Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Feb 20, 2023, 1:48:58 PM2/20/23
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Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

By Moses E. Ochonu


Everywhere I turn nowadays it's "decolonizing this, decolonizing that." The decolonial turn or fad is clouding our academic common sense, I must say.

The idea that colonialism, a short interlude, as the Ibadan School of history describes it, overwhelmed and supplanted everything that existed before is untrue and violates the logic of historical change.

I hope we don't commit the error of assuming that everything associated with colonization or colonial culture, colonial epistemology, and even colonial ontology is the sole creation of the white man and thus must be decolonized.

I hope we realize that much of what we designate under the rubric of "colonial," which we claim must be thoroughly excised from the African body politic and African ways of seeing, knowing, and doing, was actually created or co-created by Africans.

I hope we realize that the much maligned colonial library (Mudimbe) and the colonial archive have thousands of African voices and thoughts, which, though largely unacknowledged, define much of the content of these source canons.

Therefore, when we insist that everything with a trace of coloniality, everything with any tentacle in colonialism and colonization, must be banished from African epistemological and programmatic repertoires, I hope we realize the implication of that.

We'd be "decolonizing" away the work, choices, and agency of Africans, who, both in colonial and postcolonial times, chose to participate in the creation of colonial culture or to retain it as one of the components of the world they sought to create for themselves during and after colonization.

I hope that when we say we should transcend the colonial archive, we don't go to the extreme of doubly silencing the hidden African voices in the colonial archive.

P.S: This is a plea for epistemological moderation, not a denial of the imperative of epistemological decolonization where appropriate, or of the merits of decolonial theoretical approaches.

Toyin Falola

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Feb 20, 2023, 2:14:41 PM2/20/23
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Moses:
Did anyone say this?  They keep talking about Nkrumah, Senghor, resistance, nationalism, Etc.
I understood them to be saying that:
1 the history of the oldest continent cannot be dominated by 60 years of its colonial history
2 the colonial archives cannot capture all significant voices, as in Ifa divination. So you need alternative voices. I cannot go to the archives to understand the goddess of water
3 many communities are not represented since they offered no value to those who conquered them
4 build on inheritances, etc

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Toyin Falola

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Feb 20, 2023, 2:14:41 PM2/20/23
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Moses:
Your statement below is over stretched. No scholar has ever said it supplanted everything. The most devastating critique of the episode argument is by Peter Ekeh in his inaugural but he never said that. Both Zaria and Makarere demolished the interlude argument, but they did not say it supplanted everything.

The idea that colonialism, a short interlude, as the Ibadan School of history describes it, overwhelmed and supplanted everything that existed before is untrue and violates the logic of historical change.

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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
 
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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:31:56 PM2/20/23
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Oga, 

I'll respond to your comments later, but for now, for a fuller context, since this post began life as a Facebook update this morning with several contributions from my interlocutors, here's my additional commentary in response to one of the commenters on my Facebook wall:

[Decolonization] is now the lazy go-to for many people trying to give some "authentic African(ist)" street cred to their work. They want to hitch a ride on the latest theoretical fad in African studies. Nowadays, people don't even stop to think: what or who exactly are we decolonizing? Beginning with this question might jolt some of the decolonial people back to a realization that many Africans were enthusiastic participants in and contributors to colonial modernity and colonial culture writ large and that even today many Africans revere and consider the Western genealogy of modernity to be the aspirational gold standard for their countries. Are we to pretend that these tendencies did not and do not exist? Should we analyze the world as it is or as we wish it to be? Clearly, the decolonial people have chosen the latter path.

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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:31:56 PM2/20/23
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Here's another by Dr. Dailola Adebayo:


Damilola Adebayo
Thank you for writing about this issue. In addition to your points, the current "decoloniality/decolonization" trend seems to ignore the work done by historians, literary scholars and Africanist philosophers between the 1950s and the 1990s. 
An unexpected and scary discovery is that many pundits of decoloniality have a limited understanding of colonialism as a historical phenomenon or concept. If you ask "what exactly was/is colonialism?", you will be surprised at the elementary definitions that would be provided.

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 1:32 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's one contribution by the cerebral Dr. Muhammad Balogun:


Muhammad S Balogun
When I was trying to point out what is really important to us as a developing people, I made the following points on my wall in 2021:
I wonder what Samir Amin (d. 2018) would have been saying these days if he were still alive. Dependency theory still holds true. In Africa, Eurocentrism still reigns. 
Coloniality is our reality and probably cannot be extirpated. 
Can we stop using English to communicate, for instance? 
Can we stop thinking in terms of nation states and national economies? 
Can weak and consumption-based economies take charge of knowledge production? 
What is more demonstrative of coloniality than all these? 
What of the existence of Nigeria itself? It's part of colonial legacy. 
Let the post-colonial theorists continue to write impenetrable prose to elaborate on it and refine our understanding. 
Not that I agree with Chimamanda's crude put-down o! Ehen. Seriously, my take is more nuanced. 
By all means, let decolonial perspectives flourish.
However, it's neo-colonialism that African leaders need to analyze and fully understand, without being paranoid or evasive of their own responsibilities to their people and countries. It's an economic issue.
We, the hoi polloi, while aknowledging neo-colonialism, should hold our own leaders accountable and avoid conspiracy theories and nonsense. 
Our leaders are responsible for developing our countries. 
They must have the vision and the ability. 
Time no too dey.

