Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures

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 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 Adesọkan 8. Seeing, Hearing, Breathing, and Witnessing from the Africana Center at Cornell: An Afterword / Pierre-Philippe Fraiture Contributors Index