While culture reigns supreme in Cabral’s discourse on “National Liberation and Culture”, Cabral also develops a certain underlying ethic that he believes culture should be founded upon. Cabral places culture at the center of our realities, a center that he claims contains “the seed of protest, leading to the emergence and development of the liberation movement”. This beautiful analogy, if allowed, can be further extended to include water that nurtures and provides life to the fruit. This water is the ethic that accompanies a culture devoted to national liberation (my apologies if that was too corny).
This ethic includes a self-regulatory instinct that Cabral believes would keep culture from being exploited and falling into another cycle of oppression. Through constant “vigilance” of the type of culture being promoted, its origins, its strengths and its failings, we could gauge its impact and become more aware of our realities. But what does this extreme vigilance say about the national liberation itself?
Through this constant questioning Cabral makes the reader realize that the national liberation is always an ongoing and never ending process. Freedom is not simply handed to us once the oppressor leaves and the people are free from cultural domination. Since culture is ever-growing and evolving through the passage of time and is directly impacted by the political and economic spheres embedded in the society, the threat of it falling into the wrong hands is ever present. Thus, for Cabral true freedom is a process rather than a conclusive victory that is attained through remaining cognizant of one’s culture and history.
It is also important to note that this keen awareness of a culture’s ever changing nature shows how each nation has a different route to take on the road to liberation. It is simply not a one size fits all scenario but requires an acute understanding of the “historical and material realities” that shape that particular nation and a deeper knowledge regarding a popular culture that is present within the society.
Through this rigorous analysis, Cabral highlights one other feature of national liberation and its entanglement with culture. He points out how harmful the unwillingness of accepting the “positive contributions from the oppressors’ culture” can be and how the blindness towards the negative elements of one’s culture can hurt the movement. Essentially, there is no ‘perfect’ culture but through constant vigilance one could reach a safe middle ground.
Decoloniality and Decolonization 