Academic literature on the topic 'Africanness'

In this essay, I investigate (socio)linguistic scholarship on African continuities in Brazilian Portuguese to analyze the semiotic ideologies that inform academic literature on this topic. I argue that there are two main schools of thought within this field: the one that sees race as a prominent analytical category, and the one that favors social class over race. I claim that there are three commonalities to different frameworks analyzed here: (1) racialized speech is often equated with Africannes; (2) Africanness is commonly treated as an index of pre-modern times; and (3) Africanness is perceived as foreign to the modern present. In addition, I also suggest that authors who privilege social class over race – as an analytical tool – might be aligned with the ideology of racial democracy.

In the article I am interested in the ways that Africanness (as a representation of and identification with African culture) is musically performed in Slovenia. Africanness is being publicly represented either by African diaspora that is negotiating their ethnic identifications through culture or non-Africans that have established connections with African culture for various reasons. The article illustrates in which cases music offers a space of safety and self-identification, a place of fascination, aesthetic expression or cultural growth and enrichment.

This article focuses on the recent emergence of an “Afro-Dutch” category of self-identification among young people in Amsterdam. Dutch-born youth of different Afro-Caribbean and African backgrounds show a new sense of (and search for) a shared African heritage, and a growing desire for public exposure and recognition of this Africanness. Manifesting in, for example, media initiatives, performing arts, cultural festivals, and bodily fashions, this trend is characterized by an aesthetic emphasis on globalized African styles and by political struggles about the inclusion of African heritage in Dutch imaginations of nationhood. Approaching Africanness as a process of becoming and a practice of self-styling, this article explores the convergence between the renewed interest in African roots among Dutch-born Afro-Caribbeans and the ways in which Ghanaian youth engage with their African origins. It discerns three prominent, but contested tropes with regard to their framing and design of Africanness: “African heritage”, “blackness” and “Afro-cool”.

Abstract This article distinguishes between pan-Africanism and pan-Africanness. It argues that the history of pan-Africanism is replete with achievements but that the achievements could have been more and radical if the movement had from its inception adopted pan-Africanness, manifesting itself as ubuntu, as its point of departure. It focuses on epistemic and material injustice and suggests that there cannot be social justice without epistemic justice. The pursuit of the latter ought to lead to giving up one’s life if necessary, for the sake of giving life to others.

This article presents two themes: how young professionals personally experience sexuality and issues of cultural belonging or identification; and how these issues are interrelated in their lives. I identify ways in which ‘young professionals’ as a social group are in the vanguard in respect of societal reconfigurations of gender, sexuality and culture. I argue that this group embodies post-colonial transformations concerning reconfigurations in gender, sexuality and culture. I work out the complexities of sexuality and culture by focusing on public debates about African heritage, gerontocratic power relations and conventional morality, on the one hand, and personal sexual relationships, intimacy and self-definitions on the other. Finally, I explore how sexuality has become central to self-expression and how cultural self-identification is an ambiguous concern for young professionals.

Abstract This article contributes to scholarship on Afroeurope by investigating the intersection of blackness, Africanness, and Europeanness in everyday discourses and social practices in the Netherlands and Italy. We examine how young African-descended Europeans are forging new ways of being both African and European through practices of self-making, which should be understood against both the historical background of colonialism and the contemporary politics of othering. Such practices take on an urgency for these youth, often encompassing a reinvention of Africanness and/or blackness as well as a challenge to dominant, exclusionary understandings of Europeanness. Comparing Afro-Dutch and Afro-Italian modes of self-making, centred on African heritage and roots, we discuss: 1) the emergence of a transnational, Afroeuropean imaginary, distinguished from both white Europe and African-American formations; and 2) the diversity of Afroeuropean modes of self-making, all rooted in distinct histories of colonialism, slavery, and immigration, and influenced by global formations of Africanness and blackness. These new Afro and African identities advanced by young Europeans do not turn away from Europeanness (as dominant identity models would assume: the more African, the less European), nor simply add to Europeanness (“multicultural” identities), nor even mix with Europeanness (“hybrid” identities), but are in and of themselves European.