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:31:56 PM2/20/23
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Here's one contribution by the cerebral Dr. Muhammad Balogun:


Muhammad S Balogun
When I was trying to point out what is really important to us as a developing people, I made the following points on my wall in 2021:
I wonder what Samir Amin (d. 2018) would have been saying these days if he were still alive. Dependency theory still holds true. In Africa, Eurocentrism still reigns. 
Coloniality is our reality and probably cannot be extirpated. 
Can we stop using English to communicate, for instance? 
Can we stop thinking in terms of nation states and national economies? 
Can weak and consumption-based economies take charge of knowledge production? 
What is more demonstrative of coloniality than all these? 
What of the existence of Nigeria itself? It's part of colonial legacy. 
Let the post-colonial theorists continue to write impenetrable prose to elaborate on it and refine our understanding. 
Not that I agree with Chimamanda's crude put-down o! Ehen. Seriously, my take is more nuanced. 
By all means, let decolonial perspectives flourish.
However, it's neo-colonialism that African leaders need to analyze and fully understand, without being paranoid or evasive of their own responsibilities to their people and countries. It's an economic issue.
We, the hoi polloi, while aknowledging neo-colonialism, should hold our own leaders accountable and avoid conspiracy theories and nonsense. 
Our leaders are responsible for developing our countries. 
They must have the vision and the ability. 
Time no too dey.

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 1:30 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Okey Iheduru

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:31:56 PM2/20/23
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Dear Moses:

I don't want to rehash Oga TF's apt response to you. However, I must express how shocked I am that you, of all people, would expend so much ammo on a straw man! Perhaps you underestimate how seriously the scholarly and policy community take every word you utter. Eish!, as my South Africa friends would say in exasperation!

Your confused admirer,
Okey

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:31:56 PM2/20/23
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i agree 100% with the fundamental point moses is arguing that the colonial interlude could not change or account for everything. that claim is strongest when you consider education in european languages that focus on european texts. it took an ENORMOUS fight in cameroun to get to the point where an african languages and literature dept could be created, thanks to bernard fonlon.
but much of education in africa has been marked deeply by the colonial languages, and resisted mightily if we remember the throes of struggle ngugi had to go through.

anyway the larger issue, that these refutations ignore,and which underscore moses's point, is that DESPITE the obvious truth that a vast amount of african realities, thought, customs, languages, history etc, was not destroyed or, in many cases, even affected by colonialism, that is not true of how African Studies, as a field, constitutes the knowledge about africa.
how many courses touch on "precolonial Africa"? a few weeks at most on the empires, the arts, etc. then the European entry, with slavery—far eclipsing the slave trade across the sahara or on the east coast.
if one were to say that the european slavery was much worse, had this terrible impact and that, then we start to fall into the trap of focusing on the european this and that: the voyages down the coast, the implantation of the colonies, the intervention in coastal communities and agreements to implant forts, the agreements with indigenous rulers, then the colonial thing, on and on,
all defined by a timeline that is carefully defined according to how the europeans were engaged.

moses is right completely to say this is warped view of africa that gets taught, i would bet, in 95% of intro courses on africa across the academy. that is what i glean is implied in his statement.
am i wrong? i am retired, out of touch. don't tell me about the exceptions that any of you as individuals might claim, but the vast bulk of what's taught. even in high schools, i would guess.
maybe i am wrong, but i wouldn't bet on it
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:32:03 PM2/20/23
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Oga,

Let me rephrase the statement you consider overstretched:

The idea that colonialism, a short interlude, as the Ibadan School of history describes it, tainted everything that existed before it and everything that followed is untrue and violates the logic of historical change.

I have rephrased it to remove the "over-stretch" but my critique still stands. The premise of decoloniality is the claim that colonialism tainted everything that predated it and followed it--hence the call for total decolonization of our ways of knowing, doing, and seeing--our culture, analytical terms, taxonomies, and epistemologies, etc. 

Clearly, this foundational claim is ahistorical because the so-called thin white line of colonialism meant that, as Jefferey Herbst and others have argued, many parts of rural Africa in fact experienced little to no colonial governmentality. 

And even if they did, the idea that everything Africans in those parts did, produced, articulated, said, or created during the colonial period was corrupted by colonization both denies them agency and makes a moral judgment about the influence of, and Africans' engagement with, colonial culture that said Africans may not share. 

Did Africans not make self-conscious decisions about how, when, and where to engage, recreate, remake, change, repurporse, and domesticate European modernity and culture? Were many of them in fact not prolific purveyors and promoters of "colonial" cultures? Did some not even originate iterations and variants of new cultural hybridities or new forms of precolonial African cultures that are now being described negatively as tainted and compromised by colonial influence?

Decoloniality is a real, if exaggerated, condition, and decolonization is important in certain specific contexts, but as a wholesale agenda of self-making or self-remaking, it is flawed both in its assumptions and its prescriptions.

I could go on but more later when I'm less busy.


Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:32:03 PM2/20/23
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a rich discussion

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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:32:04 PM2/20/23
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Decolonization simply implies
a careful, cautious and critical
evaluation and assessment
of inherited systems of ideas and
thought, with a view to replace, 
reorder, reconsider, relocate, 
refurbish, redistribute,
reorganize  and even consolidate 
WHERE applicable.

There is no need for exaggerated
posturing  but calm, common sense,
collected and scholarly evaluation 
and argumentation.




Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
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Toyin Falola

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:57:48 PM2/20/23
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His points are more eclectic than yours 
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Harrow, Kenneth

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:57:49 PM2/20/23
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if i may, i disagree with mohammed balugon's claims on some key points/
english is not (any longer) a colonial language; achebe wrote in a language that had an english base, but which he also heard in its modified forms in nigeria.
english was modified everywhere it was spoken and to be really truthful we should say indigenized. the most obvious example is pidgin english, but language changes, evolves, absorbs the local usages, is appropriated by its speakers until it is so distant from the earlier language as to constitute a dialect and eventually a language.
the english, the europeans, have nothing to say about how english is now spoken and understood in nigeria or india or ghana or anywhere.

the nation state is also, has long since been, supplanted by global world forces that long since subdued it into major and minor players. that has nothing whatever to do with colonialism or decoloniality, much less western domination. even saying china and the u.s. and e.u. fails the test; start with microsoft and google and all the global shipping owners, and apple whose IT devices are made in china, and clothing companies and Walmart—all global, not national much less regional.

