Africa The Road To Afro Modernity

This book is a product of a select and innovative “think tank,” NobbleAfriq Institute. It stands as the pillar and the revival of the African system of thought and spiritualism which, in turn, pave the road to Afro-modernity. For those seeking the answers to the root of the malady of our time in Africa, this book serves as a guide and inspiration. This book projects that the problem of Africa is Africa due to loss of intuitive thinking, freedom, and identity, which brought about the natural spiritual and psychological void known as “disintegrated individuality.” Failure of political leadership, lack of good governance, and stunted progress in Africa are not the main problems but symptoms of disintegrated individualism, which is a loss of sense of being. We are evolving beings; therefore, we can no longer search for our identity out of the old world of the past. Our old tribal and ancestral world are not lost but outgrown. As such, our identity and the meaning of who we are cannot be found; rather, they are to be created and achieved.

Based on the idea that Africa was already becoming modern before being derailed by colonialism, the author insists that Africa can get back on track and advocates a renewed engagement with modernity. Tools toward shaping a positive future for Africa are immigration, capitalism, democracy, and globalization.

This anthology examines the "unfinished project of modernity" with respect to the unrealized potential for economic, social, and political development in Africa. It also shows how, facing the consequences of modernism, Africans in and out of the continent are responding to these unfinished projects drawing on (a) the customary, (b) the novelty of modernity, and (c) positive aspects of modernism, for the organization of their societies and the enrichment of their lives even as they contend with the negative aspects of modernity and modernism.

In a forthright and uncompromising manner, Olúfémi Táíwò explores Africa’s hostility toward modernity and how that hostility has impeded economic development and social and political transformation. What has to change for Africa to be able to respond to the challenges of modernity and globalization? Táíwò insists that Africa can renew itself only by fully engaging with democracy and capitalism and by mining its untapped intellectual resources. While many may not agree with Táíwò’s positions, they will be unable to ignore what he says. This is a bold exhortation for Africa to come into the 21st century.

An intellectual biography of a modern African artist and his immense contribution to twentieth-century art history. The history of world art has long neglected the work of modern African artists and their search for forms of modernist expression as either irrelevant to the discourse of modern art or as fundamentally subservient to the established narrative of Western European modernist practice. With this engaging new volume, Sylvester Ogbechie refutes this approach by examining the life and work of Ben Enwonwu (1917-94), a premier African modernist and pioneer whose career opened the way for the postcolonial proliferation and increased visibility of African art. In the decades between Enwonwu's birth and death, modernization produced new political structures and new forms of expression inAfrican cultures, inspiring important developments in modern African art. Within this context, Ogbechie evaluates important issues such as the role of Anglo-Nigerian colonial culture in the development of modern Nigerian art, andEnwonwu's involvement with international discourses of modernism in Europe, Africa, and the United States over a period of five decades. The author also interrogates Enwonwu's use of the radical politics of Negritude ideology to define modern African art against canonical interpretations of Euro-modernism; and the artist's visual and critical contributions to Pan Africanism, Nigerian nationalism, and postcolonial interpretations of African modernity. First and foremost an intellectual biography of Ben Enwonwu as a modern African artist, rather than an exhaustive critical exploration of the discourse of modernism in African art history or in modern art in general, Ben Enwonwu situates the artist historically and interprets his work in ways that surpass traditional discourse around the canon of modern art. Sylvester Ogbechie is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

What role does ritual play in the everyday lives of modern Africans? How are so-called "traditional" cultural forms deployed by people seeking empowerment in a world where "modernity" has failed to deliver on its promises? Some of the essays in Modernity and Its Malcontents address familiar anthropological issues—like witchcraft, myth, and the politics of reproduction—but treat them in fresh ways, situating them amidst the polyphonies of contemporary Africa. Others explore distinctly nontraditional subjects—among them the Nigerian popular press and soul-eating in Niger—in such a way as to confront the conceptual limits of Western social science. Together they demonstrate how ritual may be powerfuly mobilized in the making of history, present, and future. Addressing challenges posed by contemporary African realities, the authors subject such concepts as modernity, ritual, power, and history to renewed critical scrutiny. Writing about a variety of phenomena, they are united by a wish to preserve the diversity and historical specificity of local signs and practices, voices and perspectives. Their work makes a substantial and original contribution toward the historical anthropology of Africa. The contributors, all from the Africanist circle at the University of Chicago, are Adeline Masquelier, Deborah Kaspin, J. Lorand Matory, Ralph A. Austen, Andrew Apter, Misty L. Bastian, Mark Auslander, and Pamela G. Schmoll.

For postcolonial Africa, modernization was seen as a necessary outcome of the struggle for independence and as crucial to the success of its newly established states. Since then, the rhetoric of modernization has pervaded policy, culture, and development, lending a kind of political theatricality to nationalist framings of modernization and Africans’ perceptions of their place in the global economy. These 15 essays address governance, production, and social life; the role of media; and the discourse surrounding large-scale development projects, revealing modernization's deep effects on the expressive culture of Africa.