Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - New Book: Decolonizing African Studies

The Falola Library of African Studies.

Books sole or co-written or edited by Toyin Falola.

The state of the art in African Studies in the first half of the twentieth century?

A configuration enabling a birds eye view of this network of disciplines, from the standpoint of a single intelligence, at times in dialogue with others.

The only problem with these books is their prices.

How are most Africans-general public, students, academics- going to afford a book of $120?

At the current parallel market rate of 560 naira to $1 that comes to 67,000 naira.

The emergence of a  new Falola book for me is often like watching a new star arise in the sky. Glorious, but beyond reach. 

A solution must be found.

Tentative solution 1: cheaper printing and distribution costs.

Is it possible to postpone making profit or even breaking even on books through lower sales prices, facilitating more people getting the books?

Can these books be printed at lower costs  in Africa?

Can high quality be maintained at lower costs?

Can the relevant publishers be contacted to discuss this?

Must it always be true that scholarly books necessarily sell few copies, making it necessary to print few copies and sell at high prices, as I seem to have read?

Can Falola's books be used as a nexus around which enquiry can be organised in various disciplines, thereby galvanizing demand?

Tentative Solution 2: National Centres of Falola Scholarship where these books can be either freely accessed or accessed for a small fee. Reading on the premises only. No borrowing.

Can both solutions be combined?

Targets to be Met

A building to house these books. An existing library or a new library.

Staff to run this system if it's a new library.

Most libraries will want to distribute the books in terms of disciplines.

I'm not inspired by that idea, practical and valuable as it is.

I am inspired by the idea of unified encounter with the multi-disciplinary configuration represented by this body of work.

E Libraries and the Future of Academic Libraries in Nigeria

From my experience with social media in relation to Nigeria, the African country I have best exposure to, inadequate as that is, I suspect that e libraries and creative use of social media might be increasingly paramount in knowledge creation and dissemination.

Nigerian society has bypassed  historical routes of technological development to adopt technogical products coming after stages that did not flourish in Nigeria.

Landlines were never established as a pervasive presence in Nigeria. Poor systems management-of humans, material resources and their interelationship- that has often plagued the country's private sector meant that landlines were costly to maintain in terms of money and time, requiring regular visits from Nitel- Nigerian Telecommunications-staff.

The mobile phone has destroyed that model in Nigeria.

A similar strategy might need to be adopted for the culture of the library.

Acquiring library  space, hiring staff or negotiating with existing libraries takes money and time and requires managing significant uncertainties.

Physical libraries are indispensable but digital libraries are also irreplaceable and are more flexible.

An online Falola library, reading only, no downloads? 

Not exciting for me although it's a method used by one subscription service for scholarly books 

Social Media

How can social media be used in relating scholarly texts to social experience?

How can such approaches be used to drive book purchases or purchases of chapters of books, since that option now exists?

Thanks

Toyin

On Wed, Feb 2, 2022, 02:04 Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency, and Voice

 

In a long book of 690 pages, this new book takes on the project of cumulating and analyzing the varied conversations on decolonization and decoloniality.

 

https://www.bookdepository.com/Decolonizing-African-Studies-Professor-Toyin-Falola/9781648250279?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base5&utm_source=US&utm_content=Decolonizing-African-studies&selectCurrency=USD&w=AFCCAU966RCXDHA8V3TB&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0eOPBhCGARIsAFIwTs6GXOu_uQW4tdVAONbwRgEREch071GCM0KgLq4u6nLO-3jKMagIzjMaAgqdEALw_wcB

 

Decolonizing African Studies : Knowledge Production, Agency, and Voice

 

This book explores how decolonization and decoloniality provide liberationist knowledge to question and replace the hegemony of Western knowledge systems imposed on Africa. It critically examines the silencing and exclusion of subalterns in global knowledge production and the far-reaching implications of this for pedagogy and policy. As global power is concentrated in the global north where Eurocentrism and white supremacy validate the monopoly of knowledge and its centrality and universality, African perspectives continue to be marginalized or excluded in research, creating the problem of misrepresentation of the continent. It is to this challenge that this book has responded-the urgent need to eliminate the vestiges of colonialism in the academy and research methodologies.

Coloniality is seen not only as a historical phenomenon but also as an ethnocentric continuum, dominating all aspects of present life, especially monopolizing human epistemology, the threshold of human existence, and even development activities. This book provides a balanced overview of what a feasible decoloniality should be. It is all-inclusive, aggregating differing perspectives, including decolonial feminist and LGBTQ thought. It deploys a holistic approach that critiques the limitations to decoloniality, the impediments that culminated in the failure of the late 20th century struggle for decoloniality, and the problems associated with current African resistance to academic decoloniality.

The book closes with a discussion of African futurism. Seen as the advanced stage of decoloniality, African futurism involves the application of "traditional" (indigenous) instruments of articulation and cohesion such as Afro-spirituality, myths, folklore, and indigenous techno-scientific innovations, deployed in their capacity to drive, harness, and actualize future possibilities.

Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Decolonial Moments

Part A: Epistemologies and Methodologies

1. Decoloniality and Decolonizing Knowledge
2. Eurocentrism and Intellectual Imperialism
3. Epistemologies of Intellectual Liberation
4. Decolonizing Knowledge in Africa
5. Decolonizing Research Methodology
6. Oral Tradition: Cultural Analysis and Epistemic Value

Part B: Agencies and Voices

7. Voices of Decolonization 
8. Voices of Decoloniality
9 Decoloniality: A Critique
10. Women's Voices on Decolonization
11. Empowering Marginal Voices: LGBTQ and African Studies

Part C: Intellectual Spaces

12. Decolonizing the African Academy
13. Decolonizing Knowledge Through Language
14. Decolonizing of African Literature
15. Identity and the African Feminist Writers
16. Decolonizing African Aesthetics
17. Decolonizing African History
18. Decolonizing African Religion
19. Decolonizing African Philosophy
20 African Futurism

Bibliography

Index

 

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