I recently stumbled upon Hannah Arendt's work. Not that it was the first time I heard of her, but it was the first time I'm paying attention.
There's something she says about empire that clicks with Kenya and explains our neurosis in Kenya.
There's something she says about empire that clicks with Kenya and explains our neurosis in Kenya.
Kenyans, especially the educated, are extremely afraid of adulthood. We adults face our kids as helpless, rather than as parents. We watch the state
create a violent education system and say nothing.
create a violent education system and say nothing.
When our kids have had enough and lash out, the state threatens them with jail and permanent criminality, and we say nothing.
We even cheer the police when they shoot our youth.
The political class is eating our kids' future with loans, we say nothing.
We even cheer the police when they shoot our youth.
The political class is eating our kids' future with loans, we say nothing.
Men whimper and refer to themselves as "boy child" any time violence against women is mentioned. First, the combination of boy and child is strange, because boys are already children. Then to have adults calling themselves as a child is just madness.
They don't talk of themselves in the plural. It's never the boy children. It's always the child. They talk of themselves in the singular.
That means that "boy child" is a term for atomizing men, denying men the possibility of maturity, of being social and thinking collectively.
That means that "boy child" is a term for atomizing men, denying men the possibility of maturity, of being social and thinking collectively.
Arendt says that the bourgeois identity of empire attacks responsibility. It makes people detach themselves from a collective humanity, and makes people feel that what happens has a life of its own and nothing to do with them.
That is Kenya.
That is Kenya.
I've noticed that what disturbs Kenyans, especially the educated, about having an opinion that doesn't agree with GoK is that you are taking RESPONSIBILITY for what you think.
I noticed this from the reactions of KICD officials to my questions about CBC.
I noticed this from the reactions of KICD officials to my questions about CBC.
When I would ask questions, KICD officials would say I'm engaging in personal attacks. What they were running away from was responsibility. They wanted CBC to appear as a curriculum from the air that was just there and had no human hand behind it.
That's where the nonsense of "objectivity" comes from. We are beaten in school whenever we have opinions or are creative. If we don't stick to the exam script, we're called mang'aa. So we exit the school system spectacularly afraid of doing anything that can be traced to us.
The fear of responsibility is the fear of adulthood, or maturity. To be mature, to be an adult, is to take responsibility. The understanding is that society will hold itself collectively responsible for the things people do things before attaining the age of adulthood.
This responsibility for children is what DCI is crushing when it sends threats to high school students. DCI is basically using violence to break adult responsibility for children, and saying that it will treat children, whom we should be taking care of, as adults.
So when adults are saying that their gender turns them into children, we are looking at extreme imperial capture of Kenyan manhood and adulthood. But it reflects what we see in state violence. The Kenyan state punishes adulthood. Severely. That's why the police kill young men.
And that is why the Kenyan bourgeoisie HATED the George Floyd protests. They called us names for saying that those protests apply here. They didn't want responsibility for saying that police violence also happens in Kenya.
They left the young MEN of our slums to resist police violence on their own, and came to hide on tweera l, waiting for women to speak up against brutality against women to say that they are persecuted boys.
The boy child narrative is a bourgeois psychosis of refusing adulthood and responsibility in front of a state that punishes us for daring to be adults. We need to reckon with the violence that education has done to our minds, and relearn the maturity of taking responsibility.
And that starts with ditching that nonsense about "objectivity," or "stick to the facts," or "quote the specific line," which the media and academia assault us with.
Every thing done by human beings has human footprints. We must take responsibility for human footprints.
Every thing done by human beings has human footprints. We must take responsibility for human footprints.
I forgot to mention this: that atomization of manhood in the term "boy child" explains why men take it as a personal attack whenever violence against women in mentioned. Atomization prevents understanding on a collective and social level. It takes everything as a personal attack.
When we talk of violence against women, we are not placing responsibility on each and every individual man. We are talking of a COLLECTIVE and institutional phenomenon that encourages individuals to take certain actions and protects them when they do.
But atomization prevents people from going beyond the dictionary meaning of words. Just like it prevents poeple from going beyond themselves as individuals to the social. Just like it prevents people from taking responsibility for their public action.
We must understand that the Kenyan state, and the bourgeoisie, are extremely violent. They fight against adulthood and social and collective action. And the collective and social action which the state fears the most is that of men.The state fears men coming together for justice.
In summary, that boy child narrative is not a defense of men. It's an attack on men's humanity, maturity and responsibility.
And Kenyans, especially the educated, need to relearn what it means to be human.
And Kenyans, especially the educated, need to relearn what it means to be human.
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