Culture, Performance and Identity. Paths of Communication in Kenya: Paths of Communication in Kenya

8. Circulation of media texts and identity (de) constructions in the post-colony

Culture, Performance and Identity 131 CHAPTER EIGHT Circulation of media texts and identity (de) constructions in the post-colony Christopher Odhiambo Joseph Introduction A meaningful discourse on identity formation and construction in postcolonial society, particularly catalysed by the agency of popular cultural productions circulated by media texts from Europe and America, must not only recognise the present cultural contexts of such productions but must also situate such a discourse within a continuum of colonial and imperial history. This colonial history disturbed, disrupted and ruptured an entire people’s cosmic equilibrium. It is as a result of this ruptured history post-colonial African nations such as Kenya find their core values of life, and social characters of persons and community, perpetually competing with commoditized cultural productions from Europe and America, circulated through modern technologies of mass communication. As Edward said has most aptly noted: One significant contemporary debate about the residue of imperialism— the matter of how “natives” are represented in the Western media— illustrates the persistence of such interdependence and overlapping, not only in the debate’s content but in its form, not only in what is said but also in how it is said, by whom, where, and for whom. (1993: 21). Perhaps an even stronger argument on the significant role of these residues of colonialism and imperialism in the (de) construction of identities is what Ngugi wa Thiong’o has described as a cultural bomb in the post-colony. He passionately argues that: The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their environment, in their struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it wants to make them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is 132 Paths of Communication in Kenya decadent and reactionary, all forces that would stop their own springs of life. (1981: 3). Ngugi’s assertion is that colonialism and imperialism have, as their project, a deliberate agenda to make colonial subjects feel that their pasts are a wasteland. To counter this past, they hanker for cultures, and by implication, identities and subjectivities of the more dominant Europe and America. This problem of a cultural bomb is further complicated by the unequal technological and cultural exchange between the West and America and the post-colonies. Through the commoditisation of popular cultural productions and their circulation through media technology, the North has steadily succeeded in influencing the lifestyles, mannerisms, identities and subjectivities of the highly consuming South. According to Edmund C. Igboanusi (2006: 181) the media have affected and still do affect our consciousness on several levels; they impinge our sense of time, our spatial configurations, and on our personal and social identities. Michael Real, cited in Igboanusi argues that the influence of media in (de) construction of identities starts right from the cradle and runs all through life: From his or her earliest moments in the crib, a child learns to form a sense of personal identity, an emerging consciousness of existence, life and self, through i8nteractions on three levels. First, the child interacts with persons…second, the child interacts with the environment…But thirdly, the child also interacts with stories read him or her, with pictures shown, gradually and increasingly with all that vast second-hand experience of television, books, advertisements, movies, posters, magazines, fashion, popular music, newspapers, radio, cassettes, phones, computers, and the rest of contemporary super media. These mediated experiences influence the child’s developing sense of personal identity in the same ways in which interaction with other persons and environment does. The media exercise influence on the child, not only directly, by…all the products created in the image and likeness of super-media…the mediated culture becomes the individual’s psychic and social context, from birth to death. (2006: 181). Real’s argument concerning the influence of media on identity formation and (de) construction seems to reinforce Ngugi’s fears about this cultural bomb especially when the content circulated by the media texts are created and produced by the dominant cultures ideologies of the North. As Fred Mudhai notes: Culture, Performance and Identity 133 …the major complaint against the electronic media is that there is unequal North–South cultural exchange mainly due to not only commercialisation and lack of financial resources and technological...