it isn't that coloniality cannot be extirpated: it is not fixed. we all are constantly changing, and if it isn't simply agency or the will to change, but forces outside our control, it seems to me the evocation of colonialism or coloniality in a global age is way out of step with our current realities.

nigeria is part of the colonial legacy?
isn't every society like language. we learn to speak it, we use it; it uses us; we try a new expression and repeat it and others hear it; with time, it changes.
society is the same, in every respect. some of which we hear comes from this place, some from there. what would you say of rap for instance? now sung everywhere on earth, except north korea.
it aint the bronx that is shaping it now.
france is not shaping africa now.
england has retreated to its little corner
portugal now is poorer than angola.

who is dictating the rules?
ken


kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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Toyin Falola

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Feb 20, 2023, 3:57:49 PM2/20/23
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Ants Diop or Asante or any of those never said it tainted everything!
I was born during the era and I ate Yoruba food and spoke Yoruba language and my father married four wives, and when he died they asked my cousin to marry her!! I was grateful they did not introduce me to English language.
I think you are homogenizing. The best is to mention the specific scholars who made your points and critique them
And our colleagues who lived under apartheid and settler colonies never for once agreed with Ajayi and his interlude thesi You cannot be black in South Africa and make that argument 
While liberals quoted Ajayi’s thesis because it absolve Europeans of the damages.





I have rephrased it to remove the "over-stretch" but my critique still stands. The premise of decoloniality is the claim that colonialism tainted everything that predated it and followed it--hence the call for total decolonization of our ways of knowing,
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 1:53:23 PM
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Moses Ochonu

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Feb 20, 2023, 5:53:34 PM2/20/23
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I am outside waiting for an appointment, so can’t write much, but, Oga, my friend, Jacob Dlamini, makes the argument that even apartheid, as brutal as it was, did not and could not taint or occlude the preexisting and evolving flavors and rhythms of African life in the townships and other African spaces. African thought and life persisted stubbornly DESPITE the violence of apartheid. He is a South African and he of course rejects the decolonial valorization and centering of apartheid as the baseline of South African historical inquiry.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 20, 2023, at 2:57 PM, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:



Toyin Falola

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Feb 20, 2023, 5:53:34 PM2/20/23
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I don’t understand Adebayo’s point. His references to 40s and 50s were great moments of intellectual decolonization 
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 1:33:28 PM
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Toyin Falola

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Feb 20, 2023, 6:04:07 PM2/20/23
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The argument is changing a Lillie 
It is not about baseline
Africans have been decolonizing. It is the label that is changing 
Samuel cha gig was decolonizing in the 19..th century; so was decolonizing 
Senghor as decolonizing
African perspective is decolonizing 
WAEc in its exam was decolonizing 


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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Feb 23, 2023, 7:22:23 AM2/23/23
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it seems Gloria sums up the situation very clearly

Moses Ochonu

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Feb 23, 2023, 7:22:36 AM2/23/23
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Oga,

Adebayo’s point is a different one that complement mine. He is saying the current   decolonial fad does not acknowledge or reckon with the work that earlier generations of thinkers and scholars did in that direction and pretends that Africa has been steeped, unchallenged, in a time warp of coloniality from which they’re trying to rescue her.

Another point he makes is that most of today’s decolonial aficionados don’t even have a good, historically accurate knowledge of what constituted colonialism, how it actually unfolded, and its nuances. If you don’t know exactly how colonization happened and how how Africans engaged with it then how can you  know what you’re decolonizing of if it should be decolonized?

I responded to him thus:

Damilola Adebayo, Indeed, they make it seem as though what Wiredu, Rodney, Ake, Ngugi, Chinwezu, and many others did was not a decolonial intervention. And you’re absolutely right; the prevailing understanding of colonialism is so ahistorical.

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Okey Iheduru

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Feb 23, 2023, 7:22:39 AM2/23/23
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The "short interlude" of colonization lasted about 60 years in Kenya! Here's one example of mental slavery that captures the correct and generally accepted definition of the "decolonial perspective," i.e., colonialism did not destroy everything, but its impacts (especially its "epistemic violence") did not end with independence. Its impacts are today actually getting more overwhelming and destructive of the "African agency" or "the African personality" as some used to call it in the 1960s and 1970s. 

In this short video clip, a female Kenyan Senator was walked out of the Senate chambers in 2023 because she wasn't clothed in "the proper" colonial master's garb.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY8R_yjGUdE 

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Feb 23, 2023, 7:22:49 AM2/23/23
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''all defined by a timeline that is carefully defined according to how the europeans were engaged''

how can one study african oral literature, for example, in terms of its temporal development

ogundiran initiates one such approach in relation to yoruba religious literature and art in his the yoruba a new history

i understand his method as highly speculative but presented in terms of a clear logic which helps the discussion by provoking questions about his method of deriving conclusions about particular developments in the timeline he constructs and what other conclusions may be drawn from the available evidence.

i wonder if the work could be presented in ways that make transparent what i understand is its speculative character without sacrificing its current virtue of narrative lucidity and expressive power.

how can one study african art from earliest times to the present in terms of its temporal dynamics?

the resources seem to exist for doing this, on account of a convergence of disciplines, such as archeology and art history, a convergence ogundiran employs, in relation to integrating literature, religion, philosophy and political, economic and social history.

the heilbrun timeline of art seems to have been doing temporal studies from earliest times online in relation to the arts of all continents, including africa.

suzanne preston blier has brought out or will soon bring out a sole authored book on african art history along those lines temporal lines that could complement a related book to which she contributed some time ago.

how can one study african history from earliest times to the present in terms of its temporal actualization?

a lot of material exists on this

how may one adapt the ogundiran model to the study of african history in a totalitistic sense, building on but going beyond ogundiran's method in demonstrating  the integration of political, material, social, economic and cognitive cultures in shaping history?

