The place from which we come shapes our experience and the self. When the place has been severely disturbed and for a prolonged period, when our experiences of our place and the self in the world have been violently and extensively interrupted, we may get fixated with the place, with its past or future. We may want, for instance, to return so that we can repair the place, and in so doing restitch our experiences and the self. We may desire to go back to make the past better, however irrational the idea of repairing the past appears. We become obsessed with the future of the past, with tradition in the present. Many places in Africa are marked by repeated, sometimes continuous, violent interruptions of experiences and identities. Some Africans who live with these interruptions of experience, with the kind of historical trauma capable of reconfiguring identity, can and do become haunted by the trauma of the past. The past is too much in the present. The question of the past of Africa within modern life thus cannot but be drawn into debates on African knowledge broadly and African psychology more specifically. Yet, while the questions related to what is African about African psychology are almost ineluctable, it would be incorrect to claim that African psychology has failed because it seems to be obsessed with the issues of who is African or with the past. That is to say, that African psychology cannot help us survive modern life, that it is anti-modern (or at best not modern enough). As I have said, African psychology has been around since the nineteenth century and is arguably thriving.

What troubles African psychology, and might make us see failure where there is a complicated history but also wellestablished African psychology departments, is of course imbricated with the fixation with what it means to be African, and yet it is surely also an aftermath of the lack of clarity regarding what African psychology is. The question of definition is unavoidable. It trips up many. Definitional issues are never fully resolved. African is irretrievably marked by coloniality, an immersive phenomenon. Europe is still in Africa. African psychology exemplifies the profound entanglement of colonial conquest.