Manufacturing African Studies and Crises
by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Awarded 'Special Commendation' in the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa 1998. The intellectual liberation of the study of Africa is the battle cry of this forceful book. The author is one of Africa's younger scholars, in the forefront of research and thinking about the role of African scholars, and the ownership and state of African Studies; and winner of The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa 1994. He describes this book as an interrogation of African Studies, its formulations and fetishes, theories and trends, possibilities and pitfalls. He argues that, as a discursive formation, African Studies is immersed in the contexts and configurations of the western epistemological order; and the crisis in African Studies in North America and Britain reflects changing cultural policies as a result of the shifting ethnic and gender composition for classrooms, transformations in the global positions of these countries, and the crisis of liberal values.
The study has been highly recommended by such distinguished African scholars as Professors Mahmood Mamdani, Ali Mazrui, V.Y. Mudimbeand Adebayo Olukoshi.
Reviews
'Post-modernism and post-coloniality may still be in vogue, but this book inauguates the new era of post-pessimism.'
'... a provocative and stimulating book written by a brilliant angry mind. It is a challenge to the practice of African Studies and its political significance.'