Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Menace of "Theoretical Framework" Hazing in Anglophone Africa

Moses, that's really sad to hear.

It is unconscionable, really. 

I must be too out of touch, although i wonder which white theorists are popular? Is it possible to hazard a guess at a few names, just to give me an idea of who is garnering the interest of students. Is it a question of old-fashioned views? Who who who?

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2023 3:46:30 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Menace of "Theoretical Framework" Hazing in Anglophone Africa

 

Ken,

I guarantee you that when Africa-based students and colleagues are casting about for a "theoretical framework" to anchor or support their work, those African theorists and philosophers you mentioned, Gikandi, Mudimbe, Iheka, Adejumobi and others, will not be their preferred or default references. 

They'd rather go with White theorists, some of them intellectual inferiors of those you mentioned, no matter how irrelevant and passé their thoughts and formulations might be. 

They don't even give a serious look at Africa-based thinkers or even vernacular theorists, not to mention citing or engaging them. This is the problem.

 It is, by the way, no longer a problem of access. Even undergraduates in Nigerian universities can now easily access the works of African and Africa-centered theorists and thinkers on their phone if they want to.

 It is the residual epistemic power of Whiteness that's at work and pushing them to privilege the theories of White thinkers over those of Black and African thinkers.

 It is an aspect of the enduring life of Whiteness in Africa that the vibrant and growing literature on Whiteness in postcolonial Africa has yet to account for. I published a piece on Whiteness in postcolonial Africa but I, too, didn't do enough on the epistemic dimension of the problem.

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On Sep 25, 2023, at 2:18 PM, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:



To speak to moses's point about how african centered thinkers might attempt to be presenting their work so as to "disrupt the dominant euro-american system of knowledge."

The dominant euro-american system of knowledge in our field is dominated largely by africans or african-americans. The three thinkers i mentioned earlier as dominating african theory were all african: gikandi, mbembe, and mudimbe. Their influence has been enormous. For anyone to advance their thinking nowadays—and i am thinking about african based scholars—they have to seek publishing venues that are important to our field. I don't know them all, but what springs to mind is the African Studies Review, whose editor in chief is cajetan iheka, a nigerian with university degrees in the u.s. a second is JALA, whose previous editor was tejumola olaneyan and present editor is Moredewun Adejunmobi; RAL's editor is kwaku korang. I could go on. These are serious figures. In our field who are not in any way superficially subordinated to dominant western euro-americanthought. Instead they are forging major innovations in theorizing about african culture, with iheka a founder of african-ecological thought, moradewin in nollywood, and so on. The same is true for the major journals on african culture and cinema coming out of south africa. 

The broader question, however, that moses's thought poses is how we are to bring african based scholarship into the mainstream, of whatever field. That is really a difficult question when the money that controls education and resources is skewed against african scholars. Many of the really brilliant thinkers i've encountered work in the u.s., like olabode ibironke.  toyin falola has done  than any 10 people together to enable young african scholars to break into the field. I see their manuscripts submitted to msu press at times, and some pass the readers' threshhold and get published; others don't. The competition for journal publication can be fierce, and resources figure prominently into who succeeds or doesn't. In my mind it is not a question of pandering to some dominant euro-american paradigm, but being able to access the valuable materials, whatever their origin. And getting published or produced on a world stage can be impossibly difficult. I still believe that the hybrid african-euopean models are dominant.

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2023 1:08:37 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Menace of "Theoretical Framework" Hazing in Anglophone Africa

 

What happened with African thought and it's global influence after the great achievement of people like St. Augustine in North Africa? 

On Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 5:59 AM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Wonderful -

" There is yet another point: All theories and knowledges are not equal and do not enter the global epistemic marketplace with equal power. African knowledges and theories being marginalized and devalued relative to those of other regions, it seems to me that African scholars based in Africa should see and execute their work as part of an insurgent epistemological project of disrupting the dominant Euro-American system of knowledge and forcing Western thinkers and scholars to reckon with Africa-centered theories and thoughts. That project can only be carried out by privileging Africa-centered philosophies and theories, not by centering Western theories and ways of knowing and seeing"

Moses Ochonu

On Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:32 AM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

Ken,

Thanks for your thoughtful contribution. As you guessed, I appreciate Skip Gates' answer of using what strengthens your argument. My only caveat would be that if it comes down to a choice between an African and a Euro-American theory, the African scholar in Africa should gravitate towards the former.

