Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-fv566 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T15:47:39.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contested Boundaries: African Studies Approaching the Millennium Presidential Address to the 1996 African Studies Association Annual Meeting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Iris Berger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1856, as two young girls in the eastern Cape stood guarding their fields from the birds, they were approached by two strangers who entrusted them with a prophetic message:

You are to tell the people that the whole community is about to rise again from the dead. Then go on to say to them all the cattle living now must be slaughtered, for they are reared with defiled hands, as the people handle witchcraft. Say to them there must be no ploughing of lands,…The people must give up witchcraft on their own, not waiting until they are exposed by the witchdoctors.

…As the killing of the cattle went on,… everybody looked forward to the eighth day. It was the day on which the sun was expected to rise red, and to set again in the sky. Then there would follow great darkness, during which the people would shut themselves in their huts. Then the dead would rise and return to their homes, and then the light of day would come again (Jordan 70-71, 74).

Such millennial visions in Africa have varied over time and space. While some prophets predicted that great winds would arise, driving Europeans into the sea, others promised that wealthy black brethren would arrive by airplane from America to right the ills of white domination. In either case, the cataclysmic event would usher in a time of harmony, peace and prosperity. As the current millennium approaches, many scholars of Africa are voicing a comparable sense of crisis, a feeling that our understanding of the continent must be reimagined, reconfigured and reconstructed. Unlike Africans of earlier generations, however, we no longer predict a harmonious world emerging from the ashes of the old.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , September 1997 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amadiume, Ifi. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Zed Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjunctures and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Public Culture, vol. 2, no. 2 (Spring 1990), 1–24.Google Scholar
Asante, Molefi Keta. “More Thoughts on the Africanists' Agenda,” Issue, vol. 23, no. 1 (1995), 11–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bâ, Manama. So Long a Letter. London: Heinemann, 1997.Google Scholar
Bates, Robert H., Mudimbe, V.Y., and O'Barr, Jean. (eds.) Africa and the Disciplines: The Contributions of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Blair, Robert and Jordan, Josephine. Staff Loss and Retention at Selected African Universities: A Synthesis Report. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1994.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, Isaacman, Allen F., Mallon, Florencia E., Roseberry, William and Stern, Steve J., (eds.) Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin. (ed.) African Historiography: Essays in Honour of Jacob Ade Ajayi. Burnt Mill, Harlow: Longman, 1993.Google Scholar
Geyer, Michael and Bright, Charles. “World History in a Global Age,” American Historical Review, vol. 100, no. 4 (10 1995), 1034–1060.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorra, Michael. “A Cry, Without Tears, for His Beloved Country,” New York Times, 10 6, 1996.Google Scholar
Great Britain. University Grants Committee. 1961. Report of the Sub-Committee on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Gulbenkian Commission. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Lisbon: Gulbenkian Commission, 06 1995.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane I, with the help of Virmani, Akbar M. and Kemp, Amanda, African Studies in the United States: A Perspective. Atlanta: ASA Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert B. Area Studies: With Special Reference to their Implications for Research in the Social Sciences. New York: Social Science Research Council, 05, 1949.Google Scholar
Heginbotham, Stanley J. “Rethinking International Scholarship: The Challenge of Transition from the Cold War Era,” Items, vol. 48, nos. 2/3 (06-September 1994), 33–40.Google Scholar
Heilbrunn, Jacob. “Does Global Thinking Threaten Local Knowledge? The Social Science Research Council Debates the Future of Area Studies,” Lingua Franca, 05/June 1996, 49–56.Google Scholar
Herbert, Eugenia W. Iron, Gender and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Imam, Ayesha and Mama, Amina. “The Role of Academics in Limiting and Expanding Freedom,” in Mamdani, Mahmood and Diouf, Mamadou, eds. Academic Freedom in Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA Book Series, 1994.Google Scholar
Jewsiewicki, Bogumil and Newbury, David, (eds.) African Historiography: Which History for Which Africa! Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1986.Google Scholar
Johnson, David. “Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa,” SAPEM (07 1995), 46–47.Google Scholar
Jordan, A.C. Towards an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary Form in Xhosa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Jordan, Gregory. “Publications Focusing on Africa Disappear,” New York Times, 11 18, 1996.Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood. “A Glimpse of African Studies, Made in USA,” CODESRIA Bulletin, No. 2 (1990), 7–11.Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood and Diouf, Mamadou, eds. Academic Freedom in Africa. Dakar: CODESR1A Book Series, 1994.Google Scholar
Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1995.Google Scholar
Martin, William and West, Michael. “The Decline of the Africanists' Africa and the Rise of New Africas,” Issue, vol. 23, no. 1 (1995), 24–26.Google Scholar
Mbilinyi, Marjorie. “‘I'd Have Been a Man’: Politics and the Labor Process in Producing Personal Narratives,” Personal Narratives Group, eds. Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Mhone Guy, C.Z. “The Case Against Africanists,” Issue, vol. 2, no. 2 (1972), 8–13.Google Scholar
Mkandawire, Thandika. “Problems and Prospects of the Social Sciences in Africa,” EASSRR, vol. 5, no. 1 (01 1989), 1–17.Google Scholar
Mkandawire, Thandika. “Three Generations of African Academics: A Note,” Transformation, 28 (1995), 75–83.Google Scholar
Owomoyela, Oyekan. “With Friends Like These…A Critique of Pervasive Anti-Africanisms in Current African Studies Epistemology and Methodology,” African Studies Review, vol. 37, no. 3 (12 1994), 77–101.Google Scholar
Penvenne, Jeanne. “Paradigms, Pedagogy and Politics: Thinking About Africa in the Twenty-First Century,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 29, no. 1 (1996).Google Scholar
Personal Narratives Group, (eds.) Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Prewitt, Kenneth. “Presidential Items,” Items, vol. 50, no. 1 (03 1996), 15–18.Google Scholar
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. Orientalism. NY: Vintage Books, 1979.Google Scholar
Shohat, Ella and Stam, Robert. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Tunbridge, Louise. “Rising From the Ruins in Uganda,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 06 21, 1996.Google Scholar
Umar, Muhammad S. “Comment,” PAS News and Events, vol. 7, no. 1 (Fall 1996), 2.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Africa in the Shuffle,” Issue, vol. 23, no. 1 (1995), 22–23.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Open the Social Sciences,"” Items, vol. 50, no. 1 (03 1996), 1–7.Google Scholar
Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. “Trends and Inequalities in the Production of Africanist Knowledge.” Unpublished essay.Google Scholar