Articles · Vol. 33 No. 1 (2008): Africa Development: Special Issue The Politics of Knowledge Production in Africa - Nurturing the Fourth Generation

Thoughts on Intellectual and Institutional Links Between African and Black Studies

  • Godwin R. Murunga
    Godwin R. Murunga
    Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.
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Vol. 33 · 2008 No. 1 Africa Development: Special Issue The Politics of Knowledge Production in Africa - Nurturing the Fourth Generation AD

Abstract

Black identity and nationalism in the civil rights era were forged through trans- Atlantic and Pan-African solidarity. Both African and African-American intel- lectuals and institutions played key roles in Pan-African nationalism and the sustenance of civil rights struggles across the Atlantic. However, in the 1970s onwards, these Pan-African links were subverted by vertical dialogues between western, especially white, ‘experts’ of Africa and Africans; a dialogue that was skewed in favour of Africanist paradigms and knowledge because of the obvi- ous unequal distribution of intellectual resources in favour of white researchers in the global North. This shift was also matched by the preponderance of nega- tive themes about Africa, an increasing amount of ignorance in the west of the realities in Africa and the treatment of Africa as a mere object of curiosity and theory testing. This paper locates the growing ‘ignorance’ of African realities among African-Americans in the rise and dominance of Africanist Africa, its disengagement from Black Studies, the marginalisation of African-American and African scholarship (conducted by black scholars) in Euro-American scholar- ship and the de-emphasis of radical and Black intellectual traditions in the main- stream study of Africans. The paper proposes the enhancement of direct hori- zontal dialogue between Africans and African-Americans instead of the vertical dialogue between Africans and Africanists which has failed to provide an objec- tive presentation of Africa’s achievements and failures, gains and losses.

Godwin Rapando Murunga, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.

Keywords

black Studies African studies black people

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Author Biography

  • Godwin R. Murunga

    Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.

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