part of what i see as needing further examination in ogundiran's method may be described as a need for clearer study of the possible mutuality of influence of political, material, social, economic and cognitive history and a greater sensitivity to the cognitive imperatives of cognitive history as partly dramazing people's quest for knowledge and possibly for control of reality from within the metaphysical imperatives of cognitive constructs

                cognitive cultures in their intrinsic  and extrinsic motivations

for example, his chapter on the ife synthesis of yoruba orisa cosmology in relation to the convergence of  material and social factors at ife is superbly written, containing a richly original presentation of the cosmology, but, like most of his engagements with yoruba spirituality and philosophy, except for his opening section on the proto-yoruba and the section on the ogboni and the idea of binary mutuality, if i recall that clearly enough but which i see even then as missing a discussion of the centre of oggoni in veneration of earth, he does not engage what may be described as the metaphysical dynamics of yoruba spirituality, its evidence of an effort to make sense of existence as a whole through speculation and strategies of action, and perhaps the manner in which the perspectives developed may have  shaped history, focusing instead on this body of ideas and activities as reactions to developments in yoruba society and directed purely at achieving results in terms of social relations, if im not putting it too baldly.

        african ideas on the building blocks of history

adapting the inspirational power of ogundiran's statement of purpose, could one build on that but go beyond it in dialogue with african conceptions of the building blocks of history and of the nature of history and of its study generally?

what could the readily correlative yoruba, igbo, benin, kalabari and akan conceptions of the self in relation to its personal history contribute to ways of exploring why things have happened they way they have and why they happen the way they do?

           african hermeneutic theories and strategies

ogundiran references the use of hermeneutics in that programmatic section but his unqualified reference seems to suggest he's referring to hermeneutics purely as a discipline developed in western thought.

 how could engagement with yoruba hermeneutics methods, such as what is known abut ifa hermeneutics, help such a discussion?

how could engagement with african hermeneutic methods, such as Daryl Peavy's discussion of the Benin theory of meaning, erhia, help such a discussion in the broader african sense?

       african proverb theories and practices as historiographic tools

ogundiran skillfully and memorably uses yoruba proverbs in distilling and concentrating the significance of various stages of his narrative flow.

could the presentation of a theory of proverbs distilled from perspectives on the epistemic and semantic- not sure how to distinguish these-  character of proverbs in yoruba culture, perhaps in correlation with ideas on the nature and significance of imaginative expression in that culture, and in relation to literature of historical development, of spatio-temporal expression, as abiodun, yai and barber's discussions of yoruba oriki literature may be described help to more deeply demonstrate the role of such proverb commentaries as a style of historiographic reflection?

could integrating proverb theories from various african cultures, such as the correlative yoruba and akan conceptions, help in further rationalizing such an approach to history writing?

a comprehensive history of africa

i have long dreamt of reading a totalistic history of africa of the kind ogundiran's work suggests can be achieved, something bringing together my encounters with forms of comprehensive history in other cultures,  such as HAL Fisher on Europe and Gombrich and Clark's focus on art but integrating the entire stream of Western history up till their point of writing The Story of Art and Civilization, respectively.

i have read very little of african history, even less than i have of other histories, although my glimpses of these works suggest to me what i would like to encounter and hopefully, read, going forward.

great thanks to his discussion for helping me put some thoughts together.

toyin

Elias K. Bongmba

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Feb 23, 2023, 7:24:19 AM2/23/23
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Thanks Ken for bringing in Fonlon's legacy and achievements which included his work on the journal ABBIA and his insistence on publishing in Cameroon and Africa where the books would be available for African students. His "co-optation" into politics by Ahidjo is another story,  but today Fonlon remains one of Cmeroon's most admired intellectual and statesman and one has to add two of his fellow Nso Catholics,  Christian Cardinal Tumi and Archbishop Paul Verdzekov.


Elias

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Feb 23, 2023, 3:38:40 PM2/23/23
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Great thanks for this introduction to Fonlon. I'm reading up on him.
toyin

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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Feb 23, 2023, 3:38:47 PM2/23/23
to Moses Ochonu, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
“Most de colonial aficionados 
don’t know….. “

This amounts to unsubstantiated 
gossip and calumny.

Which article, book, author?


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 6:50 PM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Oga,

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Feb 23, 2023, 4:41:14 PM2/23/23
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"Here's one example of mental slavery that captures the correct and generally accepted definition of the "decolonial perspective."

Okey, 

This quote above is emblematic of the problem. It is precisely what I'm critiquing--the tendency to dismiss, denigrate, and devalue African choices, adaptations, etc without recognizing the agency of Africans in sticking with things associated with colonialism or in modifying or adapting those things to their colonial and postcolonial lives.

Colonialism ended almost 60 years ago in Kenya, and in that period the British have not held a gun to the head of Kenyan lawyers or Nigerian lawyers to compel them to abandon the wig or to prevent them from replacing it with an Africa-originated headgear. You don't think that it's the choice of these Kenyans to retain the wig, that they have self-consciously chosen to keep it, and that they may have their own logic, separate from the original colonial logic of the wig, for keeping it as part of their professional sartorial ensemble?

Isn't this haughty scholarly omniscience--when, instead of humbly studying the logics of cultural adaptation, retention, hybridity, domestication, etc, among our people, we descend into haughty, Manichean devaluation of how some Africans choose or chose to engage colonial cultures, participate in them, or appropriate them?

This is one of the points Olufemi Taiwo makes in his recent book, Against Decolonization. We think we know better than the Africans who were and are prolific participants in, strategic users of, and crafty adapters of colonial influences and ways of knowing and seeing.

As Ken asks, the English language is a legacy of colonialism, but can we honestly still call English a foreign language in Nigeria? Would that not insult the agency of Nigerians, who have domesticated, enriched, and invented new logics, grammars, uses, and instrumentalities for the language?