The aim of this study is to analyse selected episodes of the locally produced television programme Generations, in order to identify specific ways in which the programme seeks to forge a South African identity, and in so doing, 'flag' our nationhood as South Africans. These elements of 'South Africanness' are broadly defined as connections to a South African way of life, context, values and experiences. Generations is a programme produced under South African broadcasting local content provisions. These provisions arise out of the need, inter alia, to reflect the identity and multi-cultural nature of South Africa in order to foster 'national identity' and 'national culture'. These elements of 'South Africanness' are extracted through a genre and ideological analysis of selected sample episodes, taking into consideration the theoretical frameworks of the politics of representation and identity. The production context of, and representations made, in Generations, are found to be situated largely within the context of the South African discourses of the ‘rainbow nation', 'African renaissance' and 'black economic empowerment'. The analysis concludes that through the various categories of representations of 'South Africanness' in the selected episodes of Generations, specific instances of identity, that of national culture and national identity are formed.

It has become commonplace in academic studies, particularly those with a critical bent, to view nations as being historical constructs, as being without essence, though not without effects of exclusion and inclusion, of the constitution of the „authentic‟ national subject and the „other of the nation.‟ The critical impetus at work here is to show how a nation is constructed in order to bring into view the knowledge and power relations this construction entails, to show whose interests the construction serves, and whose it does not. This study examines the discursive production, the performative enactment and the spatial emplacement of post-apartheid „South Africanness‟ through a case study of Oppikoppi music festival. Oppikoppi is an annual event that emerged in 1994, on the threshold of the „new South Africa.‟ The festival is attended predominantly by young white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans and is held on a farm in the northernmost province of Limpopo, South Africa, an area notoriously conservative in its racial politics. Yet, curiously, Oppikoppi has been repeatedly referred to, and refers to itself with an almost obsessive regularity and repetitiveness, as a „truly South African‟ event. Indeed, the festival has been promoted, since 1998, as „The Home of South African Music,‟ and in 2009 the site of the festival was unofficially declared a „national monument.‟ Through the employment of concepts drawn from the writings of French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault – particularly his earlier archaeological works – and from Sigmund Freud – particularly his metapsychological works – this study has posed two broad sets of questions. Firstly, from a Foucauldian perspective, what have been the conditions for the production of „South Africanness‟ at this festival? What have been the requirements, the discursive „rules of the game‟ for whiteness and Afrikanerness to become „South African‟? To what extent does this constitution of the festival as a „South African‟ event preserve older lines of division, difference and oppression? To what extent does this bring about meaningful social change? Secondly, from a psychoanalytic perspective, what are the fantasies constellated in the discourse of the festival as a „South African‟ event? Who, in these fantasies, is constituted as the „other of the post-apartheid nation‟? How has fantasy provided a kind of „hallucinatory gratification,‟ a phantasmatic compensation for, and a means of conserving, the losses of privilege in the new nation? And how has fantasy oriented the festival towards post-apartheid sociality, soliciting identifications with the post-apartheid nation? The overarching argument proposed is that anti-apartheid post-apartheid nation building has cultivated a melancholic loss of apartheid for whites in general and Afrikaners in particular, a loss that cannot be grieved – indeed, a loss that should not be grieved – and, as such, a grief that takes on an unconscious afterlife. Apartheid and the life it enabled – not only racialised privilege, but also a structure of identification and idealisation, of being and having – becomes a loss that is buried in, and by, the injunctions issued to post-apartheid memory and conduct. Without the discursive resources with which to symbolise this loss, disguised repetitions of the past, a neurotic refinding of the lost objects of apartheid, and melancholia are the likely outcomes, each of which engender a set of exclusions and enjoyments that run along old and new lines.

