Ten challenges in reconfiguring African Studies

In: Review of African political economy, Volume 51, Issue 179

Abstract

African Studies is characterised by intellectual contestations and epistemic struggles. These have become accentuated in the context of the current resurgent and insurgent decolonisation of the twenty-first century. This article delineates and reflects on 10 challenges confronting reconfiguring African Studies, namely genealogical, epistemic, linguistic, chronological, theoretical, spatial (area studies, country studies), androcentric, disciplinary, canonical issues and resilience of colonial library. These challenges are posed as part of comfort zones (asserted and reasserted truth/common notions) in doing African Studies that have to be changed in accordance with demands for a decolonised African Studies.