Capitalism and memory: of golf courses and massage parlors in Badagry, Nigeria

We know that in his classic essay, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, Frederic Jameson theorizes everything, every space, as fair game for a ‘late consumer or multinational capitalism’. Even the residents of ‘Things Fall Apart’ would agree with me that the new capitalism described by Jameson has not come empty-handed. It has brought its own stool into our houses and spaces, carrying in its goatskin bag what Jameson describes as ‘new types of consumption; planned obsolescence; an ever more rapid rhythm of fashion and styling changes; the penetration of advertising, television and the media generally to a hitherto unparalleled degree throughout society…’ Please note that what Jameson describes as a ‘new moment of late consumer or multinational capitalism’ would be described as old school by my undergraduate students because Jameson was writing in 1998, that is at least ten years before Facebook, Twitter, iPod, and iPad.

I ask again: should there be a limit to the ubiquity of casino capitalism? Should there be lines too sacred to be crossed? Apparently, a member of the Jackson family does not think so. Unknown to many Americans, the Jackson family is as active in Nigeria as Oprah Winfrey is in South Africa. The Jacksons have been visiting Nigeria for a very long time. Michael Jackson performed in Nigeria a couple of times; occasionally, his brothers would breeze in and out of Lagos. Eventually, one of them, Marlon Jackson, got a bright idea about three years ago and approached American developers. His idea? Turn the Badagry slave port into a luxury resort, complete with a Jackson five museum, a slavery memorial (thank God!), a luxury hotel, a golf course, and a massage parlor!

Please, remember that I initially dismissed this as rumour but more local newspapers reported it and the news eventually gathered traction in the British media. Even the Guardian of London got interested and ran this story on 17 February 2009, ‘Michael Jackson’s Brother Plans Slavery Theme Park’. Theme park? Echoes of Disneyland? Echoes of Neverland? Let’s quote more of The Guardian’s report: ‘A museum for the Jackson Five is to be built in Nigeria, American developers have announced, as part of a $3.4bn (£2.4bn) luxury resort including concert halls, golf courses, casinos – and a memorial for Africa's former slave trade. The Badagry Historical Resort, located near Badagry's former slave port, will include a multimillion pound memorial, slave history theme park, five-star hotel and Jackson Five museum. The project is supported in part by Marlon Jackson, one of Michael Jackson's brothers.’

American developers? I hope I’m not the only one who gets jittery whenever I hear that ‘American developers’ are moving in somewhere? After all, we know what happens whenever ‘American developers’ move into America’s historic neighbourHOODS. America is a permanent theatre of war between memory and gentrification. Esiaba Irobi, the late Nigerian writer, captures the fate of Harlem in a little-known poem which deserves to be a classic of the Black Atlantic library. Every African American should memorize Esiaba’s poem. Here is Esiaba lamenting the fate of Harlem in ‘The Battle of Harlem’:

THE BATTLE OF HARLEM
By Esiaba Irobi
(for John Martin Green)

I am standing here on top of Mount Morris Park
Like the captain of a defeated army, watching
My people, black people, people of African descent,
Losing the Battle of Harlem, watching them
Evacuated one by one, like wounded, bleeding
Soldiers, bleeding in limb and mouth and memory,
Like that stubborn couple in that great eviction scene
In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the great masterpiece
Of our history, the history of the invisibles of the USA.

Standing here, I am invisible, an invisible man, yes,
But I am witnessing and testifying line by line,
With this hand trembling with rage and pain and sorrow
How Harlem is being auctioned block by block
To the highest bidder. Everything must go. Everybody!
Men, women and children. Every one is on sale.
The bulldozers are moving in. The caterpillars too,
And that large ball with which they knock down projects,
What is it called now will knock everything down
Including the Apollo. Yes, the Apollo may also have to go.

Every living trace of us, our black faces and asses,
Our smell and color will be erased and painted over
With white emulsion paint and efficient roller brushes.
We will watch entire neighbourhoods crushed
To dust, and with the crash of each building, come
Crumbling into dust, every scrap of the memory
Of our grandparents, parents, our childhoods, schools,
Parks, benches, corners, cornershops, nightclubs,
How we grew up, the lives that we lived here in Harlem,
The music we made, the paintings, the poetry, the dances.

