DAI invited the author and scholar Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa to write a meditation on "Roaming Assembly#31 ~ The Seven Colors of the Universe", a collaboration between DAI and LE18, Marrakech, curated by Laila Hida and generously hosted by Dar Souiri ~ Association Essaouira Mogador, on 23 April 2024. 

For a Critical African Intellectual Tradition

An inaugural cosmogony

In her introduction to the public program she curated for Roaming Assembly 31—April 2024, multi-disciplinary artist and curator Laila Hida refers to the documentary film “The Seven Colors of the Universe,” which lends its name to the program. The documentary was made between 1969 and 2004 by Jacques Willemont, under the scientific direction of Viviana Pâques, an Italian-born ethnologist who follows in the footsteps of Marcel Griaule, the French ethnologist and Africanist. The work of Griaule and his students and disciples occupies an important place in contemporary French ethnography. Their activities and research, mainly focused on Africa, are part of the current of ethnophilosophy, which considers all cultural expressions—myths, tales, proverbs, magic, cosmogonies, wisdoms, etc.—as philosophy; a philosophy of collective thought systems, thought traditions and visions of the world. [1] It is based on the fundamental premise that symbols and the intangible are active in everything, especially in human life and activities.

“The Seven Colors of the Universe” remains one of the most accomplished studies to date of the secret system underlying the processional rituals of the Gnawa brotherhoods. Viviana Pâques highlights the knowledge that this ritual crystallizes, updates and perpetuates. She delivers a remarkable reading of a complex cosmogony centered on the primordial principle of unity between the Divine, the Human and the Universe. It’s a cosmogony informed by knowledge of physical and subtle bodies, mythological interpretations of the celestial and terrestrial spheres, the practice of sound and vibration, and alliances with invisible worlds and immaterial living beings. The mastered gestures of the dance, the rhythms of the music and the objects used during the processional ritual give meaning to what is called for, desired and manifested during the nights of initiation known as the Lila. They constitute a metalanguage that frames the ritual and charges it with meaning, through which the gnawa evoke, invoke and re-enact the creation of the world. In Gnawa philosophy, there is no distinction between conscious perception, performative act and symbolic language.

The light above the sun

This metalanguage conveys a vision of the world that proceeds by correspondences and in which all parts are interwoven. It reflects a logic other than that of conceptual thought, dominated by fixed identities and binary oppositions: the intelligible and the sensible; the material and the spiritual; the visible and the invisible; the luminous and the obscure; the hidden and the apparent; the one and the many. The metalanguage of the Gnawa postulates the inscription of the human being in a mythical narrative in which he or she plays an integral part through the initiation ritual of the Lila, which leads adepts to metaphorical death and offers them the possibility of physical and spiritual rebirth. The infinite and eternal cycle of life and death is thus replayed, and the experience of earthly incarnation is renewed and reinitialized. [2]

This experience is symbolized by the integration—incorporation—of the seven colors of the universe, which is accomplished through dance and trance. These seven colors are the terrestrial manifestations of the seven principal (original) energies, derived from the seven divine lights. [3] They are the seven energies present in each of us, revealed during ritual vigils. They are represented by the colors of the clothes worn by the Gnawa during these Lilas. Their incorporation through dance and music consists of giving flesh and reality to parts of the original Whole, and to know both materially and physically the infinite expressions of Creation. These must be physically understood and not merely known in their structure and functioning. This appropriation of divine lights also reflects a tradition of transmitting knowledge by impregnation. It is based on the lived experience of ritual and the shared approach to the unutterable, which remains irreducible to any pre-existing knowledge or philosophical truth.

Sun and western reason

In the Western tradition of thought, contrary to other worlds of thought, such as the African, Indian or Chinese traditions, philosophical truth is often associated with light. Indeed, the association between light and truth is a philosophical topos which, at least since Plato, has enshrined the sun as the master who governs the entire visible world and is the cause of all that is seen. This analogy introduces the principle of light-truth, which comes from above, from a true world, and radiates onto a derivative world. [4] This Platonic moment is fundamental to the Western understanding of truth, which is considered as a supreme principle. The result is the idea that truth is accessible only through reason, and not through the senses. Another consequence of this Platonic metaphysical scenario is the separation between two initially analogous types of discourse in ancient Greece: logos—language, reason; and muthos—myth, philosophical fiction. [5]

This distinction induces a hierarchy in which rational analysis prevails over mythical discourse, which nevertheless remains capable of representing aspects that are beyond the scope of reason. It has succeeded in establishing and then consolidating knowledge as a value superior to cognition. While knowledge is based on notions, concepts and postulates, cognition emerges from a quest. It is experimentation, contemplation and appropriation. Knowledge exists in organized systems, outside the knowing subject. It is acquired, whereas cognition settles inside the self when experience is internalized and its lessons incorporated. Experience as a source of learning translates into non-bookish teachings acquired empirically through the practice of life, the company of objects and people, the observation of the world, its abstractions and symbolic expressions.

