New Year Lecture 2023 - Prof. Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Abstract
- Abstract
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Each year, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence starts its line of annual activities and events with the New Year Lecture open to the interested public, featuring prominent speakers who address questions and concepts central to the Cluster’s agenda. After two years of Covid restrictions the 2023 New Year Lecture could finally be held in presence again.
On 12 January 2023, the New Year Lecture was delivered by Prof. Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Chair in Epistemologies of the Global South. It was entitled "Ten Challenges in Reconfiguring African Studies".
Programme:
Welcome address
Prof. Dr. Nina Nestler
Vice President for Internationalization, Gender Equality & Diversity, Chair of Criminal Law, University of Bayreuth
Introduction
Dr. Christine Vogt-William
Director Gender & Diversity Office Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence University of Bayreuth
Lecture
Prof. Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Chair in Epistemologies of the Global South
Description
- Transcript
- ladies and gentlemen and dear guests a very warm welcome to today's New Year's lecture on behalf of the University of birwood the last year has been exciting dramatic and it has shocked us in many moments nevertheless or perhaps precisely because of that we are looking to the future without motivation and with hope and we are pushing ahead with internationalization and diversification in the internationalization strategy this can be found above all in the areas of Cosmopolitan campus and Global Networks as University of Iowa we understand open-mindedness especially in these times as a core element of the University's Global profile today you're dealing with 10 challenges for reconfigurating African studies and these 10 challenges include genealogical epistemic linguistic chronological and theoretical aspects this is a wide range at the heart of the reconfiguration of African studies is the imperative of decolonization the recognition of Africa as a legitimate site of knowledge production and rethinking African studies but if you look carefully at the global Affairs today you will see that they are partly moving in the opposite direction new powers are taking foothold on African territory taking over knowledge resources and culture massive direct Investments lead to financial dependencies and some see this as nothing more than a new form of colonization and the Democratic part of the world defends values on African soil that it partly brought there itself in 1986 the African Charter on humans and people's rights came into force of all human rights treaties it has the greatest diversity of rights with 53 signatory States the chart is the largest Regional Human Rights protection regime in the world but the status of the implementation and the enforcement is still fragmentary another example the Nagoya protocol it is also proof of how science is trying to take a responsible path together with Africa making such a self-commitment poses enormous administrative challenges yet it is the right thing to do the vast majority of states in Africa have ratified the protocol and therefore many of you already deal with its standards during your research an Endeavor like yours today the New Year's lecture with a topic like this fits right into these efforts that you as scientists are looking for a new responsible intellectual and academic working relationship between africanists and African Scholars honors you and for this I wish you every success can you hear me now wonderful thank you so much good evening everyone season whether you celebrate Christmas or not please accept my the best wishes for a happy New Year hopefully a year for all of us at the University of byroid in Germany you know into these demanding positions here at the University of in the department of leadership and transformation in the principle Chancellor's office at the University of South Africa and studies at the University of free state in South Africa and I have to admit this is my personal favorite given the immense research between the transdisciplinary fields object studies and African studies as is evidence and gender studies African queer studies Scholars he was called education at the University in South Africa he's Associated at the department of political science at the Ferguson Center for African and Asian studies at the open university in the United Kingdom previously professori research professor and director of scholarship at the department of leadership and transformation in the principle of the chances office at the University of South Africa he is also the founding head of Team mafiji Research Institute for plus social party at the University of South Africa research network based at the University of South Africa and he founded this in 2011. South Africa including over 20 books to his name his Publications include freedom in Africa the provincialization and decolonization published with rubbish in 2018. and decolonization in the 21st Century Learning theories and true ideas again published with World age 2022 from the global South beyond the coloniality of internationalism this is in The Pedestrian book series and it is under review house is Apparent from the aforementioned Publications is a most prolific scholar of the colonial Theory doing the colonial scholarship in the transdisciplinary field of African studies requires persistence and vocabularies of vision seeing the uncomfortable questions are the ways knowledge about Africa has been produced and circulated and by whom in large production practices perspectives and politics is not a secret indeed the Dynamics of an Institutional is is one of the many aspects that Professor globugachini currently addresses in his Works laid out in clear and to the point language its own disciplinary locus of renunciation in history approaches tasks in addressing necessary diachronic and synchronic aspects of African studies with a view to eliciting much needed reflection and change which hasn't done much in shaping African studies but putting ideas of Africa predominantly from Global perspectives well simultaneously accepting and vibrating African knowledge archives with indigenous knowledge perspectives and politics necessary for the reimagining of African studies from African World Views world interrogations of colonial European and African epistemic monuments of History might cause discomfort nevertheless Professor necessity are critically revisiting established knowledge production practices and contexts in order to Envision members of African Futurity imagined and lived from African perspectives histories and knowledges in all their multiplicity and complexity and here I am reminded of feminist cultural studies ahmed's observation in her seminal 2000 article in the ethics studies reader when she unequivocally States a concern with histories that hurt is not then a backward orientation to move on you must make this return unquote but so much more to be said about Professor Chinese work I want to briefly pick out two aspects among the many things I have learned from him which have held my attention while working with him one particular feature is he is mapping out the colonial visions for African studies in the 10 D's of decolonization which he tabulated in his 2020 publication with third world quarterly the cognitive Empire politics of knowledge and African intellectual Productions these potential methodological trajectories interestingly enough but realize critical diversity principles as set out by South African critical diversity study scholar Melissa Stan in her 2015 publication on critical diversity literacy in the handbook of diversity studies these principles involve considering institutional Hobbies relations historicization contextualization and positionalities and they are implicit in the 10ds which they themselves would Merit a couple of PhD theses so one integration of the colonial approaches into African studies might seem daunting for many and it is daunting to me I see these attendees as impressive pragmatic mappings towards rethinking and reconfiguring African studies a certain aspect that caught my attention while working with Professor Andre these last couple of years is his epistemic and work Mantra of building a community of practice across status groups reflecting on our loci of enunciation recognizing that we are