"In critical moments in history, with abundant evidence to support my thesis, diasporan intellectuals have framed the discourse and trajectories of nationalism and transformation in host countries" --Falola
The framing of this particular intervention turns a citical attention away from the continent to the disapora but it does so at a fundamental cost. It reminds me immediately of the "import thesis" argument in African political thought. The thesis states that nationalist thought in Africa ultimately derived from Enlightenment ideas, inspirations and revolutionary thoughts imported from abroad via, paradoxically, the colonial education of the African elite. The import thesis therefore denied nationalist agency to the African elite and made of them mere parrots of European revolutionary ideas. Pieter Boele van Hensbroek has roundly deflated this argument.
Is this what is unwittingly intended here by the argument that the framing of the discourses of nationalism an transformation in Africa has been due to diaporan intellectuals? Solely or even mainly due to them? Is this the import thesis rearticulated?
I am cranking my brain for counter-examples. Let someone more knowledgeable please help me out here.
Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan
+23480-3928-8429
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan
+23480-3928-8429
On Monday, August 8, 2016 9:56 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Dear all:
I have followed the debate, and I actually sent a short private note to Farooq who started it all. I usually don't contribute.
To us all: what is the role of you and I in our location outside of Nigeria/Africa in this struggle? I see the language of "they" instead of "we". I see a blame game from a great distance, as we are some kind of umpires in a primitive wrestling match.
In critical moments in history, with abundant evidence to support my thesis, diasporan intellectuals have framed the discourse and trajectories of nationalism and transformation in host countries:
- the rise of Israel
- Belgian nationalism in the 19th century was constructed outside of the country
- Nkrumah and Zik and other Pan-Africanists from the outside, framing Africa from a distance. The very notio of what we now call Africa was framed my Du Bois.
- The West African Students Union in London and decolonization in Africa
Today, Nigerian diaspora intellectuals come alive when it is the Igbo-Yoruba useless fights that lead everyone backward. Zik at Lincoln and thereafter in the US did not see nationalism in terms of what those of us today now see it, in terms of silly ethnicities. Solidarity becomes compromised by mutual distrust—this one is Edo, that one is Fulani, and this one is Biafra, as these definitions were there since the Stone Age.
Are we just careerists in search of food to put on our tables or are we agents of transformation who must fuse knowledge(s) from different sources to create liberation tools for Africa?
Do we write as convenient Internet Warriors without digging our legs in the mud?
TF
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