The Postcolonial Turn. Re-Imagining Anthropology and Africa
René Devisch and Francis B. Nyamnjoh (editors)
This innovative book is a forward-looking reflection on mental
decolonisation and the postcolonial turn in Africanist scholarship. As a
whole, it provides five decennia-long lucid and empathetic research
involvements by seasoned scholars who came to live, in local people’s own
ways, significant daily events experienced by communities, professional
networks and local experts in various African contexts.
The book covers materials drawn from Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. Themes
include the Whelan Research Academy, rap musicians, political leaders, wise
men and women, healers, Sacred Spirit churches, diviners, bards and weavers
who are deemed proficient in the classical African geometrical knowledge. As
a tribute to late Archie Mafeje who showed real commitment to decolonise
social sciences from western-centred modernist development theories,
commentators of his work pinpoint how these theories sought to dismiss the
active role played by African people in their quest for self-emancipation.
One of the central questions addressed by the book concerns the role of an
anthropologist and this issue is debated against the background of the
academic lecture delivered by René Devisch when receiving an honorary
doctoral degree at the University of Kinshasa. The lecture triggered
critical but constructive comments from such seasoned experts as Valentin
Mudimbe and Wim van Binsbergen. They excoriate anthropological knowledge on
account that the anthropologist, notwithstanding her social and cognitive
empathy and intense communication with the host community, too often fails
to also question her own world and intellectual habitus from the standpoint
of her hosts. Leading anthropologists carry further into great depth the
bifocal anthropological endeavour focussing on local people’s re-imagining
and re-connecting the local and global. The book is of interest to a wide
readership in the humanities, social sciences, philosophy and the history of
the African continent and its relation with the North.
Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Publishers, 2011
ISBN 9789956726653
Order from the publisher
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