Critical African Studies最新文献

{"title":"Colour-blind racism in post-apartheid South Africa","authors":"Ibrahim Steyn","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2269277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2269277","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractSeveral scholars point out that racism now resides under the guises of equality, meritocracy, non-racialism, and multiculturalism. The term ‘colour blindness’ has gained noticeable currency in international and local scholarship on racism and race. In the context of South Africa, while several authors are using the term ‘colour blindness’, very few studies offer a systematic analysis of colour-blind racism (CBR). This article examines how Whites deploy CBR in historically white universities, and it considers the relationship between colour-blind racism and neoliberalism in post-apartheid South Africa. The article advances the following two arguments. First, colour-blind racism is an ideological resource that Whites can use in post-apartheid South Africa to silence discussion about historical injustices; to resist interventions intended to address racial inequalities, and to express racialized feelings without appearing defensive. Second, colour-blind racism has proven to be useful to proponents of neoliberalism (White and Black) in their pursuit to erase race from the affairs of the state, and to assign responsibility for development and justice to the market.Plusieurs chercheurs soulignent que le racisme réside désormais sous des signes d'égalité, de méritocratie, de non-racisme et de multiculturalisme. Le terme « daltonisme » a gagné en popularité dans les études internationales et locales sur le racisme et la race. Dans le contexte de l'Afrique du Sud, alors que plusieurs auteurs utilisent le terme « daltonisme », très peu d'études proposent une analyse systématique du racisme daltonien. Cet article examine comment les Blancs déploient le racisme daltonien dans des universités historiquement blanches. En outre, il examine la relation entre le racisme daltonien et le néolibéralisme dans l'Afrique du Sud post-apartheid. L'article avance les deux arguments suivants. Tout d’abord, le racisme daltonien est une ressource idéologique que les Blancs peuvent utiliser dans l'Afrique du Sud post-apartheid pour faire taire les discussions sur les injustices historiques, résister aux interventions visant à remédier aux inégalités raciales et exprimer des sentiments racialisés sans apparaître sur la défensive. Par ailleurs, le racisme daltonien s'est avéré utile aux partisans du néolibéralisme (blancs et noirs) dans leur quête d'effacer la race des affaires de l'État et d'attribuer la responsabilité du développement et de la justice au marché.Keywords: colour-blind racismneoliberalismracial inequalityindividualismuniversalismMots clés: Racisme daltoniennéolibéralismeinégalité racialeindividualismeuniversalisme AcknowledgmentProfessor Aziz Choudry made invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article. Sadly, Professor Choudry passed away in 2021. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their comments on previous drafts of the article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The DA is current","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"112 12","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135012352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A criticism of the notions of Nwansa and Nwanju in conversational approach to African philosophy","authors":"Maduka Enyimba","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2270589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2270589","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThis paper undertakes a critical exposé of the nature of the notions of Nwansa and Nwanju in the conversational approach to African philosophy. Conversational thinking is a philosophical method that allows individual thinkers to engage with each other philosophically on phenomenological issues. It is a formal, intellectual exercise orchestrated by philosophical reasoning in which critical and rigorous questioning creatively unveils new concepts from old ones. I reveal the limitations of this approach as articulated by Jonathan Chimakonam in his contribution to the methodological issues in African philosophy. In doing so, I demonstrate that these limitations are present, in part, in Chimakonam's unclear distinction between conversationalism on the one hand, and Socratic-Hegelian dialectics on the other hand. I also show that Chimakonam's claim that the engagement between Nwansa and Nwanju in conversational relationship does not result in a synthesis but, rather, perpetuates the reshuffling of thesis and anti-thesis, raises questions on the conversational nature of conversationalism, and poses a challenge when applied to existential situations. I argue that conversational philosophy should be perceived as a reconstruction of Socratic-Hegelian Dialectics or a tacit improvement of it. It is, for this reason, I conclude that despite its limitations, a conversational approach through the dynamics of Nwansa and Nwanju is still significant in the development of contemporary African philosophy and in the management of some ideological issues confronting the African philosophical project.Cet article entreprend un exposé critique de la nature des notions de Nwansa et Nwanju dans l’approche conversationnelle de la philosophie africaine. La pensée conversationnelle est une méthode philosophique qui permet aux penseurs individuels de s’engager ensemble philosophiquement sur des questions phénoménologiques. Il s’agit d’un exercice formel et intellectuel orchestré par un raisonnement philosophique dans lequel un questionnement critique et rigoureux dévoile de manière créative de nouveaux concepts à partir d’anciens. Je révèle les limites de cette approche articulées par Jonathan Chimakonam dans sa contribution aux enjeux méthodologiques de la