls in the late 1930s, he wrestled with the problem of the political foe, about ten years after Carl Schmitt published his controversial work, The Concept of the Political. As Schmitt observed, one’s enemy is a private adversary, not a foe. To kill one’s private adversary is therefore an act of murder. In contrast, the foe poses an existential threat to the body politic and must therefore be killed as a matter of political duty. For Schmitt, private individuals do not have the right to make determinations regarding the identity of the foe. Only the sovereign may make the difficult decision in what Schmitt calls “the ultimately determining instance.” Schmitt further argues that the political stability of the nation state system and international order depends upon the friend-foe distinction. For this reason, Schmitt sought to articulate an extremely rigorous concept of the foe, which theorists like Derrida have since deconstructed. Derrida also deconstructed Schmitt’s notion of sovereignty, which he reminded his readers is not as indivisible as Schmitt suggests. After the publication of Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship in the late 1980s, Schmitt’s work has received renewed international attention and has been the subject of many nuanced studies. Though Schmitt’s prose is deceptively simple, his views on the friend-foe distinction are extraordinarily complex. In contrast to Schmitt, who pledged his allegiance to the Nazi party, Hemingway was an anti-fascist republican. For Whom The Bell Tolls was instrumental in altering perceptions in the United States about the rise of fascism in Europe and the dangers it posed to the republican nation state system. As a defender of republican ideology, Hemingway is also able to shed light on many aspects of the friend-foe distinction that elude Schmitt. In The Politics of Friendship, Derrida illustrates the difficulty, if not impossibility, of ascertaining one’s true political foe. Following Nietzsche, Derrida shows that the political foe is a mythical creature that has never existed in any metaphysical sense. In Derrida’s reading, Schmitt longs for the existence

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of an ontologically stable foe in order to stabilize international law and order. Schmitt insists upon certain knowledge of the foe’s identity, but the knowledge he seeks is finally unattainable. Another way to say this is the true foe does not disclose his essence as an event in time. The true foe has never appeared. For Derrida, the true foe may only be anticipated. The foe is therefore a specter that Schmitt summons to stave off his own political madness. Kant similarly speaks of the true friend as a “black swan,” a greatly desired creature that is rarely to be found. For Derrida, however, there is no such thing as either a black swan or a true foe, at least not in any metaphysical sense. Throughout The Politics of Friendship, Derrida cites an aphorism commonly attributed to Aristotle, “Oh my friends, there are no friends.” The words of Aristotle haunt Derrida’s work, recurring in many different contexts. Derrida suggests that Aristotle’s notion of friendship is a deconstructive “friendship without friendship.” The friend and the enemy alike are merely specters that we summon. Their true essence is something we await. Though we can never really know either our true friends or our true foes, we are not therefore exempt from making politically responsible decisions. What Derrida calls “friendship without friendship” also implies the need for a “realism without realism.” In Specters of Marx, for instance, Derrida underscores that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is compelled to go through “the ordeal of undecidability” before acting; in the end, however, Hamlet must indeed pick up his sword to restore justice in Elsinore. A deconstructive politics, in other words, is not a recipe for inertia. One must act in a politically responsible manner, but only after careful and thoughtful deliberation, and in the absence of Cartesian certainty. In For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway similarly illustrates the complex existential dilemma of Robert Jordan, who must kill men he does not know, but who are his foes because they are foes of the republic. After killing a young soldier in the fascist army, Jordan reflects upon the reasons why the young man was fated to die. Killing the young man does not make Jordan happy. In fact, it sickens him because he is able to recognize the frailty and humanity of his foe, and yet Jordan is convinced that he has done the only possible thing he could do. He has done what he was compelled to do in support of the republic. Hemingway powerfully shows the grim reality of what it means to actually kill another human being. Even if it is impossible to know who one’s “true foe” is in the manner of Schmitt, the foe for Hemingway is simply the foe of the republic. Robert Jordan lived with the guilt of killing another human being, but he willingly killed another human being, and he was also willing to die to protect Spain’s republic. The republic Jordan defended was not even his own. Jordan

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killed other men and sacrificed his own life in defense of the idea of the republic. The foe in Spain for Jordan was the person who was willing to die to protect the interests of church authorities and blood nobles. In contrast, the friend was the person who belonged to the collective body, the res publica (or “public thing”), and who also believed that all other members of the republic were entitled to equal rights under the law without regard for their noble blood or religious beliefs. In his remarks about Gaza, Vattimo suggested that the Palestinian fight against Zionist Israel is comparable to the fight that foreign nationals like Robert Jordan waged against Nationalist Spain in the 1930s. I have suggested here that the fight against Islamic fascism in northern Mali is also comparable to the fight against Christian fascism in Spain. Vattimo’s views shocked and upset many in Europe, the US , and Israel; however, in my view, what is truly shocking is the decline of support among Western intellectuals for liberal democratic states with republican constitutions. The US and Europe’s long-standing support of Zionist Israel, including “leftist” intellectuals like Derrida, has made it difficult for many to see what was once clear, if not obvious, to Hemingway and his generation. It is merely a fact that the Law of Return in Israel is predicated on religious blood claims, and it is also merely a fact that Israel is not a liberal democracy with a republican constitution. To state these facts does not make one “anti-Semitic.” In the case of Mali, with some rare exceptions, most journalists who have written on the crisis in the north have noted that Mali’s jihadists tend to identify themselves as blood notables without reflecting upon the anti-democratic and anti-republican implications of this fact.6 The Tuareg and Arabs who sought to establish the independent state of Azawad are foes of the Republic of Mali, of the very idea of the republic, and, as such, they are not exempt from the use of military force on behalf of the Republic of Mali. Many Tuareg and Arabs in the north do not wish to be a white minority in a predominately black republic because they fear it will undermine their historical privilege as blood notables. So too in Israel, many Jews do not wish to become a minority in a predominately Arab state. Zionist Jews of European origin especially fear the loss of their privilege, or they fear becoming a white minority in an Arab state. Northern Mali’s notables and Israeli Jews alike fear that, as white minorities, they will be subject to retaliation at the hands of men and women whom they have long oppressed. While such fears are understandable, the inherent rights of the people in any republic cannot be denied simply because their former oppressors fear retaliation. In her brief response to Edward W. Said’s Freud and the Non-European, Jacqueline Rose suggested that Said may have been

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far too optimistic about the chances for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians on this basis.7 Like many in Israel, Rose doubted the Palestinians would ever forgive their Zionist oppressors. However, arguments of this nature are not really arguments at all, merely articulations of an understandable anxiety. Said dismissed such arguments and insisted that the Jews of Israel will have to get used to living as a minority population in a predominately Arab state.8 So too will the Tuareg and Arab notables of northern Mali be required to adjust to life as a minority white population in a predominately black republic. They will just have to get used to the fact that they may not lord over others merely because their skin is white or because they claim to have noble blood. If the Tuaregs and Arabs of the north are truly concerned about retaliation from blacks in the south, they would do well to ask forgiveness of those whom they have wronged. This is perhaps the main lesson of Sissoko’s La genèse: If you want forgiveness for the wrong that you have committed against your brother, you must first ask for forgiveness before you can receive it. This means acknowledging that you did something wrong. It does not mean clinging to the myth of your innocence and your lost blood privilege. Jacob was compelled to ask his brother Esau to forgive him, but only after he grasped that he had done something wrong. It is not necessary to debate the relative merits of theological claims that one may dominate other human beings on the basis of one’s blood. For those who support republican ideality, ruling over others on the basis of such claims, whatever the particular theological point of reference, is simply wrong. Black Malians and Palestinians too must forgive the wrong that has been done to them. Like Esau who forgave his brother Jacob, they must give up their desire for vengeance against their white brothers who seek forgiveness. The minority populations of northern Mali will understandably feel apprehensive in the years to come; however, we all have to live with the predicable consequences of our actions, especially those that bring harm to others. In the Sahel, white notables have used blood claims to lord over black Malians for centuries, often with the use of the most outrageous forms of violence. I would argue here that the notables of the Sahel deserve justice, not pity. However, the same is true for the black population to the south.

The French occupation of northern Mali What I am proposing here may seem idealistic to some. I do not dispute that many of the worst enemies of the idea of the republic include government

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agencies that are often more focused on “interests” than the health and wellbeing of the republic itself. However, the fact that hypocritical and corrosive elements may exist within any republic does not nullify the founding ideals of the republic. It merely compels citizens of the republic to act with greater vigilance on the republic’s behalf. In the case of northern Mali, the French who were once part of the solution have now become part of the problem. Keenan is probably correct that the US and French have deliberately used the conflict in northern Mali to justify their prolonged presence in the region. In 2012, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice famously called the French plan to invade northern Mali and drive out the jihadists “crap.”9 Rice no doubt understood that, once the French drove the jihadists out of the north, they would be able to justify their military presence for years to come. Northern Mali might become for the French a new Isle St. Louis from which to exert their influence over the entire region. At the time that the French intervened in Mali, the US already had established a significant military presence in the north, only the US did not wish to share northern Mali with the French. They had already made a satisfactory arrangement with the Algerians. To date, reports of the redoubled strength of Tuareg and Arab jihadists in Mali have appeared in various media outlets.10 By some accounts, the jihadists are described as stronger than they were in 2005. In March 2015, a prominent Bamako nightclub was attacked, and five people were killed. The Islamist group Al-Mourabitoun, headed by the notorious Mokhtar Belmokhtar, took credit for the terrorist attack. Though the French have occupied northern Mali since early 2013, they have been unable to eradicate terrorist activity in Mali. What Keenan has observed of AFRICOM – that “Al Qaeda” terrorism was required to justify an American military presence in the Sahara – is probably true in the case of the French occupation of northern Mali today. For the French to justify their continued military presence in northern Mali, an insurrectionary jihadist element is needed, now retooled as a local avatar of ISIL .11 When traveling through northern Mali in Summer 2014, Malians of Mande, Dogon, Bozo, Songhay, Peulh, and other ethnic origins repeatedly told me that they believed the French were arming jihadists to fight against the Republic of Mali. This was mere rumor, based on speculative observation, but those I spoke with in Mali sincerely believed it. While some Tuaregs and Arabs in the north imagine that they may end up with an independent state, the French plan for occupying the north is probably more akin to the Israeli model of occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. At best, white nobles in the north may be able to police their own people, including their Bella slaves and other black minorities, after the model of

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the Palestinian Authority in the Occupied Territories. The white people of the north may end up in a weak pseudo-state controlled by a foreign army, not unlike Arabs in the Occupied Territories. Meanwhile, the French will continue to occupy northern Mali while making vague promises to all parties, so long as it serves their interests. The argument I make here on behalf of the Republic of Mali, including the Kidal region, is therefore an argument against northern Mali’s occupation. When the Tuareg and Arabs themselves cease to believe the empty promises of their occupiers, they will hopefully realize it is in their interests to forge stronger political alliances with their black neighbors in the south. The Republic of Mali must be allowed to evolve into a strong and unified nation state, rather than a client state of a neo-colonial power. This can only happen once the US and France accept that their long-term interests are better served by ensuring the survival, stability, and health of the republican nation state system in Islamicate West Africa. In contrast, the colonial occupying model of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank is a hopeless anachronism that is doomed to failure. Its historical moment has long since passed. In 1992, Francis Fukuyama argued that, “Islamic fundamentalism bears more than a superficial resemblance to European fascism.”12 He also made the same point about Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, suggesting the Israeli occupation of Palestine was an anachronistic instance of European-style imperialism from the nineteenth century. Derrida was wrong to attack Fukuyama in Specters of Marx in defense of the Zionist state of Israel. One does not have to accept all of Fukuyama’s conclusions in The End of History and the Last Man to appreciate his point that the long term stability of Islamicate Africa and the Middle East is dependent upon “defanging” both forms of theocratic rule.13 To make this case is not to support the “globallatinization” of Africa and the Middle East, as Derrida suggests. One may honor ancient religious beliefs without allowing them a role in government. Derrida suggests as much when he argues for the “disassociation of the theological and political” in the case of Algeria, the land of his birth.14

Conclusion In the late 1930s, Hemingway and many other Americans risked their lives to protect the republican ideals of the Enlightenment in fascist Spain. Seventy years later, political “realists” like George W. Bush, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton are often more than willing to protect America’s economic interests, rather than

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the founding ideals of their republics. From the early postcolonial era to the present, the US has shamelessly supported repressive fascist theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, while demonizing overtly secular political movements as “Marxist.” For this reason, many feel bewildered, if not shocked, when committed thinkers like Vattimo urge them to fight on behalf of their avowed political ideals. The rise of fascist theocracies in Islamicate Africa and the Middle East are a direct threat to the republican nation state system and therefore to international order and stability. Theocratic blood nationalisms like ISIL , Azawad, and Israel have declared war on the very idea of the liberal democratic state with a republican constitution. What has clouded the perception of many in the US has been their perceived economic interests, especially oil. As a result, many have lost the ability to recognize that the true interests of the US , Europe, and other nations of the world lie in maintaining the stability of the republican nation state system, not in making a quick buck. The fight for republican ideality in Mali and Palestine is as legitimate today as was the fight against fascism in Franco’s Spain in the 1930s. Until we are able to recognize that these fights are the same fights, and that they are fights worth fighting, it is not likely that stability will be achieved in the Islamicate world. What are called “economic interests” are often short-term profits that benefit only the rich and powerful. The US ’s true economic interests in Islamicate Africa and the Middle East are only achievable in the long term. These interests include the survival of human life in an increasingly imperiled world.

