828winter 2012
Transcript of 828winter 2012
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Course Description :
From the anti-colonial accounts of the proponents of Negritude to the postcolonial
endeavors of contemporary africanist scholars, the historiography of Francophone
African studies has gone through multiple epistemic changes that make it one of the
most complex and vibrant academic disciplines of our time. In this course, we willundertake an assessment of the major formulations of these discourses through a
genealogy of its major epistemic shifts, in order to evaluate the actual state and
predict the future trajectories of colonial and postcolonial Franocphone African
studies. We will start our journey with the examination of the ways Negritude scholarssuch as Aimee Ceesaire marka radical shift from earlier francophone intellectual
movements attempts to show the perfectibility of African descended cultures in order toprove their humanity. Its major thinkers theorize a negro humanity, fundamentally
opposed to the universalist, yet provincial, modern representation of humanness.However, while early theories of Negritude such as those of Aim Csaire have clear
anti-colonial postulations, they develop, as Franz Fanons oeuvre shows, an essentialist
ethno-centric conception of Africa that functions as a blackened re-articulation of modernmodes of definition of the world. As such, Negritude fails to take into consideration thefundamentally political nature of black subjectivities. Franz Fanon prepares the ground
for the development, in the 1980s, of what is today referred to as postcolonial Africanstudies, the examination of which will constitute the third movement of our journey. We
will, therefore look at the ways African scholars such as Anthony Appiah and VincentMudimbe, acknowledge the importance of early discourses on Africa, yet insist on the
necessity to think of Africa beyond the dichotomy set by Western imperialist accounts.Such a perspective will lead to a better understanding of our contemporary condition
beyond the idea of Africa invented by European modernity and early anti-colonialthinkers. We will conclude the course with two major intellectual movements, namely,
the movement ofAntillanit inspired by Edouard Glissant and the one of decoloniality astheorized by Mignolo. The former questions any idea of purity as the foundation of
Africanness. For Glissant, for example, it is precisely because human cultures areconstantly becoming that the only way of understanding the present Caribbean cultures is
to acknowledge their fundamental and ongoing mtissages in what can today be called,le tout-monde, a mixed world that finds its condition of possibility in its plurality. For
the decolonial movement, on the other hand, it is necessary that formerly colonizedpeople actualize aradical liberation from Western colonial paradigms that haveconstituted the conditions of their existence. Even though the decolonial movement ismostely .. by Latin American thinkers, it can be applied to the African realities and is
very likely to be of African studies in the years to come.
Requirements:
Weekly written response: Each student is required to turn in a written response (at
least one full, double-spaced page) to the weekly assigned readings. In addition,students are required to bring interesting questions related to each weeks reading.
Responses are due at the beginning of each class. Late versions are not acceptable.
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Presentation: Each student is expected to do at least one oral presentation of a
reading.
Mini conference:
We will organize, at the end of the quarter, a mini-conference with students in
African Studies The best four papers of the two seminars will be accepted forpresentation at the 17th international conference of the International Society of
African Philosophy and Studies, organized by the Department of French and Italian
and the Department of African Studies at The Ohio State University. For more
information, please visitwww.isapsonline.com or contact Dr. Cheikh Thiam([email protected]).
Attendance: Anyone who has more than two unexcused absences will automatically
fail this course. Two tardies count for one absence.
Final Paper: A 12-page research paper is due the last day of class.
Grading: Your final grade will be calculated according to the following breakdown:Weekly responses 15%Presentation 10%
Mini conference 15%
Final paper 60%
Weekly Schedule
January 4 : Introduction
January 11: Ngritude et pense anti-coloniale
Aim CsaireDiscours sur le colonialisme
Cahier dun retour au pays natal
January 18: La Ngritude au del de la Ngritude
Franz FanonLes damns de la terre, Slection, TBA
Peau Noire Masques Blancs, Slection, TBA
January 25: De la thorie postcolonialeHomi Bhabha
Race, Time, and the Revision of ModernityGayatri Spivak
Can the Subaltern Speak ?
February 1: Thorie postcoloniale et africanismesVincent Mudimbe
The Invention of Africa
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Vincent Mudimbe
The Idea of Africa
February 8:Anthony Appiah
In My Fathers House
February 15:Edouard Glissant
Potique de la relation
February 22: AntillanitMignolo
February 29: MtissagesMini-conference
March 7:Mini-conference
Lits of books
Vincent Mudimbe
The Invention of Africa
Vincent Mudimbe
The Idea of Africa
Anthony Appiah
In My Fathers House
Edouard GlissantPotique de la relation