products of the knowledge production systems and context we have been epistemically socialized into learning to listen opening ourselves up to possible knowledges manifesting informs other than that of established canonical knowledge production norms towards the formation of such a community is that of the colonial laws which he describes as I quote a new ethics of living together economies of care a politics of conviviality and Hospitality as opposed to enmity unquote in his this is in his 2000 2020 essay on the geopolitics of power and knowledge in the covid-19 pandemic published in the Journal of developing societies affective gendered interpersonal relational aspects of care can be integrated into decolonial epistemic practices resonances of this reasoning in the work of late African-American feminist cultural studies and media studies called our Bell hooks who observes embracing Allah ethic means we utilize the dimensions of love care commitment trust responsibility respect and knowledge in our everyday lives successfully do this only by cultivating awareness being aware enables us to critically examine our options to see what is needed so that we can give care be responsible respect and indicate a willingness to learn elevating such a witness requires us to imagine worlds that transgress the current one we have first the notion that new Words Can Be Imagined through Theory and education but also that such work is hard and uncomfortable indeed I read Professor garcini's works on epistemic freedom and decolonization as an example of better hooks's historical idea that a quote Theory can be a healing practice sorry a Healing Place as she states in her seminal 1994 work teaching to transgress the idea of such awareness informing a community of practice might be a puzzling and indeed challenging Enterprise to many for whom normal production is often conceived of as insular individualistic isolated modes of endeavor leading to interesting ideas of Silo thinking specialization I see this as a necessary epistemic parameter in Envision in envisioning this cluster as a research community of practice in working towards African studies reconfiguring African studies in the frame of doing African studies with African Scholars from the continent and from the Dundee Express sabello I look forward to explore much of these decolonial trajectories with you and so without further Ado dear colleague I hand over this space to you from your teachings and having those necessary conversations thank you so much and thank you so much hey Christine for the generous introduction and the greetings to all of you it is really a pleasure to see so many of you here those who are physically here and those who are actually present in the visual space it's a Happy New Year and I don't think I need to do the protocols I'm not all that great with that but uh can observe the the deal of the cluster the Africa multiple cluster of Excellence she is here the members of the management board of the cluster also here and they also this lecture was not going to be possible if it was not for the support of my wife who is also here uh um for the first time I will try to project something I always take knowledge very politically and because of that I want to ask issues rather than to project to them but I will project for the first time maybe for the last time as well but before I do that I want to to read to try to read because I'm not very good in Reading as an introduction to what we're going to do today I want to try to read the issues which I think made me to think the way I think the way I formulated this topic about the 10 the 10 um challenges you know recovering African studies and I must say that when I was based in South Africa when I was based in Zimbabwe I never thought of myself as doing African studies it was only when I came here that I decided also to think about what is African studies that's one two [Music] it was when I joined here that I also began to reflect on what is reconfiguring African studies when I was in South Africa I was thinking more about decolonizing African studies not really configuring African studies so this um lecture is also a journey which is a reflection from me on what is African studies but at the same time also seeking to understand what does it mean to reconfigure African studies so allow me to begin and I will Begin by reading then I will then project I think one issue for certain is that term the beauty of Africa lies in its plurality in its diversity and in this Multiplicity some call it bewildering diversity diversity which comes in the following ways it is a continent with the 54 states it is a continent with at least seven time zones it is a continent with between 2500 to 3 000 languages it is the continent at least with the seven climates it is a continent with almost a billion inhabitants Professor chandigam kandawire also added another element it is a continent with the 14 million not mutually consistent proverbs that is Africa and perhaps it is this diversity and the plurality that make African studies exist is an attraction in the first instance and secondly as a site of struggles and contestations and today I will try to reflect on those contestations and that the contestations begin with the very difficult definition of what is Africa the idea of Africa itself is not just an idea that is not given to precision and the easy definition but it is in the words of tandigam gandawin a real and the tangible social existence that validates it as an area of social study but as a young field of study African studies these meanings and the conceptions are hard to Circle also as a young field of study it has diversity Genesis and the genealogies and these continue to attract research and the contestations I must not even forget about the fact that at the center of the African studies is the colonial package and the role of the colonial Library which continue to complicate and to haunt African studies the complex questions of epistemology methodology and the theory continue to raise unlimited debate in African studies there is also the sociology and the politics of knowledge which preoccupy the minds of both africanists and African Scholars raising issues within this very University raising issues of scientific scholarship that is neutral objective versus ideologically driven scholarship that is political and subjective then there are special issues in Africa in African studies the special issues of area studies country studies Continental diasporic divisions which continue also to define the parameters of African studies then of course we cannot ignore the power knowledge Dynamics reflective of the broader global economy of knowledge which produce and reproduce and even intellectual and academic division of labor then of course during the time we are living in there is Resurgence and the Insurgent decolonization imperative and this imperative has invoked a reopening of the basic existential and epistemological questions in African studies and of course they still yet more the gender analysis and the femininity scholarship has not yet been fully integrated into African studies practices and of course here we debate endlessly this resourcing of African studies which we Call funding of research and it manifests what Jose Cassie Zoe marks and the Eleanor ramagudu termed the pervasive structural coloniality in African studies then of course Martin and the West they alerted us to what they called the resilient and the hegemonic africanist Enterprise which continues to reproduce itself in African studies in short what brings us here today is a field whose past the present and the future are mediated by struggling the contestations and I will actually try to show it with you some of them and I think they actually sit at the center of the whole agenda of reconfiguring African studies oh it's so small like you can't even read laughs is this supposed to be like that okay okay I never wanted to thank those who who invited me to give the lecture because they gave me sleepless nights during a festive season so I thought it was more of a punishment than anything but what I will try to do I will try to reflect on on the overarching vision of reconfiguring African studies I will try also to distill a few matters arising as I think about to reconfiguring African studies then I attend to the center of the lecture which is the delineation and the reflection on the 10 challenges confronting and reconfiguring African studies then I will conclude I hope I will do this