828winter 2012

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    Course Description :

    From the anti-colonial accounts of the proponents of Negritude to the postcolonial

    endeavors of contemporary africanist scholars, the historiography of Francophone

    African studies has gone through multiple epistemic changes that make it one of the

    most complex and vibrant academic disciplines of our time. In this course, we willundertake an assessment of the major formulations of these discourses through a

    genealogy of its major epistemic shifts, in order to evaluate the actual state and

    predict the future trajectories of colonial and postcolonial Franocphone African

    studies. We will start our journey with the examination of the ways Negritude scholarssuch as Aimee Ceesaire marka radical shift from earlier francophone intellectual

    movements attempts to show the perfectibility of African descended cultures in order toprove their humanity. Its major thinkers theorize a negro humanity, fundamentally

    opposed to the universalist, yet provincial, modern representation of humanness.However, while early theories of Negritude such as those of Aim Csaire have clear

    anti-colonial postulations, they develop, as Franz Fanons oeuvre shows, an essentialist

    ethno-centric conception of Africa that functions as a blackened re-articulation of modernmodes of definition of the world. As such, Negritude fails to take into consideration thefundamentally political nature of black subjectivities. Franz Fanon prepares the ground

    for the development, in the 1980s, of what is today referred to as postcolonial Africanstudies, the examination of which will constitute the third movement of our journey. We

    will, therefore look at the ways African scholars such as Anthony Appiah and VincentMudimbe, acknowledge the importance of early discourses on Africa, yet insist on the

    necessity to think of Africa beyond the dichotomy set by Western imperialist accounts.Such a perspective will lead to a better understanding of our contemporary condition

    beyond the idea of Africa invented by European modernity and early anti-colonialthinkers. We will conclude the course with two major intellectual movements, namely,

    the movement ofAntillanit inspired by Edouard Glissant and the one of decoloniality astheorized by Mignolo. The former questions any idea of purity as the foundation of

    Africanness. For Glissant, for example, it is precisely because human cultures areconstantly becoming that the only way of understanding the present Caribbean cultures is

    to acknowledge their fundamental and ongoing mtissages in what can today be called,le tout-monde, a mixed world that finds its condition of possibility in its plurality. For

    the decolonial movement, on the other hand, it is necessary that formerly colonizedpeople actualize aradical liberation from Western colonial paradigms that haveconstituted the conditions of their existence. Even though the decolonial movement ismostely .. by Latin American thinkers, it can be applied to the African realities and is

    very likely to be of African studies in the years to come.

    Requirements:

    Weekly written response: Each student is required to turn in a written response (at

    least one full, double-spaced page) to the weekly assigned readings. In addition,students are required to bring interesting questions related to each weeks reading.

    Responses are due at the beginning of each class. Late versions are not acceptable.

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    Presentation: Each student is expected to do at least one oral presentation of a

    reading.

    Mini conference:

    We will organize, at the end of the quarter, a mini-conference with students in

    African Studies The best four papers of the two seminars will be accepted forpresentation at the 17th international conference of the International Society of

    African Philosophy and Studies, organized by the Department of French and Italian

    and the Department of African Studies at The Ohio State University. For more

    information, please visitwww.isapsonline.com or contact Dr. Cheikh Thiam([email protected]).

    Attendance: Anyone who has more than two unexcused absences will automatically

    fail this course. Two tardies count for one absence.

    Final Paper: A 12-page research paper is due the last day of class.

    Grading: Your final grade will be calculated according to the following breakdown:Weekly responses 15%Presentation 10%

    Mini conference 15%

    Final paper 60%

    Weekly Schedule

    January 4 : Introduction

    January 11: Ngritude et pense anti-coloniale

    Aim CsaireDiscours sur le colonialisme

    Cahier dun retour au pays natal

    January 18: La Ngritude au del de la Ngritude

    Franz FanonLes damns de la terre, Slection, TBA

    Peau Noire Masques Blancs, Slection, TBA

    January 25: De la thorie postcolonialeHomi Bhabha

    Race, Time, and the Revision of ModernityGayatri Spivak

    Can the Subaltern Speak ?

    February 1: Thorie postcoloniale et africanismesVincent Mudimbe

    The Invention of Africa

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    Vincent Mudimbe

    The Idea of Africa

    February 8:Anthony Appiah

    In My Fathers House

    February 15:Edouard Glissant

    Potique de la relation

    February 22: AntillanitMignolo

    February 29: MtissagesMini-conference

    March 7:Mini-conference

    Lits of books

    Vincent Mudimbe

    The Invention of Africa

    Vincent Mudimbe

    The Idea of Africa

    Anthony Appiah

    In My Fathers House

    Edouard GlissantPotique de la relation