conference

Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: B08-5. To panel B08.

Title of paper:

Author:

Tesfaye Wolde-Medhin (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

Long abstract paper:
The paper takes a relational/historical perspective to make a serious of arguments regarding the so-called postcolonial states in Africa. It begins by invoking the genetic theory of ideas from the work of Gilles Deleuze, to make the basic argument that the ideas underpinning the assemblage of institutions and practices, of which the current African instances are varying actualizations, emerged in the context of Africa's encounter and interaction with European colonial domination beginning towards the end of the 19th century. The paper then provides brief explorations of current language and educational polices of selected African countries from various regions of the continent with a view to illustrating and validating the above basic claim. The paper subsequently argues that these states of affairs have given rise to deep structural and organizational disjuncture between the institutions and practices of state apparatuses and those of indigenous knowledge and social and cultural practices. The paper further argues that this situation of disarticulation has far-reaching egregiously negative consequences for the resilience and vitality of, on the one hand, the African 'postcolonial' state as vehicle and expression of political community and, on the other, the vast majorities of citizenries as embodiments of indigenous sociocultural institutions and practices. Under these circumstances, state power becomes fragile and unstable, prone to the vagaries of regional and geopolitical contestations, ethical lapses and political and financial corruptions of elites, coup d'etats, etc., while local and indigenous sociocultural institutions and practices are left to wilt and die without the supports they need to get from the states in order to maintain their vitalities to flourish and develop. The paper concludes by pointing to possible long-term directions of changes meant to create situations in which sociocultural institutions and practices of external provenance would interact with those which are homegrown in a manner of mutual interplay, reinforcement and perpetual syntheses instead being one in which the external smothers the internal.