Africana Studies
Theoretical Futures

PB: $34.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-2307-8
Publication: Jun 22
HC: $99.50
EAN: 978-1-4399-2306-1
Publication: Jun 22
Ebook: $34.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-2308-5
Publication: Jun 22
192 pages
6 x 9
A provocative collection committed to keeping the dynamism of the Africana Studies discipline alive
Read the Introduction (PDF).Description
As Africana Studies celebrates its fiftieth anniversary throughout the United States, this invigor ating collection presents possibilities for the future of the discipline’s theoretical paths. The essays in Africana Studies focus on philosophy, science, and technology; poetry, literature, and music; the crisis of the state; issues of colonialism, globalization, and neoliberalism; and the ever-expanding diaspora. The editor and contributors to this volume open exciting avenues for new narratives, philosophies, vision, and scale in this critical field of study—formed during the 1960s around issues of racial injustice in America—to show what Africana Studies is already in the process of becoming.
Africana Studies recognizes how the discipline has been shaped, changing over the decades as scholars have opened new modes of theoretical engagement such as addressing issues of gender and sexuality, politics, and cultural studies. The essays debate and (re)consider black and diasporic life to sustain, provoke, and cultivate Africana Studies as a singular yet polyvalent mode of thinking.
Contributors: Akin Adeṣọkan, John E. Drabinski, Zeyad El Nabolsy, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Kasareka Kavwahirehi, Gregory Pardlo, Radwa Saad, Sarah Then Bergh, and the editor
Reviews
“There is an admirable richness to Africana Studies, and the strength of this book is the various preoccupations, presuppositions, and disciplinary predispositions that are brought to the conversation. I vigorously recommend Farred’s book. It is an important contribution to what the editor and contributors propose is the ‘future’ of Africana studies.”—Michael Sawyer, Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, and author of Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X
“This is a fascinating volume that offers new perspectives on Africana studies and the way the worlding of Africa challenges colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial geographies, histories, ideologies, and sociocultural and racial identities. The range of topics is impressive, and they are complemented with a sweeping literature review of some key authors and debates in the field. Africana Studies is intended to reinvigorate the field and challenge established discourses, perfunctory narratives, and seemingly long-established truths. Such intentions are met with great scholarly flair and precision. This book offers a tectonic shift of the canon with much potential for black diasporic life.”—Jean-Paul Martinon, Reader in Visual Culture in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: “Theoretical Futures”: The Creation of a Concept / Grant Farred
1. On the Fecundity of Small Places / John E. Drabinski
2. Paulin J. Hountondji on Philosophy, Science, and Technology: From Husserl and Althusser to a Synthesis of the Hessen-
Grossmann Thesis and Dependency Theory / Zeyad el Nabolsy
3. The State of Crisis and the Crisis of the State in the Twenty-First
Century / Radwa Saad
4. Insurgent Practices in Contemporary Francophone Africa:
Emerging Critical Challenges / Kasereka Kavwahirehi
5. Tampered Witnessing: Visual Agency and the African
American Poet / Gregory Pardlo
6. Subverting Colonial Aesthetics: Frantz Fanon,
W.E.B. Du Bois, and Janelle Monáe / Sarah Then Bergh
7. Seductive Solidarity: Comrade Lover and Other Demons
/ Akin Ades.ọkan
8. Seeing, Hearing, Breathing, and Witnessing from the Africana
Center at Cornell: An Afterword / Pierre-Philippe Fraiture
Contributors
Index