Postcolonial Identities In Africa

Making a break with conventional wisdom in post-colonial discourse, this book explores contemporary African identities in transition. The contributors look at the colonial legacy and how colonial identities are being reconstructed in the face of deepening social inequality across the continent.

Post Colonial Identities revisits issues regarding the newer literature within the expansive African heritage of diverse regional and national groupings. It is poised at substantiating the uniformity of Africa in terms of literary and cultural movements, and lending some inter-disciplinary insights on the whole body of literature through twentieth century history.

Violence and Belonging explores the formative role of violence in shaping people's identities in modern postcolonial Africa.

This volume examines the dynamic relationship between the body, clothing, and identity in sub-Saharan Africa and raises questions that have previously been directed almost exclusively to a Western and urban context. Unusual in its treatment of the body surface as a critical frontier in the production and authentification of identity, Clothing and Difference shows how the body and its adornment have been used to construct and contest social and individual identities in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, and other African societies during both colonial and post-colonial times. Grounded in the insights of anthropology and history and influenced by developments in cultural studies, these essays investigate the relations between the personal and the public, and between ideas about the self and those about the family, gender, and national groups. They explore the bodily and material creation of the changing identities of women, spirits, youths, ancestors, and entrepreneurs through a consideration of topics such as fashion, spirit possession, commodity exchange, hygiene, and mourning. By taking African societies as its focus, Clothing and Difference demonstrates that factors considered integral to Western social development--heterogeneity, migration, urbanization, transnational exchange, and media representation--have existed elsewhere in different configurations and with different outcomes. With significance for a wide range of fields, including gender studies, cultural studies, art history, performance studies, political science, semiotics, economics, folklore, and fashion and textile analysis/design, this work provides alternative views of the structures underpinning Western systems of commodification, postmodernism, and cultural differentiation. Contributors. Misty Bastian, Timothy Burke, Hildi Hendrickson, Deborah James, Adeline Masquelier, Elisha Renne, Johanna Schoss, Brad Weiss

The Crises of Postcoloniality in Africa is an assemblage of transdisciplinary essays that offer a spirited reflection on the debate and phenomenon of postcoloniality in Africa, including the changing patterns and ramifications of problems, challenges and opportunities associated with it. A key conceptual rhythm that runs through the various chapters of the book is that, far from being demised, postcoloniality is still firmly embedded in Africa, manifesting itself in both blatant and insidious forms. Among the important themes covered in the book include the concepts of postcolonialism, postcoloniality, and neocolonialism; Africa’s precolonial formations and the impact of colonialism; the enduring patterns of colonial legacies in Africa; the persistent contradictions between African indigenous institutions and western versions of modernity; the unravelling of the postcolonial state and issues of armed conflict, conflict intervention and peacebuilding; postcolonial imperialism in Africa and the US-led global war on terror, the historical and postcolonial contexts of gender relations in Africa, as well as pan-Africanism and regionalist approaches to redressing the crises of postcoloniality.

The Fourth Congress of the Association of African historians was held in Addis Ababa in May 2007. These 21 papers are a key selection of the papers presented there, with an introduction by the distinguished historian Bahru Zewde. Given the contemporary salience and the historical depth of the issue of identity, the congress was devoted to that global phenomenon within Africa. The papers explore and analyse the issue of identity in its diverse temporal settings, from its pre-colonial roots to its cotemporary manifestations. The papers are divided into six parts: Pre-Colonial Identities; Colonialism and Identity; Conceptions of the Nation-State and Identity; Identity-Based Conflicts; Migration and Acculturation; and Memory, History and Identity. The authors are scholars from Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Bahru Zewde is Emeritus Professor of History at Addis Ababa University, Executive Director of the Forum for Social Studies, and Vice-President of the Association of African Historians. He was formerly Chairperson of the Department of History and Director of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University. Amongst his publication is A History of Modern Ethiopia 1855-1991.

Drawing together contributions from academics based in Africa and its diaspora, this work is unique in considering the situation and status of Africans globally. It explores a broad range of contemporary issues - from development and culture to linguistics - within the socio-political framework of Africa in the 21st century.

Postcolonial Nigeria has been the subject of many literatures that identify and interrogate the many issues and problems that had made it near impossible for Nigerians to achieve the anticolonial aspirations that gave birth to independent Nigeria. The rationale for this volume is to situate the thematic inquiry into the problematic of postcolonial Nigerian within the ambit of the humanities and its concerns. These thematic issues include identity configurations, aesthetics, philosophical reflections, linguistic dynamics, sociological framings, and so on. The objective of the volume is to enable scholars and students to have new insights and arguments about possibilities that postcoloniality throws up for rethinking the Nigerian state and society.

This is the third volume in a trilogy on identity, memory and subjectivity. Contributors to the book share an ambition to combine personal, political and existential dimensions in detailed evocations of the ambitions and vulnerabilities of contemporary Africans. Their essays aim to forge alliances between patient local scholarship and adventurous theoretical speculation that should inspire new research and caution against bland generalizations about African marginality.