Este trabalho de pesquisa se propõe a investigar, por meio de instrumentos qualitativos de análise, a pertinência do uso de elementos processos e modos da cultura afro-brasileira na aprendizagem da matemática escolar. Para tanto recorremos: as circunstâncias históricas de conceituação da racionalidade ocidental; as circunstâncias e consequências do racionalismo positivista para a inserção da população negra brasileira no sistema educacional; a uma proposta de racionalidade fundamentada na africanidade; a análise dos vínculos possíveis entre etnomatemática e psicologia cognitiva como instrumento de mediação da aprendizagem; e por fim a busca por elementos culturais que possam contribuir com atividades, modos e processos com potencial de serem incorporados nas aulas de matemática presentes nas práticas de um grupo de resistência dentro de uma escola de samba paulistana.
This research work proposes to investigate, through quantitative analysis tools, the relevance of the use of instruments - processes and methods - of the African-Brazilian culture in the learning school mathematics. In order to, we betake to: the historical circumstances of Western rationality conceptualization; the circumstances and consequences of the positivist rationalism for insertion of black people in educational system; the proposal of rationality founded in Africaness; the analysis of possible connections between ethnomathematics and cognitive psychology as mediation tools of apprenticeship; and lastly, the search for cultural elements - that may contribute to activities, methods and processes with the potential to be incorporated into mathematics classes - presents in the practices of a resistance group in a native of São Paulo samba school.

With the advent of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), people with the human immune deficiency virus (HIV) infection are increasingly enjoying longer and relatively healthy lives, particularly in developed countries. However, black Africans and African-Caribbean people in the United Kingdom and other developed countries are not yet enjoying the full benefits of HAART, essentially as a result of delayed diagnosis. Delayed diagnosis, in addition to affecting the health of infected individuals, also creates a community reservoir for the spread of the infection; thereby hampering prevention and control strategies by international and NHS guidelines. The delayed diagnosis may be grounded in individual, societal and health service factors that guide help-seeking behaviours of black African and African-Caribbean populations. This study set out to investigate the help-seeking behaviours to diagnose HIV and AIDS among UK based black African and African-Caribbean people, and to investigate the dynamics in those behaviours by place of origin (Africa vs. Caribbean) and by gender. A qualitative methodological approach involving semi-structured interviews was used to explore help-seeking behaviours to diagnose HIV and AIDS among black Africans and African-Caribbean populations in the UK and compared by gender. Thirty (30) purposively selected individuals from patients attending two sexual health clinics in the city of London were interviewed. These included 16 black Africans and 14 African-Caribbean people, and 16 men and 14 women. The symbolic interactionist perspective, and the concepts of broken narratives/silences, biographical disruption and biographical abruption guided the study and interpretation of findings. One main theme ‘Africanness’ and two sub-themes (“African way” and “African thing”) emerged from the findings. The “African way” embodies the risk factors involved in contracting or transmitting HIV and the “African thing” represents the HIV status itself. This is a cultural construction of HIV and AIDS within the acceptable context of participants which helped them to talk about HIV and AIDS without addressing it by the biomedical idiom. The notion of ‘Africanness’ provided a ‘marker’ for African identity. The “African thing” represented a new landscape for naming HIV without necessarily calling it by name and provided a comfortable platform for participants to seek help. The “African way” described the risk behaviours by participants that resulted in the “African thing”. Three sociological concepts; ‘broken narratives or silences, biographical disruption and biographical abruption were key issues in HIV and AIDS diagnosis at a late stage and have formed the basis for the development of a model of help-seeking for diagnosis by participants. Apparently, the main determinants of help-seeking for diagnosis of HIV and AIDS are dependent on cultural factors. Stigma is reinforced by the national health care system practices as well as health professionals themselves. This potentially increases the reluctance among black African and African-Caribbean populations to voluntarily test for HIV. An HIV diagnosis is seemingly a challenging experience because of the impending uncertainties associated with it. Seeking help for diagnosis may even be more difficult because of the anticipated and unpleasant experiences along the path to diagnosis. This may guide the individual to consider other alternatives outside the biomedical pathway, potentially; the biomedical path becomes the least likely choice, especially with black African and African-Caribbean populations. An insufficient cultural understanding is likely to result in inadequate recognition of alternative medical practices, insufficient attention to alternatives to biomedical health systems and potential distortion of the meaning of health messages linking them to practice.