investment an hour the question of reconfiguring African studies as we all know is actually the overarching agenda of the African multiple cluster of Excellence and what I found out yes I was checking I went back to the to the application itself and I went back to the second or was it the first uh New Year lecture by the founding Dean a professor assessment and they eat in those two documents and then if I'm right I found that there are two core issues which are constitutive of the reconfiguring African studies the first is the structural and then the second is the conceptual and the in the conceptual maybe before I even do that I think Quantum image is clearly I thought I will go to a document where I will find really a clear definition of what reconfiguring African studies is and they also the tasks of what what do we do to reconfigure African studies but what I found out is that this group which constitute the Africa multiple cluster of Excellence they were clever enough to define the whole issue of reconfiguring African studies as a research agenda in itself so it looks like when the founding team was talking about figuring out how to configure African studies he was actually setting an agenda for continuous thinking about what reconfiguring African studies is but of course the idea was that there is clearly two levels of intervention the structural level in which the agenda is to to deal with the structural setup of African studies including the hierarchies the distribution of resources and the organization of research infrastructure and this was an agenda which was identified from here in pyroid before the establishment of the Africa in the Africa centers and it is interesting that even the thinkers from the continent they agree that there is need to intervene at that level which is the structural level and that comes clearly from sure security as though remarks and the eleanorama good when they also speak about structural decolonizing and they go on to talk about Distributing redistributing reopening material resources and opportunities institutions jobs titles professional recognition research patches leadership and the gatekeeping roles scholarships and the entries of admission that are currently distributed in ways that Encore and reproduce the colonial relations and then coming to the second agenda the second agenda is really the most difficult and I think the lecture today will actually focus more on that rather than the structural and in that conceptual agenda the idea was that will develop new conceptual Frameworks capable of addressing the shortcomings of previous approaches and the sum of the issues which were identified was the very conception of African studies the area studies the package in African studies the colonial package and of course that all these will require decolonizing and again they seem to be a convergence of that agenda with what some African Scholars are thinking particularly because whereby they speak about the issue of epistemic decolonizing which is about Redemption of World Views and the theories and the ways of knowing that are rooted in or oriented around euro-american Theory and of course another senior African scholar a question from Ghana but who is based in South Africa he spoke eloquently about that this agenda is the most intimidating it is the intimidating question it intimidates not only the africanists but it also intimidates African Scholars themselves but now I begin to enter into [Music] some of the issues which I think are very important as we think about reconfiguring African studies what I called the Imaging issues and one of the issues which I for lack of a better term I called the hescovision cost from Melville herzkovitz who when he became the first president of the African studies Association presented this argument that African studies needs to be objective need to be scientific they need to be detachment and he argued that this will be possible for american-based Scholars because one the US had to know colonies in Africa so it is not embedded in the in the in the colonial package two that tape because of distance they are thinking they are from America coming into Africa so they will be detached they won't be embedded in the issues uh in the nd3 because of that Detachment they will be objective and therefore they will be scientific and the way of such debates here within the cluster about this issue of those who pursue scientific scholarship versus those who speak will pass you ideologically driven scholarship and I think it's not a small debate it is a debate which actually takes us to the basic epistemological questions hence the importance of this slide which really raises the basic epistemological questions and they also moves on to how have they been approached in mainstream thinking and how are we are they being rethought in the colonial in the postcolonial thinking so I put them there in terms of where does knowledge come from what is the role of identity in knowledge is there any role of identity knowledge does knowledge have a geography is there any role of biography and experience in knowledge what is the role of ideology since they are talking about ideologically driven knowledge what is the role of ideology in knowledge and perhaps you can add what is the role of the question of time in knowledge and I tried in the second column to then say these are the previous Notions of a responses to this the idea that we need to be careful about identity identity tends to lead to subject to subjectivity and therefore it undercuts objectivity and the and the being scientific and therefore it needs to be a background it rather than projected and then the idea of geography that you know but for valid knowledge valid knowledge must actually be valid across space-time and it must be Universal and when it comes to biography and experience again that the issues of objectivity impartiality and Detachment and the disinterest needs to be maintained and when it comes to ideology that when we produce knowledge when we want to be truthful we need to be neutral so those even myself when I was trained as a historian those were the values which were inqualificated in me and in history particularly we're not allowed to say I or we it was assumed that once you do that you are very subjective in other words you must pretend to be absent when you are present and that is what we are trying to run away from now we want to know to say we are present We Are Not absent when we we produce knowledge so this is why you will find when it comes now to the Colonial and postcolonial thinking they bring in the issue of Eco politics of knowledge they bring in the issue of geopolitics of knowledge they bring in the issue of body politics of knowledge and imported knowledge is of course across even the previous uh conceptions of knowledge the idea that knowledge is political I think is accepted across board it it is accepted across board but these are the issues which which I think when you are thinking about reconfiguring African studies we need to go back to those basic questions I think they are very they are very important of course we cannot offer the answers but we need not to run away from them because one issue for certain for me to stand up and they claim that I'm scientific I'm objective the only claim the only basis of that claim is that I will hide who I am but who I am is always in me so I I think it's better to put them on the table and the difference between those who who claim to be pursuing scientifically driven knowledge and objectivity is only that they are more successful in hiding their identities whereas some of us we decide to be truthful I am Savage I am black I am from Zimbabwe Zimbabwe was colonized and I'm not happy about it thank you but before I move on I thought why I did not focus more on the structural issues I think even in the in the in the proposal for the Africa multiple cluster of accidents it looks like there was a clear thinking on the structural issues it looks like the structures have been put in place whether they are working well is another question but if the structures are there the biggest achievement being the establishment of the Africa cluster centers they are there now so I think if we as a as a as a Africa multiple cluster of Excellence if there is something to show is that structurally we did something we did them so that is the whether it works well or not that's another question but it is there so I thought that one we have the the acc's we have the knowledge lab