Cleopatra, color wars – 05/19/2023 – Demetrius Magnoli

The protagonist of the new Netflix miniseries, played by Adele James, is the first black Cleopatra in the history of cinema, which provoked indignant reactions from the Egyptian government. Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, was the city chosen to found the Organization of African Unity (OAU) 60 years ago, on May 25, 1963. The two events are connected by an ideological bridge that illuminates mainstream political discourse. of the black movement.

In founding the OAU, the leaders of the newly independent countries renounced the ideal of Pan-Africanism: the United States of Africa. For decades, in the various Pan-African congresses held in Europe and the USA, the state unity of all Africa was promised. Just as Bolívar had envisioned a Spanish-American Great Homeland, Pan-Africanism dreamed of a “racial Great Homeland.” However, at the decisive hour, African leaders preferred national fragmentation along the lines drawn by the European powers.

The OAU sanctified the colonial borders, ensuring the power of the political elites emanating from independence. But the external ornaments of the Single Fatherland needed to be preserved, in the name of the historical legitimacy of the new state leaders. For this reason, the word “unity” baptized the organization that disowned it – and, for the same reason, Addis Ababa was chosen.

Ethiopia persisted as an independent empire during European imperial expansion into Africa. The idea of ​​”empire” was adapted to the discourse about an African unity stripped of outside influences adopted by the new state leaders. Menelik II, Ethiopian emperor between 1889 and 1913, enslaved the subjugated Oromo in the south on a large scale. Haile Selassié, his successor between 1916 and 1974, was an Orthodox Christian monarch celebrated by the European aristocracy. Empire, slavery, Christianity? “Africanity” knelt before the dissolving European tradition.

Black Cleopatra? Official Egyptologists accuse the miniseries of trying to “erase the Egyptian identity”: the queen, of Macedonian lineage, would be “Greek” and “light-skinned”. Nations are nationalism’s “imagined communities” — and Egyptian authoritarian nationalism claims a legitimacy rooted in ancient Greece and refined by Arab civilization. Therefore, the Egyptian State rejects the ideological project of “Africanization” of Egypt.

What was Cleopatra’s skin color? The debate, inspired by “scientific racism,” is an anachronism: in ancient Egypt, skin color didn’t matter. The question has no answer. More than two centuries separate the queen from her Macedonian ancestors and the Egyptian empire stretched across Sudan. Inaccurate investigations suggest that Princess Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s half-sister and rival, had black African features.

Thina Garavi, director of the miniseries, is not betting on the queen’s blackness, but on the ideological power of the proposal: “Why do some people need a white Cleopatra?”. The question makes sense – but so does the symmetrical question. Why does racial identitarianism need a black Cleopatra? The enterprise of “Africanization” of Ancient Egypt spread through the black movement. Following a rule of racial identity politics, it is about conducting symbolic wars against imperialism and “western whiteness”.

However, as in the case of the choice of Addis Ababa, the desired model is a mirror reflection of the European canon of the 19th century. Ancient Egypt was a centralized empire whose productive force was based on masses of workers subjected to servitude or enslaved.

“I’m asking Egyptians to see themselves as Africans,” explains Garavi. Okay – but the request implies asking the black movement to accept imperialism and slavery as part of the African tradition.

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