Africa, Cultural Studies and Difference
Cultural Studies has evolved and continues to
evolve primarily along regional lines. however
uncomfortable this might be, the genie of
British cultural studies cannot be returned to
the bottle of history. Thus, national versions
of cultural studies have arisen in a few African
countries. This book engages two critical and
seemingly contradictory tasks: i) to contribute
to the development of cultural studies from the
perspectives of African experiences and
indigenous frames of reference; and ii) to
examine these in terms of transnational
trajectories of the field in ways that do not
reduce them to one or other context. Much
cultural studies remains concerned with Texts,
often disconnected from their contexts. For the
authors published here, the contexts include
African philosophies, cosmologies and
ontologies. It includes the writings of both
residential natives and those who have
re-located to the diaspora, a spread that opens
conversations with international approaches that
include and exclude African experiences and
work. This anthology juxtaposes many different
kinds of cultural studies done in different
parts of the world as a means of creating a
global dialogue around the signifier of 'Africa'.
This book was published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.
Keyan Tomaselli is Senior Professor and Director
of the Centre for Communication, Media and
Society, University of KwaZulu -Natal, Durban,
South Africa. He is editor of Critical Arts:
South- North Cultural and Media Studies and
co-editor of the Journal of African Cinemas.
Handel Kashope Wright is Professor, Canada
Research Chair in Comparative Cultural Studies
and Director of the Centre for culture, Identity
and Education at the University of British Columbia.
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, Ox14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
ISBN13: 978-0-415-61742-0
<http://www.remote-sensing.routledge.com/books/details/9780415617420/>http://www.remote-sensing.routledge.com/books/details/9780415617420/
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: African Cultural Studies
Keyan G. Tomaselli & Handel Kashope
Wright 1
2. Africanicity in Black Cinema: A conjunctural
ground for new expressions of identity
Boulou Ebanda de
Bâ??béri
15
3. Beyond the tradition/Modernity Dialectic:
African nationalist subjectives in South African
print and visual culture of the early twentieth century
Lize van
Robbroeck
37
4. The New Flâneur: Subaltern cultural studies,
African youth in Canada and the semiology of in-bwtweenness
Awad
Ibrahim
62
5. Outliving Generations: youth traversing
borders through popular music in everyday urban life in East Africa
Fibian Kavulani
Lukalo
82
6. â??Surviving the Futureâ??: Towards a South African cultural studies
Natasha
Distiller
101
7. Facekuerade: The transformational duality in
Ebira-Ekuechi festival performance
Sunday
Ododo
112
8. Europe and African Thought Systems and
Philosophies of Education: â??Re-culturingâ?? the trans-temporal discourses
Ali A.
Abdi
137
9. An African Presence in Europe: Potraits of Somali elders
Glenn
Jordan
156
Index
182
Notes on
Contributors
189
