Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously

by Olúfemi Táíwò

Overview

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West's direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing "morality" or "authenticity;" it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfemi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of 'decolonisation' to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds 'decolonisation' of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society's foundations. Worst of all, today's movement attacks its own cause: "decolorisers" themselves are disregarding, infantilizing and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today's 'decolonisation' truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò's is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesizers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781787388857
Publisher:	Hurst
Publication date:	07/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	759,501
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Olúfemi Táíwò is Professor of African Political Thought and current Chair at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University. His writings have been translated into French, Italian, German and Portuguese. His book How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa won the Frantz Fanon Award in 2015.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xi

Preface xv

Introduction 1

1 What, After All, Is Decolonisation? 21

2 Decolonisation and the Politics of Language: An Oversold Promise? 67

3 Decolonising Philosophy or Embracing Nativism/Atavism? On the Limits of Pedigree Arguments 129

4 Decolonise This! Taking History and Agency Seriously 183

Notes 223

Bibliography 247

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

"It doesn't happen very often, but now and again one comes across a book that is really transformative. An author who simply changes the narrative and argues so persuasively there is really little more to be said on the subject. Olufemi Taiwo's Against Decolonization is one such author and this is one such book." — Martin Plaut, journalist and former Africa editor for BBC World Service News

"Against Decolonization launches a trench war. Its flaming arrows hit all, sparing no axiom of reflex decolonization. This is a bolekaja (come-down-let-us-slug-it-out) critique in its most consequential form. If you are not provoked by its argument, you sabe nothing." — Adeleke Adéeko, Humanities Distinguished Professor, Ohio State University

"With characteristic cogency, lucidity and audacity, Táíwò shows that "decolonization" has become an idea promoting indiscriminate hostility to forms of thought and practice wrongly tarred with malign colonial auspices. The ironic result is a rhetoric that gives short shrift to African agency. It's time to drop the erroneous conflations and recognize our right to inventive appropriation of the human commons." — Ato Sekyi-Otu, Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Thought, York University, Toronto, and author of Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays

"Táíwò has written an indispensable book. To sloganize for cultural and ideological decolonization is to deny history and agency to Africa. He makes his point through a thorough analysis of politics, economics and debates around language and philosophy." — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University, author of A Critique of Postcolonial Reason

"A bracing and much-needed riposte to contemporary efforts to 'decolonize' culture, language and politics in the Global South. Elegantly demonstrating the ignorance and violence of such aims, Táíwò inaugurates a new way of thinking about the persistence of empire as one of the great intellectual and political themes of our times." — Faisal Devji, Director of the Asian Studies Centre, University of Oxford

"This is a book whose time has come. Basing his arguments principally on philosophy and language, Táíwò demonstrates how 'decolonizers' reject as inauthentically African the works of even the most gifted and influential African scholars, thinkers, and writers. Consistently cogent, commonsensical, powerful, and wise, this book will not be the last word on decolonization—but it is close to it." — Biodun Jeyifo, Professor of African and African American Studies and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

"A highly important and deeply argued book. Táíwò asks us not to succumb to the simplistic siren song of the word 'decolonization'. A vague word, an easy trope does not help to create the modern African with complicated agency amidst complex historical and twenty-first-century demands." — Stephen Chan OBE, SOAS University of London, author of African Political Thought

"With immense brio and a generous dose of common sense, Táíwò exposes the weaknesses of an over-extended notion of decolonization and offers a convincing alternative. This highly readable, engaging, and challenging book is a must for everyone interested in modern Africa." — Dame Karin Barber, Emeritus Professor of African Cultural Anthropology, University of Birmingham

"Taiwo's Against Decolonisation delivers a clearly-articulated and well-supported defense of its eponymous thesis... he offers a thoroughgoing, meticulously-argued text making diverse intellectual engagements with a variety of African thinkers." — American Philosophical Association

"The first sustained critique of the contemporary decolonial movement, characterizing it as a fad in western academe that does not take the agency of Africans seriously." — Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society

"The first sustained critique of the contemporary decolonial movement, characterizing it as a fad in western academe that does not take the agency of Africans seriously." — Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society

From the Publisher