Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 09:31:12 -0800 From: azfar-AT-wsu.edu (Azfar Hussain) Subject: Re: Mudimbe On 25 July frank njubi wrote: >Azfar: >I don't think that Mudimbe can be considered an "Africanist". >Historically, Africanists have been Europeans and Americans who work in >disciplines like Egyptology, African Studies, Archaeology, etc. They are an >exclusive club of scholars with a long history in the study of Africa. >Initially many of them were explorers, missionaries, >conservationists and scholars associated with institutions like the >Institute for African and Oriental Studies at the U. of London or the >Christian Missionary Societies. Few Africans have been accepted in their >ranks. Indeed, there was a huge controversy a couple of years ago when >Kwame Anthony Appiah agreed to accept an Africanist award. Therefore, your >dismissal of Mudimbe based on his "Eurocentric Africanism" cannot fly. >Mudimbe and other Africans who write about Africanisms are critics of the >discourse. You wouldn't call Said an Orientalist because he writes about >orientalism would you? >njubi REPLY: Dear njubi, When a statement (or a term) is brutally yanked from its context, problems are likely to multiply, as has been the case with my use of "Africanist." If one reads my Mudimbe post carefully, s/he will find that nowhere did I "dismiss" him as being an "Eurocentric Africanist." In fact, what I was trying to say, in response to and agreement with Timothy Burke's post on the same subject, was that the Mudimbean afroconstructionist genealogy tends to bypass--or even fails to accommodate theoretically--the many particular and local Africas. Having made that point, I moved on to my next and last point, which precisely involved those Africanists in the metropolis to whom the many Africas pose real discursive challenges. But your post now gives me the opportunity to examine your definition of "Africanism," and also to see how Mudimbe himself envisages and engages the very notion of Africanism. So let's first take a look at a page--not a blank one! Interestingly enough, Mudimbe, together with Robert H Bates and Jean O'Barr, in their recent anthology called _Africa and the Disciplines_ (Chicago: the U of Chicago P, 1993), write their dedicatory page thus: "TO THREE DEDICATED AFRICANISTS--Margaret Rouse Bates, M. Elizabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, William McAlston O'Barr" (v). So it seems that being an Africanist for Mudimbe is not so bad, eh? See, he doesn't fail to recognize and honour "dedicated Africanists!" Understandably, Mudimbe will find it hard to accept your definition which seems to give a predominantly negative status to an "Africanist". Of course, Mudimbe has been critical of some kinds of Africanisms, but not by dismissing each and every version of Africanism as such. Also, your definition seems to delimit the scale and scope of Africanisms as understood by Mudimbe. According to him, "Africanists" were and are not only Europeans and Americans but also Africans themselves (perhaps himself included), as he says in _The Idea of Africa_: "I find it hard to believe that the majority of AFRICANISTS--AFRICAN as well as WESTERN (emphases mine)--would have fallen into that abstruseness" (44), although surely he distinguishes between "Western Africanism" and "African Africanism," and critically looks at the points of contact and confrontation between them (see _The Invention of Africa_ 166-168). But the point is, Africans can very well become Africanists, even if they don't have memeberships of the kind of "exclusive club" you speak of. By the way, Africanism is not simply a matter of "an exclusive club of scholars," but it is also a style of discourse in the way that Said's "Orientalism" is not simply Oriental studies at the University of London or elsewhere but is also a "style of thought," to use Said's own phrase. So some clubs might be dissolved over time, but the style persists. And it is with this style of discourse/thought that I was primarily concerned. Of course, it would be absurd to think that Said is an Orientalist just because he writes about Orientalism. But while critiquing some versions of Africanisms, Mudimbe ultimately comes up with a construct, with a geneaology which, paradoxically enough, tends to forge yet another version of Africanism. Regards. Azfar Hussain ############################## AZFAR HUSSAIN Department of English Washington State University Pullman, Washington 99164-5020 Phones: 509-332-4405 (home) 509-335-1803 (work) E-mail: azfar-AT-wsu.edu ############################## --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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