Epilogue Zongo, Sankara, and the Burkinabe Revolution

The revolution of the Burkinabe people is at the disposal of the people of Mali, who need it . . . Only revolution will allow them to free themselves. Thomas Sankara In the Rand Foundation’s Achieving Peace in Northern Mali: Past Agreements, Local Conflicts, and the Prospects for a Durable Peace (2015), Stephanie Pezard and Michael Shurgin propose that the Republic of Niger might serve as a model for the Republic of Mali to imitate in the aftermath of the crisis in the north. “Niger’s relative stability has made it a useful partner for US and French counterterrorism cooperation efforts, as well as a platform for both nations’ counterterrorism operations,” the authors state.1 For the Rand Foundation, Niger offers a working “model of resilience” that Mali should carefully consider as it rebuilds its fragile republic. In their study, Pezard and Shurgin prioritize the urgent goal of achieving stability in Mali, so that it might become a better regional partner for the US and France. Pezard and Shurgin’s recommendations are brief. In their remarks on the Republic of Niger, they have little to say about Niger’s sorry history of violence, embezzlement, and corruption over the last decade, including now deposed President Mamadou Tadja’s theft of $125 million, nor Niger’s inhuman policies against its Tuareg population,2 nor Niger’s complicity in the kidnapping of UN representatives Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, both Canadian citizens, who Tadja handed over to Mali’s insurrectionary Tuaregs.3 (Fowler and Guay had posed questions about Niger’s governance that Tadja viewed as inconvenient.) Instead, Pezard and Shurgin ponder Niger’s relative “good luck” in escaping the insurrectionary chaos that has engulfed northern Mali. Around the time that Tadja was busy looting Niger’s coffers, Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré is estimated to have lost $261 million in graft, about twice as much as the people of Niger lost during Tadja’s presidency, before Touré was deposed following the slaughter of Malian soldiers at Aguelhok.4 Meanwhile, Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaoré was estimated to 137

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have racked up a net worth of $275 million at the time he fled Burkina Faso in October 2014. The principal concern of the Rand Foundation, a corporation that is funded by the US Secretary of Defense, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and other military agencies, is to secure national stability in Mali in order to further US interests in the region, including the success of AFRICOM . Like France, the US has many important strategic interests in the Sahel, and for this reason the US State Department is committed to securing Mali’s future as a stable republic. Against Chomsky and Keenan’s “grand imperial design” theory, I have argued here for a more pragmatic, even “realist” approach to US foreign policy debate, albeit a “realism without realism,” as Derrida might put it.5 That the US maintains key strategic interests in West Africa is not, in my view, a valid reason to criticize Pezard and Shurgin’s findings and those military agencies that have funded their research. Foreign policy analysts like Pezard and Shurgin will continue to articulate what they imagine best serves US and French strategic interests in West Africa, which is only fitting given the enduringly anarchistic nature of international relations. Even so, Mali’s citizens in both the north and the south will understandably be concerned with a wider array of issues than achieving national stability in order to further US and French foreign policy interests in the region. For this reason, Malians may themselves not agree that the Republic of Niger offers an exemplary model for them to emulate. In fact, the very notion that Mali should be governed in the same fashion as Niger, with its long record of violence against its citizens and governmental corruption, might seem a gloomy prospect to many, especially the Berabiche, Kounta, and Tuareg. In opposition to Pezard and Shurgin, I would argue that the Republic of Burkina Faso, as governed by President Thomas Sankara from 1983–7, offers a far better model for the Republic of Mali to emulate. The model of Burkina Faso in the Sankara years is a more viable national model than the Republic of Niger, not only because such a model might better serve Mali’s citizens, but because it might also lead to greater stability in the region. My argument presupposes, however, that the US and France will be better served if Mali evolves into a stronger nation-state, rather than a weakened vassal of neo-colonial powers. In 1987, Thomas Sankara was murdered during the coup d’état that first brought Compaoré to power. It is unlikely that Compaoré could have succeeded without the full cooperation of the French, who had grown disenchanted with Sankara’s efforts to transform Burkina Faso into an autonomous state, rather than a client state of France. Following Sankara’s murder, Compaoré despotically reigned in Burkina Faso for nearly thirty years, dismantling the many progressive programs of the Sankara years, claiming that he was “rectifying” the excesses of Sankara.

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Compaoré did so with the full support of France, the US , the IMF, and World Bank. Many of Sankara’s social programs were launched to improve the daily lives of Burkina Faso’s poorest citizens, especially women. (The best English language book on Sankara is Ernest Harsch’s recent Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary. Samantha Anderson has also translated many of Sankara’s most important political speeches in her Thomas Sankara Speaks.6) Sankara placed the needs of Burkina Faso’s poorest citizens at the top of his priorities. To this end, he organized the fight against famine, drought, desertification, disease, illiteracy, unemployment, gender discrimination, and many other social ills. During the era of the Cold War, Sankara was criticized in France, the US , and other places in the developed world as a “Marxist,” even a “Neo-Maoist” radical. France was particularly perturbed that Sankara sought to free Burkina Faso from its dependent relation. France had long preferred that Burkina Faso model itself after Côte d’Ivoire, the flagship client of neo-colonialist France. Sankara did not agree. He fought instead for economic independence and self-sustainability. Nearly three decades since his assassination, Sankara remains a galvanizing figure in the Sahel, including in the Republic of Mali. The example of Sankara, who changed the name of the former Upper Volta to “Burkina Faso” (or the “Land of the Virtuous People”), continues to serve as a powerful reminder that a different kind of future is possible for West Africa. In the eyes of many, Sankara’s example inspires hope that the recurring cycles of poverty, violence, corruption, and impunity may be broken. Though Sankara made mistakes, as one might expect from a leader so young (he was only thirty-three when he became Burkina Faso’s president), Sankara offered a pragmatic alternative to the neo-colonialist model, one that offered dignity and hope to the long suffering citizens of Burkina Faso. The opposite was true of the Compaoré regime, which was known for its ready reliance upon extra-judicial assassination to eliminate political opponents. Compaoré, who married the daughter of Ivorian President Félix HouphouëtBoigny, was also a far more congenial leader to the French, one who was eager to protect their interests in the region. During Compaoré’s presidency, Compaoré’s most outspoken critic was the Burkinabe journalist Norbert Zongo. A fierce defender of free speech, Zongo not only spoke out against Compaoré’s use of extra-judicial violence, he also urged the Sankarists not to retaliate against Compaoré for killing their leader. Zongo feared that civil war might break out with devastating consequences for the poor.7 Zongo’s unflinching criticisms of Compaoré did not make him popular with Compaoré and his followers. In late 1998, Zongo was assassinated by three members of Compaoré’s presidential guard, following the murder of the

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chauffeur of Compaoré’s younger brother (known in Burkina Faso as “le petit président”). Zongo had written articles that linked Compaoré’s brother to the killing. In addition to his work as a journalist, Zongo wrote popular novels about the colonial and postcolonial eras. Zongo’s The Parachute Drop centers on a corrupt Africa president in the fictional nation of Watinbow. In Zongo’s novel, President Gouama steals millions of dollars from his nation’s coffers and kills all those who he views as his rivals. The money Gouama steals enables him to live a life of corruption and debauchery. Though a repulsive character, Gouama is an allegorical composite of the despotic West African president. Zongo does not depict Gouama’s reliance upon sorcery in governing Watinbow as an aberration, but as a basic feature of Gouama’s identity. However gruesome his descriptions of sorcery, Zongo does not demonize pre-Islamic religious practices. Instead, he shows how dangerous the combination of governance and sorcery can be. “Even God would not condemn me from sacrificing two or three people to keep the country from falling to the Marxists,” Gouama confides to the sorcerer who advises him.8 The sorcerer gives Gouama these instructions: [Y]ou must cut open the belly of a black calf and insert the severed breasts and vagina of a pregnant woman. All of this must be done in the casket of a man buried in the cemetery. On the third day, we will extract three teeth from a skull buried just for you. You must swallow one of the teeth. The other two will be set in a magnificent cane that you must carry with you at all times. If anyone wants to steal your power, they will have to return the three teeth to their proper place, which will be practically impossible.9

On the night Gouama loses power, his sorcerer instructs him to disrobe and wrestle in the nude with a donkey, even as the coup that deposes him is in progress. At the palace, soldiers gun down a thirteen-year-old girl who Gouama had drugged and raped earlier in the evening. The soldiers imagine that the sleeping body is Gouama’s. Meanwhile, the President of Watinbow coats his body in grease and wrestles in the nude with a donkey. Gouama is a grotesquely comic figure who has lost his basic humanity. Despite differences in skin color and outward appearance, Gouama and the Ansar Dine jihadist of northern Mali are secret brothers under the skin. This is so because occult sorcery practices underwrite the archaic ideology of blood nobility and enable traditional class distinctions in the Sahel. What must be underscored is that noble claims to an elected status, like those made by the Ansar Dine, are at one with belief in the occult power of blood. For this reason, removing all forms of sorcery in government is likely to lead to more egalitarian,

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stable, and enduring republics in West Africa. Relegating the ideology of blood nobility and all other forms of sorcery to the private sphere will lead to a more authentically equalitarian society, because it is belief in occult sorcery that enables unjust class divisions. Such divisions erode the social contract that is essential to the health of the republic. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, France, England, and other Western colonizers established alliances with blood notables in West Africa to serve as their proxies, leaving traditional caste relations intact, when not strengthened. So long as the notables’ power and status were preserved, they were often happy to serve their European masters. As Ouologuem shows in The Duty of Violence, the notables often manipulated their colonizers, who were oblivious to what was really happening around them. During the Sankara years, Burkina Faso systematically divested notables, chiefs, and other elites of their privileged status. The notion that a notable was fit to be a local leader due to the blood he inherited from his parents was repellent to Sankara. In an interview conducted in 1985, Sankara stated: The traditional form of organization in the country . . . is a feudal system that doesn’t allow for development and that denies the masses even a minimum of social justice or enlightenment. This feudal system functioned so that some people, simply through the circumstances of their birth, could control considerable amounts of land . . . They distributed the land as they saw fit. Others could only cultivate the land and had to pay them.10

Sankara aggressively dismantled traditional power structures based on belief in occult blood. He also rejected all forms of discrimination based in color. “[I]t’s not a question of color,” Sankara insisted. “There is only one color – that of African unity.”11 Not surprisingly, Sankara faced opposition from notables who were rightly concerned about the loss of their privilege. Imagining that they had the most to lose, the notables of the Sahel have long led the fight against the republican ideal of equality for all citizens under the law. Sankara showed himself ready to enact “the duty of violence” against the anti-democratic and reactionary elements of his own population, rather than accommodate them to his country’s detriment. In the aftermath of Azawad, Mali’s citizens too might dedicate themselves to building a republic upholding equal rights for all citizens under the law, regardless of color and caste standing.