This research thesis focuses on the recent emergence of the “African-Italian” category of self- identification among young people in Italy with African origin. It explores how and to what extent the notion of Africanness is made and unmade, contested, reinterpreted and hyphenated in everyday practices, interactions and social representations. A common tendency shown by Italian-born youth with different African backgrounds is the increasing reference to Africa and African identity in cultural, social and entrepreneurial initiatives. This reveals their search for a new sense of their shared African heritage and at the same time a growing desire for public exposure and recognition of their Africanness. Moreover, the multiple intersections of notions of Africanness, Blackness and Italianness in daily social interactions and in the local “politics of naming” shows that young people of African descent associate their “being African” with positioning themselves to local public debates about racism and in relation to transnational Blackness. Therefore, “being African” is not only an issue at the cultural and political levels, but it also represents a category of difference or belonging, which is an important matter for people in different relational contexts. Indeed, African-Italian youth politics of self-definition is situated at different spatial levels: the level of circulation of categories across the Black Atlantic, the European level of an increasing awareness of Afro-Europeanness, the national level of specific colonial histories and racial formations, and the local level of everyday interaction. This PhD research aims at contributing to the emerging field of Afro-European studies in two ways. On the one hand it explores a specific South-European socio-historical context, Italy, on the other hand it proposes to approach Africanness and Blackness as categories of practices (Brubaker 2012). Firstly, the Italian specific colonial history together with the postcolonial African trajectories of migration and local integration consolidate the concept of alterity based on the colour of the skin as well as the “tribal clichés” on Africa and Africans. Both the social and historical elements have affected the evolution of the Italian-African diaspora, the racialization processes and the strategies to resist to racism. Secondly, this research intends to consider Africanness as an “identity of relation” (Glissant 1990) and a process of self-design (De Witte 2014). According to Palmié, in this research Africa and Africanness are not considered as analytical categories or ontological givens, but as “problems to be empirically investigated in regard to both the historical forces and discursive formations that lastingly 'Africanized' the continent and its inhabitants” (Palmié 2007). Therefore, understanding whether an element is authentically African becomes less important than explore, through social practices, interactions and socials representation, when and where the social actor claims his/ her Africanness or not (Chivallon 2004). This research seeks to answer the following set of questions drawing on empirical data collected through ethnographic observations and narrative interviews. Who can be identified as an African? What does it entail to be a person with African origin in Italy and in Europe? When and to what extent does “being African” become (or cease to be) important? When does this dimension prevail over other levels of affiliations, i.e. national or ethnic, local or transnational? When is it contested? How does the notion of Africanness intersect with the notion of Blackness? During the three-year project, the researcher collected 51 narrative gender-balanced interviews with young adults aged 20-35 with different national origins – i.e.⅓ from West Africa, ⅓ from East Africa, ⅓ from Central and South Africa- who were born or have lived in Italy for at least ten years. These interviewees are young professionals, entrepreneurs, artists, social activists or university students. They can be considered as young people with great aspirations, involved in a process of social mobility and who improve their skills and knowledge through education or self-entrepreneurship. In addition, the author has ethnographically observed relevant events dedicated to the whole African diaspora – i.e. beauty pageants, association meetings, trainings and other events – as well as family contexts and online conversations. This methodology allowed to observe the elaboration of Africanness at different cultural and social levels. In the first part (ch.3) the research explored how Africanness emerges in social interactions within the Italian context, focusing on how this dimension appears as a category of alterity or as one of the aspects of the actors’ multiple identity, which is socially redefined and strategically used in daily life by the interviewees of this research. As a reaction to racism, young African-Italians appropriate the power to define what is African for themselves. This phenomenon challenges the “invention of Africa” (Mudimbe 1988), a notion relating Africanness to a paradigm of alterity. The transnational and diasporic levels of interactions carry a remarkable significance for social actors, allowing them to realize the instability of notions such as Blackness and Whiteness, as well as the process of “re-branding” Africa (De Witte 2014) occurring at the global level. In the second part the research explored some corporeal practices: male circumcision (ch.4), haircare (ch.5), use of African textiles and accessories (ch.6). On the one hand, the Black body is the intersection of the social and historical experiences of youth in Africa and in the diaspora. On the other hand, the analysis of corporeal practices shows how social actors position themselves in relation to traditional habits and consolidated aesthetic styles. The making of Africanness is here explored as a process of self-design. The individual experience and definition of Africanness are embedded in the continuous tensions between intergenerational transmission, individual appropriation, performance and creativity. The exploration of practices that involve these dimensions of social and individual life - i.e. male circumcision, haircare, use of African textiles and accessories – elucidates how the meaning of “being African” changes within evolving biographies. It becomes therefore important for self-understanding but also in the processes of self-promotion. In the last chapter (ch.7) this contribution underlined the interconnections between professional aspirations and the elaboration of Africanness. To face the lack of equal opportunities, African-Italian young people can capitalize the “African part” of their social networks or cultural backgrounds, allowing for new economic spaces and consumer niches. Contested or celebrated, the appropriation of Africanness arises as an act “of self-making” and “of self-promotion” that reduces racial categories and discrimination practices to be regarded only as one of the aspects of social life. The research showed that African-Italian young people express their subjectivities in relation both to racial paradigms and to what is considered “the African heritage”. They therefore underline the versatility of their “being African”, which appears a social construction not to be strictly related to the skin, but to a reserve of symbols, aesthetic styles and cosmopolitan competences usable, also strategically, in different life stages and relational contexts.
