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Matthews, Sally:
Constructing Knowledge About Africa in a South African University Classroom : Living Creatively with the Colonial Library.
In: Andrews, Nathan ; Khalema, Nene Ernest
(Hrsg.):
Decolonizing African Studies Pedagogies : Knowledge Production, Epistemic Imperialism and Black Agency. -
Cham
: Palgrave Macmillan
,
2023
. - S. 99-119
. - (Political Pedagogies
)
ISBN 978-3-031-37441-8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37442-5_5
Abstract
African Studies as a scholarly discipline has colonial origins. The traces of these origins remain evident in contemporary scholarship on Africa. As someone who teaches African Studies at a South African university, I have been working with my students to think about how to write and teach about Africa in a way that acknowledges and challenges these colonial origins. This paper reflects on these efforts, using V.Y. Mudimbe’s notion of the colonial library to discuss students’ responses to critiques of the coloniality of African Studies. The term “colonial library” refers both to the texts on Africa produced within a colonial framework and to the broader system of knowledge and meaning created by these texts. Some of my students believe that we need to decolonize African Studies by producing knowledge that is uncontaminated by the colonial library. Others are pessimistic about the possibility of escaping contamination by the colonial library, leading them to despair of the possibility of decolonizing African Studies. Drawing on Mudimbe, I discuss both these positions arguing that recognition of the tenacity of the colonial library need not lead us to resign ourselves to a perpetual state of intellectual colonization. While we cannot purify ourselves of all colonial contamination, it is possible to act under constraints. Through the subversive appropriation of elements of the colonial library and through learning to live creatively with the colonial library, we might destabilize and reconfigure existing forms of knowledge production about Africa despite our inability to fully step outside of them. After defending this approach to the colonial library, I discuss how we can encourage such an approach in the university classroom.
Weitere Angaben
| Publikationsform: | Aufsatz in einem Buch |
|---|---|
| Begutachteter Beitrag: | Ja |
| Institutionen der Universität: | Research Networks > African Studies Forschungseinrichtungen > Sonderforschungsbereiche, Forschergruppen > EXC 2052 - Africa Multiple: Afrikastudien neu gestalten |
| Titel an der UBT entstanden: | Nein |
| Themengebiete aus DDC: | 300 Sozialwissenschaften |
| Eingestellt am: | 04 Nov 2026 10:15 |
| Letzte Änderung: | 04 Nov 2026 10:15 |
| URI: | https://eref.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/99944 |