June 1th 2009
FOREWORD ON
THE POLITICAL
ESSAY
By Gbujama J.M.
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The political essay is the cornerstone of writing. To submit, there comes a period in comprehension when tolerance grows in purpose of the written word; not simply those interests bound for instruction; but for those like that of a sword, steel scroll, are drawn from the holder of experience to make comment on something or other to which there are communicative needs. In deference to oration its breath form, there requisites a delay of thought; giving inn then, to a certain demeanor of polite possession. There are no guarantees to the many voices which are heard and used in the reading mind, those through which one speaks to the thoughts of the reader or the elicited reactions. Religiously, it can be said to be a most peculiar devotion and the only permissible hearing of voices. The paradox of self-minding business is that whatever translations are made of language, the reality is thus looked upon by the nonconcurring and inquisitive; if so defined, since one is required to know their audience in the experience, both in the living and in the writing. This element perhaps, is the greatest contradiction of the cultural translating writer, retaining spirit in the conversion of knowledge. What is often found as alternative therefore is a silence of occurrences; the omission of the traveler’s metamorphosis into cultures and the events transferred away from the eye of their earliest realm. For many years the thoughts of European philosophers occupied in rigid formality; accompanied like the columns of a school hall or decorations of learnedness, the African scholar, administrator and staff in their daily schedule; and by African I mean, the ancestral conscience of Africa.
Not much could therefore be seen in similarities of development, that learning and language solitarily, carries a spirit of the ages so much that an African teacher’s self written government pamphlet, for instance, was complement not to European culture per se, but to specified quandaries no different than those ascribed in written parchments traded in the court yards and salons of Portugal, Spain, France, Venice or Berlin; notwithstanding Semitic, Asian and Arabic developments of text and philosophy; the outcome of the ability to do so. This comment is made purposefully, to avoid any engagement in archaic competitiveness, trivia and malice of cultures regarding the written word; since a mere glace at written text 1000 years removed reveals, perhaps even within cultures, a different textual and content ridden beckoning; though of a telling behavior. The present Egyptians have less inkling in deciphering texts of Ancient Egypt, although any connoisseur of time the world over is aware of the terms Alpha and Omega. In spite of this, there comes a further occasion when the reader awakens to the fact that the intonation in reading is a mere expectation of sound that lends no blame to perceptions that follow; a time when words become more important in the transfer and control of communication, when the imagery that follows is an attempt to give structure to poorly defined episodes; to do more than simply propagate intellectual material - but to formulate its meaning. In this regard it is the place of the writer that is relevant in the making; the reason why M.L. King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail (1963) differs from any of his more famed speeches or any commission of scholarship made in the convenience of home. On page, he was a pensive and different man. And indeed, Wole Soyinka, author of prison notes, The Man Died (1988) once observed; man is grieved by a consciousness of the loss of the eternal essence of his being and must indulge in symbolic transactions to recover the totality of being.
This is not to disregard any attempts; to disregard the writings of Henry Kissinger or William F. Buckley for instance; but to acknowledge that the nature of thoughts which develop in conception then, are the detainment of the very issues encased within; a mental correction so to speak. Thus in these attempts the political essay it can be said gave birth to realism, since it sought to implement unlike the fictional account’s role as an exploration of realism, some manner of agreement that what is espoused on the page is a form of reality or a sought actuality. Therefore, a justification of general transformations of the state by the idealistic, but also in focus, why the political essay stands out to the reader as some form of companion. To be sure, it is the historic ever standing and serious colleague. Despite the statesman, the complaining disappointment of Kwame N’Krumah on the pages of Dark Days in Ghana (1969) is both clear and personal; despite the revolutionary, the thoughts of Stephen Biko are officially resounding. For that reason, though it may appear academically improper to employ adaptive approaches in formal learning, it however is not unfound to compare such methodology to adaptive examinations in effect of approach as being, no matter how formalistic they may often result; not the word of an institution, but that of the individual. It is in this reality that the discourse of the European philosopher crept its way into the academy as the impetus for the culmination of evidential anthologies. For that reason, in a time devoid of believers there is the look forward towards the mass crowd that will gather not only in the public assembly of the merely physical, but on the mental field of contemporary matters; such as writers that have over a certain period commanded masses over the years to gather on the leaflets of generations. Whether Fredrick Nietzsche’s philosophical Beyond Good & Evil (1886), or B.F. Skinners modern scientific application Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), to Milton Friedman’s economic Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and the more controversial Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1924), as well as Franz Fanon’s treatment of the psychological Black Skin White Mask(1952); among countless others, the political essay cannot be discounted as being perhaps the most reliable purporting of human theories, contentions and resentments during certain eras.
Accordingly, substantive to the formation of Critical Information Publications was a series of experimental Manifesto writings in political science completed in advocacy and applied forensic study. The central theme developed was that of the idea of Intellectual Production completed in “great expectations” of being furthered to meet the demands of readers and needs of writers in cyberspace and beyond who produce a certain measure of written and other work; a challenge to progress literary standards into functioning representations and models. What made Intellectual Production unique as a political theory as opposed to its previous associative relation to radicalism per se, is that it is civic construct and developments of designed knowledge that serve the business interests of readers within multiple domains; particularly those requiring analytic facilitation; those of language, skill, and technocratic thinking, and is a theoretical compression of the actual substantives of the history of intellectual thought thus far; all pursuits being completed through the company Critical Information Publications (CIP), spurred in 2003 as an organizing attempt to focus on communicative needs and interests in conflicts of law; that effort however, eventually having transformed into a means of Provisional Research Development. Protectively, CIP’s function was to prevent the absence of responsible knowledge thereof from precipitating into a state of distortion and aggression; a developing of a reconstructive buffer of tolerance so to speak. Thus, committed essays were written on continuing variances in addition to the idealistic, hopeful of being able to steer the depreciating trend of cyberspace back to its intellectual roots; that of discussions in political science as subject matter. This considers its somewhat pubertal and contaminated regression into definitions of a simplistic contraption. Not in implicit opposition, however, CIP believed that a responsible society is judged best by the manner in which it applies its technology, not simply by the abundance of it; and that politics was not simply about the exploitation of elective conflicts and its actors, but also the outreach of values; since spirit both clean and tolerant is responsible for better performance.
As to the cohesive bond of sanity, language as a medicinal prescription, as remedy, was defined on this occasion as a stabilizer to the ambiguities of social and market confusion. Therefore, presented in the following proceedings are essays that emanated from the CIP effort. Certainly, given the absence of a bibliography, it is important to give word that most writings presented herein, are extemporaneous of all subject matter dealt with and referenced by way of encyclopedic, professional and personal knowledge.
Gbujama J.M.
July 2009