Nearly four decades ago, Terence Ranger questioned to what
extent African history was actually African, and whether methods
and concerns derived from Western historiography were really
sufficient tools for researching and narrating African history.
Despite a blossoming and branching out of Africanist scholarship in
the last twenty years, that question is still haunting. The most
prestigious locations for production of African studies are outside
Africa itself, and scholars still seek a solution to this paradox.
They agree that the ideal solution would be a flowering of
institutions of higher learning within Africa which would draw not
only Africanist scholars, but also financial resources to the
continent.
While the focus of this volume is on historical knowledge, the
effort to make African scholarship "more African" is fundamentally
interdisciplinary. The essays in this volume employ several
innovative methods in an effort to study Africa on its own terms.
The book is divided into four parts. Part 1, "Africanizing African
History," offers several diverse methods for bringing distinctly
African modes of historical discourse to the foreground in academic
historical research. Part 2, "African Creative Expression in
Context," presents case studies of African art, literature, music,
and poetry. It attempts to strip away the exotic or primitivist
aura such topics often accumulate when presented in a foreign
setting in order to illuminate the social, historical, and
aesthetic contexts in which these works of art were originally
produced. Part 3, "Writing about Colonialism," demonstrates that
the study of imperialism in Africa remains a springboard for
innovative work, which takes familiar ideas about Africa and
considers them within new contexts. Part 4, "Scholars and Their
Work," critically examines the process of African studies itself,
including the roles of scholars in the production of knowledge
about Africa.
This timely and thoughtful volume will be of interest to African
studies scholars and students who are concerned about the ways in
which Africanist scholarship might become "more African."
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