Questa ricerca prende avvio dalla crescente diffusione del termine “afroitaliano” come categoria di auto-rappresentazione tra i giovani di origine africana in Italia ed esplora come la nozione di africanità venga costruita o decostruita, reinterpretata o “usata con il trattino” nelle pratiche di vita quotidiana, nelle interazioni e nelle rappresentazioni sociali. Il crescente riferimento all’ Africa e all’identità africana in iniziative di stampo culturale, sociale e imprenditoriale mostra infatti che i giovani nati e cresciuti in Italia, con diversi background africani, ricercano un patrimonio culturale africano condiviso (De Witte & Meyer 2012) e desiderano esibirlo pubblicamente, lottando per un suo riconoscimento all’interno del panorama culturale nazionale. Le molteplici intersezioni delle categorie di africanità, blackness e italianità nei contesti di vita quotidiana e nelle “politics of naming” locali mettono in luce che i giovani afrodiscendenti si appropriano del loro “essere africani” posizionandosi rispetto a più livelli storici e socio-culturali: quello del Black Atlantic e della blackness transnazionale, quello europeo dove vi è una crescente consapevolezza dell’afro-europeità, quello nazionale delle specifiche storie coloniali e formazioni razziali, infine quello locale delle interazioni della vita quotidiana. Questa ricerca intende contribuire all’emergente campo di studi sull’Afro-Europa in due modi: analizzando la costruzione sociale dell’africanità in uno specifico contesto sud-europeo, quello italiano, e proponendo di considerare l’africanità come categorie di pratiche (Brubaker 2012) rilevante in vari contesti relazionali. All’interno dello spazio culturale europeo, il contesto italiano presenta delle specificità dovute alla sua storia coloniale e alle traiettorie dell’immigrazione postcoloniale. Il lascito coloniale ha contribuito al consolidamento di rappresentazioni dell’alterità basate sul dispositivo del colore e su “cliché tribali” sugli africani, ma non ha determinato le mappe delle migrazioni, che non hanno seguito le rotte del colonialismo ma perlopiù progetti economici. In tale cornice storica e socio- culturale, l’africanità viene qui intesa come un’identità relazionale (Glissant 1990) che emerge in vari contesti sociali e nei processi di self-design (De Witte 2014). L’ Africa e l’africanità non possono essere considerate categorie analitiche, tantomeno ontologiche: sono nozioni che esistono solamente nelle produzioni discorsive e nelle politiche egemoniche che hanno “africanizzato” il continente e le persone che lo abitano (Palmié 2007). Perciò, osservare quando e dove gli attori sociali reclamano e si appropriano – anche creativamente - della propria africanità è più importante del tentativo di comprendere se un elemento, o un soggetto, è “autenticamente” africano (Chivallon 2004). Questa ricerca si basa sia basa sul materiale empirico raccolto attraverso osservazioni etnografiche e 51 interviste narrative. Le interviste sono state condotte con giovani adulti di diverse origini africane (⅓ dall’Africa Occidentale, ⅓ dall’Africa Orientale, ⅓ dall’Africa centrale o meridionale), tra i 20 e i 35 anni, nati o residenti da almeno dieci anni in diverse regioni italiane. Nella scelta del campione è stato mantenuto un equilibrio di genere e tutti gli intervistati sono giovani professionisti, artisti, imprenditori o studenti universitari. Sono persone che, nonostante le umili origini o la scarsità di pari opportunità, cercano di attivare un processo di mobilità sociale facendo leva su molteplici competenze e sull’auto-imprenditorialità. Le osservazioni etnografiche sono state svolte in occasione di alcune feste familiari ed eventi rivolti all’intera diaspora africana (concorsi di bellezza, incontri di associazioni, festival, attività formative e convegni), ponendo la dovuta attenzione anche alle conversazioni online precedenti o successive agli eventi. Questo approccio al campo ha consentito di osservare la costruzione dell’africanità a diversi livelli sociali e culturali. Nella prima parte (cap.3) la ricerca esplora come questa dimensione emerge nelle interazioni sociali in contesto italiano, come categoria di alterità etero-attribuita o come una delle molteplici identità che gli attori sociali creativamente ridefiniscono o utilizzano nei vari contesti della vita quotidiana. I giovani afrodiscendenti reagiscono infatti ai processi di razzializzazione anche riprendendosi il potere di definire cosa è, o non è, africano, e in che termini, rompendo anche con l’“idea di Africa” (Mudimbe 1988, 1994) come paradigma di alterità. Il livello transnazionale e diasporico diventa importante per gli attori sociali perché permette loro di sperimentare l’instabilità delle categorie razziali di blackness e whiteness, ma anche di partecipare, declinandolo localmente, al processo di re-branding dell’Africa che rende le produzioni culturali ed artistiche “afro” sempre più “cool” (De Witte 2014). La seconda parte è dedicata alle pratiche del corpo (cap.4,5,6). Il “corpo nero” si trova infatti all’intersezione delle esperienze storiche e sociali delle popolazioni dell’Africa e della sua diaspora. Tuttavia, l’analisi dei processi di trasmissione e incorporazione di tecniche e norme estetiche ci permette di osservare i molteplici significati che i corpi assumono, al di là dell’esperienza della loro razzializzazione. I soggettivi percorsi di riscoperta e riappropriazione dell’africanità si inseriscono perciò nella continua tensione che lega trasmissione generazionale, creatività individuale e performance nello spazio pubblico. Nel corso dei capitoli sono state analizzate pratiche del corpo che toccano tutte queste dimensioni della vita sociale: la circoncisione maschile, le tecniche di cura dei capelli e l’uso di tessuti e accessori “africani”. Questo percorso ha permesso di analizzare come il significato dell’“essere africano” e dell’essere “nero” cambi nel corso delle biografie individuali e venga continuamente negoziato nelle interazioni sociali e nei processi di trasmissione. Nell’ultimo capitolo, viene sottolineata la stretta interconnessione tra riappropriazione dell’africanità, aspirazioni e percorsi professionali, mostrando anche come il “lato africano” delle reti sociali e del personale bagaglio culturale possa essere capitalizzato e tradursi in nicchie di consumo e mercato. Ridefinita, contestata o celebrata, il recupero della propria africanità rientra perciò un processo di stilizzazione e promozione del sé, nello spazio pubblico come nelle politiche culturali ed economiche locali e globali. In conclusione, la ricerca mette in evidenza come i giovani afrodiscendenti, ritrovando l’orgoglio nel “dirsi africano”, negoziano il significato sociale della nerezza e della “tradizione africana”. L’ “essere africano/a” appare una dimensione non esclusivamente collegata al colore della pelle, nemmeno ad una presunta autenticità, ma a repertori simbolici ed estetici e a competenze – spesso cosmopolite - continuamente ridefinite e riscostruite.

