Research by Expatriates in Africa: Can It Be “Relevant”?

Extract

That research by expatriates in Africa should henceforth more obviously point toward the solution of African problems hardly needs restatement. Indeed, merely to restate it may damage further the already strained credibility of American Africanists' desires to conduct research in Africa that is responsive simultaneously to theoretical concerns and to Africa's real needs.

Moreover, even a genuine demonstration of dedication to problem-oriented research is not guaranteed to silence the critics. Real accomplishments may, in the present climate, have no more impact than pious declarations of intent. African studies as conducted by American scholars is presently under such impassioned attack from so many quarters and for so many reasons that even tangible accomplishments may not be given much weight by those who feel only anger and indignation when they consider African studies. Whatever the record may show, critics of both the left and the right in recent months have interpreted African studies in the United States as biased either in one or another direction and as lacking the essential, if ill-defined, quality called “relevance.”

Thus, in Montreal in October 1969 a coalition of African and Afro-American critics dismissed the totality of African studies in the United Sates as irrelevant to Africa. Virtually the entire enterprise was labeled the willing tool of capitalist, neo-colonialist, white racist ideology. Presumably, the record of American Africanists elicited this attack.