What Mythillogical Got Wrong about Asante
A couple of days ago, I was excited to share “Anansi the Trickster”, an episode from the Mythillogical Podcast, a show I had only just begun to enjoy because it touched on something I very much enjoy.
Being Ghanaian (you should have noticed), I get excited when other people discuss topics I grew up with from their own perspectives because of the novelty they sometimes inject into what I take as granted. I’m doubly excited when these perspectives are academic (or close enough), because the expected rigour and criticality associated with the tradition ensures that the bar for quality is high.
You can only imagine my disappointment when I quit listening to this episode seventeen minutes in after a number of blunders Charles and Crofty made; mistakes so awful I had to respond multiple times on Spotify directly and I legit almost started a podcast to start addressing such things.
It was all quite sad, because these missteps came from a good place. You know that quote about paved roads and good intentions? You won’t find a clearer example than the opening of “Anansi the Trickster”.
It all began three minutes in with a content warning.
The Good Bit
I don’t enjoy being negative with my writing — there’s a lot of that already in the world without me adding to it — so I will start on a positive I’ve only just arrived at after some reflection.
From a somewhat insular Ghanaian perspective, the importance of Anansi outside of our borders will come as a pleasant surprise. I’m pretty confident when I say that the historical connection Ghana has with Jamaica and other Caribbean nations is much less emphasised in contemporary discourse than our relationship with Britain and Nigeria. This is a shame, because some of those islands harbour important cultural legacies seeded by slaves taken from what would become Ghana.
I only recently learned of the spiritual chords that bind Ghana and Jamaica in the last three years (thanks, COVID) but my appreciation of what Anansesem meant to Jamaica was non-existent until I listened to the start of that episode. So, thanks guys!
A Wrong Approach to History
Humanity has been pretty awful, and an honest account of history cannot ignore the crimes of various peoples of various times. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was one of the most consequential moments in African and Western history. Like many of such events, people today live with the consequences of past events. History isn’t entirely dead.
However (you saw this coming), the kind of solemn sensitivity acted out by the hosts of the show when they began communicating the “dark” turn this episode will take was, to me, beyond melodramatic. It wasn’t entirely farcical, but the just-get-on-with-it gut reaction it prompted within me pointed, I think, to something particularly wrong about their approach to history in the episode. And I have no doubt that I’m not the only one who would react this same way if they allowed themselves some honesty.
There are a few historians I have come to respect because of how they handle some of the most sensitive topics. Mark Felton’s World War II videos on YouTube are a remarkable example of how to talk about Nazis without sounding like a righteous arse. The writers at Kings and Generals do a remarkable job of keeping history history. Mike Duncan, to a much less extent, did such a wonderful job with the History of Rome that it kept me going until the bitter end, confident that no wayside preacher will ambush me with sermons about what I already know.
Straying Off-Topic
The next mistake the good folks at Mythillogical made was to lean in on the racial dimension of the story. Charles led with this when the two were giving some necessary background on where they were coming from with respect to the subject. When introducing his own prior knowledge, Charles began with the rather unfortunate “I’m going to give the I’m-a-White-European answer…” which, to be fair to him, was obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
While I think it is important to highlight the gulfs that still separate communities even in this hyper-connected world, drawing attention to his ethnicity — with the precedent already established — was just another step down the path towards alienating people like me from what should have been a fun and revealing listen.
I had no reason to know (or care) about his European-ness. I came for Anansi, not biographical meta-data.
On the plus side, at least the hosts suggested that Neil Gaiman’s own Anansi-related work touched more on the legend as it evolved in the Caribbean, which is worth noting for folks more interested in the origins of the source material.
Revealing the Actual Topic
A quick note about references for this episode: besides Kwesi Yankah’s “The Akan Trickster Cycle: Myth or Folktale”, all other references seemed to lean much more on Anansi as a political mascot within the context of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Black politics with respect to America and Western Europe. I’m aware of the opinion which laments the fact that so much of West Africa’s history is “breathed through” the slave trade and European contact. It was interesting to see that play out to devastating effect here.
The reading of their references set the stage of what this otherwise promising episode was going to care mostly about. Unfortunately, that was not what I cared about. At all.
I came to the podcast expecting to delve into the myth and legend of Anansi within the context of Akan culture, but I felt I was being drawn into contemporary Western concerns about politics and “race relations”, and the narratives around the legacy of a slave trade.
Perhaps I should have taken the hint. Unperturbed, I listened on, determined to get something good out of it. After thirteen minutes of introductions, we finally got into it.
The Strong Start
And it started well, actually. Context and background are crucial to building a well-grounded understanding of any subject. Charles was spot-on when, in order to bring Anansi to his audience, he felt the need to lay the ground work by explicating on Akan culture, religion and society; first things first — who are these people, and what’s the deal with them?
