African Political Thought · Unit 7
Cabral's Theory of Culture and National Liberation
A materialist argument that culture is a weapon, not an ornament, and a warning about the very elite class that would eventually kill him
This unit examines Amilcar Cabral's theoretical writing directly, distinct from the military and biographical account of the PAIGC's war in Guinea-Bissau this course's companion African History curriculum already covered. It traces Cabral's materialist theory of culture as rooted in a society's mode of production rather than an autonomous racial essence, his direct critique of Negritude and Pan-Africanism as movements developed outside the African continent by its diaspora, his theory of colonialism as 'the negation of the historical process' of a dominated people, and his call for the national bourgeoisie to 'commit suicide as a class,' a warning whose tragic failure in Cabral's own movement this unit closes with directly.
Learning Objectives
- •Students will be able to explain Cabral's materialist theory of culture, which holds that culture has 'as its material base the level of the productive forces and the mode of production,' and distinguish this from Senghor's Negritude philosophy examined in this course's earlier unit.
- •Students will analyze Cabral's specific critique that movements including Negritude and Pan-Africanism were developed by the African diaspora outside the continent rather than by continental Africans engaged in direct liberation struggle.
- •Students will explain Cabral's theory that colonialism constitutes 'the negation of the historical process' of a dominated people, and evaluate his corresponding claim that national liberation represents a people's 'return to history.'
- •Students will assess Cabral's concept of 'class suicide' for the national petty bourgeoisie as both a theoretical response to Fanon's warning about postcolonial elites, examined in this course's previous unit, and a warning that failed within Cabral's own movement.