The Politics of Scholarship
“…The person who has the power to define has that power not only to define the Self, but also to define Others. That means that Western scholarship tends to determine who is going to be included and who excluded, and that does not always have to do with the quality of scholarship being produced. A journal that is based in the UK, run by somebody who has assumptions about the world and North/South divisions, might take positions about which papers will be published. Those decisions have very little to do with science, but more with the politics of scholarly production.
It therefore becomes very difficult for African ideas, African scholarship, and African research to filter through. But fortunately we are living in the 21st century, where you have alternative ways of surviving even while you are being excluded. There are possibilities through new technologies of dissemination – just by putting something on a listserv or online, even if you have limited bandwidth, means that you increase the chances of excluded scholarship, of excluded theoretical contributions, thereby preventing them from dying simply because they haven’t been published in a mainstream channel.
So it comes back again to the notion of community media and alternative sites of knowledge production to give voice to those excluded from mainstream channels, because those exclusions have not always been informed by the mediocrity of output, but it could be a political decision.
So yes, the likelihood exists that knowledge produced in the South might not always make its way to publication or public debate for various reasons – economic, political or otherwise – but also thanks to recent developments in technologies, even if they cannot quite make it, the chance of them being accessed by those who really want to know, who really want to relate, are greater than before.”
Media and language
“African Journalism lacks both the power of self-definition and the power to shape the universals that are deaf-and-dumb to the particularities of journalism in and on Africa. Because journalism has tended to be treated as an attribute of so-called ‘modern’ societies or of ‘superior’ others, it is only proper, so the reasoning goes, that African Journalism and the societies it serves, are taught the principles and professional practices by those who ‘know’ what it means to be civilized and to be relevant to civilization.
Aspiring journalists in Africa must, like containers, be dewatered of the mud and dirt of culture as tradition and custom, and filled afresh with the tested sparkles of culture as modernity and civilization. African journalists are thus called upon to operate in a world where everything has been predefined for them by others, where they are meant to implement and hardly ever to think or rethink, where what is expected of them is respect for canons, not to question how or why canons are forged, or the extent to which canons are inclusive of the creative diversity of the universe that is purportedly of interest to the journalism of the One-Best-Way.”
“In the use of language alone, few African journalists have dared to write the way Chinua Achebe suggests is a popular mode of communication amongst the Igbo, where proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten. Fewer still have dared to contemplate using English, French, Portuguese or Spanish the creative ways that the ordinary Africans whom they purportedly target with their journalism do. While journalists mark time with linguistic orthodoxy, African communities have been busy creolizing inherited European languages through promoting intercourse with African languages, and in turn enriching local languages through borrowings. Everywhere the spoken word has also perfected its intermarriage with the unspoken through body language and other nonverbal forms.”
“To democratize African Journalism is to provide the missing cultural link to current efforts, links informed by respect for African humanity and creativity, and by popular ideas of personhood and domesticated agency. It is to negotiate conviviality between competing ideas of how best to provide for the humanity and dignity of all and sundry. It is above all to observe and draw from the predicaments of ordinary Africans forced by culture, history and material realities to live their lives as ‘subjects’ rather than as ‘citizens’, even as liberal democratic rhetoric claims otherwise. The mere call for an exploration of alternatives in African Journalism is bound to be perceived as a threat and a challenge.”
“Somebody who straddles various identity margins can never give you a straightforward answer, because he does not live his lives in dichotomies. Scholarship, everything, has to be complex, (whether) it is telling a story, (whether) it is journalism, research, scholarship – the quality of journalism should be: if you really want to understand the story, let me not rush. Let me sit down so I can tell you the story with all its nuances, it is not something that I can summarize with a few key phrases because that just complicates the matter more than it explains it. Journalism should be storytelling, but not in a hurry – that is why the ethnographic method is important. If you are in a hurry to tell a story, this school of journalism is not for you.”
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Francis B. Nyamnjoh is a Cameroon born and Dakar based scholar and novelist. These quotes were culled from his interview, Extending the Theoretical Cloth to Make Room for the African Experience with Herman Wasserman of the University of Sheffield.
Nyamnjoh Francis is one of those versatile and prolific anglophone writers to whom literary giants such as the just died Bate Besong, often made reference to. In a dissertation submitted to the department of English of the University of Buea, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of a Bachelor's degree in English; entitled The Cameroon Predicament and Anglophone Writers: A Study of Francis B Nyamnjoh's Mind Searching and Emmanuel Fru Doh's Wading the Tides, Emmanuel Njume projects the vocality of these writers inasmuch as the plight and predicament of the Anglophone is concerned. They however touch issues of national interest such as religious hypocrisy and leadership insensitivity that are characteristics of contemporary Cameroon experience. According to Bate Besong who in my opinion remains the most complex,complicated, contemporary and the most committed of all Anglophone Writers, it is only in thier roles as mirrors and visionaries of society that one reckons with the artistic profundity and excellence of Nyamnjoh in particular.
Posted by: Njume Emmanuel Ekindesone | July 22, 2009 at 03:15 AM