Race and Gender in Research and Writing in Africa and Its Diasporas: An Introduction
Abstract
The travel journals of scholars, writers, and activists who have conducted research in Africa and its diasporas could fill a library. Researchers, even with the best of intentions, by definition invade people’s lives and spaces. When they check into a hotel, ride a people mover (local bus), go to a market, or sit in someone’s home, they get observed and marked by local communities. These markers run the spectrum from diasporic kin, to Western other, to woman-out-of- place. These experiences are often not part of the intended research, so they get stored away as interesting stories from the field. By casting aside these experiences with blackness and gender in the field, scholars run the risk of marginalizing the very people they intend to write about. Black Subjects in Africa and Its Diasporas shifts the terrain of research in Africa and the black diasporas from fact-finding expeditions to more dialogic exchanges that shape intellectual conversations and contributions. It advocates that scholars recast the core of their study from objects to subjects. Yet, the idea of subject takes a dialectical turn in this volume. It places two subjects—researcher and host—at the center of the analysis. On the one hand, the concept of subject or subjectivity means everything and nothing at the same time.
Keywords
Oral History Host Community Preconceive Notion Travel Journal Black SubjectPreview
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Notes
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