Critical African Studies

14/08/2023

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2023.2226774?src=

African and African diaspora scholars have made key contributions to contemporary understandings of inequality, intersectionality, institutions and ‘development'. A recent major contribution to thi...

05/06/2023

NEW ISSUE OUT in Critical African Studies: Chinese Goods in Africa: New Extraversions, Orientations, and Expressions of African Agency with guest editors Guive Khan-Mohammad and Antoine Kernan

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcaf20/current?fbclid=IwAR157VSNKe_iSG_jE1uEWEiaRw_I21IzaEfP8RJqLvwIgwVuV4vCy7SyqA0

Chinese Goods in Africa: New Extraversions, Orientations, and Expressions of African Agency. Volume 15, Issue 1 of Critical African Studies

09/09/2022

Metji Makgoba critically unpacks the ways in which the South African government and mining corporations falsely construct Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as transformative. Makgoba argues that these actors in fact reduce BEE to numbers, metrics, and narrow notions of economic participation, rather than seeing it as a means to meaningfully redress historical, structural and unequal power relations. Building on the many existing critiques of BEE, the paper’s close reading of several key policy documents and reports delivers a detailed critique of the ways in which BEE is failing to re-organise apartheid capitalism.

This paper investigates how the South African government and mining corporations have appropriated anti-apartheid and anti-colonial discourses to legitimise Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as a ra...

07/09/2022

Addressing the project of peacebuilding, Mathias Awonnatey Ateng and A. Agoswin Musah critically examine the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) Conflict Prevention Framework. The authors argue that its overemphasis on the state, and concomitant omission of the local, render the framework inadequate. The article calls for more attention to be paid to the ‘critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach’, centred on ideas of democracy, human rights, development, and economic reform.

This paper discusses the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework from the perspective of the critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach. The paper argues that the ECOWAS conflict prevention fram...

05/09/2022

Staying with the question of the postcolonial, but shifting the focus to literary production, Isaac Joslin reads Yambo Ouologuem’s Le Devoir de Violence as a text that maps the politics of complicity and compromise in both colonial encounters and in postcolonial discourses. A profoundly ambiguous work, Ouologeum’s text resists a single narrative or clear history. In so doing, Joslin argues, the text both represents and enacts the ‘discursive and ideological violence that was, and still is, very much a part of the literary culture of francophone Africa’.

This paper outlines the problematic relationship between the enduring colonial legacy that persists, both in theories of the postcolonial and geo-political post-colonial state practices. Considerin...

02/09/2022

Corinna Mullin examines the Tunisian university, tracing struggles over power from the colonial era to the present. Focusing on four key transformative moments in the history of the Tunisian academy, Mullin argues that the ‘sediments of resistance’ remaining from all of these have helped to create the conditions of possibility for multiple alternative knowledge projects within and beyond the university, in the present moment. Working with a nuanced, multi-stranded theoretical framework, the article illuminates some of the concerns shaping intellectual values and relations since the 2010–2011 insurgent movements.

This article adopts a longue durée approach to examining resistance around the Tunisian university, tracing current material and epistemological struggles back to the colonial era. To do so, it fus...

31/08/2022

🚨Call for Abstracts🚨 CrAS welcomes contributions from scholars working on food in social sciences, arts and humanities disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary scholarship in food studies.

Through this Special Issue on the diverse meanings of African food, we seek to tell the lesser-known stories of food in and from the continent, and thereby build new theory from African spaces. We welcome contributions that are (i) clearly informed by and in conversation with the rich bodies of theory being developed in the interdisciplinary field of Food Studies, and (ii) focus closely on specific meanings generated in historical and contemporary sites of food production, preparation, trade, consumption, and/or disposal.

It is our hope that this Special Issue will open up understanding of the immense variety of practices, values, norms, emotions linked to food in Africa, and that by showcasing the myriad meanings of African food, we will expand dominant narratives about why and how food matters.

We are particularly keen to receive abstracts from researchers based on the African continent, and encourage earlycareer researchers to submit their work.

Abstract Deadline: 25 October 2022

For more info: https://bit.ly/Critical_African_Studies

This special issue seeks to understand the variety of practices, values, norms, emotions linked to food in Africa.

31/08/2022

Nkululeko Sibanda’s paper on ‘Cultural politics and cultural violence during Gurkurahundi in Matabeleland’ argues that cultural violence was used to create an anti-Ndbele thought collective that set the ground for direct and structural violence. The author defines cultural violence targeted towards out-groups as the intentional weakening and destruction of their cultural values and practices. The author traces the content of narratives that were forged in radio, television broadcasts and newspapers by the state and Fifth Brigade. The article concludes with reflections on the steps that could be taken to overcome the legacies of cultural violence through public cultural remembrances.

