Ethiopia in Transit

Millennial Quest for Stability and Continuity

Pietro Toggia, Abebe Zegeye

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415616973
• eBook ISBN: 9781317982067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The writings in this edition explore historical and contemporary issues in Ethiopia as the country underwent change and celebrated its new millennium. However, despite the recognizance of socio-economic and political changes, Ethiopia still faces enduring problems and challenges to its stability and continuity. The political past haunts the country while it is facing the future with optimism and hope. The contributors in this edition examine historical and contemporaneous issues with different lenses; they investigate the multiplicity and complexity of the contradictions that define traditional and modern Ethiopia. The contributions highlight the significance of the instability, dislocation, conflict and transformation inherent in any society. None of these writings, however, celebrate the forces that create the conflict; they are cautious not to glorify the present and romanticize the past. On the contrary, they seek to contextualize the challenges which the country faces with a view to open a dialogue, not exclusively among Ethiopians, but with scholars and social activists in the rest of Africa, as well as the international community. The contributions cover and examine such important topics as historiography, political power and legitimacy, ideology and radical views, knowledge transmission and modernity, emigration and the Ethiopian Diaspora, ethnic and linguistic identity, patriarchy and feminist discourses in a traditional society, public policies and economic development, traditional and modern art and culture, and neo-liberalism and globalization. This book was published as a special issue of African Identities.

EDITORIAL NOTE

A prologue to critical discourses on Ethiopia

 

Ethiopia has a much longer history of self-rule than any other African country. The 1896 Battle of Adwa at which Italy’s colonialism succumbed to Ethiopia has been memorialized by Africans as one of their first triumphant engagements against intruders in the pages of modern history. The diverse aspects of its history, its rich literature and pluralistic culture are hardly appreciated in the rest of Africa. In far too many scholarly writings Ethiopia is seen as an island, blighted by the ghost of localism. Emergent but vigorous debates about the country have tended to remain insular, undertaken for the most part by Ethiopians at home and in the Diaspora. While these are important, because detailed understandings of Ethiopia have emerged from such studies, sometimes this fixation and self-referential discourse on Ethiopia by Ethiopians can result in academic seclusion.

Ethiopia is often depicted as static, closed-off from external influences; and Ethiopian scholars as provincial and inward-looking. Even cases of commendable solidarity of Ethiopians with African liberation struggles in Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique are occluded and not fully appreciated in the rest of the continent. One manifestation of the localism of scholarship on Ethiopia is the passion about the 1970s politics of the military derg. It is true that Colonel Mengistu’s period was marked by bloodshed. And yet, it would be a misrepresentation to suggest, as some scholars have done, that all Ethiopians have known is the violence of the derg. When compared to imperial rule prior to 1974, and to the period after the derg was overthrown in 1991, a romanticized picture of life in Ethiopia is constructed.

The media, Western government officials and scholars are either inadvertently or for selfish motives responsible for these inaccuracies. They have blemished Ethiopia’s image by presenting it as the proverbial (biblical) land of famine, and by extension as representing Africa’s chronic poverty. Few of the contradictions of Ethiopia as a modern state are discussed. Its war with Eritrea, its incursions into Somalia, its constructions and reinforcements of ethnicities, its alignment with the United States in the latter’s ‘war against terrorism’ in the region, are all cases in point.

For example, in the news communiqué on the last controversial election in Ethiopia in May 2005, the assistant director of public information at the Carter Centre announced that the election was ‘the third in its 3,000-year old history’ (Terrence 2005). Similarly, Donald Yamomoto, then US deputy assistant secretary of state (currently US ambassador to Ethiopia) echoed this observation in March 2006: the election, he said, ‘marked the first, true multiparty election in Ethiopia’s 3,000 year history’ (2006). These observations are obviously exaggerated and decontextualized because elections and liberal democracy have only been part of the history of Western countries for a little more than 200 years. Of course, a subtext of mockery is also evident here, pointing towards the espousal of a Western mode of election and governance in underdeveloped African nations. The static images represented in studies and observations on Ethiopia camouflage the constant flux of the country. Young (1995, p.4) suggests that ‘…fixations of identities [are] only sought in situations of instability and disruption of conflict and change’.

The contributions in this special issue make the necessary preliminary steps to critically examine the constructions of Ethiopia; the articles also interrogate historical and contemporaneous issues from different angles, as well as the multiple contradictions that define present-day Ethiopia. The essays emphasize the significance of the ‘instability’, ‘disruption’, ‘conflict’, and ‘change’ inherent in any society. None of the essays celebrate or glorify the forces that create conflict in Ethiopia; instead, these articles seek to contextualize the challenges that face the country with a view to open a dialogue, not exclusively among Ethiopians, but with scholars in the rest of Africa, as well as in the international community.