The problem we have in Nigeria (and now I'm hearing Ghana and Kenya) is that our scholars there default to Euro-American theorists. So, in a rather perverse and reversed sense, they're choosing their theorists based on race--on the Whiteness of the thinker/theorist. And that choice is predicated on the age-old phenomenon of colonial mentality: anything produced by the white man is superior, foundational, and universal and would give a credibility and prestige to my work that the formulation of a black or African theorist would not.

This is a xenophilic reversal of the discrimination you speak of, which you, as a Jewish white male scholar may not be familiar with. For me as an African, I think this is a serious problem and needs to be addressed. One way to address it is to encourage African scholars on the continent to seek out theories and philosophical thought formations from Africa and African thinkers where possible and not default to the thinking that the white man owns the world of theory and should supply the theoretical formulation for their work by default.

There's an additional point: there's an experiential component to theorizing, philosophizing, and knowledge production. I am convinced that, just as Euro-American theorists and South Asian ones theorized from their experiences and the social milieus that produced and shaped them, African thinkers and theorists' thoughts and theoretical formulations are inflected by their African socializations and experiences. 

It seems logical therefore that African scholars on the continent looking for theoretical instruments to strengthen their arguments on African topics and issues would, in most cases, benefit more from the thoughts and theories of theorists grounded in an African or Africa-centered experience than they would from Euro-American or even South Asian theorists whose thoughts were informed by their own non-African experiences and worlds.

There is yet another point: All theories and knowledges are not equal and do not enter the global epistemic marketplace with equal power. African knowledges and theories being marginalized and devalued relative to those of other regions, it seems to me that African scholars based in Africa should see and execute their work as part of an insurgent epistemological project of disrupting the dominant Euro-American system of knowledge and forcing Western thinkers and scholars to reckon with Africa-centered theories and thoughts. That project can only be carried out by privileging Africa-centered philosophies and theories, not by centering Western theories and ways of knowing and seeing.

On Sun, Sep 24, 2023 at 7:25 PM Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

Dear friends, 

I suppose those who share the view that white theorists are to be shunned should shun my contribution. Why not, you can make these discriminations if you want. I agree with moses's 5 points, generally, except not point 5 where he states that it is preferable to find an african theorist when possible. I don't totally agree that there is a meaningful difference between african or non-african, in many if not most cases. We read the same texts, we argue the same theoretical points, regardless whether they are foucault or mbembe, and force a philosophical discussion that is either fruitful or ends.

The theorists i have turned to most in recent decades happened to be african—gikandi, mbembe. Prior to that i learned to love the work of an algerian jew named derrida; and indian deconstructionist named spivak, and another indian theorist named bhabha. None of these people picked their "theory" regionally, ie as western or indian or african.

When i hosted my first african literature assn conference at msu around 40 years ago i had as the goal to bring as many strong theorists together as i could. Some came from africa, some from europe or america. Edward Said gave a talk in which he stated african scholars should begin their work using conrad (which he himself did). I was profoundly disappointed that he, the great scholar on orientalism, would want us to speak from the ground of speaking back to, rather than affirming positively. I felt achebe was a much stronger place to begin. Skip gates spoke at that conference, as did appiah, spivak, palmer,  and others. Gates spoke to the question of using "white" theorists, or europeans or not, and he answered in a manner that i think moses would appreciate: use whatever strengthens your argument.

That has always been the truest answer to the claim that you should choose a theorist based on race.

We should not have to use theory in our writings; i agree completely with those who criticize it as a pointless mechanical requirement. But if we can use any writing from any author from anyplace, it would be cutting off our own noses to spite our faces to pick the theorists based on race.

There is one caveat i'd make to this. I agree that any writing about african texts should come from a perspective or location that is centered in african realities, thought, tastes, creative spaces, lived experiences.  If these imbue our thought, they are grounded and make sense. But i would not want a judge to decide on the appropriateness of the theorist based on other criteria besides the one major rule: does this thought enrich my argument. 

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2023 4:11:14 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Menace of "Theoretical Framework" Hazing in Anglophone Africa

 

Biko, I don't think Professor Njoya or any other critic of the "theoretical framework" tyranny in Anglophone African academies will say Africans embracing theory are embracing the traps of disciplined White knowledge bromides.

I think the problem lies in our people mandating and enforcing "theoretical framework" as a basis for validating a work of scholarship and, in the process, creating a situation in which our scholars, in order to fulfill the mandate and mollify gatekeepers and peers alike, are uncritically borrowing largely unrelated, Eurocentric, and even racist theories from Euro-America and, in doing so, neglecting to 1) theorize from their own Africa-inflected work, and/or 2) drawing on a rich wellspring of African theoretical knowledge and thought.