philosophie africaine. Ce faisant, je démontre que ces limites sont présentes, en partie, dans la distinction peu claire de Chimakonam entre le conversationnalisme d’une part, et la dialectique socratique-hégélienne d’autre part. Je montre également que l’argument de Chimakonam sur l’engagement entre nwansa et nwanju dans une relation conversationnelle n’aboutit pas à une synthèse, mais perpétue au contraire le remaniement des questions de thèse et d’antithèse sur la nature conversationnelle du conversationnalisme et constitue un défi lorsqu’il est appliqué aux situations existentielles. Je soutiens que la philosophie conversationnelle devrait être perçue comme une reconstruction de la dialectique socratique-hégélie","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134905836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ‘iron donkey’: the social lives of bicycles in northern Uganda, 1903–2015","authors":"Patrick William Otim","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2252687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2252687","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThis article investigates the history of bicycles – one of the most common technologies – in Acholiland, northern Uganda. Bicycles are among the most common means of transportation in this region, where people are recovering from a brutal armed conflict between the Ugandan government and the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (1987–2006). People who own bicycles in Acholiland often speak of them as local objects. Some owners have even given their bicycles indigenous names. Others have modified their bicycles to fit their worldviews, radically changing the appearance of the bicycles. Examining the history of this ubiquitous technology in northern Uganda unlocks stories of everyday peoples previously unknown to scholars. This article recounts stories of the diffusion of technology in the region, the spread of Christianity and colonial rule, and, most importantly, the domestication of foreign technologies – making them uniquely African.L’ «âne de fer » : les vies sociales des bicyclettes au Nord de l’Ouganda, 1903–2015Cet article explore l'histoire des bicyclettes – l'une des technologies les plus courantes – dans l'Acholiland, au Nord de l'Ouganda. Les vélos font partie des moyens de transport les plus courants dans cette région, où les gens se remettent d'un violent conflit armé entre le gouvernement ougandais et les rebelles de l'Armée de résistance du Seigneur (1987-2006). Les personnes qui possèdent des vélos dans l'Acholiland en parlent souvent comme d'objets locaux. Certains propriétaires ont même donné des noms à leurs bicyclettes indigènes. D'autres ont modifié leurs vélos pour s'adapter à leur vision du monde, changeant radicalement l'apparence des vélos. L'examen de l'histoire de cette technologie omniprésente dans le Nord de l'Ouganda révèle des histoires de peuples ordinaires jusqu'alors inconnues des universitaires. Plus précisément, l'article raconte des histoires sur la diffusion de la technologie dans la région, la propagation du christianisme et de la domination coloniale et, plus important encore, la domestication des technologies étrangères – en les rendant africaines à leur manière.Keywords: bicyclestechnologyAcholiAcholilandshrinesdomesticationMots clés: : bicyclettestechnologieAcholiAcholilandsanctuairesdomestication Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Patrick Otim, ‘Dissertation Fieldnotes,’ 2013.2 The only studies on bicycles I could find are McCracken Citation2012; Ranger Citation2003; Hunt Citation1999; Hunt Citation1994.3 See Letter of A. B. Lloyd in Patiko, 1904–1908 archived at The Comboni Missionaries House Library in Gulu, Uganda, hereafter CMHLG/.4 CMHLG/312: A. L. Kitching, 1904–1908.5 CMHLG/312: A. L. Kitching, 1904–1908.6 CMHLG/312: A. L. Kitching, 1904–1908.7 CMHLG/001: Visit to Patigo, 1904.8 CMHLG/002: A. B. Lloyd in Patiko, 1904–1908.9 CMHLG/1435: The Letters of A. B. Lloyd and A. L. Kitching, 1904–1908.10 CMHLG/312: A. L. Kitching, 1904–1908.11 ","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"139 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135436959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hybrid ‘Authenticities’ in youth popular culture: performing costume and identity in the work of South Africa’s Sho Madjozi","authors":"Owen Seda, M. S. Manyeneng","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2227293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2227293","url":null,"abstract":"The professional stage act of one of South Africa’s newest musical prodigies, Sho Madjozi, may be analysed as a quintessential Afropolitan example of the innovative and hybrid combination of music, costume, and dance in urban youth popular culture in Africa. This paper analyses the dynamic intersection between costume, music, and dance, presenting it as a crucial site where urban youth popular culture can reimagine tradition, while simultaneously demonstrating that contemporary African cultural identities exist in a constant state of flux. The paper borrows from scholarly insights on hybridity, identity, the Afropolitan and popular culture, as well as other writings in youth agency and popular culture, to argue that South Africa’s Sho Madjozi belongs with a tradition of contemporary urban youth performance culture that continuously resurrects and destabilises elements of the past as it reimagines the future. Sho Madjozi’s unique style as a rap artist in Tsonga is presented as an illustration of the progressive role that contemporary urban youths in Africa can play as proponents of cultural preservation, even as they stand at the cross-roads between the old and the new.