we have the junior research groups we have the research sections we have gender diversity office we have the digital research platform all that is there a structurally so one of the promises which we met I think it is in that area that were fulfilled a few of them foreign I wanted also to argue that the very establishment of the acc's actually brings another challenge The Proposal was made by africanists if I can put it that way and by then when they were putting the proposal the african-based scholars were not part of the job and now they are there now we have the acc's so it means therefore the next task is a relational task the africanists and the African Scholars coming together of course their matters arising in between that and it is only then that I thought Cassie is so we and erolanda they were right that when we were thinking about decolonizing we need also to think about relational aspects and this issue of some doing scientifically driven scholarship which is objective and this issue that others are doing ideologically driven is part of relationality which we need to sort which we need to think we need to find each other across those two whether you call them camps or something like that so I think that's one issue which is which is re-imaging and then the other issue which I thought is remaging clearly is the issue of rate definition and reconceptualizing of African studies and I thought I read a bit during the Christmas and the and the new year period and trying to understand what does it what do leading tell to redefine and reconceptualize African studies because we put it clearly as one of the agendas and fundamentally therefore means we need to think really about a working definition of African studies what what do we mean by African studies from where we stand here um Christopher clafam who is not my favorite scholar but I think he raised an important issue when he was saying when you are thinking about decolonizing African studies we need to first of all to Define African studies maybe two levels the festival being dude are you thinking about African studies as an organized intellectual inquiry which is institutionalized or are you thinking about African studies from the basis of concerns what is it concerned about so so I I thought that was that that can give us a bit of an idea in order to think about how do we Define African studies here and and that that question also arises in the work of Casey and the hair colleagues where he says African studies is an interdisciplinary knowledge production concerning Africa or Africans and it entails scholarship in with four of on and from Africa and the African studies and the emphasizes this issue of Africa and the Africans at the center of African studies and I think we are struggling with recruiting that what does it mean to put Africans at the center of African studies and that is also highlighted by Rene odenga who says whether we are thinking about the field of African studies this history its methodology whether we are thinking about the socio-cultural utility basically we are thinking about the African which is the which is the subject of the study and I think it is important that we reflect on that in our reconfiguring African studies and we need to have serious debates what do we mean by African studies in the beginning to think about that I began to think about what is really at the center of African studies if you think about it from the perspective of the concerns and I thought the concerns which we need to take into account are the existential the epistemological and the Injustice issues how do we put them at the center of African studies and they I thought if we redefine African studies in the context of existential epistemological and Injustice issues what begin to reconfigure African studies away from its genealogy in in colonial and area studies we begin to reconnect African studies with struggles of black people African people African feminist struggles Against Racism enslavement colonialism imperialism racial capitalism and hetero patriarchy and in thinking this way I was working with the two a a feminist Scholars slavia tamale and the Natalie a turkey timali causes this question which I think we need to take very seriously and this is the question where she says who will connect to the ideological thoughts of racism colonialism capitalism sexism and the hetero patriarchy in ways that our children understand and the whole work of decolonizing at the center of it is that task of connecting the dots of racism colonialism capitalism sexism heterosexism in ways that our children can understand and this becomes important within the context in which there are knowledge is for concealment of injustices and that their knowledge is for regulation and they will need to be careful which ones are we pursuing we cannot use this idea of being scientific being objective in order to pursue knowledge of concealment we will need really to deal with the knowledge of Revelation these issues of racism colonialism capitalism sexism and hetero sexism are very important and they cannot be hidden under under the pain of being scientific and they're being objective and this is not only a pattern in my heart and mind it is also a pattern in the in the in the in the other African thinkers for instance Natalie etoke put it even more forcefully when he says in a world you have thought closes itself in language that strives to erase the sensitivity of existence how can we make sense of sub-Saharan of Africa diasporic life experiences rooted in suffering born of social economic cultural historical structures dominated by unequal power relations how can we examine the encounter with the other how can we understand a path towards Freedom forced through pain inflicted on the body pain that penetrated the soul how can we describe a subjectivity in which self-destruction and reconstruction arise from the traumatic experience people who were excluded from the universal family must face these questions and I think that's an important a question and she then proceeds which I find even more interesting when he says my process breaks with the habits that will have me speak of myself and the mind as if I spoke of another step out of myself for the sake of objectivity regurgitate the others ways of thinking in others rhetoric that I have learned digested in all frankness I take the risk of injecting subjectivity into my words and I think that is an important aspect to take as we think about reconfiguring African studies and when I became a little bit sacred here at the beginning of this year I then started the seminar series The Changing African idea of Africa and the future of African studies because every time I tried to think about African studies the question of what is Africa always wanted me so I thought it would be important to have this series where we meet think very deeply about the African idea of Africa as it impedes as it is at the center of African studies of course a lot of Scholars are familiar with the work of Valentino the African idea of Africa as well as the invasion of Africa but today is increasing idea that we need to move we need to progress beyond that and the modes of progressing beyond that is that we begin to think about the African idea of Africa not simply the idea of Africa whereby Africa is thought from outside and that those seminar series which I started were an attempt to begin to do that and there to be a mechanism to do that and then we had to actually opening them in April 2022 on the theme of Africa in theory and he emphasized that when we want to reconfigure African studies when we want to rethink Africa we need you to take into account the long journey of all the Deep histories of Africa before colonialism and when we're thinking about the African idea of Africa is a departure point in African studies we're actually also thinking about this African state for self-invention safe definition self-determination self-writing and remembering it's reading this for tienga the young men the young spoiler who was saying every time somebody raises the question of African agents I get very frustrated because when he says African agency and he wants us to focus on that his fundamentally saying Africans are not people because if they are people obvious it is obvious that they budgets you can't it can't be something which is Sage for that today have urgency if they are human beings they have ratchets indeed I also began to read the the latest literature which is being published and one