What Njoya and others are saying is that when theory is mandated in such a mechanical, draconian, and unintellectual way, it wittingly or unwittingly validates the offensively racist notion that the West is the site of theory and Africa is a land of raw or empirical data, so for Africa-originated knowledge to enter the global epistemological marketplace, it must be dressed up, however awkwardly, in Western theory.

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On Sep 24, 2023, at 2:56 PM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Theories are systematic ideas about the nature of phenomena and Africana Theories (AT) represent critical ideas about the world of people of African descent with a centered focus on Africana peoples and for their own interests rather than against them, to end oppression and  exploitation. This is what Terry Kershaw defined as the Africana Paradigm – critical, centered, scholar-activism. Molefi Asante defines it as Afrocentricity. The field of Africana Studies is vast and theory is only a part of it. But as in every field, theory is the defining subject and theorists tend to be the most influential in every field. If you want to make your name in any discipline, then you must pay attention to theory in order to understand the subject better and to make your own original contribution to knowledge. Because theory is so important in higher education, dead white men tend to monopolize it and they are called the founding fathers of this or that.

Have you ever wondered why theory books are so white in a world where white people are a minority? The answer is that white people had been trying to stop us from learning, they have been stealing our ideas, and they want us to believe that we cannot do theory, we should only be native informants for the benefit of white theorists. We resist that with the knowledge that we invented writing long before there was any European in history and we have our theorists to study. We have also studied white theorists and white students are welcome to study AT for the benefit of all.

 

Some may say that we may be playing into the traps of white men if we seek to develop interest in theory while our people suffer indignities afflicted by capitalism, sexism and racism. Do you think that theory is a waste of time? Are you excited to learn about the AT you may not have been familiar with before?

Biko

On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 11:38:31 GMT-4, Toyin Falola <toyin.falola53@gmail.com> wrote:

This is not what I was told, unfortunately.

I was told that a thesis must follow a prescribed structure.

I think our colleagues in Africa have to talk so that it does not become the regular trope: diasporan scholars--- which is a way of shutting down a debate.

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 10:29 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Menace of "Theoretical Framework" Hazing in Anglophone Africa

Oga,

 

They are not entirely powerless. Yes, regulators impose draconian rules and requirements that stifle institutional flexibility and constrain, in some cases, what individual academic advisers and mentors can do, but not all meaningless and intellectually unproductive practices are imposed or required by regulators.

 

A good example: I know for a fact that the NUC does not require all Masters and PhD theses to have a theoretical framework or whatever name it's called. Yet it is now vigorously enforced by humanities and social science colleagues. 

 

You hardly read a work emanating from Nigeria without it and it is usually jarringly irrelevant to the work and makes an awkward cameo appearance only because it's a tradition to have a "theoretical framework."

 

One colleague in the natural sciences in Nigeria even told me recently that they have started seeing it in their field, so it has become a fad and a hazing ritual.

 

Of course, the problem is not theory or theoretical framework, which in some cases are not only useful but imperative. However, it's blanket gatekeeping enforcement and the fact that in 90 percent of cases the theory adopted is ill-fitting, arbitrary, irrelevant, and is not justified or critically engaged. It is rather simply used to spruce up the work and add "glamor" to it, and, of course, to mollify the gatekeepers and peer reviewers within the system.

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 24, 2023, at 10:07 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Moses:

The US does not have the equivalent of the NUC or the powerful agency in Rwanda that also probits words and language you are not allowed to use, as in referring to a person as Igbo or Hausa. Thus, as you always argue, comparison is a wahala!

Same thing is with the promotion system. The point system is imposed, and those in History cannot change it. An essay is 3 points, and a book is 5 points. If you breakdown a book into 5 essays, you collect 15 points. Thus, why blame someone who refuses to write a book?

Thus, perhaps, the focus is on what to do with the regulation agencies. Our colleagues in Uganda and Nigeria know all these things, but they are so powerless.

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 9:54 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Menace of "Theoretical Framework" Hazing in Anglophone Africa

Technical requirements such as formatting are a separate matter, having to do with archiving and dissemination. That happens and should happen everywhere. I have no quarrel with that.

 

The mechanical, blanket imposition of "theoretical framework" on every academic work as a standard of valuation is my issue and that of a joys and others who have weighed in.