And his introduction was as I would expect from a well-researched discussion: he made the distinction between the various Akan peoples, and noted that in spite of their likely diversity, most of the stories they (the hosts) had on Anansi would reflect the Asante perspective specifically. And so, while a broad history of the Akan peoples was useful, more attention will be paid to the Asantes.
I was relieved to note too that, in spite of all the ceremony of the opening minutes, they did not ignore the role slave-trading (among other less dubious industries) played in the rise of Asante’s power and wealth. Not many people who walk on egg shells around this subject seem to care about the supply side. But Charles mentioned it. That was refreshing.
The Unfortunate Turn
It all went to hell about two minutes later when he talked through “repeated attempts by the British to divide and weaken the Asante”, which resulted in numerous Anglo-Asante wars and the eventual sacking of Kumasi and the looting of its treasures.
During this rather awful minute, an entirely needless self-insert made this small bit of world history much more personal than it had any right to be. I quote him here:
“In the 1870s, we — I should say ‘we’ because we are British — we invaded and destroyed the Asante capital of Kumasi… Yes this is going to be ‘the British people are the villains’ through a lot of this episode and yeah, it’s utterly atrocious what we did.”
Now, my theory of history is that in the retelling of accounts of the past, narrators should maintain a “critic’s distance” from their subject and act, as much as possible, as though the narrative were a fictive story told of other people of another time. This may be hard to bear and unpalatable to some sensibilities but I maintain this position as the most reasonable approach to talking about the past.
Dead things, in my opinion, should remain dead.
Keeping history as-is shows the greatest respect to those “history” is made for: the living. And even when it is not quite dead, this should remain the goal: to achieve some state of society where history can be treated as such; where the living are confident about keeping it that way.
Charles’ self-insert was well-intentioned, but it failed spectacularly in a way I am confident he could not have anticipated. Which is sad because he started the episode proper so well. I have no doubt that his audience will find nothing wrong in his portrayal of the Asantes as, to some extent, the “good guys” in the story of European imperial domination, and I have little doubt that people like me — continental Africans — make up no significant portion of his podcast’s listeners. So this may be a case of the message landing on the wrong target, but I am drawn to react because “we don’t wear gloves on the Internet.”
An *Actual* Balanced Take
In the reality of pre-colonial politics in what would become Ghana, Asanteman was the local belligerent that threatened the independence of smaller states in its neighbourhood. Now this is no fault of theirs; dominant states will dominate. That’s how people tend to behave.
The arrival of Europeans to the West African shore threatened to shift the power balance to the coast, as sea-side states like those of the Fante people established positive relationships with European traders, and they were set on a path towards Europeanisation and the kind of prosperity trade with a huge market will bring.
Also, weapons. The Europeans brought with them the kinds of guns and materiel these states would have used to not only keep the Asantes at bay, but also turn the tide against their nascent empire. The Asantes had known domination once, and they did not like it one bit. They weren’t going to risk going down that path, not with all the gold they had in their keeping.
Charles’ unfortunate phrasing puts the initiative to break the power of Asanteman in British hands and places anti-Asante resistance in the framework of a long game by Europe to dominate these lands, inadvertently erasing (for at least a few minutes) the storied history of the struggle against Asante supremacy put up by smaller states.
He may have betrayed his ignorance by leaning too hard on the “atrocious” sacking of Kumasi, which completely ignored the fact that the expedition may not have been feasible had it not been for the coalitions of rival tribes that really, really wanted to get the Asantes off their backs.
I’m not sure he understands the role the fear of Asante domination played in pushing the Fantes closer to their British allies, the first important step in making these lands an actual British colony rather than the trade partner it was for much of its history. But I don’t fault him for this: Ghana’s footprint on the world stage isn’t as impressive as other regions, so the nuances of our brief history are easy to overlook.
I do fault him for this, however: he could have avoided this disastrous reading of my country’s history had he just stuck to the history bits. Had I taken the story as personally as he did with his claim that “we (the British), invaded and destroyed the Asante capital”, I should have been deeply offended by my own people being described in an offhand manner as “enemies of the Asantes” and minor actors in this story.
Fortunately for everyone involved, I prefer to keep dead things dead. And my layman’s understanding of humanity tells me that history is just one generation after another of dubious actors, and a story can stomach more than one villain.
Which is not to make villains of the Asantes and the British people. You, my dear reader, are better than that.
In Conclusion
This latest brush with this manner of unwarranted self-flagellation, along with the hyper-focus on a moral reading of history informed by Western sensibilities to the detriment of other perspectives brought to the fore a concern I have been trying to shelve for several years.
Ghanaian history isn’t told right. I strongly feel that way, and I wish I were in a position to do it right. I’m not confident that I am, because doing anything worthwhile is hard, and commitments must be taken seriously, and any such task will be a huge burden.
The consequence of not doing so, however, will be to leave such retellings to people who do not care enough about history for its own sake; people who engage with history for how it can serve them today, without due reverence to the thing itself. The publishing world is full of motivated individuals that litter the commons with subpar narratives. This can have disastrous consequences for how people see the world and themselves.
