conference

Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: E35-01. To panel E35.

Title of paper:

Author:

Harry Wels (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).

Long abstract paper:
Famous primatologist Frans de Waal wrote a book in 2016 with the intriguing title 'Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?' Given how superior people in general feel about their smartness compared to animals, the answer that De Waal suggest must have been disappointing: No, we are actually not smart enough to know that.

Now that science has provided abundant evidence that animals differ from humans only in degree and not in kind, to the level that we can actually do away with the binary distinction between the two, we can paraphrase this title of De Waal's book and ask ourselves as Africanists the question if we are smart enough to take this evidence seriously enough to start including non-human animals in African Studies as interdisciplinary field of studies (both in African Studies curricula and research)? If, given the current evidence, sentience is what humans and animals share and all other traits and skills only differ in degree and not in kind, are Africanists smart enough to find ways to include non human sentience in their research?

This paper argues that African Studies as a field and community of scholars shows mixed answers to this question. Some embrace the evidence as it opens up new vistas for understanding African realities; some find it difficult to imagine a 'level playing field' between humans and animals in terms of acknowledging similar and intertwined agency in both. Never mind the 'disappointing' answer of Frans de Waal to hís own question, in this paper I want to argue why Africanists are smarter than you might think in answering mý question in the title.