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Notes Introduction 1 The sorry history of Gaddafi’s fall is recounted most forcefully in Francis A. Boyle’s Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution (Atlanta, GA : Clarity Press, 2013). Also, see Cynthia McKinney’s The Illegal War on Libya (Atlanta GA : Clarity Press, 2012). 2 Peter Cole, “Borderline Chaos? Stabilizing Libya’s Periphery,” in Perilous Desert: Insecurity in the Sahara, eds. Frederic Wehrey and Anouar Boukhars (Washington DC : Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013), 54. 3 Ibid., 55. 4 Anouar Boukhars, “The Paranoid Neighbor: Algeria and the Conflict in Mali,” in Perilous Desert: Insecurity in the Sahara, 91. 5 See Hawad’s “Anarchy’s Delirious Trek,” The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel, ed. Christopher Wise (Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 113–26. 6 The “DRS ” is an acronym for Algeria’s secret service (or mukhabarat). It stands for “Direction des Renseignements et de la Sécurité.” 7 Jeremy Keenan, The Dying Sahara: U.S. Imperialism and Terror in Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2013), 155 [my emphasis]. 8 See Joseph Paré and Christopher Wise’s “Introduction: The Land of the BloodBoiling Sun,” in The Desert Shore, 1–18; also see Thomas Hale and Paul Stoller’s “Oral Art, Society, and Survival in the Sahel Zone,” in African Literature Studies: The Present State, ed. Stephen Arnold (Washington, DC : Three Continents Press, 1985), 163–9. 9 Thomas Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire (Gainesville, FL : University of Florida Press, 1990), 18. 10 Akbar Ahmed, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Washington, DC : Brookings Institute Press, 2013). 11 See Christopher Wise’s “Nyama and Heka: African Concepts of the Word,” Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1–2 (2006): 17–36. 12 See Anna Momigliano, “Italian philosopher apologizes for saying he wanted to ‘shoot those bastard Zionists’: Gianni Vattimo had told Italian radio that Europeans should buy more missiles for Hamas,” Haaretz (12: 33 30.07.14). Also see Tova Dvorin, “Italian Philosopher Calls to ‘Shoot Zionists’, Arm Hamas,” Arutz Sheva 7 (July 23, 2014), israelnationalnews.com

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13 Andy Morgan, Music, Culture and Conflict in Mali (Copenhagen: Freemuse, 2013), 19. 14 The MNLA is the Mouvement National pour la Libération de l’Azawad (or the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad). Though the MNLA joined forces with Islamist groups during the brief period of Azawad’s existence, including the Ansar Dine and AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), they are primarily a Pan-Tuareg nationalist movement. 15 I will generally dispense with the scare quotes around the words “white” and “black,” but it goes without saying these terms refer to problematic and complex racial distinctions in the Sahel zone that are often at variance with how these same terms are employed in the West. See, for instance, El Hadjj Sekou Tall’s “The Origins of the Fulani,” in The Desert Shore, 12–26. 16 Fallou Ngom, “Taboo Racism: The Mouride Perspective on Arabism,” in Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition, eds. Paul James and Christopher Wise (Fitzroy, Australia: Arena Publications, 2010), 236–53. 17 El Hadjj Sekou Tall states this unambiguously: The Tuareg, along with Arabs and the Peulh, are one of the three white ethnic groups in the Sahel. See Tall’s “The Origins of the Fulani,” 13. 18 Keenan, The Dying Sahara, 104. 19 Ibid., 83. 20 Ibid., 259. 21 Ibid., 260 [my emphasis]. 22 Ibid., 59. 23 Clare Heyson, “There’s Something About Mali,” Columbia Political Review, March 27, 2013, http://cpreview.org/2013/03/theres-something-about-mali/#sthash.43EyAK73. dpufyou 24 Kassim Kone, “The End of Tuareg Apartheid in the Sahel,” Cultural Anthropology, March 2012, www.culanth.org/fieldsights/328-the-end-of-tuareg-apartheid-inthe-sahel 25 Yambo Ouologuem, The Yambo Ouologuem Reader: The Duty of Violence, A Black Ghostwriter’s Letter to France, and The Thousand and One Bibles of Sex, ed. Christopher Wise (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2008), 87. Ouologuem links Arab and French forms of racism and imperialism in the Sahel to the ancient Israelite notion of the remnant in Messianic doctrines from the era of the Babylonian Captivity, asserting that the Messiah would come from a Davidic lineage. For this reason, the Prophet Ezra insisted that Israelite men who had married Babylonian, Egyptian, and other foreign women must renounce their wives and children. The Messianic bloodline had to be kept pure. As the mother was the blood source, the question of her own blood purity was not negotiable. See Ezra 9:1–12. 26 Jacques Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 53–4.

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27 Yambo Ouologuem, “Interview with Hugh Downs,” Today, National Broadcasting Corporation, March 18, 1971, cited in Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 158. 28 In To Eternal Peace, Kant states, “[T]he beginning of a lawful state cannot be counted upon except by force upon the compulsion of which the public law is afterwards based,” Basic Writings of Kant, ed. Allen W. Wood, New York: Modern Library, 2001, 459–60 [my emphasis]. Before Kant, Rousseau makes this same point, “In order that the social pact shall not be an empty formula, it is tacitly implied in that commitment . . . that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body, which means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free,” (The Social Contract, London: Penguin Books, 1968, 64 [my emphasis]). By his own admission, Chomsky neglects to take Kant’s views into account (see Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rational Thought, 3rd ed., Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1966, 107); and he ignores Rousseau’s The Social Contract, preferring instead to focus his critical attention on Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (see Noam Chomsky’s Chomsky on Anarchism (Edinburgh UK , Oakland CA , and West Virginia: AK Press, 2005)). As a consequence, the image of Rousseau in Chomsky’s reading of him is a distorted caricature at best. 29 See Derrida’s discussion of the Cartesian view articulated from the non-existent place that Descartes called “the land of romance” in Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004), 30. 30 Keenan, The Dying Sahara, xii. 31 Ibid., 12. 32 As far back as the early 1970s, Ouologuem stated that he had “no taste” for this game, which may be why he finally retired from public life, leading a more reclusive and hermit-like existence. See “Yambo Ouologuem on Violence, Truth, and Black History,” interviewed by Linda Kuehl, Commonweal (June 11, 1971). This interview is available on the web at www.nathanielturner.com/yamboouologuem 33 Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 14. 34 This is essentially what P.F. de Moraes Farias states in his review of The Timbuktu Chronicles: Al Hajj Mahmud Kati’s Tarikh al fattash, 1493–1599, co-translated by Hala Abu Taleb and Christopher Wise (“Review of Christopher Wise and Hala Abu Taleb’s Tarikh al fattash: The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599, Islamic Africa, Vol. 4, Issue 2, Fall 2013). 35 In his book-length study of Rouch’s lifework, Paul Stoller notes, “Immersion or fuller participation in other worlds can yield striking results . . . As apprentices [in West Africa] our first lesson was that one is ignorant; one knows nothing. From that time on [Rouch and I] built our knowledge, and we continue to build it. Apprenticeship demands respect. If there is one underlying theme in Rouch’s films and my books, it is that a deep respect for other worlds and other ideas, ideas often preposterous to our own way of thinking, is central to a future ethnographic practice” (The Cinematic

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39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

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Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 214–15). Keenan has unfortunately been subject to smear campaigns from right wing political analysts, bloggers, etc., who no doubt wish his research was not as well informed as it is. See, for instance, Thomas Miles’s execrable piece “Death and Career in the ‘Dark’ Sahara: The Sad Fate of Jeremy Keenan,” tomathon.com, Afrique, Current Events, Featured History, Lefty, Mali, January 4, 2012. See Jeremy Keenan, The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2009), 6. Keenan also states, “The [George W.] Bush administration has sought ideological legitimacy [in Africa] to secure what it refers to ominously as its ‘national strategic interests,’ or, in Noam Chomsky’s terms, its imperial grand strategy in Africa, by evoking the GWOT ” (Ibid., 130). Every nation on earth has national strategic interests, but a national strategic interest is hardly the same thing as a grand imperial design. In The Architecture of Language, Chomsky states, “There is no doubt that language is an innate faculty” (eds. Nirmalangshu Mukherji, Bibudhendra Narayan Patnaik, and Rama Kant Agnihotri (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 51). Chomsky hypothesizes the existence of what he calls unconscious knowledge, an obvious oxymoron. Like Descartes before him, Chomsky banishes all doubt from his thought system. He is certain. Chinua Achebe, “The Writer and His Community,” in Hopes and Impediments (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 50–1. See Donald R. Wehrs’s Islam, Ethics, Revolt: Politics and Piety in Francophone West African and Maghreb Narrative (New York: Lexington Books, 2008). Also see my “Review of Islam, Ethics, Revolt: Politics and Piety in Francophone West African and Maghreb Narrative, by Donald R. Wehrs,” Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Summer) 2010, 450–3. Barbara Hoffman, Griots at War: Conflict, Conciliation, and Caste in Mande (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2001), 19 [my emphasis]. Keenan, The Dark Sahara, x [my emphasis]. Ibid., 12–13. Ibid., x. ibid., vii. Chomsky often compares the work that he does to biblical Prophets and their struggles, asserting that political dissidents these days are modern avatars of figures like Amos, Ezra, Moses, and others. Chomsky is unaware how offensive his self-aggrandizing rhetoric might be in the Islamicate setting where Muhammad is construed as the “Seal of the Prophets.” For cases in point, see Chomsky’s On Language and Nature (Cambridge UK : Cambridge University Press, 2002), 162–3; Chomsky on Democracy and Education, ed. C.P. Otero (New York: Routledge-Falmer, 2003), 320; and Chomsky on Miseducation, ed. Donald Macedo (Lanhan, MD : Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 18.

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47 Chomsky compares this brain secretion to human semen, which is why animals are not endowed with rational language faculties. See Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics: 121–2. 48 Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky (New York: The New Press, 2002), 359–61. 49 In Islam, Ethics, Revolt, Wehrs demonstrates the relevance of Levinas’s work on ethics in the West African setting. Though Levinas’s thought is close to Derrida’s, Derrida’s work is generally more applicable in the Africa setting than Levinas’s. Derrida was himself of Sephardic Jewish and Algerian origins, whereas Levinas was an Ashkenazi or European Jew. 50 Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1996), 39. 51 Those familiar with Chomsky’s linguistic, pedagogical, and political writings will recall the often evoked figure of the “Martian Scientist,” occupying the ideal vantage point that Chomsky urges his readers to adopt. See, for instance, Chomsky, Chomsky on Democracy and Education, 62. 52 Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. 1, 108. 53 Rousseau, The Social Contract, 81. 54 See Christopher Wise, “The Spirit of Zionism: Ruah, Derrida, and the Purloined Birth Right,” in Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Metaphysical Politics, eds. Gianni Vattimo and Michael Marder (New York: Continuum Press: 2013), 113–31. 55 See Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2001), 418–19. 56 Derrida, “Marx & Sons,” in Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, ed. Michael Sprinker (London: Verso, 1999), 214. 57 See Christopher Wise, Chomsky and Deconstruction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge (New York: Palgrave, 2011), 113–15. 58 The word “ethics” is placed in scare quotes here because Derrida was himself notoriously skeptical about the very word. 59 Fredric Jameson, “The State of the Subject,” Critical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter 1987), 16–25. 60 My use of the term “horizon” here is indebted to Hans Georg Gadamer. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000). 61 Jan Assman, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 124. 62 Edward Brongersma, “The Thera Inscriptions: Ritual or Slander,” The Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1990, www.ipce.info/library_3/files/thera.htm 63 See Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1991), 75. 64 Derrida states, “[R]uah, like the German Geist can carry evil within it. Ruah can become ruah raa, the evil spirit,” in Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (Chicago,

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IL : University of Chicago Press, 1989), 101. This is the problem of “bad blood” that Derrida discusses at greater length in The Death Penalty. “[I]n the inexhaustible symbolics of blood, from sacrificial blood or Christ’s blood to the blood of filiation, and so on and so forth, there is always good and bad blood, and the two are often indiscernible” (The Death Penalty (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 2014), 200). Also see Gil Andijar’s Blood: A Critique of Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). 65 Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (Los Angeles, CA : University of California-Los Angeles, 2003), 38. 66 Guy Martin, “Actualité de Fanon: Convergences dans la Pensée Politique de Frantz Fanon et de Thomas Sankara,” Geneva-Afrique, Special 26th Anniversary Issue: Des Africains Revendiquent Leur Histoire 20, No. 2 (1987): 104.

