Tools for understanding and analyzing Africa

Sandrine Perrot(CERI-Sciences Po Paris)

Source: Damien Glez, Politique africaine, n°107, octobre 2007.

Tools for understanding and analyzing Africa

Representations of Africa : from the Bible to Pdt Sarkozy’s Dakar speech

Africa of received ideas

Which methodological stance ?

I – Representations of Africa :

From the Bible to Sarkozy’s Dakar speech

1) Africa : Terra incognita

(…)

Sébastien Münster, « Totius Africae tabula & descritpio uniuersalis, etiam ultra Ptolemiae limites extensa », 1544

Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), “Africae nova descriptio”, 1644

John Cary (1754-1835), “A New Map of Africa from the Latest Authorities” , 1805

Eugène Andriveau-Goujon (1832-1897), “Carte générale de l’Afrique, d’après les dernières découvertes”, 1880

2) The « Genesis » of received ideas

The curse of Ham

« And he said, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants, shall he be unto his brethren » (Book of Genesis, 9, 25).

3) Slavery, Gobineau and colonisation

The Inequality of the Human Races (Gobineau)

The justification of slavery and colonisation

To pull Africa out of « Darkness »

II – The African clichés

« Africa doesn’t work because it is « stuck » by sociocultural obstaclesthat it turns into sacred identity grigri » (…)

(Stephen Smith, Negrologie, p. 48-50 et 191).

1 ) Africa and Africans : a culture of failure ?

2) A continent without History

Colonisation as the beginning of History ?

Slavery and colonisation: a biaised relationship to the Other

Guilt and victim strategy

“Human History, in Africa as anywhere else in the world is made of contacts and interactions of routes more than roots”.

(A. Maalouf, Les identités meurtrières,

Paris, Grasset, 1998)

3) Africa and its relationship to the world 

Mansa Moussa on a map of 1375 ©Bibliothèque nationale de France

Africa, actor in its relationship to the world

The extraversion strategies (JF Bayart)

« The African connexion »

III – Which methodological stance ?

III – Which methological stance ?

Africa, Africas ?

The extraneity of analytical tools (developpementalism, dependantism)

Alternative approaches:- Afro-centered approaches (W. Yefru, M. Asanté) - « Bottom-up » politics (JF Bayart)- Unidentified political objects (UPO)(D.-C Martin, C.

Toulabor, A. Mbembe)

Should we banalise Africa ?

Conclusion

Neither Afro-pessimism, nor Afro-optimism but Afro-realism

« We have to learn again how to see Africans in a different way, neither brothers, nor subjects, but men of our world and of our time » Michel Levallois, collectif Futurs africains, Misère de l’Afro-pessimisme, Afrique &histoire, 2005, n°3)