Trying to look on the bright side of colonialism

There has been a big flap this week about an article published in Third World Quarterly entitled 'The Case for Colonialism' by Bruce Gilley at Portland State University. The controversy seemingly revolves around how the article was published by the journal's editor despite having been rejected by its reviewers, i.e. a violation of the peer review process. But, of course, the complaints are not purely about the process of the paper coming to light: after all, the author is arguing that colonialism was largely a good thing, and we should have more of it. There would be much less political buzz if the journal's editor had, over the objections of reviewers, approved a paper called 'The Case Against Colonialism.'

As for the paper itself, it is something of a train wreck, and there is a strong case for thinking the reviewers (whose reviews are apparently under lock and key) were right. Gilley maps out a series of epistemic virtues (non-biased data and case selection, internal coherence, falsifiability of claims), which he uses to criticize those opposed to colonialism. In the course of building his own argument, however, he violates all of them, and how. You could base a drinking game on how many times he hoists himself on his own petard. Just one example: Gilley claims that colonialism had 'subjective legitimacy' because, he writes, the colonized populations generally approved of colonial powers and governance. His 'data' for this sweeping claim throughout the paper largely comes in the form of journalistic impressions and anecdotal remarks. This is not the worst of it. As others have pointed out, the most damning problem with the article is his relentless cherry-picking of benefits from colonial rule together with a complete disregard for the long-term and widespread damage colonial rule caused or the self-serving and usually racist motivations behind it. It does not take much effort to see the piece, particularly in the current US political climate, as historical revisionism in the service of white supremacy. No doubt defenders of such views will object that academia should be open to 'alternative voices' in the name of the First Amendment. But academic journals have no obligation to be open to crappy papers.

What could have been more interesting, instead of making a case for colonialism, is a critical analysis of the myriad ways former colonies grapple with the legacies of colonialism, since they are typically unable to fully embrace or reject them. Whatever 'benefits' might be attributed to colonialism cannot be disentangled from harms and violations; there are no real concepts to faithfully describe this. Tainted benefits? Abuses with an upside? When you drive the N1 out of Cape Town in South Africa, you are enjoying one of the best highways in Africa. You are also 'enjoying' the fruits of the Apartheid system, built by cheap labor, and as you drive, you can see townships where populations of non-whites were dumped and continue to experience the effects of political oppression. Reading Gilley is like hearing someone say: "Get over it. Don't you see you have a highway? So blind, so ungrateful."

Is there a link here to bioethics? I think so. Bioethics workers in developing countries are in a similarly uncomfortable position of being unable to fully reject assumptions, preoccupations and frameworks originating from the richer countries of the north, but also unable to fully embrace them without losing touch with (and being useful for) their own local context. The decolonization of bioethics in Africa, whose shape is hard to discern, will be a long work in progress.

Is there an 'African bioethics'?

Well, is there? There have been a number of published attempts to isolate what is different about African ways of identifying, analyzing and resolving ethical issues related to health and medicine. Usually there is talk of African communitarianism, solidarity and Ubuntu, to be contrasted with the typically ‘Western’ emphasis on personal autonomy. But as time goes on, this whole narrative seems more and more contrived and out of step with reality. We know autonomy has limits, and does not automatically trump other considerations in cases of moral conflict.  The stress on communal life and social harmony in African morality has similarly been oversold: contemporary ‘African life’ is not predominantly lived in villages led by traditional elders where communal problems are resolved by palabre under a baobab tree. That image is becoming increasingly quaint against the influences of colonialism and globalization, increased urbanization, digital communication, and the subsequent fraying of traditional community structures.

A couple of recent articles probe into what an African bioethics might mean. In Developing World Bioethics, Gerald Ssebunnya argues that the pursuit of a distinctly African bioethics is basically a fool’s errand. According to Ssebunnya, the whole idea that an African bioethics exists – or ought to – comes from Africanist philosophy and the desire to distance African philosophical thought from that of their past colonial masters and oppressors. Unfortunately, he writes, that meant falling back on what he calls ‘ethno-philosophy’, which consists of two main activities: (a) unreflectively recycling bits of common morality and (b) polemically talking about the nature and need of African philosophy rather than actually doing it. His remedy for what he calls this ‘sterility’ is for African bioethicists and other African stakeholders to work on the foundational, conceptual underpinnings of bioethics, and thereby contribute African elements to the ongoing global discussion about what makes health-related policies and practices ethical or unethical.

The article by Sirkku Hellsten in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics is about the role of philosophy in global bioethics, but also touches on the notion of regional flavors, like ‘African bioethics’. Using Henry Odera Oruka’s four types of African philosophy, she distinguishes four ways of philosophizing in bioethics worldwide: ethnophilosophy, philosophic sagacity, ideological philosophy, and professional philosophy. She makes a good attempt at describing the strengths and weaknesses of them all (and has the good grace to keep calling the first three 'philosophy'), but really, only professional philosophy contains something universal: the critical use of reason in examining and developing arguments. That is, and should be, the philosophy behind global bioethics. Hellsten seems undeterred by the fact that this universal method historically originated from the European Enlightenment, or that the method is known to be vulnerable to influence by cultural factors (or as she calls them, ‘biases’).

Where does this leave African bioethics? One option is that Africans keep producing bioethics informed by philosophical approaches Ssebunnya (and probably, in her heart of hearts, Hellsten) considers 'sterile.' Another option is that Africans are paradoxically meant to double-down on their Western philosophy, rather than avoid it, in order for African contributions to global bioethics to be born. Maybe this is where these two authors are going. Apply ‘universal method’ to African circumstances, stir. Will the resulting concoction be, in some way, African?