The Postcolonial Turn is insightful and valuable reading for scholars and advanced students of anthropological, and more generally social scientific, engagements with Africa. It admirably and constructively dissects colonial biases in anthropology without the bitterness that often overshadows such efforts. This is not to say that the authors aren’t critical of colonial and much post-colonial anthropology.
They are. But they seek to find value that underlies anthropological methods, perspectives, and theoretical developments, salvaging positive trends from anthropology that empower practitioners to interrogate colonialism in ways that elucidate the post-colonial turn toward greater and more nuanced understandings.
Their well-situated diachronic perspectives that come from long engagements with Africa add dimensions with a refreshing depth of insight seldom available from the sojourners who comment on African social realities from the perspective of one or two field seasons.
The contributors seek to comprehend ‘the many forms and instances of endogenous knowledge production in Africa’ (p. 16) from within specific socio-cultural settings.
These perspectives are refreshing as the contributions engage structural and material worlds as well as cultural ones in ways that situate indigenous actors as producers of endogenous knowledge and society, and emphasize the intellectual linking of field sites with ethnographic representations. In this regard the book brings to the fore critiques of Eurocentric and ethnocentric interpretations.
The Postcolonial Turn brings readers into contact with indigenous scholars as well as those who have long engaged with and embraced African anthropologies in transformative ways. The ideas and arguments presented are not necessarily new, but represent a maturation of thinking about African systems of knowledge that both challenge and complement Western understandings. The ethnographically grounded insights are instructive and at times humbling. Indeed, I frequently found myself pondering my own field site, and reflecting on how I could be a more competent ethnographer and scholar. The chapters admirably and competently explore how modernization is absorbed and digested locally to produce culturally situated expressions of modernity and social critique, thus challenging notions of unidimensional expressions of progress or development in both secular and spiritual realms. To be sure, in these and other ways many of the chapters (overtly at times) are at odds with post-modern sensibilities, which are seen as all too often supporting neo-colonial notions of centre and periphery.
The book mainly examines themes emergent in the studies of colonialism, postcolonialism, borders, and endogeneity. But the subjects are broad and varied, including issues relevant to the humanities, arts, aesthetics, religion and spirituality, crafts, politics, gender relations, transnational cosmopolitanism, and more. And while the contributors are mostly anthropologists, there are also sociologists, political scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and literary scholars.
There is an introduction followed by four thematically structured parts. The introduction, by Adebayo Olukoshi and Francis Nyamnjoh, does an excellent job of fleshing out and tying together the relevant themes and issues raised in subsequent chapters. Part 1 critiques intellectual colonialism by focusing on the work of the late scholar and teacher Archibald ‘Archie’ Monwabi Mafeje who, despite exile from his native South Africa during apartheid, upheld a commitment to and appreciation of the potential of anthropology as a social science capable of speaking truth to power. His primary goal, eloquently espoused and brought to life here in essays by Mafeje himself, Jimi O. Adesina, and John Sharp, was to create spaces for indigenous voices – an appreciation for ‘endogenous’ over ‘racialized’ epistemological underpinnings of social science.
The following parts build on this theme. In Part 2, Wim M. J. van Binsbergen and Valentin Y. Mudimbe dialogue with René Devisch to address ‘What is an anthropologist?’, the title of Devisch’s acceptance speech for an honorary doctorate from the University of Kinshasa in 2007. Part 3 seeks ways to transcend borders between scientific knowledge and local knowledge. The opening chapter by Theophilus Okere, Chukwudi Anthony Njoku and René Devisch, and the next by Theophilus Okere, argue for the creation of forums for integrating local knowledge into transnational, institutional spheres related to promoting education, state and economic development, arts, agriculture, and so on. The closing chapter of Part 3, by Paulus Gerdes, uses an ethnomathematics approach grounded in fieldwork carried out in Mozambique to suggest ways in which indigenous mathematical
ideas and practices can inform school curriculums.
Part 4 examines modes of expressive culture. An exploration of Tanzanian hip hop by Koen Stroeken shows how culturally specific appropriations of this style have served to confront the establishment in ways that speak across age, gender and class lines. René Devisch examines how Christian-based matricentric healing communes in Kinshasa strengthen the abilities of communities to cope with hardships and challenges through collective action that is rooted in a liturgy that lays bare the paradoxes and irreconcilables of Western modernity. Finally, Richard Werbner critiques Appiah’s construction of cosmopolitanism, through analysis of a funeral in Botswana, to show us how post-colonial moral passions and tensions become transparent in the rich biography presented through eulogies.
This volume will provocatively engage the most seasoned Africanists. It will also be a valuable learning tool for advanced students of Africa who want to understand how African scholarship has significantly broadened the perspectives of anthropology.
The Postcolonial Turn also compels us to be more reflexive, to account for both intercultural and intra-cultural variation and conflict, and for local systems of knowledge production in ways that complement and expand on understandings of the human condition and shape our models of both knowledge and consciousness.
Ithaca College
DAVID TURKON
doi: 10.1093/afraf/ads050
Advance Access Publication 7 June 2012
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