For a critical African intellectual tradition

In L'Invention de l'Afrique. Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge, [6] Congolese writer and philosopher Valentin-Yves Mudimbe introduces the concept of the colonial library, which encompasses a sum of ideas, representations and concepts produced by the West that define and shape the perception, interest and fascination in Africa as an object of research. For Mudimbe, the colonial library constitutes the most comprehensive corpus of a totalizing “knowledge-power” on Africa, which is the product of an imperial culture that made colonization possible. His work questions the possibility of a knowledge of Africa liberated from European ethnocentrism. He suggests the possibility of an unmediated African thought that could preserve a model of knowledge typical of African initiation societies, or even a mysticism representative of these societies. [7] He affirms his interest in the symbolic correspondences between social experiences and mythical explanations of a world order, as highlighted by ethnophilosophy. [8] However, his approach is resolutely critical. If he refers to this discipline and its foundations, provided by the writings of ethnologists such as Marcel Griaule, it is in order to draw from it the foundations, the “raw data” of a critical and scientific philosophical discourse, [9] the methodological stakes of which he specifies. [10]

The revised ethnophilosophy advocated by Mudimbe seems to reconcile Western rationality, which analyzes myth as a socio-cultural code, with a specifically African way of thinking, which he describes as gnosis. The latter is defined as “structured, common and conventional knowledge”, organized by “specific procedures of control in its use and transmission” that make it a “superior and esoteric knowledge.” [11] In this way, Mudimbe aims to combine the contributions of Western thought with those of the African world. In so doing, he seeks to demonstrate the possibility of overcoming binary oppositions or forced symmetries between the Western civilizational model and African culture. By postulating fluid boundaries between the two, Mudimbe introduces the possibility of coexistence between myth and logos, ethnology and history, writing and orality, primitiveness and civilization.

The critical African intellectual tradition, introduced by the work of Mudimbe, can be considered as a counterpart to the systematic Gnawa model of thought deciphered by Viviana Pâques. These two references inform the thinking of Laila Hida who, through this public program, opens up an interdisciplinary space of enunciations and experimentations centered on notions of embodiment and multisensory interaction that affirm the role of the body and sensitive experience in the process of constructing knowledge.

Notes: 

[1] B. I. Sarevskaja, “La Méthode de l'Ethnographie de Marcel Griaule et les questions de méthodologie dans l'ethnographie française contemporaine,” Cahiers d'études africaines 4, no. 16 (1964): 590-602 [online], https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1964.3729.
[2] Viviana Pâques, “Le monde des gnawa,” in L'autre et l'ailleurs. Hommages à Roger Bastide. (Nice: Institut d'études et de recherches interethniques et interculturelles, 1976),169-182. (Publications de l'Institut d'études et de recherches interethniques et interculturelles, 7) [online], https://www.persee.fr/doc/ierii_1764-8319_1976_ant_7_1_942. See also Viviana Pâques and Jésus Aguila, “Gnawa et l'énergie,” Horizons Maghrébins - Le droit à la mémoire, no. 43 (2000): 106-112 [online], https://www.persee.fr/doc/horma_0984-2616_2000_num_43_1_1911.
[3] Viviana Pâques, “Le symbolisme des couleurs au Maroc,” Horizons Maghrébins - Le droit à la mémoire, No. 42 (2000): 157-164 [online], https://www.persee.fr/doc/horma_0984-2616_2000_num_42_1_1879.
[4] Camille Rodic, “La vérité placée en abîme : du soleil platonicien au Soleil pongien ?,” Fabula-LhT no. 24 )2020). Toucher au “vrai” : la poésie à l'épreuve des sciences et des savoirs, directed by Annick Ettlin et Jan Baetens, 2020 [online], https://doi.org/10.58282/lht.2517.
[5] Leopoldo Iribarren. Du muthos au logos Le détour par la pragmatique des discours. In : Labyrinthe, n° 28, 2007 [online], https://doi.org/10.4000/labyrinthe.2733.
[6] Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa, Philosophy, Gnosis and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 256.
[7] Anthony Mangeon. La “gnose africaine” de Valentin-Yves Mudimbe (HAL, deposited March 4, 2021), 47-56 PDF, 47-56, https://hal.science/hal-03160083/document.
[8] Emmanuel M. Banywesize, “De Valentin Yves Mudimbe à Achille Mbembe. Des concepts pour renouveler les sciences sociales,” Afroglobe 2, no. 1 (2024): 102-127. Issue: Achille Mbembe. Une pensée de la postcolonie, edited by Delphine Abadie and Ulrich Metende [online], https://edition.uqam.ca/afroglobe/issue/view/124/51.
[9] Henry Odera Oruka, ed., Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990; Nairobi, Acts Press, 1991), xvii; and D.A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994; Nairobi, East African Educational Publishers, 1995). Quoted in Philipp W. Rosemann, “Penser l'Autre: la philosophie africaine en quête d'identité,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 4^th ser., 96, no. 2 (1998): 285-303 [online], https://www.persee.fr/doc/phlou_0035-3841_1998_num_96_2_7088.
[10] Henry Odera Oruka, ed., Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990; Nairobi, Acts Press, 1991), xvii; and D.A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994; Nairobi, East African Educational Publishers, 1995). Quoted in Philipp W. Rosemann, “Penser l'Autre: la philosophie africaine en quête d'identité,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 4^th ser., 96, no. 2 (1998): 285-303 [online], https://www.persee.fr/doc/phlou_0035-3841_1998_num_96_2_7088.[11] Banywesize, “De Valentin,” 112.

About Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa

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