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The Future of Africa's Past: Observations on the Discipline1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Heike Schmidt
Heike Schmidt*
Affiliation:
Florida State University
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Extract

In April 2007 David William Cohen and his graduate students held a symposium on the future of African Studies at the University of Michigan. David Cohen, two graduate students—Isabelle de Rezende and Clapperton Mavhunga—as well as five invited speakers with different disciplinary backgrounds—Pius Adesanmi, Tim Burke, Jennifer Cole, Paul Zeleza, and myself—contributed papers. The purpose of the conference, entitled “2020: Re-Envisioning African Studies,” was twofold. First, it appeared timely to reflect yet again on the state of African Studies in disciplinary-based and area studies departments. Second, David Cohen had the idea of 2020 representing both the utopia of ideal vision and the concrete question of what the field might look like when the graduate students participating might conceive their second book projects. What follows are the thoughts—not a list of solutions—by a historian who has studied in three academic contexts—Germany, Zimbabwe, Britain—who has taught in as many—Britain, Germany, USA—and who has gathered experience both in area and disciplinary-based departments.

Finding one's intellectual home in area studies is problematic for a range of reasons, not least for the exoticization and marginalization of non-western world regions in the global flows of ideas. At the same time, African Studies make for a comfortable sense of belonging. This is a community of scholars who provide a productive and engaging, if at times impassioned, conversation with colleagues across disciplinary boundaries, time periods, and the great diversity of African and diasporic societies and regions. The question is: what place does the historical discipline occupy within this field, and what is its future?

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 34 , 2007 , pp. 453 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2007

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank the African History Group for inviting me to what turned out to be a truly inspiring symposium, the conference participants and my students, especially the participants of my “gender in Africa” graduate seminar in spring of 2007 whose critical feedback on the discipline gave me much joy and informed my thinking.

References

2 “2020: Re-envisioning Africa,” symposium by the African History Group, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 13-14 04 2007Google Scholar.

3 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Representations 37 (1992), 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar.

4 Chakrabarty, , Provincializing Europe, 28Google Scholar.

5 Hegel, G.W.F., The Philosophy of History (New York, 1956 [Berlin, 1837]), 99Google Scholar.

6 Mbembe, Achille, On the Postcolony (Berkeley, 2001)Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 12.

8 Chakrabarty, , Provincializing Europe, 45Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 28.

10 Isaacman, Allen, “Legacies of Engagement: Scholarship Informed by Political Commitment,” African Studies Review 46/1 (2003), 1–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Alpers, Edward and Roberts, Allen, “What is African Studies? Some Reflections,” African Issues 30/2 (2002), 11–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 In his paper for the Michigan symposium David Cohen discussed the question of “One or Many Africas: A Few Things Bearing on ‘Africa 2020’,” Parker, John and Rathbone, Richard also chose diversity and unity as an organizing theme in their African History: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Roundtable on Atlantic connections with Urban Bush Women (New York) and Jant-Bi (Senegal), The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, 18 06 2007Google Scholar.

14 Harvard University, A Report on the Harvard College Curricular Review (04 2004), http://www.fas.harvard.edu/curriculum-review/key_documents.htmlGoogle Scholar.

15 Ajayi, Jacob Ade, “Colonialism: An Episode in African History,” in Colonialism in Africa, vol. 1, ed. Gann, Lewis and Duignan, Peter (Cambridge, 1969), 479–509Google Scholar.

16 Harms, Robert, The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (New York, 2002), xixGoogle Scholar.

17 Isaacman, Allen and Isaacman, Barbara, Slavery and Beyond: the Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750-1920 (Portmouth NH, 2004)Google Scholar. It needs to be noted that the Isaacmans emphasize that their study is located in the context of Portuguese colonialism. Arguably, one can still claim that their discussion of Chikunda identity up to the 1880s contributes to the historiography of Africa before colonialism.