This paper examines and analyses the various instances where ‘performances’ of cultural violence by the state and Fifth Brigade were experienced during Gukurahundi in Matabeleland. This paper conte...

29/08/2022

Gift Mwonzora and Kirk Helliker’s article on ‘Truce and reconciliation in Zimbabwe: from Mugabe to Mnangagwa’ examines three episodes of state-centric national reconciliation. They argue for a more nuanced analysis of the essential characteristic of these flawed reconciliation episodes. Building on Nir Eisikovits’s theories of truce and reconciliation, the authors categorize three reconciliation periods as types of truce-making with different characteristics. The first two episodes, in 1979 at the formation of a unity government between the former colonizer and the colonized, and in 1987 with the unity government of Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front ANU-PF and the Patriotic Front – Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-ZAPU) left key tensions unresolved. Instead, they achieved strategic and tactical goals of the ruling party. They argue that the third episode of reconciliation, from 2009 to 2013, also failed as a reconciliation process but was distinct from the earlier two episodes in terms of its truce-making characteristics.

Throughout history, truce-making has been an important mechanism to temporarily halt fighting between antagonistic forces. In some instances, national truces are used to usher in longer-term nation...

25/08/2022

The first paper in Issue 14.2 is Alexander Rusero’s article ‘Worth the gamble? Access to information, risks and ethical dilemmas in undertaking research in authoritarian regimes: the case of Zimbabwe’. The article gives important insights into the challenges and ethics of undertaking research in the context of political hostility towards the researcher and research participants. Rusero explores this question through his experiences of being a researcher in his home country of Zimbabwe. The article focuses on the constraints of accessing information and, in particular, on conducting interviews. To conclude, he argues that the challenges of undertaking research in authoritarian regimes can be a source of motivation for better research techniques and strategies.

Undertaking ethnographic or phenomenological inquiry under a hovering cloud of dictatorship can often be a mammoth, some might even say life-risking, venture. In such circumstances, researchers are...

23/08/2022

Our latest issue of Critical African Studies is now available and features articles on themes of truce and reconciliation, authoritarianism and cultural violence in Zimbabwe and power, peacebuilding and violence in a range of other contexts in Africa.

The introduction by the journal co-chairs provides an update on a roundtable hosted by CrAS earlier this year to discuss the question of ‘What is Critical in African Studies?’ at the Association of African Studies in Africa (ASAA) Conference in Cape Town. Our speakers explored what it means to look at the world and to theorise from African positions, both on the continent and in the diaspora.

Additionally, on 13th May we also held the first Critical African Studies AGM to include both our Editorial Board and our newly-reconstituted Advisory Board. At this online event we discussed the governance of the journal and reflected on our strategic priorities, looking to the future. We are excited to work together to continue strengthening the journal and fostering critical debate in African Studies.

Volume 14, Issue 2 of Critical African Studies

18/05/2022

The final article presents the poem, ‘Bird, or How I Became an Acholi Poet’, a poetic response that demonstrates song as a site for knowledge making and social memory and a method for resistance and decolonization by the poet-scholar Juliane Okot Bitek

(2021). Colonial intent as treachery: A poetic response. Critical African Studies. Ahead of Print.

16/05/2022

Astrid Jamar's article, 'Accounting for which violent past? transitional justice, epistemic violence, and colonial durabilities in Burundi', examines the entanglements between violence, accountability, and coloniality; how specific dynamics of violence and hegemonized norms operate within transitional justice practices and how colonial durabilities reproduce themselves

(2022). Accounting for which violent past? transitional justice, epistemic violence, and colonial durabilities in Burundi. Critical African Studies: Vol. 14, Colonial Durabilities in the Contemporary African Great Lakes Region, pp. 73-95.

13/05/2022

In yet another article from the latest issue of CrAS, Chloe Lewis article, 'The making and re-making of the ‘rape capital of the world’: on colonial durabilities and the politics of s*xual violence statistics in DRC', examines the production of about *xualviolence in the of the with a particular eye on the politics of statistics.

(2022). The making and re-making of the ‘rape capital of the world’: on colonial durabilities and the politics of s*xual violence statistics in DRC. Critical African Studies: Vol. 14, Colonial Durabilities in the Contemporary African Great Lakes Region, pp. 55-72.

11/05/2022

In the second article of our latest issue on , Julian Hopwood's article, 'An inherited animus to communal land: the mechanisms of coloniality in land reform agendas in Acholiland, Northern Uganda', reflects on how collective has faced over a century of hostile policy promoting land as private property where access to land for the Acholi people of northern Uganda still has much in common with understandings of the pre-colonial situation.

