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    Rethinking the future of humanities in Africa and the question of epistemological agency

    Msiska, Mpalive Hangson (2017) Rethinking the future of humanities in Africa and the question of epistemological agency. Journal of Humanities, University of Malawi 25 (1), pp. 5-30. ISSN 1016-0728.

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    Abstract

    Using Bergson’s theory of history and Foucault’s concept of knowledge as power, among others, the paper argues that the field of Humanities in Africa should be reconceptualised into African Humanities in order to effect what Deleuze and Guattari have defined as conceptual self-semiotisation. The discipline must undertake, as in the past, a continual critique of the concept of the human subject, but without dethroning it as proposed by some Post-structuralists. It must focus on how globalisation, science and technology impinge on the formation of subjectivity in Africa, including Malawi. Moreover, it must enact a strategic epistemological self-determination by appropriating, adapting and reconstituting received dominant theories and practices, which entails being both counter-hegemonic and consciously, but selectively, part of the dominant formation. It offers other strategies for implementing that shift, such as the deployment of the historical traditions of epistemological resistance as well as cultural and political decolonisation, as those advanced by Achebe, Ngugi, Soyinka, Chimombo, Oruka and Wiredu, among others.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): African, Malawi, Epistemology, Human, Humanities, Subject
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Research Centres and Institutes: Contemporary Literature, Centre for
    Depositing User: Mpalive-Hangson Msiska
    Date Deposited: 17 May 2017 14:00
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:41
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/18726

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