We cannot valorize one type of African response to colonial influences and colonial taxonomies and epistemic and aesthetic legacies and pass harsh judgment over other types. Did Africans engage colonialism in the same way? Were there not many responses ranging from rejectionism to accommodationism, with other strategies in-between?

Falola himself writes about these varieties of African engagement with colonial influences in his book, Nationalism and African Intellectuals. 

Finally, has it occurred to you that some of the "colonial legacies" you decry were co-created by Africans and Europeans?


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Toyin Falola

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Feb 23, 2023, 4:41:14 PM2/23/23
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All the arguments have no validity in logo,
  1.  there is no finality to any argument for all historical eras.. one day someone will say Buhari’s it your president 
  2. Decolonization is not. Subaltern is not new. Decoloniality is not net
  3. Labels are reinvented for attenten
  4. It is a piece of bad scholarship to homogenize as innocent figures are tarnised. Blyden was decolonizing. Abuja was decolonizing. Ahmad Baba decolonizing. Ngugi was decolonizing,Cabral was decolonizing what is the point in thrashing them?
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 5:50:20 PM

Toyin Falola

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Feb 23, 2023, 4:47:42 PM2/23/23
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I am writing from the hospital 
Apologies for all the errors
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 3:40:40 PM

Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth

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Feb 23, 2023, 6:48:10 PM2/23/23
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Hope all is well? .it would be well.
Augustine 


On Thursday, February 23, 2023, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
I am writing from the hospital 
Apologies for all the errors

Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 3:40:40 PM

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
All the arguments have no validity in logo,
  1.  there is no finality to any argument for all historical eras.. one day someone will say Buhari’s it your president 
  2. Decolonization is not. Subaltern is not new. Decoloniality is not net
  3. Labels are reinvented for attenten
  4. It is a piece of bad scholarship to homogenize as innocent figures are tarnised. Blyden was decolonizing. Abuja was decolonizing. Ahmad Baba decolonizing. Ngugi was decolonizing,Cabral was decolonizing what is the point in thrashing them?

Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 5:50:20 PM

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
Oga,

Adebayo’s point is a different one that complement mine. He is saying the current   decolonial fad does not acknowledge or reckon with the work that earlier generations of thinkers and scholars did in that direction and pretends that Africa has been steeped, unchallenged, in a time warp of coloniality from which they’re trying to rescue her.

Another point he makes is that most of today’s decolonial aficionados don’t even have a good, historically accurate knowledge of what constituted colonialism, how it actually unfolded, and its nuances. If you don’t know exactly how colonization happened and how how Africans engaged with it then how can you  know what you’re decolonizing of if it should be decolonized?

I responded to him thus:

Damilola Adebayo, Indeed, they make it seem as though what Wiredu, Rodney, Ake, Ngugi, Chinwezu, and many others did was not a decolonial intervention. And you’re absolutely right; the prevailing understanding of colonialism is so ahistorical.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 20, 2023, at 5:04 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:


The argument is changing a Lillie 
It is not about baseline
Africans have been decolonizing. It is the label that is changing 
Samuel cha gig was decolonizing in the 19..th century; so was decolonizing 
Senghor as decolonizing
African perspective is decolonizing 
WAEc in its exam was decolonizing 



Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 3:16:02 PM

Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 2:32 PM

Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 9:54:23 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

By Moses E. Ochonu


Everywhere I turn nowadays it's "decolonizing this, decolonizing that." The decolonial turn or fad is clouding our academic common sense, I must say.

The idea that colonialism, a short interlude, as the Ibadan School of history describes it, overwhelmed and supplanted everything that existed before is untrue and violates the logic of historical change.

I hope we don't commit the error of assuming that everything associated with colonization or colonial culture, colonial epistemology, and even colonial ontology is the sole creation of the white man and thus must be decolonized.

I hope we realize that much of what we designate under the rubric of "colonial," which we claim must be thoroughly excised from the African body politic and African ways of seeing, knowing, and doing, was actually created or co-created by Africans.

I hope we realize that the much maligned colonial library (Mudimbe) and the colonial archive have thousands of African voices and thoughts, which, though largely unacknowledged, define much of the content of these source canons.

Therefore, when we insist that everything with a trace of coloniality, everything with any tentacle in colonialism and colonization, must be banished from African epistemological and programmatic repertoires, I hope we realize the implication of that.

We'd be "decolonizing" away the work, choices, and agency of Africans, who, both in colonial and postcolonial times, chose to participate in the creation of colonial culture or to retain it as one of the components of the world they sought to create for themselves during and after colonization.

I hope that when we say we should transcend the colonial archive, we don't go to the extreme of doubly silencing the hidden African voices in the colonial archive.

P.S: This is a plea for epistemological moderation, not a denial of the imperative of epistemological decolonization where appropriate, or of the merits of decolonial theoretical approaches.

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Feb 23, 2023, 6:48:10 PM2/23/23
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simon gikandi's Slavery and the Culture of Taste is all about the point okey is making about how africans were agents in the production of knowledge, cultures, values, perspectives even when they were enslaved, and especially thereafter including the colonial period.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 3:58 PM

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Feb 23, 2023, 6:51:03 PM2/23/23
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I suspected Falola might have been facing a medical emergency when he did not approve any post for the 22nd.

How are things, prof?

What's happening?

Is it you or someone else?

Please take care of yourself.

Toyin

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Abidogun, Jamaine M

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Feb 23, 2023, 6:51:03 PM2/23/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Sending Prayers for Wellness!!!

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Toyin Falola
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 3:46 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

CAUTION: External Sender

 

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This message originated outside Missouri State University. Please use caution when opening attachments, clicking links, or replying.