These are just the first three stanzas of the long poem in seven stanzas. I have published an extended essay on the poem that is available online. The sentiment is sufficiently clear. Is this the fate that awaits the sites of memory in Badagry if Marlon Jackson eventually gets his way? After all, it is the same American developers deploying the same keywords, the same diction, the same code words from the registers of late consumer capitalism: theme parks, golf courses, massage parlors. We are lucky they aren’t talking yet of water slides and roller coasters; we are lucky that they are not yet dreaming of replicating the Las Vegas strip on the historic slave routes of Badagry but don’t hold your breath.

The most principled, most memorable line of opposition to this brazen act of potential desecration came from Toyin Falola, one of Nigeria’s most famous ambassadors in American academia. Interviewed about Marlon Jackson’s project, Professor Falola told the BBC: ‘It is not appropriate from a cultural or historical point of view. Moneymaking and historical memory are allies in the extension of capitalism. You cry with one eye and wipe it off with a cold beer, leaving the other eye open for gambling.’ I couldn’t have put it better. But questions persist that I hope we shall have some time to address during question and answer. The capitalism that we are talking about here is proposing to desecrate memory in Africa because she has been invited not by a white man but by Marlon Jackson, a diasporic son of Africa. How does this inflect the problematic question of shared memories of slavery between Africans and diasporic Africans?

In his classic ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Pierre Nora discusses three kinds of memory: archive memory, duty memory, and distance memory. I have no time to go into a detailed exploration of Nora’s exposition on the tensions between memory and history but what are the implications of Marlon Jackson’s Badagry adventure for duty memory? And then, my final question, a reiteration: should there be lines that capitalism must not cross? I do not know the answer but there are lessons to be learnt from Chinua Achebe.

The recent faceoff between Chinua Achebe and the rapper 50 Cent over the latter’s attempt to use the title of Africa’s most famous novel, ‘Things Fall Apart’, for a film project goes much deeper than the simple question of the protection of intellectual property. After all, copyright laws do not extend to titles. But 50 Cent comes complete with a certain countercultural symbology that is completely out of whack with the solemn memories inscribed in ‘Things Fall Apart’. 50 Cent is bling-bling, face cap worn backwards, saggy pants hanging down to expose expensive designer boxer shorts, tattoos, expensive Nike runners, totally ripped six-pack abs, heavily pimped hummers with 28-inch rims (apologies to Xzibit) and other kinds of toys, cribs, and lyrics projecting an image of the black woman that I dare not explore here. Now, can you imagine Okonkwo and Obierika breaking kola in the candy shop? I’m sure you know that song – ‘I’ll take you to the candy shop/I’ll let you lick the lollypop/Go ‘head girl don’t you stop/Keep goin till you hit the spot’. I prefer to enjoy that song and let my imagination run gaga when I go clubbing; definitely not when I am thinking of a cultural heritage of the importance of ‘Things Fall Apart’.

50 Cent offered a million dollars. Achebe declined the insult. This tells me that capitalism and profit will never consider any space too sacred to violate. And the stories of 50 Cent and Marlon Jackson warn us to resist the temptation of discoursing capitalism and memory as a white versus black affair. If invasive capitalism has any race at all, it is green. Not the green of the environment. The green of the dollar bill. Green is the race of capitalism for now. Tomorrow, the race of capitalism will be the red of the Chinese Yuan as America is swept aside by China. A man is entitled to witness the collapse of at least one empire in his lifetime. I was not around when the British Empire collapsed; I will not be around to see the collapse of the emergent Chinese empire. I am therefore honored to be a living witness of the gradual collapse of the American empire.

But Achebe teaches us that our only hope lies in people who are ready to stand up for memory and say: No! That is what so many Americans are doing in the Occupy movement that has spread across this country like wildfire in the harmattan. I salute them.

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