Pietro Toggia argues that Ethiopian history reserves a privileged site for successive states as incontestable sites of knowledge, truth, legitimacy, and national identity. He shows how the state reconstructs the memory of its past as total knowledge, and how the state utilizes this ‘truth’ of the past to command legitimacy. The state-authorized historiography has been packaged as a foundational knowledge for the nation, national identity, and the raison d’être of state power. As much as Ethiopia’s history has been always a totalizing narrative, the historians have also been strategically selective in reflecting the history of the militarily and politically dominant groups. According to Toggia, Ethiopian history books have been generally reductionist, and history writing has always been a state project. The article suggests the need, in critical studies, to challenge the state historiography, as the dominant unicentric narrative framework.

Teshale Tibebu’s contribution provides a critical reflection of radicalism in Ethiopia in the 30-year period from 1961 to 1991. His essay highlights three main points. First, unlike any other place in the history of revolutions, Ethiopia went through three simultaneous revolutions during the 1974–1991 period: those in Eritrea, Tigray and Ethiopia at large. Second, almost all the military conflicts that consumed hundreds of thousands of lives in the country were conducted among political forces that were Marxist, or Marxist-oriented. Third, Marxism was deeply embedded in the Eurocentric structure of knowledge. Ethiopian Marxism by extension was Eurocentric in its grasp of the Ethiopian situation. It rejected Ethiopia’s historical past and tradition as being a reactionary pile of refuse badly in need of cleansing with forces of modernity. The essay presents a critical reflection of this Eurocentric paradigm, in general, and its adaptation in Ethiopia, in particular.

Abebe Zegeye’s essay explores the historical origins of the Beta Israel people; it analyzes the conditions of their existence in mainland Israel and critiques the notions of displacement and the Diaspora as applied to their historical experience in Ethiopia. Zegeye argues that the existential experiences of the Beta Israelis can best be described as Diasporic. The Diaspora is in fact the language of those on the margins of history; those who nevertheless insist on having their stories told from their point of view. The Diaspora acknowledges the possibility of returning to imagined communities previously abandoned. Ironically, the Diaspora also forces us to reckon with the possibility of taking up options such as integration and dissolution in host-communities. These are choices and processes fraught with contradictions; they leave permanent social and historical imprints on the affected people and can produce unintended or unexpected consequences for the communities in the Diaspora.

Mackonen Michael demonstrates that although Ethiopia is home to many ethnic groups and nationalities, some have more recognition than others; and some traditionally view themselves as superior to others. He also notes that the discourse on ethnicity and nationalism has been limited to internal circles of radical students and intellectuals. The central argument of his essay is to question and define the ethnic hegemony of the Amhara people. The article thus examines Amhara identity and Ethiopian nationalism within the country as well as in the Diaspora.

Indrawatie Biseswar argues that Ethiopia seems to be charting a unique discourse on women which is similar to many of the ‘gender’ discourses on the continent (Namibia, Jamaica, Cameroon, etc.) that are embedded in the state. Her essay shows how the absence of a comprehensive radical gender discourse and the rigorous focus on a depoliticized national women’s discourse produces an extremely narrow outlook that is actively promoted as meeting the demands of women’s emancipation, rights and freedom in the country.

Lawrie Barnes and Kobus van Aswegen explore the usages of Maale, a minority language spoken in the Omo region of south-western part of Ethiopia; and they suggest that regional nationalism, which is isomorphic with ethnic groups in Ethiopia, such as the Maale, corresponds to ethnic nationalism of Paulston’s model. This, they argue, is the reason why the Maale language has been maintained as a viable language in spite of centuries of political repression. They claim that the Maale (as a minority language-group) have never experienced a language shift or a language death.

Melakou Tegegn’s article also provides a critique of the public policies that the government of the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has followed to deal with political and economic challenges since 1991. He argues that these government policies show only minimal success in alleviating poverty and enhancing development. Tegegn also identifies five of the following challenges that the government continues to face: chronic deficit in political democracy; gender inequality; environmental degradation; unchecked population growth; and the crisis of rural development.

Meskerem Assegued’s article focuses on the biography and the artworks of an Ethiopian artist – Elias Sime. Her essay describes the seamless levels of this Ethiopian art form, depicting social life in realistic portraits. Assegued suggests that the paradoxical blend of poverty and richness of socio-temporal life in Ethiopia is conducive for Elias Sime’s works of art.

The final piece for this special issue of African Identities is contributed by Fassil Demissie. His essay is a critical examination of neo-liberalism in post-1991 Ethiopia and he advances two major arguments. First, he identifies the characteristic features of the neo-liberal project in Ethiopia in this period; these features are the privatisation of the economy; the devaluation of the currency; the major reform of fiscal policy to reduce the deficit; deregulation of the market; and other forms of state disengagement as a fulfilment to the condition of the country’s integration into the global capitalist system. Second, Demissie argues that these neo-liberal programmes are exacerbating the adverse conditions under which urban residents live in cities like Addis Ababa.

