Postcolonial Identities in Africa (Postcolonial Encounters) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1856494160 ISBN 13: 9781856494168

Publisher: Zed Books, 1996

Synopsis

'The end of Apartheid', 'the decay of the state', the escape of refugees', 'the increasing fatalities from AIDS' - from crisis to catastrophe, Africa has come to be globalized for media consumption, grossly misrepresented and, above all, marginalised.

In this book, distinguished anthropologists, political scientists and social historians from Africa, Europe and America make a radical break with much conventional wisdom in postcolonial discourse to explore contemporary African identities in transition. They look at the colonial legacy and how colonial identities are being reconstructed in the face of deepening social inequality across the continent. They ask how the postcolonial imagination as a highly specific, locally created and historical force reconfigures personal knowledge and how that reconfiguration shapes the moral and religious realities around the uses and abuses of postcolonial power.

Using case-studies, the book explores why postcolonial studies has to enunciate and interpret the distinctive languages of identity politics in all the cultural richness of their specific metaphors. It asks whether the very idea of the postcolonial conceals the continued dependence of African countries? Is the postcolonial thus merely a neo-colonial mystification, a Eurocentric product of Western scholarship in collusion with Western imperialism?

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Werbner is Professor of African Anthropology and Director of the International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research (ICCR) at the University of Manchester. Among his books are Ritual Passage, Sacred Journey (1989), and Tears of the Dead (1991), for which he received the Amaury Talbot Prize of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He is coeditor-in-chief of Social Analysis and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Southern African Studies, Cultural Dynamics, Journal of Legal Pluralism, and Journal of Religion in Africa. He is also Series Editor of Postcolonial Encounters, a Zed Books series in association with the ICCR, Universities of Manchester and Keele. His distinguished career has included visiting appointments at a number of universities in Africa and North America.

Review:

"An excellent contribution to the growing body of literature on postcolonial Africa... should prove to have lasting influence, among all those with an interest in postcolonial encounters." --American Ethnologist, Voume 25, No 1, February 1998

"A fascinating range of approaches to debates surrounding issues of identity in African studies... extremely thorough, insightful and thought-provoking." --Contemporary Politics, Volume 3, No 4, 1997

'Both [editors] have for a long period been active in constructing African Studies as an interdisciplinary research area. The high quality of the contributions to the volume is a witness to the fruitfulness of their endeavours' --The European Journal of Development Research

About this edition

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1856494160
• ISBN 13: 9781856494168
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Werbner Richard, Ranger Terence