Chapter 1 1 For more on the history of ancient Ghana, which is not to be confused with the modern nation of Ghana, see Charles Monteil, “La légende du Ouagadou et l’origine des Soninké,” in Melanges ethnologiques: Mémoires de l’Institut Français d’Afrique Noire, No. 23 (Dakar: IFAN , 1953), 361–405. 2 Christopher Wise, ed., Tarikh al fattash: The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599, Christopher Wise and Hala Abu Taleb (trans.), (Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press, 2011), 270–1. 3 Worship at the shrines of saints in Timbuktu is copiously documented in the Tarikh al fattash. For instance, Al Hajj Mahmud Kati writes, “The tomb of Alfa Muhammad Tulay, at Hunde-biri, [is a tomb] whose efficacy has been proven: this is the regular meeting place of people suffering from leprosy, both those who are mildly afflicted and the terribly deformed. God welcomes the intercession of the saint on their behalf, which leads to their healing, as I have myself witnessed on many occasions” (Ibid., 169). Such ancient practices are viewed as heretical by the Ansar Dine and MOJWA . The Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, whose ideology has inspired the Ansar Dine, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood, also once famously destroyed the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the tombs of many other historically important Muslim figures, because they feared that hajis to these sites were excessively venerating them. 4 See: “An Account of the Sa’dian Conquest of the Songhay by an Anonymous Spaniard,” in John Hunwick, Timbuktu and The Songhay Empire: Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan, down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 322. Hunwick’s full translation of this portion of the document reads, “Jawdar, knowing from his spies that the black king had prepared himself to fight, sent him a message

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asking him not to cause the death of so many men, but to do so of his own free will what he would be obliged to do by force, that is to submit to the king Mulay Ahmad, seeing that he was a sharif, a descendant of the Prophet, and to him legitimately belonged sovereignty over all Moors.” Hunwick notes, “By ‘Moors’ here, we should no doubt understand ‘Muslims’ ” (Ibid.). The Arabic word for “black” is abd [‫]ﺩﺏﻉ‬, which also means “slave.” Before the modern abolition of slavery, it was not lawful under Islamic law to enslave a fellow Muslim, although one could enslave a “pagan” or a non-Muslim. For the Moroccans led by Jawdar, blackness signifies paganism and a person who is therefore licit to enslave, as opposed to a fellow “Muslim” or a “white.” Jawdar’s message underscores the Moroccan view that it is inappropriate for black “pagans” like the Askiya Isaak to be a sovereign ruler over whites or “Moors”; that is, Jawdar does not even recognize that the Askiya Isaak is a fellow Muslim – or a “white.” (Although born a Christian, Jawdar had at this time converted to Islam, in the service of Mulay Ahmed.) Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo, The Mysterious, trans. Diana White (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), 127 [my emphasis]. Tony Grooms, “African American Reactions to the Arab Spring,” unpublished paper, Hassan II Mohammedia/Casablanca University, Department of English and Moroccan American Studies International Conference, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Arab Spring and its Implications for American Studies in Arab Universities,” Marrakech, Morocco, December 7, 2012. Christopher Wise, “A Voice from Bandiagara,” in Christopher Wise, ed., Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant (London and Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), 23. See Mali: First Assessment of the Human Rights Situation After Three Weeks of Conflict (London: Amnesty International Publications, 2013), 8, www.amnesty.org/ en/library/asset/AFR37/003/2013/en/b5713181-930c-4552-b407-d2b20836db0c/ afr370032013en.pdf The case of the Mossi offers a particularly interesting example of this imperialist policy, as it was the exceptional case of the failure of the French to “divide and conquer” a powerful ethnic cluster. The French originally split the Mossi people and lands into three parts, one part going to what is today Mali, another part to Cote d’Ivoire, and another part to Niger. The Mossi, whose cultural history and language extend back some 2,000 years, protested with so much force that the French finally relented and changed their tact. This led to the formation of the territory of the Upper Volta, which was renamed Burkina Faso after independence. Even today, Burkina Faso is dominated by the Mossi people, who live in the central zone of the nation state. For instance, see El Hajj Sekou Tall’s “The Origins of the Fulani,” in Christopher Wise (ed.), The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel (London and Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 15.

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11 Dubois, Timbuctoo, 77–8 [my emphasis]. 12 Joseph-Jacques Césaire Joffre, My March to Timbuctoo (London: Chatto & Windus, 1915). 13 Dubois, Timbuctoo, 137 [my emphasis]. 14 See Robyn Dixon, “African troops face a challenge after France leaves Mali,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/01/world/ la-fg-mali-army-20130202. Dixon notes that the US State Department blandly denies that they ever thought these funds were sufficient to “stave off large insurgencies.” This response obviously begs the question of the loss of these funds due to extreme and well-known government corruption in Bamako. That is, one will never know if $500 million dollars would or would not have been sufficient, as these funds never made their way north. 15 Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1998), 166. 16 Hunwick, “Leo Africanus’s Description of the Middle Niger, Hausaland, and Bornu,” in Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 282. 17 The text of the Tarikh al fattash reads as follows, “Now Ali had a son named ‘Abd Allah. Thus it was that he called to him, ‘Hey! ‘Abd Allah!’ His son came right away. When he stood before them, Ali handed over his son to the three men and said to them, ‘Would my son compensate for the one whom you have lost?’ ‘Yes,’ they responded. ‘Then take him and do as you please, but leave in peace the descendent of the Prophet (May God bestow his blessings upon him and grant to him salvation!)’ These men immediately killed the son of Ali, and then they returned to their home” (44–5). 18 Wise, Tarikh al fattash, 47–8. 19 This legend is recorded in Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan. See Hunwick’s translation in Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 6. I have also documented various oral narratives of this legend in my own research performed in Timbuktu and Gao. Dubois also documents this legend in Timbuctoo, 90–1. See Christopher Wise, “Introduction to the Tarikh al fattash: Timbuktu, Gao, and the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas,” in Tarikh al fattash: The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599, ix–xxvii. 20 The griot’s (or West African oral poet or “bard”) account of the rise and fall of the Songhay Dynasty has been transcribed by Thomas Hale from his recording of the Zarma griot Nouhou Malio in The Epic of Askia Mohammed (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press, 1996). The griot and other members of the caste of the nyamakala tend to refer to the Askiya Muhammad by his maternal name, “Mamar Kassaye.” For the griot, as for other Songhay animists, one’s maternal lineage is more significant than one’s paternal lineage. Even today, Songhay men will bequeath their possessions to the son of their sister, rather than their own sons. This is to insure that one’s possessions will certainly go to one’s actual blood heir. As for the children of one’s wife, only the maternal lineage can be verified as a matter of certainty.

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21 See my discussion of this incident in “The Novel, Historiography, and the Griot Epic in the Sahel,” in Teaching the African Novel, ed. Gaurav Desai (New York: Modern Language Association, 2009), 154–75. 22 Wise, Tarikh al fattash, 202–3. 23 Ibid., 133. 24 See Herman Te Velde, “The God Heka in Egyptian Theology,” Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootshap, Ex Oriente Lux, Vol. 21 (1970): 175–86. 25 See Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (London and Sterling, VA : Pluto Press, 1999). Shahak and Mezvinsky state, “The politically important distinction between Jewish blood and non-Jewish blood is well-known to most Israelis, but is ignored by almost all those who write about Israel and its policies” (154). 26 Ouologuem stated this to me in an interview I conducted with him in 1997 at his home in Sevare, Mali, which is only a few kilometers from Mopti. His full remark, which seems prophetic in retrospect, was as follows: “Go back to America and tell my black brothers that I’ve been fasting for them so they’ll come back to Africa. Tell them to come back and ease our suffering . . . The worst enemies for blacks right now are racist Arabs, Arabs who have been satanically blessed with oil, and who are now funding the Jews and apartheid governments everywhere. It is the Arabs who are sponsoring all these organizations that are against blacks . . .” (Christopher Wise, In Search of Yambo Ouologuem (Vlaeberg, South Africa, 2011), 53–4). The extent to which Yambo Ouologuem may himself espouse anti-Semitic views is a much-debated topic in the copious literature that has been written about him.

Chapter 2 1 See Eric Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 172–85. 2 Thomas Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire (Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1990). 3 Thomas Hale, Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1998). 4 Stephen Belcher, Epic Traditions of Africa (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1999). 5 Barbara G. Hoffman, Griots at War: Conflict, Conciliation, and Caste in Mande (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2001). 6 John William Johnson, “Introduction,” in The Epic of Son-Jara: A West African Tradition (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1992), 9.

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7 Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage, 1939). Also, see Jan Assman, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997). 8 Johnson, “Introduction,” in The Epic of Son-Jara, 9. 9 Although the French use “Bambara” and the term has wide usage, American Mande specialists prefer “Bamana” as a term that more accurately reflects what this people calls itself. I will use the term “Bamana” here, except in cases of usage in formal article titles and original citations. 10 See Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1981), 75–94. 11 Herman te Velde, “The God Heka in Egyptian Theology,” Jaarbericht van het Voorsaiatishch-Egyptisch Genootshap, Ex Oriente Lux, Vol. 21 (1970): 177. 12 Ogden Goelet, “A Commentary,” in The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth By Day, trans. Raymond Faulkner (San Francisco, CA : Chronicle Books, 1998), 145–6. 13 Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), 329. 14 Derrida, Dissemination, 87. 15 Germaine Dieterlen, “The Mande Creation Myth,” Africa, Vol. 27 (1957): 126. 16 Derrida Dissemination, 87. 17 Susan A. Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1982), 27 [Handelman’s emphasis]. 18 Jan Assman, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 240. 19 Tom Hare, Remembering Osiris: Number, Gender, and the Word in Ancient Egyptian Representational Systems (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1999), 279. 20 Patrick R. McNaughton, “The Semantics of Jugu: Blacksmiths, Lore, and ‘Who’s Bad’ in Mande,” in Status and Identity in West Africa: Nyamakalaw of Mande, eds. David C. Conrad and Barbara E. Frank (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1995), 46. 21 Joseph Henry, L’âme d’un peuple africain: Les Bambara, leur vie psychique, éthique, sociale, religieuse (Munster: Aschendorff, 1910). 22 Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume II: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 1991), 264–5. 23 Bernal, Black Athena, Vol. II , 265. 24 Ibid., 264. 25 te Velde, “The God Heka in Egyptian Theology,” 176. 26 Ibid., 186.