 

Toyin Falola

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Feb 23, 2023, 6:55:17 PM2/23/23
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I have clots in the brain and tw
From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 4:24:28 PM
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Harrow, Kenneth

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Feb 24, 2023, 3:45:54 AM2/24/23
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Are you feeling ok?
What is tw??
Hope you are doing ok
Ken
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 6:52:26 PM

Abidogun, Jamaine M

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Feb 24, 2023, 3:45:54 AM2/24/23
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We are all here for you. Feel our prayers wrapping you in healing loving kindness, our Friend.

 

Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 5:52 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

CAUTION: External Sender

 

I have clots in the brain and tw

From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 4:24:28 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

Hope all is well? .it would be well.

Augustine 

On Thursday, February 23, 2023, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

I am writing from the hospital 

Apologies for all the errors

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 3:40:40 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

All the arguments have no validity in logo,

  1.  there is no finality to any argument for all historical eras.. one day someone will say Buhari’s it your president 
  2. Decolonization is not. Subaltern is not new. Decoloniality is not net
  3. Labels are reinvented for attenten
  4. It is a piece of bad scholarship to homogenize as innocent figures are tarnised. Blyden was decolonizing. Abuja was decolonizing. Ahmad Baba decolonizing. Ngugi was decolonizing,Cabral was decolonizing what is the point in thrashing them?

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 5:50:20 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

Oga,

 

Adebayo’s point is a different one that complement mine. He is saying the current   decolonial fad does not acknowledge or reckon with the work that earlier generations of thinkers and scholars did in that direction and pretends that Africa has been steeped, unchallenged, in a time warp of coloniality from which they’re trying to rescue her.

 

Another point he makes is that most of today’s decolonial aficionados don’t even have a good, historically accurate knowledge of what constituted colonialism, how it actually unfolded, and its nuances. If you don’t know exactly how colonization happened and how how Africans engaged with it then how can you  know what you’re decolonizing of if it should be decolonized?

 

I responded to him thus:

 

Damilola Adebayo, Indeed, they make it seem as though what Wiredu, Rodney, Ake, Ngugi, Chinwezu, and many others did was not a decolonial intervention. And you’re absolutely right; the prevailing understanding of colonialism is so ahistorical.

Sent from my iPhone



On Feb 20, 2023, at 5:04 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



The argument is changing a Lillie 

It is not about baseline

Africans have been decolonizing. It is the label that is changing 

Samuel cha gig was decolonizing in the 19..th century; so was decolonizing 

Senghor as decolonizing

African perspective is decolonizing 

WAEc in its exam was decolonizing 

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 3:16:02 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

I am outside waiting for an appointment, so can’t write much, but, Oga, my friend, Jacob Dlamini, makes the argument that even apartheid, as brutal as it was, did not and could not taint or occlude the preexisting and evolving flavors and rhythms of African life in the townships and other African spaces. African thought and life persisted stubbornly DESPITE the violence of apartheid. He is a South African and he of course rejects the decolonial valorization and centering of apartheid as the baseline of South African historical inquiry.

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 2:32 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense

 

Here's one contribution by the cerebral Dr. Muhammad Balogun:

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Moses Ochonu

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Feb 24, 2023, 3:45:54 AM2/24/23
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Ken,

That’s my point, not Okey’s. Okey is arguing the opposite point. 

If African cultural practices, ideas, and knowledges survived and in some cases thrived through 350 years of brutal Atlantic slavery, I don’t understand why the idea that colonialism had at best an uneven and shallow impact and that many African thoughts and cultures survived the tragedy strikes some people as implausible.

And what about the appropriation and rechristening of African and Africa-derived ideas and practices as “colonial” by colonizers? What do we make of this? Do we reify this colonial appropriation by calling for the decolonization of those appropriated and colonially rebranded ideas or do we deconstruct their alleged coloniality?

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 23, 2023, at 5:48 PM, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:



Moses Ochonu

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Feb 24, 2023, 3:45:54 AM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ahh Prof, I hope things are under control. Please let us know when it’s ok to call sir. I was worried when I the list didn’t update for more than a day, but I also knew you were on the road, so I thought it was the stress of travel. Praying for your quick and total recovery.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 23, 2023, at 5:55 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Feb 24, 2023, 3:46:05 AM2/24/23
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Sorry, get well soon.

-CAO.


On Friday, February 24, 2023, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
I have clots in the brain and tw
From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 4:24:28 PM

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Feb 24, 2023, 3:46:24 AM2/24/23
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We are all strongly sending you healing vibrations, each of us in our own ways. You will be well soon! 
Ken
From: Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 8:25:18 PM

Toyin Falola

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Feb 24, 2023, 3:46:31 AM2/24/23
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All forms of hegemonic control do not mean that humans Beings do not seek places of self assertion
And when they are free, usually not total,, they struggle to decolonize. To deny them this is to double tragedy: the tragedy of that colonization, and the tragedy of not seeking so spaces of assertion.
I see attacks on decolonization as seeking useless relevance in white scholarship 
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 2:58:43 PM

segun...@gmail.com

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Feb 24, 2023, 4:03:24 AM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
TF,
Get well quick!!!
Aase Edumare. 
Segun Ogungbemi

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 24, 2023, at 2:46 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Toyin Falola

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Feb 24, 2023, 4:03:35 AM2/24/23
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Aborigines in Australia, indigenous Indian populations have insisted that this is not an academic issue
It is like saying a raped woman gained something from it.
Decolonization is just a new label to describe what has been with us since Moses took the children of Israel  out of Egypt.
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 6:27:47 PM

Moses Ochonu

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Feb 24, 2023, 8:27:02 AM2/24/23
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“I see attacks on decolonization as seeking useless relevance in white scholarship”

This is highly uncharitable. No one is attacking decolonization per se, but is Simon Gikandi seeking relevance in white scholarship when he writes robustly about African and African-Caribbean agents in the making of colonial modernity and colonial culture?

