Postmodernism and the reclaiming of tradition

Abstract

The history of the Zulu people is the history of myself'.1 In Africa, as elsewhere, the notion of tradition is bound up with the discourses of ethnicity and nationalism. Typically invoking pre-colonial identi- ties as the basis of peoplehood, such narratives of common descent are imbued with a strong sense of 'pastness', orientating the modern self in traditional terms. Anderson explains this invocation of tradition as a feature of the inverted nature of ethnic narratives of common descent.2 More common are accounts which focus on the ioss of meaning' brought about by modernisation and the psychic security offered by an idealised past. Recent theories look to supplant this sense of tradition as reaction with a sense of tradition as creation. One example is Lonsdale's argument that the affirmation of ethnicity in post-colonial Africa, with its associated invention of tradition, must be seen in the context of internal debates over civic virtue as pre-colo- nial moral economies are re-structured by the state and capitalism.