The Idea of Africa
A Liberating Concept or a Western Imperialist Trope?
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23604285 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Reginald M J Oduor (0000-0001-7519-0433, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 47-61 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-13 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | African Literature in Transition : Volume 1 (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/9781009662376.005 |
| OpenAlex | W4415717284 |
| ISBN | 9781009662376 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
Scholars such as Wole Soyinka, Ali Mazrui, and V. Y. Mudimbe have pointed out that the idea of Africa was designed to legitimize Western imperialism. This raises the question as to whether or not this idea can metamorphose into a liberating concept. Nevertheless, between the 1950s and 1980s, numerous creative writers almost invariably wrote poems, plays, and novels that focused on the identities of their various peoples, while taking the African identity as a given in their formal academic ruminations contained in their essays. Consequently, this chapter explores the extent to which the portrayals of the cultural identities of the peoples of Africa in numerous literary works by creative writers from the continent, and the African identity taken for granted in the bulk of the theoretical works by the same authors, point to a discrepancy in their presentations of the nature of postcolonial reconstruction. The thesis of the chapter is that foregrounding the names of the continent’s various peoples in scholarship would acknowledge their rich and highly diverse cultures, thereby significantly mitigating baseless continent-wide generalizations. We can then still talk of “African literature,” “African philosophy,” and “African history,” among others, but in a highly circumscribed manner.
Cultural identity · Foregrounding · Identity (music) · Narrative · Point (geometry) · Scholarship · African cultural and philosophical studies · Human Rights and Development · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development
| Highly cited | No |
|---|