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- Convenors:
-
Bakheit Mohammed Nur
(University of Bayreuth)
Rüdiger Seesemann (University of Bayreuth)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Location-based African Studies: Discrepancies and Debates
- Location:
- S67 (RW I)
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 1 October, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel proposes to scrutinize the epistemic power relations between the Global North and the Global South together with their impact on the political economy of knowledge production in and about Africa as carried out from different locations and loci of enunciation.
Long Abstract:
In academic forums concerned with the reconfiguration of African Studies in Europe, Africa and the Americas, scholars frequently debate the rationale for studying Africa. While appearing simple on the surface, the question of why we study Africa has profound epistemological, methodological, relational, and ethical ramifications. It challenges the validity of knowledge produced in the framework of African Studies and probes claims to the objectivity of research methodologies. Furthermore, the inquiry into knowledge production in African Studies raises questions about the extent to which academic works perpetuate colonial and epicolonial images of the continent produced by hegemonic power differentials past and present.
This panel proposes to scrutinize the epistemic power relations between the Global North and the Global South together with their impact on the political economy of knowledge production in and about Africa at different locations around the globe. In particular, the panel seeks to engage with multiplicity, relationality, reflexivity, and decoloniality as conceptual tools for the reconfiguration of African Studies. How do academics and institutions in the field view, design and reconfigure their working relationships, institutional structures, theoretical and methodological toolboxes, research ethics, epistemologies, and intellectual representations? What does their respective locus of enunciation entail for their approach to the study of Africa? What challenges are current attempts to reconfigure African studies facing? How do scholars address these challenges? The panel invites papers that engage with theoretical, empirical, methodological, intersectional, and decolonial dimensions of the current state and future direction of African Studies.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 1 October, 2024, -Oyewumi Olatoye Agunbiade (Walter Sisulu University, South Africa) MIRABEAU SONE ENONGENE (Walter Sisulu University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper introduces “Inverted disillusionment” as an alternative paradigm to reconfigure knowledge production and critique of emerging untoward in/actions of the people as against leadership in African literature. It sequels pressure to reconfigure ideologies and representations in African studies
Paper long abstract:
The pressure to reconfigure structures, ideologies and representations in Africa given the range of emerging realities in its milieu could be seen as a child’s play without rethinking the place of knowledge production in African literature. This is because studies on post-independent Africa from literary authors and scholars have been inundated with complexions of disenchantments mainly from leaders. Postcolonial theory especially with its ideology of post-independence disillusionment which expresses the disappointment of the people to their leaders after independence has consistently provided a framework for the critique of such literary works. However, emerging realities in postcolonial Africa suggest a reconfiguration on the ideology of disillusionment in Africa as quotidian realities among the people have outgrown the erstwhile ground upon which disillusionment was based. This paper introduces the concept of “Inverted disillusionment” as an alternative paradigm for knowledge production and critique of deep seated and emerging untoward actions of the people in African literature. The first author having established two indices of Inverted disillusionment: ‘General moral decadence among the people’ and ‘Apathy/ disorientation to politics’ in a seminal research, seeks to foreground with textual evidence the third category which is a spotlight on the working class, especially government workers, to see if their actions have holistically made the civil service the enemy of development or not in Africa. The study signals a new direction in African literature/studies, as it concludes with a poser that “if today’s leadership was yesterday’s followership/workers, why much ado about leadership in African literature?”
Abiodun Adejumo (University of Lagos, Nigeria)
Paper short abstract:
The field of African studies has been viewed as a field of study that has undermined respectful exchange with Africa as a place of intellectual production. This paper seeks to analyze how knowledge about Africa is produced and to what end has it addressed Africa's position in scholarship
Paper long abstract:
The field of African Studies has come under serious criticism for its marginalization of African voices. Increasingly, African scholarship has been associated with various forms of disadvantage that undermine respectful exchange with Africa as a place of intellectual production in its own right. This paper seeks to analyze how knowledge about Africa is produced, by whom, and to what ends it is put, and to relate such questions to Africa's position in global scholarship.
This study will adopt qualitative research methodology with data being sourced from secondary means which include textbooks, journals, magazines, and newspapers, and also the modernization theory will be adopted as the theoretical framework. It is expected that this paper might find out that intellectual thought and knowledge production on Africa has continued to exist within a borrowed and dominated framework as the scholarship in African studies is yet to be divorced from the viewpoints of those who created intellectual thought and knowledge production on Africa.
Keywords: Marginalization, Scholarship, Intellectual production, Knowledge.