of them is by a chill member in the federal insa the politics of Thailand imagining African becomings which also emphasize the issue that let's make Africa the departure point so that we seize hold of any options in the future and I think in the third was it the third new lecture by a professor Peter Cemetery from the emoi ACC was beginning also to say let's move let's think about ways of knowing Africa and the shifting imaginaries so I'm building on that to to present what I'm presenting today and what I'm presenting today the focal point is really on this 10 issues and nobody must ask me why it had not three hey why 10 you know to 20. so these are the issues which I decided to focus on I regretted when I tried now to look at one of them because it trained a lot of energy from me so the first one I thought it would be important for us to reflect on the genealogies and the Genesis of African studies the second one I thought it would be important for us as we think about we configuring African studies to think about the epistemic questions a the third one is to think about the linguistic question the fourth one this one now I'm so I'm selling out now I'm reviewing that I'm a historian the chronological question and then the 51 the theoretical empirical questions and the sixth one we have going to have a conference here on Specialized his thing and I think it will be important to also think about specialty as a as a as an aspect in African studies and then of course the long-standing problem of androcentricity in African studies and as well as the disciplinary turbines in African studies disciplinary fundamentalism people who wants to be in African studies but they want to also to to be permanently dwelling wherever they came from and then the ninth is the Canon the question of the canon in African studies and of course that one is linked to the question of the colonial Library so that's what I will quickly do and then I will sit down the the first one on the Genesis and the genealogies of African studies I think it would be important that how do we shift from the colonial genealogies there is a lot of work being done about so as a lot of work being done about the the African studies Association 1957 a and all the problems which cascaded from that which created the what a what martini and the and the westical the the africanist Enterprise but the question is how do we shift you from that I think we can do it very easily by actually thinking about other genealogies a pluralizing the genealogies of African studies it's not a singular genealogies it's not singular Genesis they are various um genealogies and the Genesis of African studies but the one which is dominant which comes from the africanist Enterprise tends to displace the other the other genealogies of African studies so I was thinking if we leak it with the red black reticle tradition but to we gain if we begin to think about it even from the continent think about it from legon think about it from ipadan think about it from Dakar think about it from darasalam think about it from maputo think about it from Cairo makerere what will we gain if we think about it that way and of course al-mazuri was already beginning to indicate that is possible to shift the genealogies and the Genesis of African Studies by looking at their Genesis in Africa itself where he talks about the Genesis of African studies in the birthplace of this study of African civilization in Egypt and he also links it with the work of the The Chronicles of uh Apple Abdallah Muhammad IBN batuta so he begins to say they are genealogies of African studies in Africa itself and we need to to do that so what I'm doing is really sort of a mapping of what we can do practically then secondly the most difficult even for me is the epistemic question in African studies and that one also it needs us to revisit the work of African thinkers themselves of course a lot of us particularly from the anglophone we we received him debate through the invention of Africa and the idea of Africa because that was what was published in English this one a I only got it now because it was published recently it was published in 1982 in France but it only published in English now and that's where he started the whole issue of thinking about the issue of the epistemic question in African studies and he was really thinking between two two realities one was the the colonial reality of the colonial structure and at the same time he was also thinking within the context of decolonization which was the search for the recovery of African knowledges and of course a what comes out of mdimbe is that he if you read him carefully you you end up seeing no no way out of the colonial Library but I think there is a way out of colonial Library as long as colonialism [Music] had an intention but it did not achieve all his objectives it means they are their species in which it was not successful and we need to think from those then the third I will move a bit fast the third is the question of theory and empiricism bifurcation in African studies and I see this on a daily basis here with the the research which we do whereby the data is gathered from Africa the theory we search for It in America and also in Europe and I think it would be important for us to think very deeply about also thinking about why is this like that I think obviously it is linked also to the political economy of knowledge but it is also linked to our own Consciousness that the way we have been trained and I I thought also immediately I was thinking about that I thought in the 1960s and the 1970s there were possibilities of theory coming from Africa both Theory and the empirical work being done from Africa and you can you can criticize the concept of neo-colonialism produced by chroma but he produced it within that context uh it was only in the 80s a 1990s where there was Risa population again when the centers of ibadan the centers intercars and centers in maputo they were all now suffocated because of the the major crisis which affected the higher education but I think still there is possibility to great Theory from Africa in that there is there a lot of theoretical Concepts from Africa I always talk about the concept of hybridity which is always given credit to to homie Papa that but it is there there is a long-standing tradition of thinking about hybridity in African studies beginning with the work of Edward Wilmot blyden in 1887. in 1964 and they're coming to the work of al-mazuri in 1986 the triple Heritage so you can see it is it is they and it is a pure which we can use so I'm just using that as an example and then the other issue which I think is important when I started I talked about the plurality of Africa how plural it is and the one of the pluralities is really the linguistic Heritage of Africa and we can't take all these easy corners of saying no English is now our language French is now our language and we have one on our own languages I don't think that that is the that is the way to go and the and again all those who argue that way they have attended to distort what the younger is saying is hostile to what he called to Colonial languages but in book is not saying that his argument is that he is concerned when the colonial language is replaces the language is used to existed on the continent and the secondly he is concerned about practical issues pertaining to children when they go to school when they are quickly moved away from the mother tongue and he is saying that it disturbs the normal cognitive process and he also talks about the language that but when you take language don't think about languages be a communication it carries a so many things it is the Bank of memory it is the career of culture identity and consciousness and he became even more vocal during the time of the African Renaissance when he was arguing that his African nice as possible when the keepers of memory have to work outside their own linguistic memory and they again he has a new book now which is published this year in the language of languages where he is turning to the question of of translation as the language of languages that in order to connect with other languages I think it'd be best more to be translations not remove and replace and then the fifth question which troubled me and this one it comes also from my own background as a historian is the question of the question of time the question of chronology and the question of prioritization in African studies and that one also you know alumazuri said Europe timed