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Addressing the consequences of colonialism on African history, knowledge and its institutions, this innovative work from one of Africa's most eminent historians uses memory, visual aesthetics and literature to consider the 'Self' and Yoruba Being in the context of the African decolonial project.
List of contents
Part I. Introduction; 1. Prologue: My Archive; 2. Autoethnography and Epistemic Liberation; Part II. Fictions and Factions; 3. Narrative Politics and Cultural Ideologies; 4. Memory, Magic, Myth, and Metaphor; 5. A Poetological Narration of the Nation; 6. A Poetological Narration of the Self; 7. Satire and Society; 8. Narrative Politics and the Politics of Narrative; Part III. Visual Cultures; 9. Sculpture as Archive; 10. Textiles as Texts; 11. Canvas and Archiving Ethnic Reality; 12. Hair Art and the Women Agency; 13. Photography and Ethnography' Part IV. Conclusion; 14. Self, Collective, and Collection.
About the author
Toyin Falola is Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, at the University of Texas at Austin. He had served as the General Secretary of the Historical Society of Nigeria, the President of the African Studies Association, Vice-President of UNESCO Slave Route Project, and the Kluge Chair of the Countries of the South, Library of Congress. He is a member of the Scholars' Council, Kluge Center, the Library of Congress. He has received over thirty lifetime career awards and fifteen honorary doctorates. He has written extensively on African knowledge systems, including Religious Beliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa (2021), African Spirituality, Politics and Knowledge Systems: Sacred Words and Holy Realm (2021) and Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency and Voice (2022). He is also the series co-editor for Cambridge University Press's series African Identities.