 

Where you and I teach, those issues are worked out on a case by case and discipline by discipline basis. They're also worked out with flexibility to allow the authorial voice to come through and for the original contribution to be highlighted unencumbered by rigid impositions. 

 

On relevance, I agree with you, but I argue in a piece I'm working on that relevance and theory are actually part of the same crisis of Nigerian social science and humanities scholarship: the struggle for identity under the pressure of instrumentalist expectations from the state, parents, and even students.

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 24, 2023, at 8:58 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Moses:

Where a central body controls all the institutions, as in the NUC, it imposes a rigid control. Even at the undergraduate level in Nigeria, a university's control over what it teaches and how it is structured is now 30 percent. Thus, the issue of theory is not a Nigerian phenomenon. Your thesis will not be examined if you don't even follow formatting instructions. These are regulations. Our colleagues cannot do anything about this. Where a regulation demands a literature review or hypothesis, neither the student nor the supervisor can change it.

 

I think the challenge has now shifted to "relevance." The AU has revamped its funding side, asking for research relevance. Rwanda is revising its PhD criteria to focus on "relevance." By relevance, it means "What is your contribution to nation-building?" Many topics we approve for Ph.D. in the West will not stand in many African countries.

 

I think your argument is on education for specific field competence. Sure, but systems can also focus on needs, deficiencies, etc. They may even say that humanities are useless, as many countries say concerning History. They recently asked me in Lesotho why they should not abolish degrees in History. It is their right if their elite and planners think it is unnecessary, but I won't agree with that decision. I have also advised state governors to convert the universities to trade centers as they need the most competent crafts workers and artisans, but they told me that parents and students need boasting rights even if the quality is insignificant.

TF

 

 

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 8:36 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Menace of "Theoretical Framework" Hazing in Anglophone Africa

Forum members may find these Facebook posts and dialogue interesting, especially if they read my interventions on the topic of theoretical framework requirements in Nigerian academic writing/research and the discussion it generated on this list a few years ago.

 

Since that conversation, I've come to learn that this is not only a problem in Nigeria but also in Ghana and Kenya, leading me to conclude that this may be a neocolonial epistemic disease afflicting Anglophone Africa.

 

 

 

Moses Ochonu

September 18 at 5:51 PM  · 

Shared with Public

 

Years after making my two Facebook posts on the subject of theory/theoretical framework as practiced in Nigerian humanities and humanistic social science scholarship and stirring controversy on what ought not to be controversial, the controversy continues to ripple in Nigerian academia.

 

Now, it has crossed the border to Ghana. Several weeks ago, I received an email from a Ghanaian professor in Ghana asking about my "publication" on theoretical framework.

 

I ignored the email because I didn't recall publishing anything on the subject.

Undeterred, he emailed me again last week, reminding me that he still needed the "publication."

 

I wrote him back saying I had not published on the topic and that I only made two Facebook posts that went viral and caused unnecessary controversy in Nigeria.

 

I then distilled and outlined for him the points I made in my two posts.

 

He responded that he and I were on the same page on the issue, and that he recently gave a seminar on the subject. A few days before the seminar, however, he said the abstract went viral in Nigeria and some Nigerian academics sent him my Facebook posts and told him to "stop the madness."

 

Here, below, I reproduce my response to my Ghanaian interlocutor.

 

The points of my intervention, as you'll see, are simple:

 

1. A scholarly work does not have to have a theoretical component or make a theoretical intervention to have merit.

 

2. Requiring ALL works in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences, regardless of research questions and focus, to have a section titled "theoretical framework" is mechanistic and intellectually tyrannical, since some scholarly works do not lend themselves to theorization or theoretical engagement and can make sound arguments and even iconoclastic interventions which are backed by rigorous, compelling analysis without engaging with any theories and without being informed by any theoretical formulations. The topic and issue in the research should dictate whether the author engages with existing theoretical formulations, not the whimsical decision of academic bureaucrats, mentors, and regulators.

 

3. When theory is invoked, it should not simply be used to spruce up or glamorize a work. Rather, the theory should be relevant to the work, and the author of the work should not simply hide approvingly behind the theory but should critically engage the theory, showing the ways in which his work instantiates the theory and/or challenges or enriches/extends it.

 

4. Instead of arbitrarily and instinctively reaching for theories within which to insert a work, authors should, depending on their research and its insights, dare to theorize themselves, formulating their own original theories from the insights, findings, and implications of their work.