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27 Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785–1985 (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 1987), 140–1. 28 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (New York: Anchor Books, 1956), 37. 29 Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 12. 30 Derrida, Dissemination, 152. 31 Hoffman, Griots at War, 19. 32 Barbara G. Hoffman, The Power of Speech: Language and Social Status among Mande Griots and Nobles (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1990), 80 [my emphasis]. 33 Hoffman, The Power of Speech, 6. 34 Hoffman, Griots at War, 37. 35 McNaughton, “The Semantics of Jugu,” 51. 36 Ibid., 51. 37 Hoffman, Griots at War, 67. 38 Patrick R. McNaughton, The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West Africa (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1988), 15. 39 Charles Bird, Martha B. Kendall, and Kalilou Tera, “Etymologies of Nyamakala,” in Status and Identity in West Africa, eds. David C. Conrad and Barbara E. Frank (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press, 1995), 31. 40 te Velde, “The God Heka in Egyptian Theology,” 186. 41 Bernal, Black Athena Vol II , 484. 42 Bird et al., Status and Identity in West Africa, 28. 43 Ibid., 28. 44 Ibid., 28. 45 Barbara G. Hoffman, “Power, Structure, and Mande jeliw,” in Status and Identity in West Africa, eds. David C. Conrad and Barbara E. Frank (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press, 1995), 43. 46 Bird et al., Status and Identity in West Africa, 28. 47 McNaughton, “The Semantics of Jugu,” 51. 48 Youssouf Cissé, “Notes sur les sociétés de chasseurs Malinké,” Journal de la Société des Africanistes, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1964): 193. 49 Derrida, Dissemination, 94. 50 Bird et al., Status and Identity in West Africa, 29. 51 Ibid., 29. 52 David Conrad and Barbara E. Frank, “Nyamakala; Contradiction and Ambiguity in Mande Society,” in Status and Identity in West Africa, eds. David C. Conrad and Barbara E. Frank (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press, 1995), 6.

154 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Notes

McNaughton, The Mande Blacksmiths, 47. Conrad and Frank, “Nyamakala,” 6. Henry, L’âme d’un peuple africain, 27. te Velde, “The God Heka in Egyptian Theology,” 185. Dominique Zahan, La Dialectique du verbe chez les Bambara (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1963), 141. Henry, L’âme d’un peuple africain, 27. Charles Monteil, Les Bambara du Ségou et du Kaarta (Paris: Larose, 1924; reprint, Paris: G.P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1976), 121. Johnson, “Introduction,” 124. Hoffman, Griots at War, 169. Goelet, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, 147. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 161. Sory Camara, Gens de la parole: Essai sur la condition et le rôle des griots dans la société malinké (Paris: Mouton, 1976), 101. Hale, Griots and Griottes, 64 [my emphasis]. Ibid., 62. Claude Meillassoux, “Histoire et institutions du kafo de Bamako d’après la traditions des Niaré,” Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, Vol. 4, No. 14 (1964), 189–90. Assman, The Search for God, 124. Ibid., 140. Ibid., 141. te Velde, “The God Heka in Egyptian Theology,” 185. Goelet, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, 34. Bokar N’Diaye, Les castes au Mali (Bamako: Editions Populaires, 1970), 14. Meillassoux, “Histoire et institutions du kafo de Bamako d’après la traditions des Niaré,” 79. McNaughton, The Mande Blacksmiths, 18. Paul Stoller, In Sorcery’s Shadow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 127. McNaughton, The Mande Blacksmiths, 18. Hale, Griots and Griottes, 194–6. Roderick McIntosh and Susan Keech McIntosh, “Finding West Africa’s Oldest City,” National Geographic, Vol. 162, No. 3 (September 1982), 415. Hoffman, Griots at War, p.37. Ibid., 12. A.M. Jones, “African Metrical Lyrics,” African Language Studies, Vol. 5 (1964), 52–3. Titinga Frédéric Pacéré, “Saglego, or Drum Poem (for the Sahel),” in The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel, ed. Christopher Wise (London and Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 64.

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84 Eric Charry, “Plucked Lutes in West Africa: An Historical Overview,” Galpin Society Journal (March 1996), 17–18. 85 Ruth Schumann Antelme and Stephane Rossini, Sacred Sexuality in Ancient Egypt (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2001), 47. 86 Hare, Remembering Osiris, 139. 87 Ibid., 138. 88 McNaughton, The Mande Blacksmiths, 15. 89 Portions of this interview, conducted in both French and Fulfulde, may be viewed on line: “Interview with Umarian Tijaniyya of Alawar, Pt. 1,” www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HDV5f20fmPU and “Interview with Umarian Tijaniyya of Alawar, Pt. 2,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGFmh8ooTac. Both film interviews were shot by Fallou Ngom and Christopher Wise. 90 The unusual nature of conjuration rites among the Umarian Tijaniyya led me to mistakenly assume that these practices were specific to this region. During the 2001–2003 academic years, however, I conducted further research among Sufi brotherhoods in the Occupied Territories and Jordan, and found that the beliefs of Sahelian Tijaniyya are by no means specific to West Africa. In one case, a prominent professor of the Shari’a faculty at the University of Jordan in Amman was known to talk to specters that he summoned during his lectures. However, Wahhabi’s at the university dismissed him as an eccentric Sufi and heretic. 91 Christopher Wise, “Yambo Ouologuem Among The Tijaniya,” in Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant (Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), 228. 92 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (New York: Routledge, 1993), 125. 93 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 1 [Derrida’s emphasis]. 94 See Christopher Wise, Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 82. Derrida theorizes what he calls the “visor effect” which is linked to the appearance of the conjured father in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. However, when the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears, he wears a helmet with a visor but also carries a truncheon. Derrida is silent about the role of the truncheon in conjuration. The “truncheon effect” refers to the penalty meted out to those who betray the conspiracy. The penalty for treason or betrayal of the conspiracy is always death, the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 95 Jacques Derrida and Helen Cixious, Veils (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 2001), 83–4 [Derrida’s emphasis]. 96 Wise, Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant, 228. 97 Stoller, The Taste of Ethnographic Things (Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 112.

156 98 99 100 101 102

Notes Ibid., 112. Zahan, La Dialectique du verbe chez les Bambara, 133. Stoller, The Taste of Ethnographic Things, 112. Hoffman, Griots at War, 33–4. Stoller, The Taste of Ethnographic Things, 117 [my emphasis].

Chapter 3 1

2 3

4

5 6

7 8

Davies notes, “[T]here can be no question of the Egyptian system being a direct borrowing of the Sumerian. One obvious objection is that there is little, if any, discernable overlap between the two sets of signs. The Egyptian signary, though pictographic in character like archaic Sumerian, is clearly derived from indigenous sources,” W.V. Davies, Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2001), 40. Ibid. My view, in this regard, is obviously influenced by Freud’s Totem and Taboo, as well as Derrida’s reading of Freud on totemic writing practices, especially in The Politics of Friendship. The empirical and external theory of language’s beginnings in Freud radically differ from Platonic, Cartesian, and neo-Cartesian theories of language’s origin as a mystic seed that deposited in the human head. See Eric Havelock, Origins of Western Literacy (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1976); Walter J. Ong, Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977); and Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York: Routledge, 1982). Havelock and Ong tend to depict literacy as a bizarre aberration in human history, or as Havelock puts it “a recent accident” (Origins of Western Literacy, 6; see also, Ong’s critique of Derrida in Orality and Literacy, 75–7). Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1981), 76. Chomsky claims that it is a “truism” that writing is a copy of speaking. See Noam Chomsky, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (London, The Hague, and Paris: Mouton & Co., 1964), 67. Alan H. Gardiner, “The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3 (1916), 3. Augustine writes, “A person strengthened by faith, hope, and love, and who steadfastly holds to them, has no need of scriptures except to instruct others. That is why many people, relying on these three things, actually live in solitude without any texts of the scriptures” (On Christian Teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 26).

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9 Assman notes, “[For the Jews,] Egypt represents the old, while Israel represents the new . . . The same figure reproduces itself on another level with the opposition between ‘Old’ and the ‘New’ Testaments” (Moses, the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1997), 7). 10 Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage, 1939), 146–7. 11 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (New York: Routledge, 1994), 171–2. 12 Ibid., 142. 13 John Williams Johnson and Fa-Digi Sisoko, The Epic of Son-Jara: A West African Tradition (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1992), 132. 14 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press), 161. 15 Jacques Derrida, “Circumfession,” in Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1993), 10. 16 Susan Handelman notes, “With the deceptively simple words ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,’ the Hebrew Bible begins. In fact, however, this statement was (long before Derrida) a supreme challenge to the classical tradition of Western metaphysics: to assert that matter was not eternal, that the world had a temporal origin, that substance came to being through divine fiat, indeed through divine speech (“And God said, ‘Let there be . . .’ ”) threatened the foundations of Greek ontology,” The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1983), 27. 17 Ogden Goelet, “A Commentary,” in The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth By Day, trans. Raymond Faulkner (San Francisco, CA : Chronicle, 1998), 147. 18 See Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (Los Angeles, CA : Fowler Museum Publications, 2006), 180–6. 19 Park describes meeting a Peulh who requests a written charm or “saphie” from him, noting that he is able to use both his whiteness and his writing skills as a means of gaining leverage over those he comes across in his travels. Park records the elderly Peulh man saying, “ ‘If a Moor’s saphie is good,’ said the hospitable old man, ‘a white man’s [saphie] must be better,’ ” Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, 1795, 1796, 1797 (London, J. Murray, 1799), 206. 20 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 11. 21 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 110. 22 Ibid., 131. 23 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1982), 97. 24 Thomas Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire (Gainesville, FL : University of Florida Press, 1990), 154. 25 Tintinga Frédéric Pacéré, Le langage des tam-tams et des masques en afrique (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1991), 26.

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26 Tintinga Frédéric Pacéré, “Sagelego: or, Drum Poem (For the Sahel),” in The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel, ed. Christopher Wise (Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 47. 27 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 8. 28 Among the Tijaniya, for instance, it is obligatory to memorize at least seven “versets” (“chapters”) of the Qur’an, which is to say, seven distinct groupings or thematic clusters of Surahs. The Qur’an itself has 114 Surahs (separate revelations), but they are organized into such “versets” according to their content. In total, there are sixty “versets” or thematic groupings, but only those students with the desire and the ability learn all of them, thus memorizing the entire Qur’an. 29 After much searching, at the Grand Marchée in Bamako, Mali, I was once able to purchase an ornate and expensive Arabic-French version of the Qur’an for only 2,000 CFA (or US $4.00), whereas a cheap and abridged version of the Hadith cost me 10,000 CFA (or US $20.00). 30 Without reference to Islam, Ong himself makes this point in his discussion of St. John of the Cross. Ong states, “As St. John of the Cross long ago noted (see his Ascent of Mount Carmel), once you have Jesus Christ, you have all of revelation. There is nothing more to say, nothing further to add to the Word. All you have to do, once the Father has given His Word, is to learn better and better what a ‘Person Incarnate’ means” (Interfaces of the Word, 263). 31 Paul Stoller, The Taste of Ethnographic Things (Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 112. 32 Ibid., 111. 33 Perhaps the best known ethnological account of this phenomenon is Jean Rouch’s classic film on the Songhay, Les maîtres fous (1957). Westerners who have viewed this film are often most disturbed at images of African faces smeared with saliva, flowing from the chins of Houka initiates. 34 Stoller, The Taste of Ethnographic Things, 117. 35 See Paul Lovejoy, “The Bello-Clapperton Exchange: The Sokoto Jihad and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” in The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel, ed. Christopher Wise, (Boulder CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers), 201–27. 36 E.W. Bovill, Missions to the Niger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 126. 37 See George Francis Lyon, A Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa in the Years 1818, 1819, 1820 (London: Cass, 1966 ([1822]). 38 Major F.R.S. Denham, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, In the Years 1822, 1823, and 1824 (London: John Murray, 1828), 152. 39 Ibid., 239. 40 Ibid., 239.

