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In October 2016, thirty intellectuals and artists from Africa, its diasporas, and beyond gathered together in Dakar and Saint-Louis, Senegal, to reflect on the present and future of Africa in the midst of transformations that are sweeping through the contemporary world. The aim was to take stock of the renewal of Afro-diasporic critical thought and to discuss the new perspectives emerging from the ongoing projects constructing political, cultural, and social imaginaries for and from the African continent.
This book brings together and makes available to the English-speaking world the material presented at the 2016 Ateliers de la pensée - Workshops of Thought - in Dakar. The authors deal with a wide range of issues, including decolonization, the development of social utopias, and the pursuit of new forms of political, economic, and social production on the African continent. Running throughout is a constant concern to interrogate the categories and frames of meaning that have served to characterize the dynamics of the African continent and a shared desire to produce new frames of intelligibility through which to see Africa's present realities and its future. The contributions also attest to the view that there is no African question that is not also a global question, and that the Africanization of the global question will be a decisive feature of the twenty-first century.
To Write the Africa World and its companion volume The Politics of Time will be indispensable for anyone interested in Africa - its past, present, and future - and in the new forms of critical thought emerging from Africa and the Global South.
List of contents
Thinking for a New Century
Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr
I
(European?) Universalism: put to the test by indigenous histories
Mamadou Diouf
Laetitia Africana: philosophy, decolonization, melancholia
Nadia Yala Kisukidi
For a truly universal universal
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Migrant writers: builders of a balanced globalization of Africa/Europe
Benaouda Lebdai
II
For what is Africa the name?
Léonora Miano
Epistemological Impasses around the object Africa
Maurice Soudieck Dione
Reinventing African modernity!
Blondin Cissé
What is a postcolonial author?
Lydie Moudileno
III
How can one be African?
Hourya Bentouhami
Re-discovering meaning
Bonaventure Mve-Ondo
Esteem For Self:
Creating One's Own Sense/Carving Out One's Own Path
Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux
Dictionary for lovers of the African continent: two entries
Alain Mabanckou and Abdourahman Waberi
Emancipatory utopias
Françoise Vergès
IV
Martiality and death in sexual relations in Cameroon
Parfait D. Akana
Confronted with demographic challenges and technological mutations: does a good paying-job have a future in Africa?
Ndongo Samba Sylla
Healing the in-common
Abdourahmane Seck
V
Paths of the universal
Sami Tchak
Re-enchanting the world: Husserl in the post-colony
Nado Ndoye
Writing the humanities from the vantage point of Africa
Felwine Sarr
Thinking the world from the vantage point of Africa
Achille Mbembe
Notes
Index
About the author
Achille Mbembe is a Research Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Felwine Sarr is Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University
Summary
In October 2016, thirty intellectuals and artists from Africa, its diasporas, and beyond gathered together in Dakar and Saint-Louis, Senegal, to reflect on the present and future of Africa in the midst of transformations that are sweeping through the contemporary world. The aim was to take stock of the renewal of Afro-diasporic critical thought and to discuss the new perspectives emerging from the ongoing projects constructing political, cultural, and social imaginaries for and from the African continent.
This book brings together and makes available to the English-speaking world the material presented at the 2016 Ateliers de la pensée - Workshops of Thought - in Dakar. The authors deal with a wide range of issues, including decolonization, the development of social utopias, and the pursuit of new forms of political, economic, and social production on the African continent. Running throughout is a constant concern to interrogate the categories and frames of meaning that have served to characterize the dynamics of the African continent and a shared desire to produce new frames of intelligibility through which to see Africa's present realities and its future. The contributions also attest to the view that there is no African question that is not also a global question, and that the Africanization of the global question will be a decisive feature of the twenty-first century.
To Write the Africa World and its companion volume The Politics of Time will be indispensable for anyone interested in Africa - its past, present, and future - and in the new forms of critical thought emerging from Africa and the Global South.
Report
"Questions to do with the world and its relationship with Africa have never been more urgent, and Africa is the richest and most indispensable source and location for thinking about these issues. To Write the Africa World is a rich and powerful contribution to the debate."
Fred Moten, New York University
"To Write the Africa World is a compelling and urgently necessary collection of essays centered around the present and future role of Africa in the global sphere... For scholars and writers who are interested in the future of Africa and new forms of critical inquiry and thought emerging from the continent, this volume will be essential reading."
JDDavisPoet