MIRABEAU SONE ENONGENE (Walter Sisulu University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines different perspectives on African studies in an attempt to capture and reconfigure new narrative which brings in authentic African voices and perspectives. The paper argues that although African Studies scholarship is about Africa but fundamentally not for Africans, by Africans.
Paper long abstract:
The complexity of African society entering the 21st century necessitates an interdisciplinary examination of African studies as a discipline in its political, social, economic and cultural developments and challenges. Naturally, the purpose of African Studies as a field of scholarly inquiry, is to constantly interrogate epistemological, methodological, and theoretical approaches to the study of Africa, inserting Africa and its people at the centre of that interrogation as subjects, rather than objects. It is clear that those who produce knowledge about something wield considerable power over it. In this vein, African Studies remains a colonised space rife with misrepresentation, homogenisation and essentialising about Africa. This paper shows how ‘African Studies’ can be an integral part of knowledge specific to Africa. It further examines the different perspectives on African studies in and out of Africa in an attempt to capture and reconfigure new narrative which brings in authentic African voices and perspectives. The paper argues that although, in most cases, African Studies scholarship in and outside the continent is about Africa and Africans, it is fundamentally not for Africans, by Africans. It concludes that the future of African Studies should intricately be tied to the norms and values, history, present fortunes and future prospects of the African continent.
Zack Dustin Zimbalist (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on 1260 readings from 24 undergraduate syllabi in North America, this paper investigates the content and instructional approaches in the teaching of "African politics.” I critique the hegemonic concepts and theories from the Global North and present alternative perspectives and approaches.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on 1260 readings from 24 undergraduate syllabi in North America, this paper investigates the dominant content and instructional approaches in the teaching of "African politics.” Despite recent momentum around decolonizing curricula, most courses still rely predominantly on articles and books written by male non-African authors based in the Global North. These materials are more likely to engage in sweeping generalizations about how politics works on the continent, employing concepts like “neopatrimonalism”, “personal rule”, and “clientelism”. While some of these “seminal” materials make use of secondary Africa-wide data to support their broad claims, in other cases the supporting evidence for such generalizations remains elusive or unconvincing (e.g., a lab experiment in one African capital city). Next, the paper underscores that the books and articles most prominent in North American classrooms have been cited between 1,000 and 6,000 times, whereas the materials offering counternarratives or critiques, from non-African and African authors alike, typically receive less than 500 citations. Finally, I conclude with two suggested remedies for the current situation. The first is that book and journal editors change the incentives for authors so that generalizations to all of Africa are made with far greater caution and qualification (through their submission guidelines and guidance to reviewers). Second, I advocate for an alternative approach to teaching that emphasizes counter-hegemonic narratives and amplifies the voices of Africans and women. I provide examples of suggested readings and instructional methods that encourage students to think critically about power relations and knowledge production in “African politics.”
Amber Murrey (University of Oxford) Emile Sunjo (University of Buea)
Paper short abstract:
Building on 'defiant scholarship in Africa', we reflect on the potentials and ambiguities of collaborative decolonial solidarity praxis in fostering intellectual work that does not seek validation or legitimacy through capitalist and colonial epistemes in African and European universities.
Paper long abstract:
As a critical concept, ‘defiant scholarship in Africa’ (Daley and Murrey 2022) brings attention to the determined body of intellectual work that has long called out, deciphered, and rendered legible shifting and discordant colonial logics and articulated alternative approaches to knowledge creation founded upon anti-colonial solidarity (Beti 1972), decolonial feminism (Dieng 2021; Vergès 2021), rebellion (McKittrick 2021), indigenous worldmaking and the sacred (Nkwi 2017), conviviality and incompleteness (Nyamnjoh 2015b, 2021; Fokwang 2021), humility, ‘companionable connection’ (Gibson-Graham 2006), and more. We reflect on a three day writing workshop in Yaoundé, Cameroon inspired by 'Defiant Scholarship in Africa' during which a collective of scholars sought to think through and implement practices of decolonial solidarity against dominant writing and publishing formulas. Importantly, our collective began with a refusal of prevailing models of North/South writing workshops that too often commence from unspoken assumptions that there is a dearth of publishing know-how or skill in African settings that requires ‘correcting’. We rejected as untenable the neoliberal and corporate models of scholarly publication in Western universities. This includes the implicit or explicit ‘publish or perish’ approaches and their manifestations in African universities as ‘publish and perish’ (Nyamnjoh 2004: 331-335). Such approaches to hiring and retaining academic labour have resulted in excessive competition, exhaustion, desperation, plagiarism, and the theft of ideas—all of which are often unevenly racialised and gendered. We reflect on our ambitions to do more than replicate existing models for knowledge creation and offer reflections on our ongoing work to centre the plurality of projects breaking or delinking from established canons and orders of knowledge to open up possibilities for self-determination, liveable futures, and worldmaking otherwise.