 

5. If the work truly needs theoretical engagement and has obvious theoretical implications, our African scholars should not instinctively advance or borrow the theories of dead white, often male, scholars who theorized from a Euro-American perspective. They should instead invoke the theories of African and Africa-centered scholars and theorists whose scholarly, experiential, and theoretical explorations are grounded in African realities and epistemologies and are thus more relevant to the works of Nigerian/African scholars researching and writing on Nigerian/African topics and issues.

 

I am not sure how these points of mine became controversial, but there was a lot of discussion (both pro and against) among Nigerian academics around these fairly obvious and commonsensical observations. 

 

Perhaps it is because people have a difficult time hearing that what they've been doing for so long has little or no intellectual logic.

 

The most egregious of the reactions to the two posts is the misleading claim, perhaps a deliberately mischievous mischaracterization, that I was saying that historians and other humanists and social scientists should not use theory in their work or should discard theory.

 

Anyway, now you know the full story.

 

 

 

Usman Isyaku

September 19 at 10:25 AM  · 

 

A reply to Moses Ochonu on theoretical frameworks 

What you said here is correct, but it can easily be misconstrued as a strong position against the use of theoretical frameworks in social sciences and humanities research. A call for critical engagement with theories is good. This is partly because many African scholars lack sufficient grasp of what theories are and their functions in research, and partly because there are not enough theories to explain emerging problems that have local peculiarities.

 

It is important to note that applied research, which is most commonly practiced by African scholars, doesn't lend itself to theoretical formulations by design. On the other hand, basic research that aims at knowledge abstraction at a philosophical level to establish higher order cause and effect relationships, requires theorising. This is useful to note because theories help in piecing a set of ideas that work together to explain and or predict social phenomena. It helps to avoid fragmentation of knowledge through the production of isolated empirical works that do not have generalizable ideas. Such works are mostly contextual in nature. 

 

Researchers following these arguments should be careful about taking exclusionary position for or against the use of theories in research. Theories are useful, can be created, critiqued, extended, or discarded depending on the design type or strength of arguments. Theories are mostly misunderstood, and it is easy for African scholars to critique them as racist and irrelevant instead of taking time to understand why they exist in the first place.

 

 

 

Moses Ochonu

 

I totally agree with you here, Usman. The problem is that our people are not very good with nuance. Once you criticize a practice on certain intellectual grounds, no matter how nuanced and qualified your critique may be, our people will simply understand you to be saying that everything associated with that practice is bad and should be discarded. So, your post above is important to further clarify my point. 

 

There is a place and venue for theory, and there's a place for work that's empirically and analytically sound and compelling without theoretical engagement. Scholars should not be forced into or out of each category, and their work should never be arbitrarily devalued or rejected on account of their failure to be theoretical or non-theoretical. Theory and theoretical engagement should depend on the kind of research, the topic, approach, questions, and goals of the research, etc. It should never be mechanically and tyrannically imposed on all research by mentors, peers, and gatekeepers. Which is the problem we have in our country. 

 

While some research can stand on their merit and make real contributions to knowledge without theoretical engagement and without theorizing their findings, certain types of research demand or lend themselves to abstraction and philosophical reflection and formulation. This is why I encourage our young African scholars to dare to theorize originally, since, from my experience, most existing Euro-American theories don't speak to the empirical realities of African research topics and to the peculiarities of our experiences. 

 

I also encourage them to use the insights and epistemological abstractions from their works to critique the existing theories rather than simply uncritically adopt the existing theories. I have externally examined several doctoral and Masters' theses in Nigerian universities, and the problem that I see is that their mentors, supervisors, and regulators force the authors to do theory for theory's sake, to mechanically impose ill-fitting and unrelated theories on their works to mollify the "where is your theoretical framework?" people or get them off their backs. In 90 percent of the theses, I've encountered and in 80 percent of the conference papers, journal articles, chapters, and other works I've read from Nigeria-based colleagues, the theoretical framework chosen has no bearing on and has little or no relevance to the work at hand and was awkwardly forced on the work to satisfy the mechanistic requirement to have a "theoretical framework." 

 

As you rightly stated, the root of the problem is our people's lack of understanding of what theory is and what it does for and to scholarship. We have not learned the meaning and work of theory, but we rush to borrow theory with which to drape our work. We have not properly learned to analyze rigorously and draw out clear arguments and through lines in our work, but we want to rush to theorize what we have not demonstrated through analysis and clear argumentation and evidence. 