(2022). An inherited animus to communal land: the mechanisms of coloniality in land reform agendas in Acholiland, Northern Uganda. Critical African Studies: Vol. 14, Colonial Durabilities in the Contemporary African Great Lakes Region, pp. 38-54.

09/05/2022

In the article, & ask: Does the colonial legacy imprint on the ‘post-conflict’ era, shaping post-genocide attempts at nation-building and identity re-engineering carried out in the name of the broader project of peacebuilding?

(2022). Post-genocide identity politics and colonial durabilities in Rwanda. Critical African Studies: Vol. 14, Colonial Durabilities in the Contemporary African Great Lakes Region, pp. 19-37.

06/05/2022

The first issue of 2022 is now out: . 'Colonial Durabilities in the Contemporary Great Lakes Region', explores the concept of in a bid to unearth both the concrete and invisible sites through which continues. The papers in this special issue that urge us to address an important question: Can we truly if we do not fully understand the of the present and its effects?

The issue opens with a preface by Cherie Rivers Ndaliko who articulates a reminder that ' is not only – or even primarily – the product of what we say, but of how we listen.' Read the full issue today!

Frequency: Yearly ISSN: 2168-1392 eISSN: 2040-7211 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21681392.2022.2058773

09/03/2022

In late 2014, disputes around land, displacement and compensation related to the roll-out of big infrastructure projects across Ethiopia mutated into much deeper conflicts about the authoritarian nature of the state, the political marginalization of particular ethnic groups and the legitimacy of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). As security forces continued to quell mounting protests, the federal government imposed a state of emergency. From an upcoming special issue on , Biruk Terrefe explores how the EPRDF navigated this period of political fragility and why infrastructures were used as strategic vehicles for the party’s discourse. Drawing on the Addis-Djibouti Railway as an analytical lens, this research explores how the party strategically deployed posters, images and speeches centred around infrastructure to directly respond to protestors' grievances.

(2022). Infrastructures of Renaissance: tangible discourses in the EPRDF’s Ethiopia. Critical African Studies. Ahead of Print.

07/03/2022

Recently published in CrAS, Eglė Česnulytė investigates the process of individuals trying to figure out how the neoliberal economy works by focusing on women selling s*x in Mombasa, . The article will explore the key tensions prevailing in s*x work through encounters with supernatural forces narrated by women selling s*x.

(2022). The moral economy of s*x work in Mombasa, Kenya. Critical African Studies. Ahead of Print.

04/02/2022

We have an open call for papers for a special issue of Critical African Studies that will focus on the prospects and limitations of African humour. By this, the editors expect papers that discuss the various ways in which humour is produced, distributed, and consumed across African and its diasporas. African humour has been largely ignored, especially beyond discourses on joking relationships, regardless of the varied, emerging popular culture comedic genres across the continent.

Find all the information on how to submit here:

Seeking papers that discuss the various ways in which humour is produced, distributed, and consumed across African and its diasporas.

31/01/2022

In the final paper of issue 13.3, Martin et al. explore the ways in which humour can open up conversations about s*xual and gender-based violence, with a specific focus on interviews and focus groups conducted in Sierra Leone. Without dismissing the fact that humour itself can be violent in certain contexts, the authors examine productive linkages between comedy and laughter on the one hand, and space, memory, and lived experiences on the other. They argue that humour is complex and intimately related to violence in multiple ways. Harnessed effectively, humour can help to generate deeper reflection and social cohesion even in spaces of pain and hardship.

https://buff.ly/3teTE50

28/01/2022

The last two papers in this issue present important arguments about the role of comedy as a powerful form of politics. Amanda Källstig and Carl Death examine Trevor Noah’s stand-up comedy performances and interpret them as a form of political resistance. The authors draw on critical theories of comedy that have interpreted stand-up as a form of political counter-discourse to show how Noah effectively challenges racist and racialized assumptions, drawing on ‘ambivalent mockery’. Their article traces how his material provides a powerful challenge to dominant white, western and Eurocentric discourses on race, disease and poverty.

https://buff.ly/3Gkph0N

26/01/2022

Innocent Dande’s paper makes an important contribution to urban working-class dog histories in Africa. The article examines informal dog breeding practices of the working class and informal workers in Zimbabwe’s high-density suburbs from 1990 to 2019. Dog breeding in this context was not overly shaped by standards established by Western kennel clubs, but instead responded to changing urban sub-cultures and demands for urban security during the Zimbabwean crisis. The political economy of informal dog breeding The emergence of informal dog breeding businesses also provided an avenue for wealth creation by the successful breeders. The article ends by arguing that human-dog relations changed the Zimbabwean crisis in Harare’s high-density urban suburbs.