Are Black scholars who write about the persistence and flourishing of African cultures in the Americas and the Caribbean looking for relevance in white scholarship or telling a story of Black resilience and the limits of oppressive power?

Is Olufemi Taiwo looking for relevance in white scholarship for critiquing the excesses and wrong premises and assumptions of the current fad of decoloniality and decolonization?

Are these scholars not simply giving Africans on the continent and in the diaspora their due and resisting the epistemological move to attribute everything and an all-conquering omnipotent hegemony to the white man?

Ultimately, is this a debate about the relevance in specific, defined contexts, of decolonization or about nuance and the current trend of wrongly and ahistorically labeling everything “colonial” and calling for its decolonization?

My original piece clearly stated, and I’ve repeated since, that I am not against decolonization and decoloniality where the objects are clearly defined and delineated, and that my short intervention is only a plea for epistemic moderation.

What worries me and other critics is the burgeoning epistemic extremism. 

What rankles is that some people in our field who have no sense of the complex history of colonialism, the polyvalent African agency in it, and the long genealogy of intellectual decolonization on the continent, are claiming that all our current epistemic practices are colonial, that past generations of Africanist scholars and thinkers have allowed this to persist, and that they’re on a mission to solve this problem.

Is this historically or even factually correct? And should it not be critiqued?

And finally, by all means people in formerly or presently colonized spaces should reclaim their personality and their erased or suppressed singularities, but as scholars we should critique the distortion of history and the denial of local agency—good and bad—in that noble project.

If such matters are beyond academic critique or scrutiny then we might as well change professions. 

And if that is the case then why has decolonization not remained strictly in the political and sociocultural realms and has instead been brought into the academy as a theoretical and epistemic enterprise?

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 24, 2023, at 3:03 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Okey Iheduru

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Feb 24, 2023, 8:27:20 AM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
TF:
I'm delighted to know you're well enough to be back on the forum. We're praying for your quick recovery.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/PH0PR06MB90041C444A93EAA05ABDFD33F8A89%40PH0PR06MB9004.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

Toyin Falola

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Feb 24, 2023, 9:10:18 AM2/24/23
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I am still in the hospital…but struggling

Toyin Falola

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Feb 24, 2023, 9:10:19 AM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Ok, let me frame the question differently:

If people want to use decolonization to write their own history, why not let it be?

 

If IPOB wants to write the history of Biafra the way they want it, let it be?

 

The Yoruba say Oduduwa is their father? Let it be. Christians never wake up say he is not their father.

 

How many nations in the world who wake up on do what they do to us---writing their history for amusement parks?

 

There is a liberal attack  on decolonization as it is an anti -racist paradigm. It is is racist component that is the issue.

 

The real argument is that there is nothing new about decolonization, just as there was nothing new about subaltern studies. What you now call decolonization is what an earlier scholars were calling Nationalist Histori0graphy, African Perspectives, etc. What Santos, Mignolo, Sabelo added to is no more than a heavy dose of race and racism.

 

How can Africans lived under apartheid and we will call it an “episode.” It is white liberals who popularized its usage. If the Mau Mau killed my people, colonialism cannot be an episode.

 

Let people continue to use as it applies to their trauma, their sexuality that was assaulted that pushed them skin bleaching, their sense of beauty that pushed to the skinny being more beautiful than the plumb; their villeages where they blended communities.

 

Can Australian aborogines wake up and be praising white people?

Can 14 million Indian population wake up and be debating decolonization?

Let us decolonize if it does away with useless democracy

Let us decoonize if does away with useless intellectual disciplines

Let us decolonize if its proponents will give its home grown theories

Let us decolonize if it empowers the use of our indigenous languages.

But to attack it, the way I have seen it done, is entrenchment of white power and not African agency.

TF

 


Date: Friday, February 24, 2023 at 7:27 AM

Toyin Falola

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Feb 24, 2023, 9:17:34 AM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

I am writing in the hospital under the influence of heavy medication—if I don’t work, I will die.

Apologies for all the errors.

Toyin Falola

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Feb 24, 2023, 9:44:33 AM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Moses:

Who does the label?

This is the real key

When I was in College, my teacher thought me that technology was the decisive factor, now I disagree: definition was the decisive factor. Definition kills more people that bullets. Blacks saw themselves as devils. If the Fulani call Tiv people “pagans” all of they have basically being killed.

There must be a revolution in the autonomy of the mind.  In South Africa, I proposed the use of autonomy but they said they prefer decolonization.

TF

Moses Ochonu

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Feb 24, 2023, 9:44:33 AM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Oga,

I agree with some of what you wrote and disagree with others, but none of that matters at this point. Your quick and full recovery trumps everything else. So when you’re out and fully back to your routine, we’ll continue. Knowing you though, I am convinced that even in your condition, and probably against the advice of your doctor and family, this conversation is helping you somewhat to cope and exercise your fecund mind and restless intellect. Please rest sir. And let us know, even if privately, when it’s ok to call and how.



Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 24, 2023, at 8:10 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Feb 24, 2023, 8:14:44 PM2/24/23
to Moses Ochonu, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Your rage seems to be against 
yourself, my dear friend.Worry
not about me - and avoid
trivialization of my work 
of four decades on a range of
areas.

Come and listen to my film
talk on Tuesday 28,February 2023
online on African Traditional
Medicine and Methodology 
accompanied by the screening
of my 2023 reissue of a conversation
with Dr.KTarus.


A poster follows.







Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 12:17 PM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Cc: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Gloria,

Everything is about Eurocentrism vs Afrocentrism with you. So predictable. No nuance. Everything is black and white, cast in reductive and Manichean terms. 

Even if I talk about my love for amala, ewedu, and gbegiri, I am sure you’ll find an Afrocentric/Eurocentric angle to explore. You’ll probably say “ahh Moses is sticking it to the man through his culinary rebellion/resistance” 😂 😆 

 It must be so tiring to be in your intellectual position of permanent rage against the alleged omnipresent and omnipotent forces of the man. 

