Overview
How may we conceptualize Africa in the driver’s seat of her own destiny in the twenty-first century? How practically may her cultures become the foundation and driving force of her innovation, development, and growth in the age of the global knowledge economy? How may the Africanist disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences be revamped to rise up to these challenges through new imaginaries of intersectional reflection? This book assembles lectures given by Pius Adesanmi that address these questions. Adesanmi sought to create an African world of signification in which verbal artistry interpellates performer and audience in a heuristic process of knowledge production. The narrative and delivery of his arguments, the antiphonal call and response, and the aspects of Yoruba oratory and verbal resources all combine with diction and borrowings from Nigerian popular culture to create a distinct African performative mode. This mode becomes a form of resistance, specifically against the pressure to conform to Western ideals of the packaging, standardization, and delivery of knowledge. Together, these short essays preserve the committed and passionate voice of an African writer lost far too soon. Adesanmi urges his readers to commit themselves to Africa’s cultural agency.
Full Product Details
Author: Pius Adesanmi ,
Toyin Falola ,
Kenneth W Harrow
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Imprint: Michigan State University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.295kg
ISBN: 9781611863550
ISBN 10: 1611863554
Pages: 207
Publication Date: 01 February 2020
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Long after you have read them, the insights of these essays stay with you, almost in the same manner in which the memory of his life and work, now that he is gone, remain indelible. No other person writes of Africa in the world and the world in Africa like Pius Adesanmi. Consistently passionate, witty, humorous, and yet rigorously researched and thought through, the essays collected in this book are sure to create a new benchmark for activist intellectualism in public discourse in the social media. --BIODUN JEYIFO, former Professor in African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature, Harvard University
Before his untimely death, Pius Adesanmi had emerged as one of Africa’s leading public intellectuals and as an astute interpreter of the African imagination. In this collection he speaks to us from the land of the ancestors with a voice that is both cautionary and prophetic, providing one of the best diagnoses of the African problematic that I have read in many years. Combining sharp analysis with humor, this book is an invitation to all of us to rededicate our commitment to Africa’s continuing struggle for agency in the twenty-first century. — Simon Gikandi, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University Long after you have read them, the insights of these essays stay with you, almost in the same manner in which the memory of his life and work, now that he is gone, remain indelible. No other person writes of Africa in the world and the world in Africa like Pius Adesanmi. Consistently passionate, witty, humorous, and yet rigorously researched and thought through, the essays collected in this book are sure to create a new benchmark for activist intellectualism in public discourse in the social media. — Biodun Jeyifo, former Professor in African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, and author of Against the Predators’ Republic: Political and Cultural Journalism, 2007–2013
Author Information
PIUS ADESANMI (1972–2019) was a scholar, writer, literary critic, satirist, and columnist.