the world so that the Greenwich Meridian chimed with the universal hour and he was really beginning to talk about coloniality of time but what is even more important is why is it that in African studies who are working with pre-colonial Colonial and post the colonial interludes with the colonial is is a centrally determining Center and it is crazy possibly the single most disastrous epistemic effect of colonial tutelage and experience on our thinking and education which normal practically and the systematically straight jacket our basic assumptions along intellectually colonially neocolonial Alliance is the historical periodization scheme which runs from pre-colonial Colonial and the postcolonial period indeed then a the Congolese historian also raises this issue that this periodization is a is a is a technique of silencing and they if you you read the work of checked Appalachian silences in African history she raises very interesting arguments about but there was a time when African history was denied existence that it never existed right up to the 1960s and he calls that the Paradigm of of denial and then from 1960s the Paradigm of recognition and they say is you can celebrate the other and he says but they they carry the same logic by the time they recognize African history as a legitimate disciplinary area of that it has been defined in accordance with the periodization of European waste that's what he is saying so I think it is also important to think about this this question of chronology in African studies of course I don't have an answer how to do it but I know that it preoccupied even the historians who were engaged in the UNESCO General history of Africa they seem not they seem not to have succeeded in cracking it but it must still preoccupy our research they need the 60 issue which I think is also important we always talk about the issue of area studies is is defined in terms of the U.S using Africa African studies to understand these hunting grounds on the continent but we don't also think about the problem of us as African Scholars each starting where you were born every time he has that the way you were born in the in that we need to also think about it and I think Mahmoud mom then was beginning to to think that way when he was saying the one of the major problems is notion that every exploit you must cultivate his or her own local page where geography is forever fixed by contemporary boundaries and he went on to call this the intellectual claustrophobia in which state boundaries are conflicted with boundaries of knowledge and the consequently turning political into epistemological boundaries so this issue is not about just pasting boundaries is also to make sure that African Scholars needs to understand Africa itself Beyond where they were born so it is important that we we we we think that way as well if what what were arguing about the fall of the area studies we also need to rethink about this issue it doesn't mean that it is wrong to begin from where you were born but you must not end there you need to to to to move beyond that in the this affected me personally because where I was trained there was a tendency that when you come into history you are asked where do you come from then you say this rich in this region yeah your topic must be if you say I come from this region this is your topic must be there so it really reproduced the ethnicity in a in a in in a particular way uh and also this issue of thinking about Africa is because some of the the thinkers from political science they think the solution is comparative African studies and then we did a paper myself uh these men and the in the in the folk William on on the critic of the comparative African studies but I think odanga also raises another important area which we need to think about this idea that nowadays you find the fish in Africa China Africa Brazil Africa India Africa whereby a continent is linked with a country so the person is thinking that Africa is a country it takes India as a country but this is India Africa but India has relations with Zimbabwe his different relations with different countries it can't have relations with the continent how will you have something like that but the idea that you are thinking about Africa is the country it becomes the problem also which actually indicates that in comparative studies if we are not careful you'll be reproducing the same colonialities which are carried in the knowledge so that's one thing which I wanted to raise then of course the question of Andrew cynical question in African studies it made me to to return to that foundational takes a engendering African studies where there is a clear argument that if indeed is true that the majority more than half half of the humanity is of feminine genders this fact alone gives sufficient ground that any social science which ignores such a percentage is actually an impoverished science and this comes from I'm africanistic feminists who were actually part and parcel of course and they were actually explaining to themselves and they to the colleagues that it will be put in for us to take the question of gender seriously and in the actual paper which I wrote I really said a number of things about this book because it is very important in the sense in the way it was packaged and decorated if you go to it then you will understand that the issue of gender analysis the issue of feminist analysis is not something which you need to add or to think about after you've written oh I didn't mention women because then you ate one or two personally I would prefer to ignore them than to actually make an opportunistic way of just mentioning YouTube if they asked me I would say EG this one and that one it must be actually something which we create we inbuilt it into our methodologies into our epistemologies into our theoretical thinking and I think it will actually and the issue is not true that you are making any favor to anybody but as they say it will improve the quality of social science and it will improve the quality of African doing African statistics so I think I think it is important that we take it serious then eight I'm about to end is the question also of the of the disciplines personally I was trained in a discipline I was trained in in history so I can't then he claimed that I was trained in African studies it is only when I get out of the continent Out of Africa that the likely topic which I did in Zimbabwe becomes African studies and I think it will be important to to rethink that but what also is important for me is a African studies really we tend to pour from from disciplines this is why I I gave you the example of a sin and the rivulets and they after I had written the paper I then read one paper which was written by Apollo Champy's laser where he had various metaphors of African studies sometimes it is seen as marriage sometimes as you see the sea is there already and the issue is when I came here compared to South Africa I found here there is strong belief in disciplines there is a strong belief in discipline and it reminded me really of uh Louis Arrow got in this idea that we must be careful of what we call disciplinary decadence the ontologizing or replication of a discipline treating it as though it was never born and it has always existed and they will never change or in some cases it will never die even where we meet to try to do a courses on on African studies it looks like everyone who comes in his own discipline into that it's just a historian comes to do history and anthropology this comes to do anthropology there is no no intention really to to move beyond what I've called disciplinary fundamentalism of course it is very difficult for almost all of us but I think it is a challenge which we need to take into account um how to think about it because it has implications also that do we really exhaust all our energies in disciplinary debates or again we go back to the concerns of African studies which are existential epistemological and about injustices and I think also the issue of inter-trans multi-disciplinarity has not been successful in giving a African studies security as a field and the problem is immediately you put pressure on me on some of the things I can easily withdraw and say ah you are right I'm not African studies of History so I just go back to my to my to my subject no no no if you are right but as for me remember my historian and that means that at any time African studies can be an offer anyone can abundant and they go back to talk to their to