ABSTRACT Racial identities in South Africa reflect a highly complex history of how people have related to each other. They also illustrate how power has been used to validate different identities, along a racial hierarchy that attached the most value to whiteness and the least to black Africanness. These structural validations have played themselves out in everyday interactions between people both in terms of how they are seen and how they see themselves. In particular, this study draws on psychoanalytic literature to help to explain the workings of race and the recalcitrance of racism. In South Africa, conceptualizations of blackness and whiteness have dominated discourses on race and on racism. Set in Cape Town, this study by contrast, focuses on coloured identities and how these are experienced and understood particularly in relation to black Africanness. It uses participants’ life histories to explore the workings of race and racism in coloured households and communities, examining relations between family members in this regard in particular. It illustrates the tensions that characterize coloured subjectivities especially in the post-apartheid era, showing how coloured identities articulate themselves in opposition, as well as in relation, to black Africanness. Importantly, this study reveals how associations with black Africanness have threatened the security of many people who identify as coloured. The thesis also explores indices of sexuality and gender as they relate to the broader topic of race and racism. The key argument of the study as a whole is that by exploring the meanings of race racism in the realm of the intimate, or the intrapersonal, we will come closer to understanding these notions and practices and in the case of racism, some of the reasons why it persist after social and political transformation, even as its meanings change.