Eyob Balcha Gebremariam (University of Bristol)
Paper short abstract:
While recognising the enormity and complexity of various challenges, I want to focus on my experience, specifically on what I call “triple hurdles”. The triple hurdles are epistemic orientation, language, and passport positionality.
Paper long abstract:
The challenges associated with epistemic orientations emanate from the hegemony of Eurocentric epistemologies in development studies. The universalist claim and hegemony of Euro-centred knowledge frameworks, theories and concepts contribute to disregarding and discrediting ways of knowing and interpreting the world I have been exposed to growing up in Ethiopia. Hence, bringing non-Eurocentric epistemic orientations into my teaching and research is always challenging. The second hurdle concerning language concerns the normalisation of English as the only language for producing academic output recognised in evaluating my academic success and achievements. The incentives to produce academic outputs in languages other than English are almost non-existent. As a result, aspiring academics like me are discouraged from producing knowledge outputs easily accessible by most people from whom the empirical data is gathered and about whom most research in development studies/African studies is apparently concerned. The third hurdle is passport positionality, where the nationality/passport of academics becomes a restricting factor for their social and physical mobility. This includes the expensive fees that immigrants pay to renew their and family members' visas and the massive sums of money, time, and psychological resources that Global South academics pay when they plan to travel for academic activities (such as applying for Schengen Visas). I want to reflect on how the implications of these “triple hurdles” can be further explored and reflected on within the context of pursuing social and epistemic justice while examining possibilities of reconfiguring African studies.
Sabelo Mcinziba
Paper short abstract:
This paper contributes to conversations about the reconfiguration of African Studies by proposing solutions ranging from funding models, methodology, citation politics, etc. even within the larger reality of asymmetrical economic power relations between the Global North and the Global South.
Paper long abstract:
The conundrum of the reconfiguration of African Studies is entangled with a whole set of other attendant problems mostly centred around the question of economic power as a base. The base of this power in economic relations between the Global North and the Global South manifests in the superstructure of knowledge production in academia that demonstrate these unequal relations. The calls for the reconfiguration of African Studies must necessarily address the waning power of the call of decolonisation that has been weakened by academic careerism, political correctness appeasement by those in power, managerial co-option of genuine struggles, etc. I propose a series of deployments with clear indicators to address some of these challenges as far as possible within the framework of hegemonic economic relations while admitting to the impossibility of reconfiguring towards decolonisation any academic institution without reconfiguring the entire economic and political system that governs those very institutions. Even with such profound limitations, there are a few the steps that Africans, the African diaspora and allies can undertake towards decolonisation. There can be no total epistemic justice outside of economic justice that (re)produce the very relations of the Global North and the Global South. The political economy of knowledge owes its being to the actual political economy between Africa, its friends, frenemies and enemies.
Peter Oni (University of Lagos) Ademola Kazeem Fayemi (Australian Catholic University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper contends that the asymmetrical power dynamics in knowledge production ‘on’ and ‘in’ Africa ought to be urgently addressed with some responsibilities on the shoulders of academic and non-academic actors in African Studies.
Paper long abstract:
African Studies, today, is confronted with a serious problem of asymmetrical power relations of distinctive epistemic kind. In addressing this problem, there has been an increasing call towards decoloniality aiming at dismantling colonial historical structures and epistemes that continue to reinforce disparities in the quality and positionality of knowledge production in African Studies. Desirable as the push towards decoloniality is in re-ordering epistemic power relations in contemporary African Studies, the question is: who sets such agenda and whose responsibility is it in ensuring its realisation? This paper contends that the power dynamics in knowledge production ‘on’ and ‘in’ Africa ought to be urgently addressed with some responsibilities on the shoulders of academic and non-academic actors in African Studies. This paper further argues that African scholars have a foundational responsibility both in designing new transdisciplinary paradigms of indigenous methodologies and epistemologies and setting agenda from within for the field, while non-academic actors like the activists and daily knowledge curators of indigenous knowledges have the responsibility of keeping the tide on bridging the power disparities. Some critical challenges such as existentiality and authentic south epistemologies in the realisation of the agenda setting and responsibilities mapping between academia and non-academic actors in African Studies are hypothesised and responded to.