This special issue of African Identities ends with a book review by Pietro Toggia who surveys Abera Jembere’s An Introduction to the Legal History of Ethiopia, 1434–1974 (2000).

References

Terrence, K., 16 May 2005. Ethiopia elections: dispatch from Addis Ababa [online]. The Carter Centre. Available from: h­t­t­p­:­/­/­w­w­w­.c­a­r­t­e­r­c­e­n­t­e­r­.o­r­g­/­n­e­w­s­/­d­o­c­u­m­e­n­t­s­/­d­o­c­2­0­9­8­.h­t­m­l­ [Accessed 18 August 2008].

Yamomoto, D., March 28, 2006. Ethiopia’s troubled internal situation. Remarks to Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, House International Relations Committee, Washington, D.C. [online]. Available from: h­t­t­p­:­/­/­w­w­w­.s­t­a­t­e­.g­o­v­/­p­M­/­r­l­s­/­r­m­/­2­0­0­6­/­6­3­9­1­9­.h­t­m­ [Accessed 18 August 2008].

Young, J.C.R., 1995. Colonial desire: hybridity in theory, culture and race. London: Routledge.

 

Pietro Toggia, Melakou Tegegn and Abebe Zegeye

History writing as a state ideological project in Ethiopia

Pietro Toggia

Kutztown University, Pennsylvania, United States

In this article I argue that Ethiopian history reserves a privileged site for successive states as incontestable sites of knowledge, truth, legitimacy, and national identity. It shows how the state reconstructs memory of its past as total knowledge, and how the state utilizes this ‘truth’ of the past to command legitimacy. The state-authorized history has been packaged as a foundational knowledge for the nation, national identity, and raison d’être of state power. As much as Ethiopia’s history has been always a totalizing narrative, the historians have also been strategically selective in reflecting the history of the militarily and politically dominant groups. Ethiopian history has been reductionist and history writing has been a state project. This study critically examines how the state’s history as a metanarrative claims totality; and how everything else is silently subsumed under its totalized discourse. It excludes marginalized populations, ethnic and religious polities. As much as the state attempts to centralize every outlying domain around its power core, it simultaneously exteriorizes them through state discourses. Moreover, the paper suggests the need to challenge the state historiography, as the dominant unicentric narrative framework, with critical historiography.

Introduction

In this article I argue that Ethiopian history reserves a privileged site for successive states as an incontestable domain of knowledge, truth, legitimacy and national identity. Not only do the states welcome this form of history writing as key source of totalized knowledge, but they also actively adopted it as one of their ideological projects to legitimize the state power and to reconstruct a national identity. The production and dissemination of past knowledge as history was systematized especially under Emperor Haile Selassie’s government, with extensive publication of history textbooks for all grades and higher education. As much as Ethiopia’s history has always been a totalizing narrative, the historians have also been strategically selective in reflecting the history of the militarily and politically dominant groups. Ethiopian history has been reductionist and history writing has been a state project.

I will show how the state reconstructs memory of the state’s past as total knowledge, and how it utilizes this ‘truth’ of the past to command legitimacy. The state-authorized history has been packaged as a foundational knowledge for the nation, national identity, and raison d’être of state power. The state has accorded itself a privileged position in the pages of history as a transhistorical and epistemological entity. Writing history, as a state project, has also facilitated a mutual accommodation between theological institutions and political ruling groups. The earlier royal scribes were invariably clerics of the Ethiopian Tewahdo Christian Orthodox Church.

Ethiopian state history as a case study illustrates the interplay of knowledge/ truth production and the exercise of power. This essay reveals how political history is more privileged than any social, economic, or cultural aspects of the social field. Similarly, this study demonstrates how the state’s history as a metanarrative claims totality; and how everything else is silently subsumed under its totalized discourse. It excludes marginalized populations, ethnic and religious polities. As much as the state attempts to centralize every outlying domain around its power core, it simultaneously exteriorizes them through state discourses. Hence, due to the fact that knowledge of the past has been selectively represented as state history, it often faces a representational crisis along with other sectarian state projects.

The paper also critically explores how ethnohistories challenge the unicentric narrative of the state as one feature of resistance by ethnonational movements. The political challenge to Ethiopia’s central state encompasses a contention of the unrepresentativeness of the nation’s history which reflects only state history of the dominant military and political groups. Thus while the pages of Ethiopian history affirm the legitimacy of the state, they simultaneously evoke resista...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. Editorial note
• 2. History writing as a state ideological project in Ethiopia
• 3. Modernity, Eurocentrism, and radical politics in Ethiopia, 1961–1991
• 4. The Beta Israel and the impossible return
• 5. Who is Amhara?
• 6. A new discourse on 'gender' in Ethiopia
• 7. An investigation into the maintenance of the Maale language in Ethiopia
• 8. The EPRDF vis-á-vis Ethiopia's development challenges
• 9. A retrospective observation of Elias Sime
• 10. Situated neoliberalism and urban crisis in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• Index