Agency, Africanity, and Some Propositions for Engaged Scholarship

Abstract

Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of Africanity as expressed in his preface to “Black Orpheus” underscores the necessity of re-storying African pedagogies in African studies. Summarizing his own insights as he reflects on issues of identity, agency, and representation, Sartre offers a powerful perspective in the current debate on reimagining African studies pedagogies. Africa has been imagined as the “dark continent” and these images are regularly etched as of undeniably African origin. Yet, relying upon these images of Africa, results in a very limited understanding of what Africa was, is and is becoming. Through an examination of the epistemic linkages expressed in the previous chapters, this concluding chapter reflects upon the possibilities of (re)imagining an African studies without epistemic limits. The chapter acknowledges the complexities of recasting dominant narratives about Africa and the possibilities of African agency in reimagining an Afrofuture as a way of tackling the legacies of epistemic imperialism. The audacity to justify a “re-storying” of African pedagogical choices is a consequence of the persistent nature of epistemic violence in academic spaces and tackling it demands black agency.