Fieldwork as Decolonising African Literary Studies : Researching Tanzanian Hip-hop and Spoken Word Poetry as a Ghanaian

Title data

Adjirakor, Nikitta:
Fieldwork as Decolonising African Literary Studies : Researching Tanzanian Hip-hop and Spoken Word Poetry as a Ghanaian.
ed.: Adjirakor, Nikitta ; Ajayi, Oladapo Opeyemi ; Diman, Hanza ; Yuan, Mingqing
Bayreuth : Institute of African Studies , 2021 . - (University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers ; 27 ) (BIGSASworks! ; 10)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15495/EPub_UBT_00005680

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Abstract in another language

This article follows a decolonial perspective to suggest that fieldwork can be a useful tool in reconfiguring African literary studies. Drawing from the positive reception to her Ghanaian nationality in Tanzania, the author writes that fieldwork can produce possibilities for relocating Africa in African studies by centering the lived experiences of interlocutors. Her paper asserts an ethical responsibility of researchers towards their interlocutors to produce knowledge that is collaboratively drawn, seeing the field not only as a site of data extraction but also of theorization and intellectual knowledge production. Her paper also reveals a complicated relationship with her institution based in the west which was received negatively by her interlocutors as a process of re-colonisation.