Using an article written by Nigerian-­‐born academic and critic, Sylvester Ogbechie, I consider the ways in which contemporary African art is constructed as a taxonomic category. Ogbechie’s article, ‘The Curator as Culture Broker’ (2010), is framed as a critical response to the practice of Nigerian-­‐born African art curator Okwui Enwezor. I respond directly to the arguments and claims made in this article through a discussion of the ways in which Africanness and contemporaneity are negotiated in relation to organisational structures of time and space as well as through a consideration of two exhibitions curated by Enwezor: In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present (1996) and Snap Judgments: New Positions in African Photography (2006). My thesis is that the ways in which terms like contemporary African art are used in taxonomic endeavours often leads to oversimplification of our understandings of concepts like Africanness, like contemporaneity, and by extension like culture and history. My argument claims that Ogbechie’s position is bedevilled by a number of broad assertions that belie the complexity of the terrain and the discourse of contemporary African art.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
英語研究所
87
Abstract Because the project of colonialism has fixed the African as a projection of Western desires and economic interests, Chinua Achebe's act of writing is bound to be his quest for the techniques and ideologies of narrative that could counter colonial discourse. Achebe would conceive narrative as a vehicle for what Edward Said calls "an opposing point of view, perspective, consciousness" pitted against "the unitary web of vision" embedded in dominant discourse (Orientalism 240). In this thesis, I would like to argue that Achebe's effort to reinvent the African is tied to the framework which has been shaped by the changing discourse on representation and national identity in colonial and post-colonial Africa. Through a close reading of his theoretical reflections on the nature and function of African writing and his works in question, namely Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease, I would like to show that Achebe's seminal status in the history of African literature lies precisely in his ability to use the novel as a new way of reorganizing African cultures, especially in the crucial juncture of transition from colonialism to national independence. The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One explores Achebe's theoretical reflections on the nature and function of African writing in general. With the juxtaposition of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Chapter Two examines the issues of race and representation in colonial and anti-colonial discourse. Chapter Three investigates the problem of identity takes place at the juncture of colonization and independence in No Longer at Ease. Chapter Four recapitulates the major arguments of the thesis and discusses Achebe's use of the Western literary form.

