“The global culture … militates against … African unity. It serves the purpose of the multinationals. It is a postmodern application of the old adage ‘divide and rule’.

The movement towards a global culture … [and] this postmodern tendency towards cultural fragmentation and identity struggles … are two faces of the same coin. …

There should be no African unity. People should remain divided, fragmented, confused. And new slogans, new catchwords, new worthy causes must be found to hide this truth. ‘Identity‘, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘respect for other cultures’, ‘cultural studies‘, the list will go on proliferating, so as soon as we unveil one world another is found to replace it, so that our African peoples remain perpetually confused, so that our African intellectuals and thinkers and writers are drawn into the noose. … They forget that there is no culture without an economy to support it, without political institutions to defend it, without a land in which it can strike its roots. That ‘cultures’ and ‘identities’ are doomed without a material base, condemned to whither away. …

Otherwise, culture, identity, multiculturalism become an exhibition, a spectacle for the pleasure of others to see, to consume. Like the festivals of African culture I have seen in London, or Copenhagen or New York. Like the visibility of African-Americans in music, dance and sports and their almost total exclusion from the decisive levels of banking, production, business and other areas linked to intellectual or administrative or economic power.”

aus: Nawal El Saadawi: Why keep asking me about my identity? Rede, New York, März 1996, hier in: The Nawal El Saadawi Reader, London/New York: Zed 1997, S.121/122.

Abb.: Riri Suheri: Bhineka (diversity?), 2017, indoartnow, im Internet.

08/22