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41 It is important to underscore here that the Islamic parataxis of the Book does not necessarily cancel belief in the autonomous power of discourse in the external world. This is especially true in the Sahelian context, where pre-Islamic belief systems continue to exert a profound influence upon contemporary West African peoples. 42 See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1982), 259. 43 Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 4. 44 Ibid., 130. 45 Ibid. 41. 46 The Tarikh al fattash contains copious information about who may or may not be enslaved and on what basis. One of the most fantastic justifications for enslaving local Sorkho peoples is that they are said to be descendants from female slaves of the Prophet Noah who mistakenly swam in a pool of sperm of a giant named Waj. See Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599 (Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press), 54. 47 See John Hunwick, “Studies in the Tarikh al fattash, I. Its Authors and Textual History,” Research bulletin, Vol. 5 (1969): 57–65; also see Levtzion Nehemiah, “A Seventeenth-Century Chronicle by Ibn Al-Mukhtar: A Critical Study of Tarikh Al Fattash,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 34 (1971): 571–93. 48 Hale notes, “[T]he griot’s language stands in counterpoint to that of the scribes. Each represents a distinct tradition and set of beliefs” (Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 11). In contrast to Hale, I draw attention to the shared traditions and beliefs of the griots and scribes, not their differences. 49 John Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 6. 50 Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 57–8. 51 Ibid., 50. 52 See Wise, “Introduction to the Tarikh al fattash,” in The Timbuktu Chronicles, xxiii. 53 Thomas Hale and Nouhou Malio, The Epic of Askia Mohammed (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press, 1996), 21. 54 Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 6. 55 Derrida describes the ring of flesh that remains after circumcision in his “Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Periphrases,” in Jacques Derrida (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1993). He also explores this theme in his book Glas (Lincoln, NE : University of Nebraska Press, 1974); and in Ulysse gramophone: Deux Mots pour Joyce (Paris: Galilée, 1983). Caputo has written extensively on the theme of circumcision in Derrida’s writing. While sometimes informative, Caputo’s reading of circumcision tends to overemphasize the exceptional nature of Judaic orientations to the rite. See John Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press,

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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Notes

1997); and Jacques Derrida and John Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997). Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 117–18. Ibid., 137–83. Ibid., 140–41. Ibid., 133. Hale and Malio, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, 27. Paul Stoller, The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1992), 111. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 262. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 194. Ibid., 194. Ibid., 18. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 58. Ibid., 50. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 6. Ibid., 6. Hale and Malio, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, 21. The important work of the McIntoshes at Jenne is legendary in Mali. See Roderick McIntosh and Susan McIntosh, “Finding West Africa’s Oldest City,” National Geographic, Vol. 162, No. 3 (September 1982): 396–418; and Roderick McIntosh and Susan McIntosh, “The Inland Niger Delta before the Empire of Mali: Evidence from Jenne-Jeno,” Journal of African History, No. 22 (1981): 1–22. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 58. A similar rhetorical strategy is adopted in Al Sa’di’s description of the Mossi, historical rivals of the Songhay. See Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 106–7. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 6fn52. Iyad ag Ghaly, “Transcript of the audio message of Iyad ag Ghaly Amir of Ansar Al-Din movement to the people of Timbuktu,” Nouakchott News Agency, http:// azelin.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/iyyc481d-agh-ghc4811c4ab-22read-out-overlocal-radio-in-timbuktu22-en.pdf_[my emphasis]. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 35. Ibid., 33. Ibid., lxiii. Ibid., lxiv. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, xi. Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 34. Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2002), 196. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 102. Ibid., 153.

Notes 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

161

Ibid., 133. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 141. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 205. Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 109. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 224. Ibid., 230. Ibid., 231. Hale and Malio, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, 24. Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 45. Also, see Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 108. Hale, Scribe, Griot, Novelist, 58–9. In the 1850s, a British traveler James Richardson records his disappointment at the indifference of local inhabitants to Arabic translations of the Gospels that have been printed for distribution in the Sahel. “They have not even any curiosity to know the contents of the Gospel, much less the inclination to study or appreciate them. They remain in a state of immovable, absolute indifference. Even the beautiful manner in which the Arabic letters are printed scarcely excites their surprise,” Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa, Performed in the Years 1850–51 (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1853), Vol. II , 21–2. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 31. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 27. Johnson, “Introduction,” The Epic of Son-Jara, 9. Hale and Malio, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, 59. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 60. Hale prefers the word “captive” rather than “slave.” The terms are synonymous, although the term “captive” tends to soften the circumstance of the ignoble person described. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 234 [my emphasis]. Ibid., 251. Ibid., 149. The author in this case is likely Ibn Al Muhktar, a grandson of Al Hajj Mahmud Kati. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 296 [my emphasis]. Ibid., 131. Derrida, Specters of Marx, xviii. Ibid., xviii. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 72–3. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 168. Andy Morgan, Music, Culture, and Conflict in Mali (Copenhagen: Freemuse (2013), 10.

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114 Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 168. 115 Derrida, Specters of Marx, 114 [my emphasis]. 116 Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other (Lincoln, NE : University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 59 [my emphasis]. 117 Derrida, Specters of Marx, 176. 118 Eric Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 180 [my emphasis]. 119 Like Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, Al Hajj Mahmud Kati’s Tarikh al fattash explores the theme of animal metamorphosis. See Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 127. Animal metamorphosis is an important feature of occult sorcery in the region. It is commonly believed in the region, even today, that some sorcerers have the power to assume animal form. Stoller documents this notion in his fascinating narrative, In Sorcery’s Shadow (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1989). 120 The Tarikh al fattash records an instance of local belief in “the gift of second sight,” or the ability to see the more real world of which this world is a mere replica. Such beliefs are evocative of the Doctrine of the Heavenly Book, or the Platonic notion that the world we inhabit is a mere replica of some more “real” world that is construed to be supersensible. See Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 128. Also, see Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, 44. 121 See Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, xxii. 122 See Noam Chomsky, “Noam Chomsky On Post-Modernism,” http://cscs.umich. edu/∼cshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html 123 Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, 39–40.

Chapter 4 1

2 3

4

See Christopher Wise, “In Search of Yambo Ouologuem,” Research in African Literatures. Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 1998): 159–82. It was also later republished in book form in Chimurenga’s “Best of Chimurenga” Series. See Christopher Wise, In Search of Yambo Ouologuem (Vlaeberg, South Africa: Chimurenga Books, “Best of Chimurenga,” Series 2, Book 5, 2011). Christopher Wise, ed., Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant (Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999). See Christopher Wise, “Qur’anic Hermeneutics, Sufism, and Le Devoir de violence: Yambo Ouologuem as Marabout-Novelist,” Religion and Literature, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring 1996): 85–112. See Ryan Jacobs “Saudi Arabia’s War on Witchcraft,” The Atlantic, August 19, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/saudi-arabias-war-onwitchcraft/278701/

Notes

163

5 See Wise, “Yambo Ouologuem Among the Tijaniya,” 228. 6 Yambo Ouologuem, The Yambo Ouologuem Reader: The Duty of Violence, A Black Ghostwriter’s Letter to France, and The Thousand and One Bibles of Sex, ed. Christopher Wise (Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press, 2011), 148–51. 7 John O. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 141. 8 Wise, “In Search of Yambo Ouologuem,” 216. 9 Eva Von Dassow, The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth By Day (San Francisco, CA : Chronicle Books, 1998), 24. 10 Ibid., 105. 11 Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes, In Sorcery’s Shadow (Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 60. 12 Ibid., 82. 13 Ibid., 101. 14 Ibid., 84. 15 Ibid., 88. 16 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (New York: Routledge, 1993), 110. 17 Jacques Derrida, “Circumfession,” in Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1993), 155. 18 Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (London: Heinemann, 1988), 97–9. 19 See, for instance, Wole Soyinka’s “Remarks on Yambo Ouologuem’s Le Devoir de violence,” in Wise, Yambo Ouologuem, 17. 20 Ouologuem, The Yambo Ouologuem Reader, 33. 21 Ibid., 149. 22 Ahmad Kamal, The Sacred Journey (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1961), 64. 23 Ouologuem, The Yambo Ouologuem Reader, 5. 24 Ibid., 56. 25 John Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press, 1997), 327. 26 Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1993), 126 [Derrida’s emphasis]. 27 Jacques Derrida, Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2 (Stanford, CA : University of Stanford Press, 2004), 132. 28 Ibid., 132. 29 Noam Chomsky, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use (New York: Praeger, 1986), 265–9. 30 Jacques Derrida, “White Mythology,” New Literary History, Vol. 6 (1974), 5–74. 31 Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, 57. 32 I have discussed this question at length in previous writings, especially Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East and “The Spirit of Zionism” in Deconstructing Zionism.

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35 36 37

38

39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Notes

See my chapters “Arab-Jew” and “The Secular Trace” for further discussion of Derrida’s claims about the particularity of Judaic identity. Ouologuem, The Yambo Ouologuem Reader, 87 [my emphasis]. This question is discussed in greater detail in my book Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East, especially the historical role of the Prophet Ezra in asserting the priority of this doctrine (Ezra 9:1–12). See my chapter “Arab-Jew” in Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East, 27–43. P.G. Walsh, “Introduction,” in Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), xxxviii–xxxix. Ouologuem, The Yambo Ouologuem Reader, 87. See Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2002), 95. Also see Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1989),130–1. Derrida distinguishes historical “messianism” from the allegedly more general concept of “messianicity” and states that he “oscillates” in his views about which term is more appropriate. What Derrida calls “messianicity” is similar to Heidegger’s notion of the Zusage, a non-specific term for the faith or belief that is prior to all questioning. “Messianism,” on the other hand, is linked to the Religions of the Book and the historical experiences of particular prophets who first articulated the concept. See Jacques Derrida and John Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), 22–3. Works by Tall that have been translated into English and published include: Al Hajj Sekou Tall, “The Origins of the Fulani,” in The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel, ed. Christopher Wise (Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 11–25; Al Hajj Sekou Tall, “Wanderings: Bamako, Moscow, Delhi,” in The Desert Shore, 229–47; Al Hajj Sekou Tall, “Key Concepts and Traditional African Society,” in Voices: The Wisconsin Review of African Literatures (Issue 4), Fall 2000: 55–63; and Christopher Wise, “Interview With Al Hajj Sekou Tall,” in Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant, 231–41. Some of the translations of works that Tall gave to me have not yet been published, including a poem on the Peulh love of cattle and a spirited defense of gerontocracy in West Africa. Al Hajj Sekou Tall, “The Origins of the Fulani,” 13. Marcel Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 17. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 214. Tall, “Key Concepts and Traditional African Society,” 58. Ibid., 58 [my emphasis]. Ibid., 58.

Notes

165

48 Ibid., 59. 49 Jules Salenc, “The Life of Al Hajj Umar: Translation of an Arabic Manuscript of the Zaouia Tijaniya of Fez: Accompanied by an Introduction and Notes by Jules Salenc, Director of the École Faidherbe,” Bulletin du Comité d’Études Historiques et Scientifiques de l’Afrique Occidentale Française 1918 (Gouvernement Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française), (Paris: Emile Larose, Libraire-Éditeur, 1918), 405–31. 50 Tall, “Key Concepts and Traditional African Society,” 59. 51 Ibid., 59. 52 Ibid., 60. 53 Ouologuem, The Yambo Ouologuem Reader, 59. 54 Ibid., 60. 55 Ibid. 59. 56 Ibid., 61. 57 Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 116. 58 See Gil Andijar’s “Introduction: Once More, Once More: Derrida, the Arab, the Jew,” in Derrida’s Acts of Religion, 37. 59 Christopher Wise, “The Triumph of El Hadjj Oumar Tall,” Voices: The Wisconsin Review of African Literatures, Spring 2000, Issue 3: 29–33.

