When I tell people in Africa that I am doing African Studies they often ask me: Is that African Culture? But is African Studies (AS) all about Cultural Studies(CS)? An email alerting me about an interesting Review of Evan Mwangi's 'Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality' seemed to suggest so. Yet I don't think AS and CS are one and the same thing let alone one being the subset of the other. Even if you look at the key names associated with CS you will find that they are not necessarily the same folks as those in AS. For example, Gayatri C. Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha are not even 'Africanists', that contentious name that is normally used to refer to those involved in AS. Okay, maybe, Stuart Hall, bell hooks and Cornel West are so by virtue of being involved in 'Black Studies' but, still , African-American Studies, or even Africana Studies, is not one and the same thing as African Studies. This Review of Manufacturing African Studies and Crises as well as The Challenges of Doing African Studies and The Relevance of African Studies are very good introductory texts of what AS is and what it is not. In short, it is one of the fields that belong to what is called 'Area Studies' where the key object/subject is the area - here Africa - rather than the discipline - i.e. History, Political Science, Architecture etc. That is why this field is populated by Political Scientists (Richard L. Sklar et al.), Historians (Mamadou Diouf et al.), Anthropologists (Kelly M. Askew et al.), Philosophers (Sanya Osha et al.), and, of course, Cultural/Literary Critics (Harry Garuba et al.) among other 'Africanists' accross various disciplines. For sure it is a very contentious scholarly field and Bringing African Studies Back to Africa: Beyond the 'Africanist-African Divide' is my attempt at making sense of it. So, if there is such a thing as 'African Cultural Studies' then its part of African Studies.
I also don't think it is true that so much of African Studies analyzes African literature, whether produced by academics or non-academics. In fact I would say African Studies, at least among 'African Africanists', has been obsessed with 'Development and Modernity'. Those involved in Cultural Studies indeed interpret culture in a descriptive/historical way in an effort to uncover non-obvious information in as much as they also try to construct information in a normative sense as there is a seemingly humanitarian goal towards which they aim. That is why they have words such as 'unmask', 'deconstruct', 'rethink', 'rewrite' and re-create' for that is what they 'normally' do. Probably that is why they are also criticized for their 'postmodern bent'. One of them, bell hooks, even has a 'text' on 'Postmodern Blackness' which asserts that postmodern critiques of essentialism "allows us to affirm multiple black identities, varied black experience". My good online 'broda', Pius Adesanmi, has now won a prestigious Penguin Prize on African Writing for his book titled 'You're not a Country, Africa!' which, I dare presume, is such a critique of an 'essentialist, monolithic Africa'.
Of course the postmodern bent has also affected African Studies but I don't think that is what it is much criticized for. It has been much more criticized for being colonial, as in having an imperial heritage/legacy, like Anthropology; after all, 'Area Studies', especially in the way it developed in the US within the traditionally 'White Universities and Colleges', in contrast to the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), was all about understanding the 'other' - those in the far 'East of West' - and thus 'controlling' them/us. With the rise of postmodernism some scholars in AS, especially those belonging to CS/Postcolonial Theory, influenced it, mostly in the US which has been much more preoccupied with matters of identity particularly cultural and racial identity. As such even a number of our seasoned African scholars who have wandered there as academic, if not economic, exiles - the Prodigal Sons and Daughters of Africa - have been affected if not infected by that bent, no wonder their erstwhile colleagues feel they have drifted to postmodernism. After all the influential gurus of CS/Postcolonial Theory, such as Spivak and Bhabha, are based in very influential universities in the US. In conclusion we might find the quote below from someone who is (now) 'straddling' AS and CS quite revealing:
"The turn of the 1990s ushered in the fourth phase—the post cold war era when area studies were deemed to be in crisis, a period that coincided with the ascendancy of the anti-foundationalist and representational discourses of postmodernism, postcolonial scholarship and cultural studies, which questioned the integrity of regional and cultural boundaries and identities and privileged hybrid, immigrant, and diasporic identities." - Paul Tiyambe Zeleza on African Studies from a Global Perspective posted at http://www.zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/african-studies-global-perspective.
My mission is to acquire, produce and disseminate knowledge on and about humanity as well as divinity, especially as it relates to Africa, in a constructive and liberating manner to people wherever they may be.
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Address: P. O. Box 4460 Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
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