their disciplines uh then lastly I was also concerned about the question of the Canon and the the colonial Library question in African studies and I think we need to also put our heads together for that one uh Tony Morrison put it very well Canon building is the Empire Building Canon defense is National Defense Canon debate whatever the terrain nature and the range of criticism of history of knowledge of definition of language the universality and the atheistic principles sociology of art the humanistic imagination is The Clash of cultures and the all of Interest are invested and in the in the book which we are editing with a with the Katarina Trump we actually Focus also on the question of the Canon in the undoing the Canon is the section which which we we focused only and I think it is important and the the issue being that the Canon at the moment is produced from the perspective of the africanistic Enterprise and it is produced by those non-african High Priests of the discipline and why is it like that they have access to the most recognized depresses they have access to all those generals which are said to be International peer-reviewed journals so then they dominate that way and I think it also links with the colonial Library which sustains it and the issue is they are African school as well already for a long time trying to break out of this and I'm reading the work of uh toyin falola particularly I would refer to a number of you to his idea of ritual archives the autoethnography as he continued to search for and I want to conclude by saying all I'm trying to do here I've just made Drew a map of the issues which we need to take into account secondly I tried to be sectoral in in the issues which I mapped out but the bottom line was to provoke thinking rethinking and then thinking of African studies as part and parcel of advancing the agenda of recovery in African studies and secondly I wanted also of course to identify the domains in which we can practically intervene and of course if anything I was also attempting to say there is needed to redefine and reconceptualize African studies linking it with black African afro-feminist struggles as a field upon of struggles and of course if anything if I raised more questions than answers Let It Be rethinking thinking and unthinking is always through questions but what I think I also did I was thinking along with African Scholars who are thinking from Africa thank you so much no he wanted to run away but I didn't let him I think we still have time for questions we just need to find the microphone are there any questions that anyone would like to pose yes please thank you for the third provoking presentation that you've given us for me I think my challenge is that a I guess when we're pointing at these different genealogies for me they seem to be doing different things uh the pan-africanism genealogy versus the African studies genealogy and again as you said you disadvocated it then very nicely and spoke about the area studies genealogy which seems to be doing something very different and when you go to the US and you go to the African studies conference you'll only see Euro Americans you won't see African-Americans and when you go to an African-American studies conference you'll see only African Americans and so then you come across as though the ones are not interested in issues of Africa than the others but it's actually these issues of compartments compartmentalization and how they work in the field so I also wanted to think about whether for example when you think about older thinkers before our Modern Age when you think of people like Augustine since Augustine Central Casting and people like turtleian and Euclid all these people were African Scholars in a way but their writings were considered part of a Greek tradition a Roman tradition Etc or whether we want to even think of people like even batuta he spoke about or people like Ivan Cena who one might consider part of and his Islamic age so I I think about whether this preoccupation on Africa when the methods and tools that we are actually using are in fact of a western tradition and as as though and that Africans find themselves in a political impasse because we cannot risk isolationism because isolationism would mean that we're excluded from the peer review mechanisms and accesses to the libraries that you mentioned that give us access to a global movement of thoughts and ideas and so and I wonder if uh African reconfiguring African studies has a risk to it of of something that we asked and as Africans are not yet willing to undergo that's my comment question maybe I take about three or so questions thanks a lot for the nice presentation to say your name okay my name is Fester spooma I am from the share of social population geography um my question is related to the the the 10 list the list of 10 factors that are um presenting challenges to the reconfiguration of African studies I didn't see um or where will you place in institutional challenges and the politics of consensus signs where Whenever there is funding uh you see the people working on their projects are socialized to agree on the scope of the research and even though they disagree because of the research funding conditionalities they have to now agree on things the under normal circumstance will not agree and the key issue there is for example in the early 2000s when migration research when the there was funding provided the researchers are told to work on how to reduce migration so first of all there's a systemic challenge there the outcome of the research has been determined in advance and just to receive the funding the researchers have to agree and work within that scope I didn't see such a consideration in the 10 lists you provided there okay that's my question my name is Isaac I'm a junior research fellow I I want to clarify this issue of theory and empiricism that you raised I mean are you Theory and empiricism that you talked about okay are you on uh I mean are you suggesting an all-out war on Theory from elsewhere why I asked that is because uh you might have an idea I mean you're investigating something for which you find Theory elsewhere outside Africa which better explains the problem I mean I I spent months trying to I had a brief conversation with you sometime about the issue of financial Technologies and there are theories that are developed in Europe and in the U.S which I think helps me to understand the the problem occurring in Ghana and elsewhere is that something inherently wrong with this I mean you can hear me let me start with you Isaac of course I'm not all out work on Theory from other places um what we're trying to do is to pursue this issue of reconfiguring African studies in such a way that what does it mean to bring Africa into African studies it means there are Concepts their theories need to come in if you arrived the question is how do you arrive at a poor I think that's that's the fundamental question which we need to if you arrive at a theory uh not this one of saying I was moving in the library then I made foco then I saw that is relevant to my work that that is not arrival attitude he what I'm trying to suggest is that let's not create a lie that there are no theories and the concept in Africa let's not create that lie but that does not therefore preclude you from using other theories even myself I use some of them from from from Europe depending the issue is when it becomes habitual that the data you go and they collect in Africa the data you go in the correct in Asia the data you're going to correct in Latin America the data you're going to collect in Caribbean then Theory you begin or Europe and you know them if we are doing that we are still reproducing something very dangerous so so basically I'm not like that word the all-out war in theory from elsewhere that's not what that's not what I'm trying to do I'm trying to to say before the world it takes us serious we must take ourselves seriously in the first instance and that's that that is the basic underlining issue and the in the in the if we have all these universities and all these professors I don't think we can create a life that a big country like Nigeria like that there are no theories which we can use to understand why Muslim family is the same to their children to Western schools I don't think we can need to go to France to look for bonjour for that I I don't think so there is there is a lot of scholarship which has been produced within the continent which you can answer that very easily