https://buff.ly/3K2zcdw

24/01/2022

Continuing the urban theme, but moving from questions of artistic representation to the politics of economic development, Graeme Young explores the recent history of Kisekka Market in Kampala, Uganda. He argues that even when seemingly benign or pro-poor, urban development in informal spaces all too often consolidates existing relations of political and economic power. The article demonstrates the importance of actively interrogating the political economy of informal spaces as part of the project of theorising and building more inclusive, just and sustainable African cities.

https://buff.ly/3nc9jhW

21/01/2022

The fourth article in the special section of the issue is by Fiona Siegenthaler, who explores pluriversal conceptions of the city through three artists: David Koloane, Jo Ractliffe and Anthea Moys. Using a heuristic distinction between images, imageries and imaginaries, Siegenthaler argues that de-centered and de-colonial perspectives require plural modes of representation to do justice to the plethora of urban experiences. Through the artists’ work, the article shows how creative work may be more adept at revealing cityness than other forms of urban scholarship.

https://buff.ly/3JXHweJ

19/01/2022

The third article in the collection asks us to shift our perspective from urban dilemmas to art, to make sense of African cities. Focusing on public spaces in Johannesburg through a 2011 performative artwork entitled Inhabitant, by Sello Pesa and Vaughan Sadie, Pauline Guinard examines the power of performance both to re-envision the city and to engage audiences in that new way of seeing. The article argues that contrary to dominant narratives, Johannesburg does in fact have public spaces, but recognising them and their potential demands a willingness to re-think our ideas of what public spaces are and could be.

https://buff.ly/338pBBt

17/01/2022

In the second article of the issue, Jonathan Cane actively resists what he terms ‘a strain of persistent horizontality’ to explore instead the politics of verticality in African cities. In a study of three artworks, Filip de Boeck and Sammy Baloji’s film The Tower: A Concrete Utopia, Bodys Isek Kingelez’ sculpture Kimbembele Ihunga and Ondjaki’s novel Transparent City, Cane argues that the politics of verticality can be expanded to include the poetics and promises of three-dimensional urbanism. He draws on these representations of African cities to interrogate assumptions and ideals about the future, and to expand thinking within and beyond African Studies about where modernity lies.
https://buff.ly/3GkUeCe

14/01/2022

This special section on representing urban lives in Africa starts in Durban, South Africa, where Kira Erwin explores how public storytelling can use ‘counter-hegemonic narratives to disrupt, disarticulate and expand dominant storylines, so that we may reimagine anew alternative ways of seeing and being in the city’. Erwin’s article, Storytelling as a political act: towards a politics of complexity and counterhegemonic narratives, reflects on a research project collaboration where Empatheatre makers drew on oral histories of migrant women’s experiences to develop an interactive performance. The article argues for the political possibilities of public storytelling and scholarship.
https://buff.ly/3fcQ57k

12/01/2022

Happy New Year to all! We are pleased to announce that our latests issue is now online. The issue provides aninsight into the critical interdisciplinary contribution that African Studies is currently making to the study of the urban. Additionally, two papers explore the power of humour to addresssome of the large-scale social, political and personal issues playing out on and beyond the African continent.

Find the full list of articles below:

1.Storytelling as a political act: towards a politics of complexity and counter-hegemonic narratives
By Kira Erwin
2. The promises, poetics and politics of verticality in the really high African city
Jonathan Cane
Inhabitant By Sello Pesa and Vaughn Sadie (2011) or how to (re)imagine public spaces in Johannesburg through art
By Pauline Guinard

3. Representing Johannesburg in transformation: urban experience, imageries, and the work of art by David Koloane, Jo Ractliffe and Anthea Moys By
Fiona Siegenthaler

4. Neoliberalism and the state in the African city: informality, accumulation and the rebirth of aUgandan market
By Graeme Young
5. The political economy of informal dog breeding businesses in Harare’s high-density suburbs,Zimbabwe, 1990-2019
By Innocent Dande
6. Laughter, resistance and ambivalence in Trevor Noah’s stand-up comedy: returning mimicry as mockery
By Amanda Källstig
&
Carl Death
7. Bringing inside out: humour, outreach, and s*xual and gender-based violence in Sierra Leone
By Laura S. Martin
,
Caroline Bradbury-Jones
,
Simeon Koroma
&
Stephen Forcer

Frequency: Yearly ISSN: 2168-1392 eISSN: 2040-7211 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21681392.2021.2014684