This book discusses how musicians from Bahia, an emblematic African diasporic location in northeastern Brazil, think about, discuss, compose, rehearse, perform, and stage music inspired by what they perceive to be their own African ancestry. It argues that these musicians assert Afro-Brazilian identities and connect to the African continent and other diasporic places by creatively engaging essentialized notions about African music and culture: instead of mechanically reproducing these tropes, they emphasize them or downplay them. The book theorizes these preconceived notions about African music, culture, and performance as tropes of Africanness, emphasizing that they exist in two interrelated realms: as essentialist ideas in discourse and as concrete practices and sounds. Six commonly encountered tropes of African music are analyzed: the notions that its most important parameter is rhythm and that it is dominated by percussion; that it is meant to be danced to or deeply embodied rather than intellectualized; that it always touches on the sacred; that it is spontaneous and improvisatory; and that it reflects communalism rather than individualism. Through four case studies from Bahia (a jazz big band called Orkestra Rumpilezz, a symphony orchestra called the Orquestra Afrosinfônica, and two berimbau orchestras led by capoeira practitioners), the book demonstrates the nuances of musical creation in the African diaspora, acknowledging the genuine impact that essentialisms have on Bahian music while showing that they may not be an essential part of the musicians’ African roots.

AbstractBroadening the conceptual scope beyond the Global North and ‘Asian biases’, this chapter takes cognisance of the challenges of universalistic approaches to migration realities, which undermine the fact that both experience and knowledge are contextual. Emphasis is on re-theorising migration to account for contextual specificities that shape the realities of moving within the Global South, particularly in Africa where migration – subsequent to involuntary push factors such as civil war, political violence, economic challenges, extreme poverty and social realities specific to the continent – is often a forced experience compared to the Global North where it is a choice and lifestyle. Contextual theories of migration in this chapter avoid rendering the specific universal by exploring how the state polices the migratory process; the social meanings society attaches to ‘that which is foreign’; and the ultimate meaning of being a black African migrant in Africa. These contextual realities call for conceptual renegotiation of the meaning of Africanness or African identities, especially for black Africans located in spaces of violent and brutal prejudice against those perceived as foreign. The main conceptual contribution is built around experiences that hardly find their way into mainstream discourses and theorisations where Global North and Asian biases have dominated what has become to be known as literature and theories of migration.

Chapter 3 presents the book’s first case study, Orkestra Rumpilezz, a big band mixing jazz with emblematic Afro-Bahian genres such as Candomblé, carnival music (ijexá and samba reggae), samba de roda, and capoeira. It opens with a discussion of composer-director Letieres Leite’s trajectory in Brazil and Europe and his views on Africa and the liminal status of jazz in Bahia, as an African diasporic genre and, simultaneously, US America’s classical music. This is followed by an analysis of how the orchestra spotlights percussion and percussionists in its performances and links them to the polemic notion of racial democracy in Brazil. A number of performance practices (layout of musicians on stage, colors and styles of costumes, visual symbols, instrumentation, physical movement, speech between pieces) are connected with the tropes of embodiment, spirituality, and spontaneity.

Chapter 1 provides a background on Afro-Bahian history, religion, politics, and musical activism focusing on two questions: How did Bahia emerge as an epicenter of African diasporic culture in Brazil and the black Atlantic? And what are the implications of this image for the study of tropes of Africanness? The discussion touches upon the specific practices and realms from which perceived Africanness emanates, including carnival percussion ensembles linked to black consciousness and, especially, the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion, which agglutinates Brazil’s most evocative African symbols, images, and sounds. Additionally, racial relations and the complicated relationship between African-based identities and national consciousness are discussed.

Chapter 4 continues the discussion of Orkestra Rumpilezz, focusing on how it materializes Letieres Leite’s rhetoric about African rhythmic complexity. Two strategies for increasing rhythmic complexity are discussed: the transfer of drum patterns from Candomblé to the big band to form polyphonic textures; and the transformation of traditional timelines (clave-like patterns) borrowed from Candomblé and carnival music, including rotation (shifting the timeline’s reference point), truncation, and superimposing two versions of the same timeline, a phenomenon that is labeled staggered timeline alignment. The chapter theorizes unique cases of timeline usage, comparing and contrasting them with well-known studies of clave in other parts of the black Atlantic.

This conclusive chapter compares and contrasts the ways in which the musicians and ensembles discussed in the book approach the tropes: sometimes emphasizing them, at others downplaying them, and at yet other times interrupting them. It presents the implications of this study for diaspora studies, Afro-diasporic religion, and the erudite/popular divide in Brazil. It closes by arguing that a conscious and disciplined study of African tropes enables researchers to discover that variety in African diasporic creation is limitless and enables musicians to access an expanded range of musical expression.

Chapter 6 discusses the Nzinga Berimbau Orchestra, a berimbau ensemble formed by members of a capoeira angola group headquartered in Bahia. Led by Mestra Janja and Mestre Poloca, this orchestra explores new repertoires beyond capoeira, and utilizes the berimbau in new contexts—dissociated from capoeira’s physical expression, in the concert hall. The chapter begins by discussing the role and perceptions of the berimbau in capoeira and Brazilian popular music and moves on to explain the various strands grounding the Bantu-centric rhetoric of the Nzinga orchestra. Remaining close to capoeira aesthetics, drawing on rhythms and songs from the Angola Candomblé tradition, treating the berimbau as a purely percussive instrument, and emphasizing the tropes of African spontaneity and collectivism, the Nzinga orchestra articulates the strongest Afrocentric discourse studied in the book.