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Is Africa a Postmodern Invention?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2019

Jane L. Parpart
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Extract

The utility of postmodern thinking to the study of Africa continues to be a matter of hot debate. Some authors see postmodernism, particularly colonial discourse analysis, as a threat to well established historical methods for studying African societies. Others draw on postmodern insights while warning of its shortcomings, especially the lack of attention to political and economic structures. This brief discussion cannot fully explore such a complicated subject; rather it is intended as a personal view on some of the key issues at hand.

Type
African Studies; Past, Present and Future
Information
African Issues , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 16 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1995

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References

Notes

1 Vaughan, Megan, “Colonial Discourse Theory and African History, or has Postmodernism passed us by?”, Social Dynamics, vol. 20 no. 2, 1994, 1–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bozzoli, Belinda, “The Discourses of Myth and the Myth of Discourse,” South African Historical Journal, vol. 26, 1992, 191–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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5 Some Western scholars, most notably Marxists, reject postmodernism as dangerous and politically naive (Callinicos, Against Postmodernism). Others, while sympathetic to Marxism, see postmodernism as an outgrowth of the culture of late capitalism. Fredric Jameson, for example, endorses an approach which draws on the strengths of postmodernism without abandoning political action ( Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991).Google Scholar Some scholars find postmodernism's emphasis on difference and multiplicity useful for their work and not necessary inimical to other approaches ( Prakash, Gyan, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 32, no. 2, 1990, 383–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

6 Scott, Joan, “Deconstructing Equality-versus Difference: or the Use of Poststructuralist Theory of Feminism,” Feminist Studies vol. 14, no.l, 1988, 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As Eagleton explains, “'Language’ is speech or writing viewed ‘objectively,” as a chain of signs without a subject. ‘Discourse’ means language grasped as utterance, as involving speaking and writing subjects and therefore also, at least potentially, readers and listeners'ij(T. Eagleton, Literary Theory, Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis, 1983, 115).

7 Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, Tavistock Publications, New York, 1972 Google Scholar; Power/Knowledge, translated by C. Gordon, The Harvester Press, New York, 1980.

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12 Suleri, Sara, The Rhetoric of English India, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1992, pp. 4–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Colonial and neocolonial discourse refers to the writings/discourse of Western/Northern authors on the South; postcolonial discourse refers to the writings of authors in the South, some of whom are based in the North. This terminology is fluid and a continuing matter for debate. Homi Bhabha, Nation and Narration, Routledge Press, London, 1990.

13 Appiah, Anthony, In My Father's House, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992 Google Scholar; Mudimbe, Valentin, The Invention of Africa, James Currey, London, 1988.Google Scholar

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16 Vaughan, “Colonial Discourse Theory,” p. 13.

17 Sylvester, Christine, “‘Women’ in Rural Producer Groups and the Diverse Politics of Truth in Zimbabwe,” in Marchand, M. and Parpart, J., eds., Feminism/Postmodernism/Development, Routledge Press, London, 1995 Google Scholar; ‘“Urban Women Cooperators', 'Progress,’ and ‘African Feminism’ in Zimbabwe,” Differences, vol. 3, 1993, pp. 39-62; Clifton Crais, The Making of the Colonial Order, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, 1992; Cohen, David and Otieno-Odhiambo, E.S., Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape, James Currey, London, 1989 Google Scholar; J. Parpart, “Gender, Patriarchy and Development in Africa: the Zimbabwean Case,” in the Michigan State University WID Working Paper Series, forthcoming).

18 Cooper, “Conflict and Connection,” p. 1518.

19 Hennessy, Rosemary, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, Routledge Press, New York, 1993.Google Scholar

20 Ahmad, Aijaz, In Theory: Classes and Nations and Literatures, Verso, London, 1992.Google Scholar

21 Smart, Barry, Postmodernity, Routledge Press, London, 1993.Google Scholar