 

Personally, I want our colleagues and regulators to prioritize the teaching of analytical skills, so that works of young scholars would have rigor and compelling arguments and analyses. Once you're successful in doing that, the scholars themselves, depending on the nature of their research, will see and highlight the theoretical dimensions and insights of their work and the way the works dialogue with and challenge existing theories. You do not have to mandate it as a requirement. 

 

If I have a small quibble with you here, it is that 1) it is important that African scholars understand the racism--yes--racism and Eurocentricism that inhere in many influential theories, and 2) it is also important that African scholars, where possible, privilege the theories of African and Africa-centered scholars/theorists because not only do those theories approximate our realities and experience better than the ones originating from Euro-American experiences and realities, but also because privileging them over Euro-American ones helps in decentering global epistemologies and in giving visibility to marginalized and devalued African theoretical perspectives in the global knowledge marketplace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wandia Njoya

September 21 at 1:44 PM  · 

 

I have never used theoretical frameworks in my academic publishing. When I was writing my dissertation, post-colonial theory was the fad and I wasn't having it. In my view, it was terrible, and I said so. The short version of my beef with postcolonial theory can be found on Al Jazeera. 

 

For the first chapter of my dissertation, where I discussed what others had written on my topic, I said I was using decolonization of Fanon. It wasn't a theory then, but I said it's what I'm gonna do. And then I added tragedy as a philosophical concept based on Wole Soyinka's book "Myth, literature and the African world." I also used some work on narratology and argument. And a lot, I mean a lot, of Lewis Gordon's work. One of my committee members, explained it to me very simply: what we need to understand is what Ideas are guiding your analysis and how you are going to carry out the analysis. Is that a theoretical framework? I danna. 

 

For me, it was stories and realities that guided my work. I opened my dissertation with my personal experience. Yes I did. That's a no no in Kenya. In fact, I later published a conference paper in a Kenyan journal where I talked of mourning my friend Adam Hussein Adam, and the editors were pleasantly surprised that such personal experiences of Adam and my friendship with him could produce an academic reflection.

 

In my dissertation, I was also very committed to using African thinkers to guide my work, and in fact one of the people I cited, Ambroise Kom from Cameroon, said at my defense that the one thing that struck him about my dissertation was the many African thinkers I had cited. 

 

I get theory because it's the work people do of drawing patterns through different things. But having a theoretical framework? I see students saying "I'm going to use theory X and Y" and honestly, I don't get it. Neither do they, and I can tell from the very bland and uninteresting way in which they write their literature review. You can tell they were ticking a box. 

 

When theory is imposed like that, it inevitably becomes gatekeeping into Western empire. It reduces African scholarship to the application of Western theories to African raw data. Lewis Gordon has mentioned this problem in his book "Existentia Africana." He calls it a formula of "whites do theory, Africans do experience." 

 

What this is really about is that we Kenyans are not allowed to interpret our own experiences according to African ideas, as Mordecai Ogada has just commented. That suppression of interpretation leads to a crisis of meaning, which Joe Kobuthi mentioned in our Maisha Kazini conversation, because meaning is the product of interpretation. Without interpretation, we have no meaning. 

 

We Kenyans don't know how to interpret our lives. We look for meaning from either our ethnic group or the government, or 'the white man stole our culture." Those are the only interpretations we are allowed in Kenya. And the police are academics and those Kenyans who demand solutions when you share an experience. What they are really asking is "what will the government say about it?" I hear some Kenyan universities have even graduated to demanding that students link their thesis to Vision 2030 or current government initiatives.

 

What I've since understood is that in Africa, thesis and dissertations are about hazing for entry into an imperial club. We're getting thesis to join an elite; not to think. What's ironical is that Anglo-American empire is collapsing, but we're not reducing this gatekeeping. We're increasing it. It's like the corruption of Kenya Kwanza. Now the theft is starting to look more like a desperate awareness that they can't believe they made it to government and that they may never get the same position again, so they need to grab as much as they can before the opportunity disappears. 

 

Same thing with universities. Because Kenya has no avenues for self-expression outside the church and the academy, people come to the university desperate for a voice, ready to follow whatever hazing ritual we scholars throw at them. It will remain this way until we detach ourselves from Anglo-America, or when we decide that we don't need permission, not for our experiences to be valid, as Lupita said, but for our INTERPRETATIONS of those experiences to be valid, and for that validity to come from our African peoples, wherever in the world they may be.

 

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