Chapter 5 1 Christopher Wise, ed., Tarikh al fattash: The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599, Christopher Wise and Hala Abu Taleb (trans.), (Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press, 2011), 250. 2 Ibid., 254–5. 3 Ibid., xvi. 4 Ibid., 224. 5 Ibid., 253 [my emphasis]. 6 Ibid., 224. 7 The distinction that I make here between the personal rival and political foe is indebted to Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 2007), as well as Derrida’s careful reading of Schmitt in The Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1997). Schmitt reiterates the historical public enemyprivate enemy distinction in various ancient cultures: hostis-inimicus (Latin); foe-enemy (English); polémios-echtrós (Greek); ojeb-soneh (Hebrew). For Schmitt, Christ’s injunction to “love your enemies” refers only to one’s private adversaries, not one’s public enemies. In his essay “Enemy or Foe: A Conflict of Modern Politics,”

166

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18

19 20 21

Notes

Telos, No. 72 (Summer) 1987, 194–201, George Schwab observes, “A ‘neighbor’ [for the Ancient Israelites] meant a fellow Israelite . . . In Deuteronomy the ‘others’ are usually those people who stand in the way of God’s chosen people in their journey to the Holy Land . . . Believing they fought for just causes, the Israelites did not find it necessary to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants . . . During periods of hostilities, foes were indiscriminately put to death and property that had not been damaged was either destroyed or confiscated” (195). Schwab also observes, “Neither the Greeks nor the Romans were much concerned with sparing noncombatants during hostilities . . . or, drawing distinctions between combat and non-combat areas” (Ibid., 198). “Christians during the Middle Ages also drew a sharp distinction between the private and the public adversary,” Schwab points out. “The command to love one’s enemy (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27) reads in Latin diligite inimicos vestros, not diligite hostes vestros. The inimicus is the private enemy; there is no mention of the public foe, the hostis” (Ibid., 196). It is not until the Enlightenment that a distinction is drawn in Europe between combatants and non-combatants. This occult murder is discussed in a previous chapter. See John O. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire Al-Sa’di’s Tarikh al sudan down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 141. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 225. Ibid.. Ibid., 153–4, and Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay, 194. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 231. Thomas Hale and Nouhou Malio, The Epic of Askia Mohammed (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press, 1996), 56. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 276–7. The Prophet Noah is also a prominent figure in the Tarikh al fattash, which includes tales of the interactions of Noah and the giant Waj. See Wise Timbuktu Chronicles, 52–5. Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? (New York: HarperPerennial, 1979), 96. Ibid., 97. Among other songs, Salif Keita’s early recording with the Rail Band entitled “Soundiata Gansan Na” is perhaps his best known griot tribute to Mali’s founder, Sundiata Keita. It was recently released and is available on an album entitled Belle Epoque, Vol. 1: Soundiata, under the Sterns label, 2007. See Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2002), 356–7. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 3. The author of the Tarikh al fattash records the following act of Sunni Ali Ber, the leader of the Songhay prior to the rise to power of the Askiya Muhammad: “The Shi

Notes

22 23 24 25

167

Ali was a tyrannical king. His heart was so hard that he once threw a baby into a mortar and forced the mother to grind it, even while the baby was still alive. The flesh was then fed to his horses.” Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 87–8. See, for instance, Alexis Okeowo’s “A Movie That Dares to Humanize Jihadists,” The New Yorker, March 5, 2015. Although similarly named, Abderrahame Sissako is of no relation to Cheick Oumar Sissoko, the director of La genèse. Wise, The Timbuktu Chronicles, 299. Anthony Lane, “Adventures in Rothland: ‘The Humbling’ and ‘Timbuktu,’ ” The New Yorker, February 2, 2015, 62–4.

Chapter 6 1 Anna Momigliano, “Well-known Italian philosopher: ‘I’d like to shoot those bastard Zionists,’ ” Haaretz, July 23, 2014. 2 “Philosopher apologizes for anti-Israel remarks,” i24 News, July 31, 2014, www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/38762-140731-philosopherapologizes-for-anti-israel-remarks 3 Gabriel Noah Brahm, “The Philosophy behind ‘BDS ’: a review of ‘Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics,’ ” Fathom, Spring 2014. 4 See Cary Nelson and Gabriel Noah Brahm, The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel (New York: MLA Members for Scholars’ Rights, 2014). 5 Susan Stamberg, “Robert Jordan, Hemingway’s Bipartisan Hero,” NPR Books, October 14, 2008. 6 The music critic and writer Andy Morgan is one exception to this trend. Morgan has lived in Mali for many years, where he formerly worked with Tuareg musicians and helped to organize the Festival of the Desert in Timbuktu. Morgan’s articles about the Tuareg and Arab populations in the north are insightful and also note the existence of white racism and blood nobility. His articles on Mali may be found at the following website: http://www.andymorganwrites.com 7 Jacqueline Rose, “Response,” in Edward W. Said’s Freud and the Non-European (New York and London: Verso, 2003), 77. 8 Edward W. Said, “My Right of Return” (interview with Ari Shavat), in Gauri Viswanathan’s Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 456. 9 Colum Lynch, “Rice: French plan for Mali intervention is ‘crap,’ ” Foreign Policy, December 11, 2012. 10 See, for instance, Kathleen Caulderwood, “Jihadist Groups in Northern Mali May Be Better Armed Than Military: 2015 Small Arms Survey,” IBT , June 1, 2015.

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11 See “Al-Mourabitoun Jihadists in Mali Pledge Allegiance to ISIL ,” Sputnik International, May 14, 2015. 12 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), 236. 13 Ibid., 271. 14 Jacques Derrida, “Taking a Stand for Algeria,” College Literature, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter 2003): 115–123.

Epilogue 1 Stephanie Pezard and Michael Shurgin, Achieving Peace in Northern Mali: Past Agreements, Local Conflicts, and the Prospects for a Durable Peace (2015), xvi. 2 Jeremy Keenan describes Niger’s treatment of its Tuareg population in the north as nothing short of “genocidal.” See Jeremy Keenan, The Dying Sahara: US Imperialism and Terror in Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2013), 12. 3 Robert R. Fowler, A Season in Hell: My 130 Days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda (New York: HarperPerennial, 2011), 297–8. 4 “Mali lost $261 mln to graft in ex-president Toure’s last years – audits,” TVC NEWS , May 16, 2015, www.tvcnews.tv/?q=article/mali-lost-261-mln-graft-ex-presidenttoures-last-years-audits 5 Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship (London/New York: Verso, 1997), 80–1. 6 See Ernest Harsch, Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary (Athens, OH : Ohio University Press, 2014); and Samantha Anderson, Thomas Sankara Speaks (New York: Pathfinder Books, 1988). 7 Norbert Zongo, “The Mobutuization of Burkina Faso,” in Christopher Wise, ed., The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 163. 8 Norbert Zongo, The Parachute Drop (Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press, 2004), 22. 9 Ibid., 22. 10 Anderson, Thomas Sankara Speaks, 104. 11 Ibid., 67.

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Index Abrahamic xxv, xxvi–xxvii, xxvii, xxix, 47, 73, 75, 79, 82–3, 94, 102, 108, 112–14, 121 Abrahamic fascism 129, 132, 135–6 Achebe, Chinua xxii, 67, 73 Adorno, Theodor W. xxi Africanus, Leo (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Zayyati) 1–3, 9–10, 13 AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) xvii, xx, 93, 128, 134, 138 Ag Ghali, Iyad ix, xiii, xiv, 52, 59, 67, 70 Aguelhok massacre xiv–xv Ahmed, Akbar xiii Ajami writing in Sahel 44 Al Bachir, Omar 13 Al Farouk (“Protector of Timbuktu”) 122 Algeria xiii, 134 Algerian Imperialism in Sahel xvi, xviii Al Mansur, Mulay Ahmad (al-Dhahabi) 1, 2, 5, 95, 98, 148–9 n.4 Al Qaeda xiii, xiv, xvi, 4, 5, 6, 10, 68, 70, 134, 148 n.3 Al Sa’di, ‘Abd al-Rahman 37, 44, 45–7, 49, 53, 54, 61–2, 69 Al Sagalli 10–11 Amadou, Sekou 45 Amulets 34–5, 55–7, 99, 122, 157 n.19 Amadu, Sekou 7 Ancient Egypt xii, xxvi, xxxi, 15, 28–9, 45–6, 50, 64–5, 82 Creation Myths 18 Egyptian Book of the Dead 25, 27, 37, 71–2 Egyptian Monomyth (“Hamlet Constellation” or “Osiris” monomyth) xxvii–xxviii, xxix, 26–7, 45–6, 84, 100, 104–5 Eye of Horus 76–7 Ka 37, 70

Literacy in Ancient Egypt 33–4, 38, 57, 64 Moses and Songhay Sorcerers 12, 45 Mummification 63 Non-being 64–5 Anderson, Samantha 139 Animal metamorphosis 162 n.119 Animal sacrifice 94, 100, 120–3 Ansar Dine ix, xv, xvi, 4, 6, 7, 44, 52, 59–60, 62, 65, 67–8, 70, 85, 103, 115–19, 122–4, 129 Apuleius 17, 64–5, 81 Arabs in Sahel xiii, xiv, 52, 102, 119, 124–5 Arab Imperialism in Sahel 2, 8–9, 13, 73, 76, 93, 102, 134–6 Aristotle 131 Askiya Dawud 1, 12, 54–5, 59, 65, 69, 95–6, 98, 100, 103, 117, 120, 124 Askiya Isaak 5, 148–9 n.4 Askiya Muhammad (“Mamar Kassaye”) 1, 12, 45–6, 47–50, 54, 58, 60–1, 65–6, 94–6, 124 Askiya Muhammad Bani 96, 98, 117 Askiya Musa 1, 99 Assman, Jan xxvii, xxviii, 19, 27, 35 Augustine 34–5, 77, 156 n.8 Azawad ix, xii, xvi, 3, 70, 103, 115, 128, 132, 136, 141 Ba, Amadou Hampaté 83 Baba, Ahmed 3, 119 Baghayogho, Muhammad 119 Bamako, Mali 8 Bamba, Amadou xxx, 70 Ban on Graven Images 35, 40–2 Barth, Heinrich 38 BDS Movement (Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions) 127 Belcher, Stephen 16 Bella (Tuareg slaves) xv, 115, 117, 134 Bello, Muhammad 41

179

180

Index

Belmokhtar, Mokhtar 134 Bernal, Martin 20–1, 23 Bird, Charles 23–4 Bin Laden, Osama 5 Blanchot, Maurice 43 Blood Election xii–xiii, xv, xxvii, xxix, 57–60, 66, 70, 79, 80–2, 110–12, 124–5, 133, 136, 140–1, 147–8 n.64 Arabs 10–12, 70, 80, 119–20 Blood of the Mother 72 Jews 151 n.25 Bodin, Jean 51 Brutus, Denis 67 Bush, George W. 135 Butler, Judith 127 Caillé, René 38, 41 Calvin, Jean xxiv Camara, Sory 26 Caputo, John 47, 77 Cartesianism in Sahel x, xx, xxi–xxii, xxii–xiii, 15–16, 33–4, 66, 78, 86–7, 89, 120–1 “Competence” (or “Unconscious Knowledge”) xxii–xxiii, xxiv, xxvi, 47, 78, 131, 156 n.3 Cartesian Mastery 16–17 Césaire, Aimé xxx, 60 Charry, Eric 28–29 Cheney, Dick 93 Chomsky, Noam x, xi, xviii, xxi, xxii–xxiii, xxiv, 47, 66, 78, 86–7, 89, 91, 93, 138, 145 n.28, 146 n.37, 146 n.46 Ethics xxvi, 78, 86, 131 Martian Science xxiv Neo-Platonism 15–16, 33–4, 147 n.47, 156 n.3 Christianity xxvii, 1, 9, 13, 20, 36–7, 40, 88, 121, 158 n.30 Blood-based Messianism 79–82, 144 n.25 Teachings of Jesus 27, 62 Circumcision xxvi, 33, 38, 56, 84–8, 108, 159 n.55 Cissé, Youssouf 24 Clapperton, Hugh 41 Clinton, Hillary 8, 135 Compaoré, Blaise xxx–xxxi, 137–41

