Starting off, the Equiano team project was incredibly insightful and interesting to discuss in class on Thursday. Something that I found to be particularly interesting about their project was the Benin Culture and how it was related to Equiano. Before the group presented on Thursday, I had never heard about the Benin culture. I would say that I agree with the small class discussion we had about what constitutes an advanced civilization. In many aspects, the qualifications for an advanced society are entirely dependent on an individual culture. Specifically for our western culture, we often associate advanced technology with a culturally advanced civilization. With regards to the Benin Empire, they may not have had the technological advancement as European civilizations, but they do seem to have been artistically advanced. They had various different mediums and techniques that they used to display their art that I find to be quite fascinating. Such as the elephant tusks with figurative carvings.
This project helped me realize a little more of the cultural context from which Equiano came from because, despite not having the technological advancements such as the huge mast ships Equiano was put on when he left Africa, his culture did have it's own arguably unique characteristics that could describe it as being advanced. In Equiano's narrative he said in the beginning that he was surprised that an "advanced" civilization such as the English's didn't wash their hands more often or before eating. The English may have thought as their own culture being advanced but, in the beginning, Equiano saw them as barbarians for not washing their hands and for the way in which they treated their slaves.
Hey Monique! I also really liked learning about Benin culture, and I feel like it added a lot to Equiano's narrative, especially the first chapter. He describes his culture in pretty great detail here, so it was cool to see it line up with what some of what the Equiano group shared with us! I wonder if, at the time, other societies viewed this artistic advancement as a merit, or if they simply assumed they were not advanced since they didn't see the same technological advancement?
ReplyDeleteHey Monique! Learning about the Kingdom of Benin's culture was interesting to me as well. Equiano's decision to begin his narrative with it (and our group's decision to start our presentation with it) hopefully helped combat the tradition of starting stories with 'secondly' like we learned from the TED Talk. I hope Equiano's audience learned that his nation's people were creative and collective and anything but savage, and that that started to change their minds about Africans and the slave trade.
ReplyDeleteI wrote something similar in my blog, Monique! I think that the 'advancedness' of a culture is entirely subjective based on our understanding of culture as a concept. The Benin Empire has religion, tradition, language, and social structures that European culture had. I think a large part of the reason we today don't recognize this as much is because African culture is often subjugated or downplayed. If the world recognized that Africa is place full of people that live normal lives in normal cities like us, it would be harder to accept the colonization and theft of its resources.
ReplyDeleteHi Monique! I really like your perspective on this topic, especially how you talk about Equiano's reaction to the English not being as cleanly. I think in every culture certain things have an importance that maybe other cultures do not. I gave an insight into Benin culture but also made me think about what other cultures place an importance on. In our Western culture do we find something to be absolutely necessary that we would find strange if not done when traveling and learning about other cultures?
ReplyDeleteHey Monique, I like what you have said here. I also had no idea what Benin culture was before the Equiano group presentation. I think that learning about Benin culture was very beneficial to my understanding of Equiano's novel. It is interesting to me that an individual culture can define success based on its own customs.
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