Sent from my iPhone


On Feb 24, 2023, at 10:25 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu> wrote:


TF hits the nail on the head.
Great intervention.

Attacking scholars who speak
about decolonization is a Eurocentric 
ploy and propaganda stunt. 

TF’s recovery would be speeded
up by  rational postings.






Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 9:22 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Oga,

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

unread,
Feb 24, 2023, 8:14:44 PM2/24/23
to Moses Ochonu, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
TF hits the nail on the head.
Great intervention.

Attacking scholars who speak
about decolonization is a Eurocentric 
ploy and propaganda stunt. 

TF’s recovery would be speeded
up by  rational postings.






Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 9:22 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Epistemic Decolonization and the Flight of Academic Common Sense
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Oga,

Moses Ochonu

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Feb 24, 2023, 8:14:44 PM2/24/23
to Emeagwali, Gloria (History), usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Gloria,

Everything is about Eurocentrism vs Afrocentrism with you. So predictable. No nuance. Everything is black and white, cast in reductive and Manichean terms. 

Even if I talk about my love for amala, ewedu, and gbegiri, I am sure you’ll find an Afrocentric/Eurocentric angle to explore. You’ll probably say “ahh Moses is sticking it to the man through his culinary rebellion/resistance” 😂 😆 

 It must be so tiring to be in your intellectual position of permanent rage against the alleged omnipresent and omnipotent forces of the man. 

Sent from my iPhone


On Feb 24, 2023, at 10:25 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu> wrote:



Ogedi Ohajekwe

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Feb 24, 2023, 8:14:54 PM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Get well soon.

—-

On Feb 24, 2023, at 9:10 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Toyin Falola

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Feb 24, 2023, 9:52:45 PM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, Moses Ochonu
My response is not an endorsement of the tone of Moses and Gloria, but hardly is there a theory from the South that is not ridiculed or demeaned and eventually ridiculed, be it negritude, dependencies, nationalist historiography, Decoloniality, neocolonialism, ujama.
It is not a case of making them work but of destroying them
ECA, Lagos Plan of action, AfricaRisising, Africa Renaissance, etc, they are demolished 
My objection is why can’t we pose the question: how can we make it work?
From: 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 10:25:50 AM
To: Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>; usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Gloria Chuku

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Feb 24, 2023, 9:52:45 PM2/24/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Oh no; wishing you full recovery, Prof!!
GC

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 23, 2023, at 6:55 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Feb 25, 2023, 9:12:40 AM2/25/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
"TF’s recovery would be speeded
up by rational postings"-Gloria.

I don't think so. I think that Oga TF should entrust the moderating of this platform to trusted aides for now.

The man just turned 70, he needs to take a brief break from mental exertion to recover fully.

I don't have to be a medical professional to know this.

Once again, quick recovery Sir.

-CAO.

On Friday, February 24, 2023, 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
TF hits the nail on the head.
Great intervention.

Attacking scholars who speak
about decolonization is a Eurocentric 
ploy and propaganda stunt. 

TF’s recovery would be speeded
up by  rational posting.






Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association


Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 9:22 AM


Toyin Falola

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Feb 25, 2023, 9:19:26 AM2/25/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

My daughter, Bisola Falola and my friend, Professor Vik Bahl, do assist, but it is a minimum of four hours a day, and adherence to Google regulations regarding LGBT, anti-Semitism, etc. And I don’t like people to abuse one another—an insult is not an argument.

TF



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segun ogungbemi

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Feb 25, 2023, 10:51:25 AM2/25/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
I think TF should have a break from any activity that will stress the brain. Thanks for your advice Chidi. 
Segun Ogungbemi. 

On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 8:12 AM Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
"TF’s recovery would be speeded
up by rational postings"-Gloria.

I don't think so. I think that Oga TF should entrust the moderating of this platform to trusted aides for now.

The man just turned 70, he needs to take a brief break from mental exertion to recover fully.

I don't have to be a medical professional to know this.

Once again, quick recovery Sir.

-CAO.

On Friday, February 24, 2023, 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
TF hits the nail on the head.
Great intervention.

Attacking scholars who speak
about decolonization is a Eurocentric 
ploy and propaganda stunt. 

TF’s recovery would be speeded
up by  rational posting.






Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association


Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 9:22 AM
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Edward Kissi

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Feb 25, 2023, 10:51:49 AM2/25/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Chief TF,

It warms the heart and delights the eye that even as you recover from your hospital bed you are able to “speak” to your global family of relatives, friends, admirers and well-wishers  through this vital medium you created and continue to monitor. I am one of your many friends and admirers who have a vested interest in your good health. The best of the best recovery wishes to you!

Edward Kissi

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 25, 2023, at 9:19 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:


To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/PH0PR06MB90048D14B4C8E527D1A9B3C9F8A99%40PH0PR06MB9004.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

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Moses Ochonu

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Feb 25, 2023, 12:13:12 PM2/25/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
I second the sentiment that Oga takes a break to recuperate fully, but I doubt he will. If he can’t find someone to manage the list to his satisfaction while he’s away, we can wait. The list will not die. We’ll resume posting when he’s fully recovered.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 25, 2023, at 9:51 AM, Edward Kissi <eki...@usf.edu> wrote:

 Chief TF,

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Feb 25, 2023, 2:28:52 PM2/25/23
to segun ogungbemi, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Segun

You are quite right- especially if
disengagement is less stressful.

My comment also had a double
meaning.🤣



Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of segun ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2023 9:19 AM

Dr. Oohay

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Feb 26, 2023, 4:35:39 PM2/26/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
TF, may you recover fully sooner rather than later.

Nkolika Ebele

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Feb 28, 2023, 11:21:28 AM2/28/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
l love this perspective and I agree with it, though I have just started following the discussion. 
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