which confirm that even more relevant then my brother there who's raising and this is the problem about numbers immediately I say to 10 I knew that it would be 11 12 13 14. even when I was writing myself I I wanted to add more but I said let me stop here I promised the 10 let me stick to 10 but the issue of institutional challenges I thought I will avoid it particularly if I was thinking about the the reconfiguring here because it looks like is part and parcel of um structural changes which I said I will avoid for now and then move into the conceptual issues but I think it's an important is an important aspect to look at then the question of it concerns us even if I'm raising this 10 I'm still very conscious that to produce critical knowledge it is not about consensus per se it is the pursuit of knowledge obviously leads to decisions but it sends us must not be a ingenious disasters it must be to census really on issues and you remember the the critique which the philosopher put about African philosophy to say but if it is a unanimous thought it is not philosophy and we had almost a similar challenges when we're talking pushing more the agenda of decolonizing particularly when we're in South Africa pushing the issue of decolonizing within universities let's decolonize that let's decolonize that and I was in an office where I was really the the commissar to do that if I can put it that way and whenever I went to the Departments I never expected people all of them to say yes let's do it this way in a university once you see people agreeing on one thing we have actually destroyed it so the issue is we we work through diseases but there are some issues which are actually existential which affect other people you can't say sexual harassment I know it's fine other people believe it's fine others don't believe it's fine those ones we need a consensus on such issues um they need foreign it is it is my wish that in the research which we do in African studies we dig as much in terms of genealities going there and they through that is not really being preoccupied about genealogies is also being a cognizant that in order to reconfigure in order to shift from the eurocentric genealogies we need to find other genealogies for African studies and the in the the issue that when we do that maybe we end up and I raised it in the in one of the slides I didn't read it when I was talking about uh modembe there were a number of warnings one is essentializing two is nativism three is what a children because you get wise in yourself I'm not pushing for that I'm not pushing for Africa to cut itself from the world anyway it's impossible you can't cut it it is already too too implicated in well the Affairs of knowledge a economy and the other things but what I'm I'm I'm trying to to do is that the domain of African studies and I'm not the only one there are many others who are saying in the domain of African studies but where are the Africans in African studies and how do we put them make sure that they are there at the same day remember when when we invited the a doctor go to the murunga here yes I did I I'm I'm not about this issue of of reconfiguring African studies he said I don't think I forget then he he ended up talking also about putting Africans at The Descent and then somebody from the floor raised the question about the controversy which affected the African status review Channel about atheno or what you call autoethnography and he was saying but this thing took place while Africans were there in the editorial board of the journal so what do you mean by putting Africans at the center and I think that question we need to continue to to Define it what do we mean by putting Africans at the center if you put them in the editorial Boards of these journals which are which educate keepers are they not being used to justify some of the dangerous decisions which are taken so so it's it's an important aspect but I'm not really advocating for The Cutting of of Africa from the world of knowledge I remember it was a Ali mazuri who raised it long ago and they said what we need to do when we're thinking about knowledge in Africa we must be careful to be suspicious of the state one but we must connect the knowledge to society to but at the same time we must not deconnect ourselves from the world of knowledge production so he put it in such a in such an interesting way and even in 1963 when the Julius became the first black uh Chancellor of the University of East Africa a what what is the other one in Kenya he also worried about this question which were raising the question of localizing but at the same time without necessarily avoiding what they call standards he talked about the standards how do we do it in such a way that we don't end up saying there are no standards there are some people who are more radical than me I don't want to hear the way to stand that I don't want to hear the word uh Excel is immediately raised that they raise the flag of coloniality in fact there is no civilization without its own standards of what is good and what is bad I think we had one more question um one more one more yes that's right that's almost yeah yeah there it is oh um thank you so much first of all that was a great talk I'm Munda by the way I'm a student here um I was wondering Professor that if someone is not in basically base in global South and living uh in the in the in the in the global North and train in the global North can that person play a role to give a voice to the voiceless so give back agency who have been denied agencies for long so is it is it possible that's an important question which is posed many times and I think it is an important question which we need to to pay attention to um I think when we're talking about the global South I think we don't mean a geography person as as those who are more complex than me they say there is a global North in the global South there is a global South in the global North so they are talking about Global South to mean not geography per se maybe positionality in the power structures that would be one dimension but I think the work of of Ramon gross vocal helped us to really think about that question which we are raising because he raises the question of don't confuse geographical location with the epistemic location with the social location so he says don't confuse those three and they if you confuse them then you will create an impression that all those who are based in Africa they produce it be colonize knowledge that is not true there are so many eurocentric thinkers in Africa who are more eurocentric than Europeans so so it's it's really we need to be critical when we're thinking about this issue of uh and then you have people like but he has been pushing the agenda of epistemologies of the global South even if he is a European of course it's a southern European Southern Europeans have their own issues which made him to think the way he is thinking at a list it shows that it is not about where you are located geographically which makes you think critically about the issues of power in knowledge about issues of politics and knowledge about issues of locus of enunciation in knowledge so my simple answer is you can't be best wherever you are best do Progressive work thank you okay I think they just went yeah that's fine me first or you I would just like to say thank you very much yes you can go sit down yeah so I also want to add a short word of thanks first of all to uh to this great audience in the room and in the zoom and I would also like to acknowledge who has uh done a lot of work to prepare this event and of course our Master of Ceremonies Dr Andrews thank you so much I think she has deserved an Applause and um Dr Christine folk William for her fabulous introduction and um I have to make a confession and I mean zabelo of course he knew who he was talking about when he said someone stole his holiday it was me and um I think whatever you delivered here confirms that it was the right thing to do so thank you so much sabelo for this uh really intriguing input that you gave us and well this is now the flowers foreign and you have all seen that we have prepared a reception outside and you are all welcome to socialize discuss uh have a drink and have some finger food thank you so much for making this a great New Year lecture
Origins & context
- Title
- New Year Lecture 2023 - Prof. Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- New Year Lecture
- Date
- February 17, 2023
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