PAPER
with commisioned writings by:
TOMKE BRAUN
NOLAN OSWALD DENNIS
ZARA JULIUS
ZAYAAN KHAN
MAHRET IFEOMA KUKPKA *
LINDIWE MNGXITAMA
MAGNUS ELIAS ROSENGARTEN
KATHY-ANN TAN
Not quite white anymore
I can no longer remember every detail of my first trip to the place where my mother was born. I was twelve years old, an age when children slowly pay less attention to cuddly toys, but are still happy to snuggle up to a soft furry body at night. On this journey I was accompanied by a small panda bear. In retrospect, an interesting choice. A panda in Nigeria, or rather in an area south-east of a place that was given its name in the course of its colonisation by the British in 1897, in reference to the Niger River that runs through the country.
I tell this story because when it comes to the topic soil, I always have to think of my first encounter with what for me was a very special soil: deep red, brown, heavy, a soil that could hardly be any more fertile. At that time, I had traveled to Nigeria with my parents and brother to see where my mother had spent the first years of her life and to meet the people who could not come to visit us in Germany. We went by bus from Lagos to Abia State, the last stretch by my mother’s cousin's car, who had picked us up at the bus stop. The wheels of the car churned up the red earth. The road was unpaved, deep green forest to either side of the road. It was hot and humid and when we arrived, our skin was sticky and covered in a thin coat of red earth. I looked at my panda cuddly toy, which I had held in my arms the whole time, and saw that the light areas of the black and white fake fur had turned red. They were never going to turn completely white again, even after repeated washing.
There is a strange metaphorical quality in these words. It makes me think of the boy Jem who, in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee, tries to wash his dark skin white in 1930s South of the USA in order to escape the racism of his time, a motif that recurs in countless variations in literature, film and autobiographical stories. I also have to think about how this journey had changed me, how my daily lived experience could never again revert to bearing as much whiteness as it had largely been before. My place within the complex grid of national belonging, cultural ancestry and emotional self identifications had changed then and has been continuously changing ever since. I had come into contact with a particular soil and it was as if tender roots had formed, protruding from my body into the ground and connecting with a centuries-old fabric, a network of non-linear linkages spreading like mycelium regardless of time and space beneath the surface of the earth. Of course, I had no concept for it at the time, nor might I have been able to describe what I had felt. Today I know that these roots I felt connected with what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari called the rhizome. They are not to be confused with an anchor that binds me to a certain place. The roots are rather to be understood as a delicate yet determining string that can latch onto an all-encompassing web here and there, sometimes taking on the function of an anchor, but in actuality remaining flexible. It is up to me to find the places where there are moments of connection, of belonging.
According to the matrilineal traditions of the Igbo culture, ethnicity is determined by descent from the mother's line. My mother is Igbo and therefore my brother and I are also Igbo, regardless of whether we were born in Igboland, grew up there or not, and also regardless of our father's ethnicity. In this sense my belonging is a result from being interwoven into a cultural network that clearly transcends any nation-state. Whether I am also German is irrelevant in this context. I am the first-born daughter of my mother, Ada, and thus the bearer of the culture. The insignia Omu Arochukwu bequeathed to my mother by her mother are passed on to me and it is my task to carry them on into my descendancy. There is an interwoven-ness, a kinship that I first felt in the place that never questioned my existence and role.
Such forms of affiliations were translated into valid citizenship law after Nigeria's formal independence on October 1st 1960. Until today, every person who has at least one birthparent who is a citizen of Nigeria is automatically a Nigerian citizen, too. The different rules of descent of the various ethnic groups brought together on the territory of today's Nigeria are reflected in this compromise and became internationally recognisable. The respective ethnic and cultural affiliation is still relevant alongside citizenship. I am from Obinkita, even though I had never set foot on this soil until I was 12 years old. The fact that I was born several thousand kilometers away is irrelevant. Belonging to soil works without contact to soil.
I would like to build on this idea taking into account that deadly conflicts are still alive based on ground affiliations today. German National Socialists had a radically exclusionary idea of belonging. They extended it with the idea of purity of blood. Belonging to the nation of Germany and the identity of an individual were determined by common blood and ancestry as well as by the connection to one's own German soil. A return to nature and agriculture were propagated as the ideal model of life. This blood-and-soil ideology served as the basis for racist policies and the persecution and murder of marginalized groups.
The deadly dangers of ethno-nationalism can still be observed today in many existing conflicts. Efforts to decolonize carry the risk of romanticizing ideas of supposed pre-colonial pure nations that never existed and foster the exclusion of all plurality and complexity. Decolonisation without a simultaneous decolonisation of power structures, knowledge and epistemologies will perpetuate existing (colonial) hierarchies and inequalities. Wouldn’t we need very new approaches that rethink land ownership? Who owns soil? Is belonging to ground without belonging to its soil conceivable? What inclusive forms of living together are possible? Do we need to think about other forms of identity that detach their origins from the idea of ground and much rather start and continue to grow in hybridity?
Homi K. Bhabha sees hybridity as a kind of "third space" that forms beyond any binary opposition and in which new identities and forms of expression develop. It could be about no longer thinking about belonging, but developing other forms of being together. Dominant cultural norms and discourses could be destabilized and alternative forms of identity and knowledge constructed. The challenge is to remain open to complexity, to acknowledge the multi-layered nature of identity and to take into account its historical and socio-economic contexts. It remains ambivalent.
In a way, this puts my brother and me in a conflict of belonging. We are both Igbo and German. However our identities can by no means be limited to either, if only because neither Igbo nor German represent formulated identity concepts, but rather we are permanently required to shape them individually for ourselves.
To whom will I bequeath my Omu Arochukwu if I do not give birth to a daughter? How will I continue the traditions and thus contribute to their preservation and change? Being German is a historical process of negotiation and a point of conflict that continues to this day, which I myself as a German citizen with my life story, challenge again and again. Who am I? Equally important is the question of where am I, where am I and can be myself.
Over the years, the black and brown panda cuddly toy has disappeared from my life. What remains are memories and a few photographs: of me sleeping under a mosquito net, cuddled up to the little bear or laughing in an armchair in my great-uncle's house in Aruchukwu, the panda on my lap. The ongoing debate with identity, origin and belonging has remained - will remain. Whenever I step on this deep red, powerful soil, I feel accepted, at home without being at home, because home is where my books are, my clothes, my things, the people with whom I can share all of this. This soil allows me a moment of connection, a reminder that these moments can be anywhere, anytime. The soil is inside me.
*Dr. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka is an art scholar, freelance writer and, since 2013, senior curator at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. In her exhibitions, lectures, publications, and interdisciplinary projects, she addresses the issues of racism, memory culture, representation, and the decolonization of art and cultural practices in Europe and on the African continent. She is a member of the advisory board of the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD) and of TEXTE ZUR KUNST and a founding member of the Neue Deutsche Museumsmacher*innen (a network of BIPoC museum practitioners in Germany). In addition, she has been and continues to be active on international juries, scientific panels, and search committees. She studied Economics in Heidelberg as well as Aesthetics/Media Theory, Philosophy, Curatorial Practice, and Exhibition Design at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, where in 2015 she received her doctorate in art and media theory.