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"133 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86333727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ancestral rendezvous: leveraging the San culture in Botswana contemporary theatre","authors":"Connie Rapoo","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2247270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2247270","url":null,"abstract":"Young producers of popular culture in Africa are positioned at the ironic axis of lack and luxury. Enticed by the lure of hope, these cultural producers are cashing in on the power of new media and popular culture as creative resistance to marginalisation and a highway to self-assertion. Building on Karen Barber’s notion of creative expressions as ‘social facts,’ this paper examines the theatre of Moratiwa Molema as a performative articulation of young people’s desires for alternative African futures. Molema’s play, The Rebirth of the Ostrich, and her short cyborg semiotic film, The Cosmic Egg, are illustrative of how young people reassemble narratives of the past to create imagined and futuristic landscapes within which they can participate productively. In the play, African tradition meets postmodern technology to symbolise hybrid interconnectivities between genres, genders, and genealogies of African-ness. The Cosmic Egg expresses Afrocyborg consciousness. The film is part of The Afrocyborg Virtual Reality Film Collective, a cinematic initiative based in South Africa that seeks to reinterpret and represent African mythologies through Afrofuturistic lenses. Molema deploys the aesthetics of cyborg semiotics to create a post-modern representation of Botswana history and forms of identification that exemplify futuristic alternative experiences of citizenship for Botswana youth. She borrows tropes of origin from the Tswana and San people of Botswana and conjoins these with Greek performance aesthetics to imagine and articulate possibilities for the current young and future generations. These works elaborate on how young African citizens express discontent with the lingering legacies of colonialism, but most importantly how young artists of African popular culture reimagine emancipatory practices and strategies for political change. In this paper, I argue that Molema’s creative work epitomises the use of popular culture by African youth to express the pressures, pleasure, and power of the marginalised generation.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86980750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Journeying into the experiences of persons accused of witchcraft: rethinking development theory and practice","authors":"M. Mabefam","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2232052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2232052","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"68 3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90832428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The development of a smart political moral economy in Africa: discourse, legitimization, disciplining, and hegemony","authors":"P. Bloom","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2200012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2200012","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uses and expands the concept of a ‘ political moral economy ’ to better understand elite attempts to justify and promote capitalist development strategies linked to the proliferation of ‘ smart technologies ’ such as big data, mobile communications, and the construction of hi-tech cities. Drawing on an Ideology and Discourse analysis perspective on hegemony introduced by Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, it aims to show how market-based ‘ smart development ’ across the African continent have discursively incorporate resistance moralities associated with popular critiques of elite corruption, foreign exploitation, and local economic marginalization for its overall political success. To do so, it will focus on the case of ‘ Leapfrogging development ’ discourses and the planned construction of the Technopolis Konza in Kenya. The key advance of this article is showing how dominant ideologies – and the domestic and foreign regimes of elite power they support – can be strengthened through processes of ‘ moral legitimisation ’ and ‘ moral disciplining ’ . Speci fi cally, this moral dimension of hegemony involves the ongoing incorporation and strategic redeployment of existing and emergent normative discourses for the purpose of providing political legitimacy to these governing ideologies and further attempting to normatively regulate populations in accordance with their core values and interests – even in the face of their practical and ongoing failures as policies.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88751777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hauntings of the metaphysical empire? Anthroponomic patterns in contemporary Zimbabwe","authors":"Tendai Mangena, Alice Mitchell","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2232053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2232053","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"98 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75924168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reconfiguring African Studies, reconfiguring economics: centring intersectionality and social stratification","authors":"Stefan Ouma, Christine Vogt–William, F. Obeng-Odoom, A. Oduro, Tanita J. Lewis, Lebohang Liepollo Pheko, S. Stevano, I. Kvangraven","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2226774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2226774","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88399513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Subverting the hegemony of Western ‘theological’ and cultural domination: King Moshoeshoe I and ‘hidden transcripts’ of resistance","authors":"P. Leshota, M. Mushonga","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2023.2208688","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2023.2208688","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88798721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}