1st Edition
An Anthology of African Cultural Studies, Volume I Groundings
This volume provides an overview of fundamental or ‘grounding’ themes in African Cultural Studies, including the articulation of African cultural studies, the issue of Africa’s diaspora(s), African identity and identifications, and media studies in Africa and its relationship with cultural studies. The first of two volumes, the book predominantly pulls together a rich reservoir of previously published articles from Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, mapping a long history of the field that draws from a diverse range of origins and locations, especially from within Africa itself.
The first section of the book addresses how African cultural studies has been called for and explained, both as a comprehensive continental (and sometimes national) discourse and as being in conversation with established global cultural studies. The second section addresses the African diaspora and what might be termed diasporic African cultural studies. A third principal theme explored is how African identities and identifications are articulated in African cultural studies. On spatiality, the volume takes a stance on the exclusive continental versus continuity conception of Africa: the African diaspora is treated as contributory and its relationship to the continent as problematic, while taking up continental Africa as the principal location of African cultural studies. In terms of identity, Blackness is taken up as the dominant (but importantly, not exclusive) racial identity, and identification of African cultural studies and gender and social class are also addressed in novel ways. The book ends with an examination of the complex relationship between media studies and cultural studies.
This book will be a key resource for academics, researchers and advanced students of African cultural studies, media and cultural studies, African studies, history, politics, sociology, and social and cultural anthropology, while also being of interest to those seeking an introduction to the sub-field of African cultural studies.
An Introduction to African Cultural Studies
Handel Kashope Wright and Keyan G. Tomaselli
Part I – African Cultural Studies: Groundings
1. African Cultural Studies: An Overview
Handel Kashope Wright and Yao Xiao
2. Negotiations, transitions and uncertainty principles: Critical Arts in the worlds of the post, Critical Arts
Keyan Tomaselli, Johan Muller and Arnold Shepperson
3. African cultural studies, cultural studies in Africa: How to make a useful difference
Francis Nyamnjoh
4.Would We Know African Cultural Studies If We Saw It?
Handel Kashope Wright
5. Cultural studies in Africa: Positioning difference
Keyan Tomaselli
Part II – Articulating Diasporic African Cultural Studies
6. Wild seed: Africa and its many diasporas.
Adwoa Afful
7. African intellectuals in the belly of the beast: Migration, identity and the politics of African
intellectuals in the North
Francis Njubi Nesbitt
8. Ships that will never sail: the paradox of Rastafari Pan-Africanism
Barry Chevannes
9. Communicating Pan-Africanism: Caribbean leadership and global impact
Hopeton S. Dunn and Rupert Lewis
10. Just kidding? Humour, rhetoric and racial inference in newsletters of a San Francisco Bay
Area South African group
Scott M. Schönfeldt-Aultman
Part III – African Identities: Race, Class & Gender
11. Notes on the (Im)Possibility of articulating continental African identity
Handel Kashope Wright
12. That rare and random tribe: Albino identity in South Africa
Ngaire Blankenberg
13. A politics of blood: The ‘white tribe’ of Africa and the recombinant nationalism of a colonizing indigene
Jenny de Reuck
14. Middle-class matters, or, how to keep whites whiter, colours brighter, and blacks
beautiful
Sonja Laden
15. Reflections on Trans & Taxonomy (with Neo Musangi)
Keguro Macharia
Part IV – Media Studies and/as Cultural Studies
16. Alter-egos: cultural and media studies
Keyan G. Tomaselli
17. Capital or critique? When journalism education seeks to influence the field
Priscilla A. Boshoff and Anthea Garman
18. Reuters and the South African press at the end of Empire
Peter Putnis
19. Broadcasting to the Portuguese Empire in Africa: Salazar's singular broadcasting policy
Nelson Ribeiro
20. Paradigms in South African cinema research: Modernity, the New Africa Movement and
Beyond
Keyan G. Tomaselli
Biography
Keyan G. Tomaselli is Distinguished Professor, Dean’s Office, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, and Professor Emeritus and Fellow, University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is founder and now co-editor of Critical Arts.
Handel Kashope Wright is Senior Advisor to the President on Anti-racism and Inclusive Excellence, Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education and Professor of Education, University of British Columbia and Senior Research Associate, University of Johannesburg. He is also Associate Editor of Critical Arts.
