Abstract
This chapter situates the field of media and communication studies within the humanities that are facing an epistemic crisis that calls for new thinking, new ideas, and greater interdisciplinarity. It argues that theory in critical media and communication studies and other related disciplines has reached a dead end in terms of its explanatory and transformative power. The wellsprings of critical theory such as structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism in the West are drying up and face the spectre of epistemic closure. In media and communication studies, many theories of re-animating critical thinking and transforming the field from the grip of Eurocentrism and Western universalism have been propagated mainly by scholars from the Global North. This chapter gives a panoramic view of the transformation theories existing in the field. It argues that most of the Western theories represent false alternatives for Africa and the Global South because they epitomize anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism and the failure of Europe to think outside a colonial discourse. The chapter places hope for a trans-epistemic multicultural media and communication studies in the transformative power of decoloniality, a Southern theory that emerges from the exteriority of Euro-American imperial political and epistemic paradigms.
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Moyo, L. (2020). Introduction. In: The Decolonial Turn in Media Studies in Africa and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52832-4_1
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