This paper examines South African President Thabo Mbeki's notion of the African Renaissance. Representations of Africa have been challenged in the past by movements such as negritude and pan-Africanism. Thabo Mbeki's proclamation of the African Renaissance can be seen as another attempt to fight and challenge prevailing representations of Africa. An African Renaissance that does not degenerate into essentialism (particularlism) has the potential to transform the lives of the many Africans who have been ravaged by the continuing legacy of colonialism. The author argues that if the call for an African Renaissance is to have any lasting impact on the African condition, it must be careful to avoid taking the essentialist positions advocated by earlier ideological movements such as negritude. The essay contends that the call for an African Renaissance is an important effort which needs to be adopted by Africans beyond the borders of South Africa.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
1 Marion O'Callaghan (1995:34) has noted that "not only did neo-negritude pose no threat to the category of race, it reinforced this category... Moreover, neo-negritude refused and eliminated the real questions of today and the passage to today's technological conquest by the very nature of its return to a mythical yesterday."
ABIOLA, IRELE 1971 "Negritude Revisited" in Aspects of Africa's Identity: Five Essays, edited by Paul Nursey-Bray. Kampala: Makerere Institute of Social Research. 1981 The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. London: Heinemann.
AHLUWALIA, PAL 1996 Post-Colonialism and the Politics of Kenya. New York: Nova Science. 1999 'Negritude and Nativism' in Search of Identity. Africa Quarterly 39: 2, 21-43.
AHLUWALIA, PAL, BILL ASHCROFT & ROGER KNIGHT (EDS) 1999 White and Deadly: Sugar and Colonialism. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
ANYINEFA, KOFFI Hello and Goodbye to Negritude: Senghor, Dadie, Dongala and America. Research in African Literatures 27: 2, Summer.
ARMAH, A.K. 1967 African Socialism: Utopian or Scientific. Présence Africaine 64.
ASHCROFT, BILL & PAL AHLUWALIA 1999 Edward Said: The Paradox of Identity. London: Routledge.
BLACKBURN, ROBIN 1998 The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800. London: Verso.
BLYDEN, E.W. 1967 (1888) Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. London: Edinburgh University Press. 1862 Liberia's Offering. New York.
CURTIN, PHILIP D. 1974 Precolonial African History. Washington: American Historical Association.
DATHORNE, O.R. 1988 Dark Ancestor: The Literature of the Black man in the Caribbean. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
EVANS, GRAHAM 1999 "The End of the Rainbow: South Africa's 1999 Election and the African Renaissance." Paper presented to the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific Conference, University of Western Australia, Perth, 26-28 November.
1999 South Africa's Foreign Policy After Mandela: Mbeki and his concept of an African Renaissance. The Round Table 352: 621-628.
GATES, HENRY LOUIS, JR. 1998 "Harlem on our Minds." Critical Inquiry 24, Autumn, 1-12.
HEGEL, G.F.W. 1944 The philosophy of History, quoted in Thomas Hodgkin, "Where The Path Began" in Christopher Fyfe (ed.) (1976). African Studies Since 1945. London: Longman.
JULES-ROSETTE, BENNETTA 1998 Black Paris: The African Writers' Landscape. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
KANNEH, KADIATU 1998 African Identities: Race, Nation and Culture in Ethnography, Pan-Africanism and Black Literatures. London: Routledge.
LEYS, COLIN 1994 "Confronting the African Tragedy." New Left Review 204: 33-47. 1996 The Rise and Fall of Development Theory. London: James Currey.
MARX, KARL, quoted in R.A. HIGGOTT 1983 Political Development Theory. London: Croom Helm.
MAZRUI, ALI 1967 Towards a Pax Africana. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MPHAHLELE, EZEKIEL 1974 The African Image. London: Faber and Faber.
MUDIMBE, V.Y. 1988 The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
O'CALLAGHAN, MARION 1995 "Continuities in Imagination" in The Decolonization of the Imagination, edited by J.N. Pieterse and B. Parekh. London: Zed Books.
SAID, EDWARD 1993 Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus.
SOYINKA, WOLE 1976 Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SPELTH, JANICE 1985 Leopold Sédar Senghor. Boston: Twanye Publishers, 1985.
WASHINGTON, BÂ. 1973 The Concept of Negritude in the Poetry of Leopold Sédar Senghor. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
WAUTHIER, CLAUDE 1978 The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa. London: Heinemann.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1421 | 473 | 44 |
Full Text Views | 298 | 77 | 38 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 227 | 79 | 13 |
This paper examines South African President Thabo Mbeki's notion of the African Renaissance. Representations of Africa have been challenged in the past by movements such as negritude and pan-Africanism. Thabo Mbeki's proclamation of the African Renaissance can be seen as another attempt to fight and challenge prevailing representations of Africa. An African Renaissance that does not degenerate into essentialism (particularlism) has the potential to transform the lives of the many Africans who have been ravaged by the continuing legacy of colonialism. The author argues that if the call for an African Renaissance is to have any lasting impact on the African condition, it must be careful to avoid taking the essentialist positions advocated by earlier ideological movements such as negritude. The essay contends that the call for an African Renaissance is an important effort which needs to be adopted by Africans beyond the borders of South Africa.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1421 | 473 | 44 |
Full Text Views | 298 | 77 | 38 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 227 | 79 | 13 |