Conjuration 30, 37, 54–5, 69, 97–8, 155 n.90 Conjuration and Sahelian Leviathan 50–1 Truncheon Effect 155 n.94 Conrad, David 24 Dan Fodio, Usman 7 Deconstruction x–xi, 32 Deconstruction as “gibberish” 66 Iterability 31 Delafosse, Maurice 44, 50 Denham, Dixon 40–3 Derrida, Jacques x, xi, xii, xvi, xviii, xxiii, xxvii, 17–18, 19, 24, 25, 33, 36, 37, 39, 47, 50, 54, 66, 99, 109, 130–1 Abrahamic xxvi–xxvii, 90, 108, 129 Archive 30–1 Blindness 78 Blood inheritance (“Hamlet Complex”) 72, 104 Circumfession 38, 73, 159 n.55 Globallatinization 14, 135 Hauntology 36–7 Marxism xxvi Messianicity 82, 164 n.38 Metaphysics of the Sponge 43–4, 72–3 Mourning the Dead 61–3 On Kant xxv Spirit-Specter 21–2, 30, 36–7, 43–4, 66, 73 Tears 77–8 Zionism xxv, 79 Descartes, Rene xxii, 47, 78, 86–7 Diop, Cheikh Anta 18, 19 Dogon xxix, 29, 82, 84 Dogon zodiac 84 Dos Passos, John 128, 130 Dubois, Felix 7–8 Dylan, Bob 104 Epic of Askia Mohammed 44, 45–4, 46–9, 60–1, 84, 95, 100–1, 103, 109, 115 Excision 74, 84–5, 87–8 Fanon, Frantz xxx, 39 Farrakhan, Louis 6 Fodio, Usman Dan 7 Fowler, Robert 137

Index Franco, Francisco xii–xiii Frank, Barbara 24 Frankfurt School xxi French foreign policy in Sahel 138 French imperialism in Sahel xvi–xvii, xviii–xix, 2, 6, 8, 13, 73, 93, 102, 134–6, 149 n.9 Racist French Imperialism 81, 144 n.25 Freud, Sigmund xxvii–xxvii, 17, 54, 63, 73 Totem and Taboo xxvii, 156 n.3 Fukuyama, Francis 135 Fune 17, 105 Gaddafi, Muammar ix, xv, 6 Ganda Koy militia xiv Gardiner, Alan 34 Gellhorn, Martha 128 Global War on Terror xx Goelet, Ogden 18 Goody, Jack 33, 39 Griaule, Marcel 83–4 Griots 15–17, 22–3, 26, 40, 46–7 Burial in Baobab Trees 24 Instruments 28 Origins 26–8, 81–2 Guay, Louis 137 Habermas, Jurgen xxi, 89, 91 Hagar, 75, 78–9 Rite of Sa’y 75–6 Hale, Thomas xi–xii, xix–xx, 16, 27, 28, 55, 69 Hale and Malio 16, 44–6, 57–9 Handleman, Susan 18 Hare, Thomas 19, 29, 51 Harsch, Ernest 139 Havelock, Eric 33, 39 Hawad ix Hawgaru, Mori 47–9, 54, 60 Hegel, Georg xxviii, 78 Heidegger, Martin x, xi, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, 19, 21, 86, 89, 104 Justice xxiii–xxiv Ethics xxvi Technology as “violence doing” 89 Zusage and Messiancity 82, 164 n.38 Heka 12, 15, 20–1, 29, 38, 46 Egyptian God Heka 19 Evil heka 24–5, 53–4, 147–8 n.64

181

Heka and Magic 21, 23, 47 Heka and ruah 35–6, 54 Hemingway, Ernest 128–32, 135 Henry, Father Joseph 20, 24 Herdeck, Donald 67 Heyson, Claire xv Hitler, Adolf 13 Hobbes, Thomas 51 Hoffman, Barbara xxii, 16, 22–3, 28, 31 Horkheimer, Max xxi Hornug, Eric xxvii, 64 Hospitality xxv, xxvi, 10–11 Houdas, Octave 44, 50 Houphouet-Boigny, Félix 139 Hunwick, John 44, 52–3 Ibn Umar, Mahmud 47 Irvine, J.T. 40 Ivoirianisation xiv Jacob-Essau xxvii, 97, 100, 103–7, 124–5, 133 Jameson, Fredric xxvi Janjawid 13 Jawdar, Pasha 2, 5, 95, 148–9 n.4 Jihad in Sahel 19th Century 6–7 Joffre, Joseph-Jacques Césaire 7 Johnson, John Williams 16, 25, 37, 57 Jones, A.M. 38 Judaism xii, xxv, 6, 34–5, 40, 43–5, 47, 72–3, 80–1 Judaism as “counter-religion” 157 n.9 Kant, Immanuel xviii, xxiv, xxvi, 119, 129, 131 Anti-Semitism xxv Citizenship xii, xxv Force of the Law xxiv, 145 n.28 Hospitality xxv Judaism xxv Kati, Al Hajj Mahmud 2, 37, 44, 45, 47, 53, 55–7, 62, 94, 96–7, 100, 102, 117, 120 Keenan, Jeremy x–xi, xiv, xv, xvi, xviii–xix, xx–xxii, xxxi, 93, 128, 134, 138 Keita, Salif 104–5 Keita, Sundiata xix, 3, 57–9, 66, 94, 105 Epic of Son Jara (Sundiata Keita) 57–9, 105

182 Kendall, Martha B. 23–4 Kone, Kassim xv Kristeva, Julia 19 Kukiya 12, 45, 51, 102 Laing, Alexander Gordon 41, 43 Leibniz, Wilhelm Gottfried xxiii Levinas, Immanuel xxiii, xxvi Lévi-Strauss, Claude 39 Lewis, I. M. 53 Libya ix, 5–6 Lyon, George Francis 41 Maalouf, Amin 9 Maiga, Mohamed Abdoulaye 30–1 Mande Dynasty 3 Marder, Michael 127 Marx, Karl 36 Massignon, Louis xxv, 102, 129 McCain, John 128 McIntosh, Roderick and Susan 27 McNaughton, Patrick 19–20, 23, 24, 27, 29 Mendelssohn, Moses xxv Messianism 73, 79–82, 144 n.25 Messianicty and Messianism 82 Miles, Thomas 146 n.36 MNLA [“National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad”] xiii, xiv, xviii, 115, 117–18 Monteil, Charles 25 MOJWA [“Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa”] 4, 6, 7, 10, 68 Morsi, Muhammad 5 Morton, Andy xiii, 62 Mukhtar, Ibn Al 96–8, 117 Muridiyya xxix–xxx, 38, 124 Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt) 5, 148 n.3 Nation of Islam 6 N’Diaye, Bokar 27 Négraille (“black rabble”) xv, xvii, xxix, xxx, 6, 70, 73, 75–6, 79, 89, 102 Nelson, Cary 127 Ngom, Fallou xiv Nietzsche, Friedrich 19, 21, 78, 99, 101, 109, 130 Niger xiv, xv

Index Nobility xxvii–xxviii, xxix, 44, 82, 140–1 Sharifian 5, 10–11, 82 Wakuri 3 Nyama 12, 16–17, 20–5, 36, 46, 56, 93, 97, 99–100 Baraka and nyama 17, 57 Caste standing and nyama 44, 66 Logos and nyama 15, 32 Nyama as Satanic fluid 20 Nyamakala 17, 24, 44, 50, 105, 108–9, 150 n.20 Occult possession and nyama 25 Pharmakon and nyama 15, 17, 21, 22, 25, 37 Sahelian variants 17, 30, 46 Oath Swearing in Sahel xxvi, 47–8, 109–10 Oath Swearing and cursing 54, 99 Oath Swearing and the Sahelian Leviathan 50–1 Oath Swearing on tombs 61–3, 148 n.3 Ring, Chains as Symbol of Vow 47–8, 50, 60–1, 109, 111 Vow-breaking (adultery or zena) 49, 57–8, 95 Obama, Barak 8, 128, 135 Ogotemmeli 83–4 Ong, Walter J. 33, 36, 38–9 Ould, Al Hajj Salem 95–7 Ouologuem, Yambo xv–xvi, xvii, xix, xxix, 6, 60, 67–71, 73–4, 79–83, 87–90, 105, 119, 141 Criticism of Gulf State Arabs 13, 69–70, 151 n.26 Criticism of Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul Jabar 6 Ousmane, Sembene 84 Pacéré, Titinga Fredric 28, 39 Palestinian-Israeli conflict xii, xix, 12–13, 127–8, 133, 134–5 Paré, Joseph xi, 15, 51 Park, Mungo 38, 39, 41, 66 Peckinpah, Sam 104 Peulh (Fulani) xiii, xiv Pezard, Stephanie 137–8 Plato 15, 19, 32, 42

Index Islam and Platonism 46, 65, 159 n.41, 162 n.120 Khora 73 Logocentrism 33, 36, 40–3, 62, 156 n.3 Phonocentrism 35, 38–9 Soul (“psyche”) 15–16, 19, 22, 64–5 Thymos 94 Principle of Reason xxiii–xxiv Qaddriyya 7, 124 Racism in Sahel xiii, xvi, 2, 5, 8–10, 52–3, 69–70, 76, 140–1, 144 n.25, 148–9 n.4 versus US Racism 13 Rahwan (variants : ja, mbeelu) 37 Rail Band 105 Republicanism xv–xvi,xx, 112–13, 125, 129, 134–6 Republic of Mali ix, xvi–xvii, xviii, xx, 130, 132–3, 137–9 Republic of Niger 137–8 Rice, Susan 134 Rose, Jacqueline 132–3 Rouch, Jean 48 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques xvi, xxiv, 39, 51, 119 Force of the Law xxiv Sa’adian Conquest x Sahelité (“Deep Sahelian Culture”) xi, xxvi–xxvii, xxxi, 4–5, 15, 50–1, 69 Said, Edward W. 132 Sankara, Thomas xxx, 138–41 Schmitt, Carl 101, 130–1 Senghor, Léopold Sédar xxx Shibboleth 86 Shurgin, Michael 137–8 Sissako, Abderrahmane 94, 114–25 Sissoko, Cheick Omar 94, 102–14 Slavery in Sahel 4, 11, 52–3, 148–9 n.4, 159 n.46 Beydane-Hal-Pulaar 4 Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies (Stanford) xxi Solomon (Prophet Suleyman) 45

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Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr xxii Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas 1, 3, 45, 47–8, 56, 95–7, 101 Sorcery xx, 54–5, 101, 122–4, 140–1 Spanish Civil War xii–xiii, 127–8, 132, 135 Stoller, Paul xi, 16, 27, 31, 40, 48, 51, 69, 72 Sunni Ali Ber (“Si”) 3, 45–6, 50, 54, 123 Tadja, Mamadou 137 Tall, Al Hajj Sekou 67–8, 70, 83–7, 89–90 Tall, Al Hajj Umar 7, 29–30, 37, 66, 68, 70, 83, 85–6, 90, 93 Tarikh al fattash 2, 3, 9, 12, 37, 40, 44, 45, 47–8, 50, 53, 55–6, 60–1, 63, 67, 94–6, 98, 101–4, 117, 119–20, 124 Tarikh al sudan 9, 12, 37, 40, 44, 46, 49, 50, 54–5, 63, 67, 94 Tera, Kalilou 23–4 Te Velde, Herman 18, 21, 24–5 Timbuktu manuscripts 4, 44, 49, 52, 56–7, 60, 65, 70, 115 Tomb smashing 4, 52, 60, 65 Touré, Ali Farka 62 Touré, Amadou Toumani xxx, 137 Touré, Vieux Farka 62 Tuaregs xiii, xiv Umarian Tijaniyya xxix, 7, 29–31, 37, 67, 83, 85, 87, 90, 124 US Foreign Policy in Sahel x, xi, xxii, xxiii, 93, 129–30, 137–8, 150 n.14 US Imperialism in Sahel ix, xii, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, 13, 93, 102, 134–6 Vattimo, Gianni x, xi, xii, 127–9, 132, 136 Wahhabism xiii, 5, 52, 60–1, 65, 68, 70, 148 n.3 Wahhabi Racism 82 Wehrs, Donald xxii Zahn, Dominique 24–5, 31 Zionism xii, xiii, xxv, xxix, 12–13, 79, 127–9 Law of Return xiii, 79, 132 Zongo, Nobert xxx, 139–41

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