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.
ContentsMore Than Just a Name, by Toyin FalolaForeword, by Kenneth W. HarrowPreface. Form as Resistance: The Story of This BookPart One. Crossfire#WhoOwnsTheProblem?Culture, Development, and Other AnnoyancesFor Whom Is Africa Rising?Africa Is People, Nigeria Is Nigerians: Provocations on Post-mendicant EconomiesThe Disappeared African Roots of Emma Watson's UN FeminismThe Africa Just Outside of Your Hilton Hotel WindowPart Two. Imagining Culture, Figuring ChangeCapitalism and Memory: Of Golf Courses and Massage Parlors in Badagry, NigeriaOde to the Bottle - For Ken Harrow, Who LaughedAso Ebi on My MindAra Eko, Ara Oke: Lagos, Culture, and the Rest of UsA Race through Race in MissouriPart Three. Variations on Love and SelfDowry: Managing Africa's Many LoversCaribbean Self, African SelfieFace Me, I Book You: Writing Africa's Agency in the Age of the NetizenWhat Does (Nigerian) Literature Secure?Post-centenary Nigeria: New Literatures, New Leaders, New NationBibliographyIndex