The preservation of the memory of a human abattoir and that of contraptions employed in
the termination of human lives cannot be said to have been interrogated only because
travellers, as Spufford contends, are “notoriously bad at saying why” (Steve Clark 1996:
13). On the contrary, one must probe further into the informing consciousness of this
interrogation. Part of the anthropological grounds upon which colonialism thrived in the
African colonies especially was the legitimization of western imperialism through the
construct of the “doctrine of polygenism” the subtext of which apportioned inferiority to
the black race.^41 It was this that provided the false valence for the colonizer to affirm his
superiority in the colonies and to impose a western provincialized epistemic order on
Africa in the name of modernity. It accounts for why such interrogation could be said to
be an attempt on the part of Mapanje to engage in what James Ferguson (2005: 166)
designates as efforts at “decomposing modernity”.
Still preoccupied with the metaphor of drinking from the source, the next title advances a
critical stance on the pretension of modernity and modernization. Perhaps just as colonial
textuality engages African “primitivism” from different angles, this section of the
collection applies its lenses to different aspects of British life as a reciprocal indication of
the colonial itinerary in the colonies. Once again, the question of western epistemic order,
despite its attraction, receives further scrutiny, not least because at this point the
condition of exile cannot preclude engagement with the situation in the homeland.
Utilizing the natural status of the exiled personality whose knowledge of home and
interaction with outside can result in some kind of objective reflection about both the
distant space of home and the alienating aura of exile (Carine Mardorossian 2002: 16),
the metaphor of river sources reverberates with a comparison that straddles Malawi and
Britain. This is the basic argument in “Drinking the Water from its Source”. Shire River
in this instance may not be different from River Thames. If the tendency for beneficiaries
of Shire River is to ignore or forget the flipside concerning its sources, this is because
institutions and individuals perceived to oppose to his wish were executed, usually over trumped-up
charges. The “guillotine” in the poem must be referring to the reminder of his bloodshed, and the “wives’
regalia”, his record for having been married to six women, an uncommon pattern in English monarchy. 41
James Ferguson, 2005: 169.