ABSTRACT
This begins with a statement made by Derrida in Glas: ‘The undecidable, isn’t it the undeniable.’1 This statement (for there’s no question mark) occurs in the context of a discussion of fetishism, and Derrida has elsewhere spoken of what Glas tries to approach is a fetishisation in general.2 What the previous chapter began to address was that Derrida’s attempt to generalise a thinking of fetishism yet, of course, relies on specific genres or traditions of thought, in particular as regards Glas, Hegelian philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis, together with a redeployment of, what may be termed, a queer aesthetic. The question that detains me concerns what it might mean to generalise fetishism or to detect a fetishism in general with reference to a specific European tradition of thought: in particular, one that may be read in terms of an idealisation of (Western) paternity as sole origin, and without much evident reference to the African cultures and philosophies that have been so long identified with fetishism and, more widely, animism. It seems strange to bracket this spirit-zone off, together with the much debated question of the status of African philosophy in relation to Western philosophy, as if Africa were not a source, even the source, for a thinking or rethinking of fetishism(s). If this constitutes a possible omission – and this may not be the right word – on Derrida’s part, it would seem to be because he works within a particular intellectual inheritance, following on from, as well as transforming, the workings out of a European philosophical tradition. A certain thinking of Africa could well be at stake in this, but, if so, then it has been somewhat mutedly so as regards African thought and culture. In saying this, what needs to be affirmed is that Derrida has explicitly offered responses to particular African political predicaments, especially those of South Africa. The question
that is being raised here is rather one of an epistemic nature, as will slowly unfold. More generally, what arises is an opportunity to consider the significance of a seemingly recurrent and long-engrooved swerve away from an engagement with African intellectual and cultural legacies, one recurrent within the tradition of so-called Western thought, and an opportunity to keep reintroducing philosophical and literary contributions from African sources. What is to be explored in this chapter is the question of how it is that Africa has to contend with a Western repetition compulsion in which it is that which is overlooked, time and again. This will be done by first returning to Hegel’s commentary on Africa in order to show how it constitutes and exemplifies a European Africanist or, more generally, primitivist discourse that in its irrationalism is specifiably different from the logic of Orientalism, as traced by Edward Said. What will be suggested is that Africa is overlooked precisely because it is that which just cannot be seen through the eyeglass of Western philosophy of the metaphysical tradition. This predicament will then be elaborated upon and, also, further illustrated through a reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. The chapter will conclude with a juxtaposition of Coetzee’s novel with other South African literary texts as a means of bringing the issues at stake into clearer focus.
