Thinking Africa: Shifting the Geography of Reason
Background
At the beginning of 2010 the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University launched its flagship project, Thinking Africa. The project forms an integral part of the department’s post-graduate programme and is headed by a departmental Steering Committee and national and international scholars (see our fellows here). The project seeks to unify a number of national, institutional, research and teaching related demands in a coherent post-graduate project that will, among other things, encourage post-graduate students to participate more actively in the various research projects of staff members. All the projects relate to Africa in some way, but each project has its own particular focus and approach. In launching this project, we are sufficiently ambitious to seek not only to contribute to existing academic work on Africa, but also to make some small contribution to critical attempts to rethink the study of Africa. It is hoped that this closer collaboration will result in peer-reviewed publications, either solely authored by students participating in the various research projects or as co-authored in collaboration with the project leaders.
What is Thinking Africa?
It is often claimed that knowledge is power or that power is knowledge. Thinkers like Edward Said and Michel Foucault argue convincingly that knowledge and power are inextricably linked and that there is no such thing as neutral or apolitical knowledge. This general insight takes on a particular urgency when one considers the field of African Studies (i.e. the study of Africa, its history, sociology, philosophy and politics etc.). The primary reason for this is that the systematic study of Africa as a geographically specific but culturally diverse entity has imperial origins. As a discipline in the global academy African Studies has its roots in colonialism and remains to some degree shaped by contemporary forms of imperialism. Accompanying this has been, what Jamaican philosopher Lewis Gordon refers to as, a racialised division of labour in which blacks have experiences that whites interpret.
There have been a number of innovative attempts to, in the useful phrase of the Caribbean Philosophy Association, “shift the geography of reason.” The most important of these attempts on the continent has certainly been the work of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Despite this, however, the broad field of African Studies remains a contested and fractured field with the deepest fracture being between modes of knowledge production that see Africa as object of study by epistemic communities located elsewhere and those that see themselves as part of a community of African subjects producing knowledge for their own epistemic community.
Add to this the globalising, neo-liberal instrumentalisation of knowledge production at universities and things get really complex. As far back as 1992 Derrida reminded the university community that, in an age of quality assurance and accountability, the primary meaning of “responsibility” lies in theorising the paradoxes (or aporiae) and themes that constitute the contemporary university as institution and the politics of knowledge production in it. Possibly the most fundamental paradox is the tension between the need to somehow consolidate the study of Africa in disciplinary terms (illustrated by the ambitions of “African Philosophy”) while the very disciplinary organisation of knowledge is being eroded by multi-disciplinarity and the realities of globalisation. Thinking Africa was conceived, in part, as response to three questions that present as different permutations of this fundamental paradox: What is Africa? Who is the study of Africa for? What is the study of Africa for?
For two longer descriptions of how the project is positioned intellectually, click here
The relationship between the department’s existing post-graduate programme and the Thinking Africa project can best be illustrated with reference to each post-graduate qualification.
The post-graduate programme
From 2010 prospective students are expected to align their individual research projects - BA Hons. research papers, M.A. full/mini theses and PhD dissertations - with the available specialisms of the lecturers in the department. Click here to see these.The postgraduate programme.doc
Notification
When applying for admission to the department’s post-graduate program, prospective students will have to indicate the field of interest they want to do research in. In addition and where possible, it will be expected of prospective students to participate in research projects conducted in that field of research in line with the requirements listed in the post-graduate programme link.
Blog
The Thinking Africa blog is online here.
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