Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a decade of work, we consider the ways participatory arts-based research have (and not) enabled us to translate our feminist values in meaningful ways. We also consider the challenges, benefits, and dilemmas of what it means to seek to support the audibility of participants' voices.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2006, the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) has been involved in a wide range of participatory arts-based research projects with diverse migrant communities in rural and urban areas across southern Africa. As the co-founders of the MoVE (methods:visual:explore) project, housed at the ACMS, we are committed to exploring collaborative forms of knowledge production and the ways participatory methodologies might be used to generate more respectful research, engagement, and dissemination "with" rather than "on" those whose lifeworlds are under investigation. Our feminist practice is premised on the idea that research should be driven by a strong social justice agenda, with a commitment to sharing outputs that are produced during the research process. To date, MoVE projects have involved partnership with migrants residing in informal settlements, Somali migrants and refugees, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBTQ+) asylum seekers, and migrant women, men, and transgender persons involved in sex work. These and other MoVE projects have culminated in various research and advocacy outputs, including public exhibitions, engagement with officials, the development of accessible materials, and free downloadable E-Books. In this presentation, we take a reflexive step back on nearly a decade of work to consider the ways participatory (arts-based) research have (and not) enabled us to translate our feminist values in meaningful ways. We also consider the challenges, benefits, and dilemmas of what it means when seeking to support the audibility of participants' voices.

Paper short abstract:

A thesis and a stageplay, and some comics, and many folk tales: Epistemologies and methodologies of decolonial knowledge-making and sharing processes, involving oral histories in the South African university

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on two texts I wrote, and the research processes that generated them. First, is my Masters thesis text which passed at the University of Cape Town with distinction and was nominated for the Leiden African Studies Thesis Award 2017. Second, is the stageplay I included as part of thesis itself, and which I am currently working on staging.

The paper is a deep and systematic reflection on the epistemological and methodological decisions and acts, moves and manouvres, and dialogues I made in the construction of these texts as I worked through, and posed, several challenges in the process of earning an education in a post-colony, through English.

There were intellectual challenges of genre conventions in producing decolonial and indigenous scholarship; and also, challenges of institutional racism, heterosexism, and neoliberal academic exploitation which re-renders Africa, African lives and African peoples as data plantations.

With a close reading and exhibition of sections of both texts, I explicate and extrapolate on the decolonial characteristics of certain intellectual moves (and incredible battles), scholars must make when decolonizing structures of knowledge, power, being, and institutions (Maldonado Torres 2007). I make the argument that considerations to broaden access 'to' research must precede the dissemination and 'output-based' thinking of academic conventions. Critical intimacy (Spivak 2016) must be woven into the entire research process from conceptualisation to field and data-work to analysis to the sharing of findings. Participatory research involves a sustained an ethics of relationality, to research with - not about - others.

Paper short abstract:

Decolonising African studies needs to include consideration for publishing. This paper is on book publishing in Africa and co-publishing across continents. Examples are given of steps that can be taken so that researchers and publishers can participate in an equitable global publishing system.

Paper long abstract:

Decolonising African studies needs to include consideration for publishing in the African continent as well as publishing on Africa internationally.

This presentation focuses on book publishing in Africa and co-publishing across continents. It will discuss the initiative 'Publishing Cooperation North-South' promoted by the African Books Collective with support from the US and UK African studies associations, some notable university presses and participation from African publishers. This initiative proposes a fair way forward for the availability of Northern-published books in Africa. We also bring experience from the co-publishing practices of the International African Institute's (IAI) book publishing programme. Both ABC's publishing cooperation initiative and the IAI's focus on publishing ethnographic work, including books comprising long-form journalism aimed at wider audiences, bring into focus the concern to connect research with the people and lands it is written about; and the African scholars and participants who have collaborated in the research.

Significant North American university presses have indicated their support for co-publishing with academic publishers in the continent which can enable local distribution and bookselling. At the same time, there are real challenges, including distribution costs, funding for translation, and markets.

What strategies can Northern-based researchers adopt to ensure their work is disseminated in Africa? What role should the African publisher play in evaluating manuscripts? Should academic associations promote ethical guidance and 'white lists' of committed publishers? What other steps can be taken so that both researchers and publishers can fully participate in an equitable global publishing system with a level playing field?

Paper short abstract:

Experience report and critical reflection of the film "The Book of the Senegalese Village Guelakh" (2019) resulting from an ethnological collaborative approach. The topics of collaboration, (re)presentation and multi-purpose reception are at the centre of interest.

Paper long abstract:

Can we write both for a Senegalese village and for ethnology/anthropology? Fatou asked me to write a book about her Senegalese Village Guelakh. Placing the writing of the book in a scientific context, I focused on the ethnological topics of "collaboration", "visual anthropology", "ethnography, poetics and aesthetics" and "representation".

The community approach was at the centre of interest and thus the polyphony and multilingualism of the village Guelakh. The only way to (re)present this "reality" seemed to be to make the book a film. The villagers tell of the traditional life as Peulh nomads, now abandoned due to the advancing desert. Two men from the village of Guelakh set up a development project 27 years ago to ensure survival in this arid region. 4 years ago, a French agricultural company has been set up next to the village and some inhabitants have abandoned the village project to work in this company as day labourers. The film offers a framework for the voices of experts.

We renounced on a voice "off" that explains or interprets. The villagers are the experts and tell according to their individual points of view. The film narration follows the villagers' instructions made during a visualization session of the filmed material. The Book of the Senegalese Village Guelakh is an ethnographic audio-visual document (70 min., with French and German subtitles); a panoply of individual and heterogeneous narrations containing fragmented and even contradictory elements. The villagers allowed me to publish the film.