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- Convenors:
-
Sa'eed Husaini
(Center for Democracy and Development)
Simukai Chigudu (University of Oxford)
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- Stream:
- Sociology
- Location:
- Chrystal McMillan, Seminar Room 6
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Through revisiting Hountondji's notion of externalization, this panel seeks to carefully probe the commitments and motivations that lie behind how knowledge about Africa is produced in Western institutions and why Western scholars seek to become Africanists.
Long Abstract:
The broad field of African studies is beset with impassioned disputes and ideological disagreements over whose voice, ideas, and interests are legitimate in advancing knowledge about the continent's diverse histories, societies, and politics. Long-standing discussions about the 'invention of Africa' within colonial rhetoric and institutions form the backdrop to more contemporary critiques of and challenges to the hegemony of Western institutions and scholars in the global knowledge arena. For the Beninese philosopher, Paulin Hountondji, the study of Africa is characterized by externally generated epistemologies that simplify and homogenise the continent. He refers to this phenomenon as the 'externalisation' of African scholarship, which he argues is a failure to decolonise intellectual and academic life.
This panel is an attempt to evaluate Hountondji's notion of externalization through a careful discussion of the Western arts of African Studies.
At a structural level, it aims to illuminate the historical and political-economic processes and intellectual logics by which knowledge about Africa has been and is produced in Western institutions. And at a subjective level, the panel seeks to understand the myriad commitments and complex motivations that lie behind how and why Western scholars seek to become Africanists.
In the spirit of critical and collective reflexivity, the panel aims to deepen our understanding of the causes and consequences of the externalization of African studies with the ultimate aim of adding new dimension to debates about decolonizing the academy. Submission from across the social sciences and humanities are welcomed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Jean Allman (Washington University )
Paper short abstract:
This paper reconstructs the processes by which white privilege was hardwired into African Studies, by the displacement of an older tradition of African American scholarship on Africa, the founding of the ASA in 1957 and by the recolonization of knowledge production in Africa in the postcolonial era
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the racial politics of knowledge production about Africa in the US, with a focus on the history of the African Studies Association. (It is a revised and shortened version of the lecture I delivered at the ASA's 60th anniversary meeting.) In it, I make three basic points. The first is that the privileging of white scholarship was hard-wired into the ASA at its founding with the displacement of the much older tradition of African American scholarship on Africa. Secondly, that displacement was intended by those who founded the ASA to sever permanently any connections between an emerging African American Studies and African Studies. My third point is that long before #RhodesMustFall the decolonization of knowledge production was at the forefront of struggles across the continent. Indeed, there was a moment in the mid-sixties when it appeared that the balance of power over knowledge production might shift decisively from colonial studies of Africa or, in Hountondji's words, "the externalization of African Studies," back to the continent itself. That Africa-centered project of decolonization was severely compromised by a host of internal and external forces, while at precisely the same time, there was a massive influx of Cold War-related funding to African studies in the USA. Thus funded and fortified, African Studies in the US did not assist in the recentering of knowledge production in postcolonial African institutions, but rather expedited the "rapid recolonization" - American style - of knowledge production about Africa, beginning in the late 1960s
Simukai Chigudu (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
Accepting Hountondji's notion that African studies as a field is founded on Western epistemologies and interests, this paper seeks to explore the role of race, specifically 'whiteness', in shaping the global politics of knowledge production about the continent.
Paper long abstract:
Is it ethical for white people to study Africa? Given the high number of Western university programmes, institutions, and publications dedicated to the study of Africa and given the high number of white people who work professionally in Africa studies, one might automatically assume that only a racist could think that the answer to this question is anything but an obvious "Yes!" The answer may, of course, still be "Yes," but it might not be quite so obvious. At any rate, I want to suggest that this issue - a major point of contention among black and African scholars for decades - is worthy of intellectual investigation. Accepting Hountondji's notion that African studies as a field is founded on Western epistemologies and interests, this paper seeks to explore the role of race, specifically 'whiteness', in shaping the global politics of knowledge production about the continent. Inspired by David Roediger's history of working-class white racism in America, in which Roediger pointedly observed that there is a fundamental epistemic asymmetry between typical white views of blacks and typical black views of whites - these are not cognizers linked by a reciprocal ignorance but rather groups whose respective privilege and subordination tend to produce self-deception, bad faith, evasion, and misrepresentation, on the one hand, and more veridical perceptions, on the other hand - this paper asks to what extent might this be true of white Western views of Africa? And what are the ethical implications of such epistemic asymmetry?
Ella Jeffreys (School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London))
Paper short abstract:
With reference to both the constraints of the discipline and the author's own experience in the field of African History, this paper seeks to investigate the ways in which white historians of Africa interact with conversations surrounding the decolonization of the academy.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which white historians of Africa can be seen to depend on their relationship with disciplinary traditions in order to recuse themselves from discussions around decolonization of the academy, and the implications that this bears for the scholarship they produce. It will argue that the temporal distance between the white historian of Africa and the communities that they research can be an alluring tool through which to justify the prevalence of white historians in the field of African Studies. Drawing on personal experience in studying, teaching, and researching African History, this paper will speak both to individual motivations for pursuing a career in the field as well as the intellectual logic underpinning the white gaze in histories of Africa. Particular attention will be given to the role of archival methodologies and accepted writing styles, both of which serve to further entrench the distance between the historian and the process of research itself.
Elina Oinas (University of Helsinki) Salla Sariola (University of Helsinki) Katriina Huttunen (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the way Western biomedical and social science staff conducts a science project in West Africa: who encounters whom, why and how? What remains unaccounted for? Hountondji's concept 'externally generated epistemologies' is used to understand the epistemic practices of this project.
Paper long abstract:
The paper examines the way Western biomedical and social science staff conducts a vaccine trial in a village in West Africa. The biomedical and sociological presence in the site of the research could be assumed to differ from each other, yet the study shows that also the social science ethnographical approach has difficulties in engaging with the context. Both disciplinary conducts 'externalize', guided by their disciplinary epistemic habits, and at best, invest in self-recognition (Fanon 1967, 211) rather than an encounter with the context of the research project. Interestingly, the non-human companions are taken with seriousness, yet the African human engagements are recognized with difficulty. The paper discusses Paulin Hountondji's concept 'externally generated epistemologies' to understand the epistemic practices of this project.