Author: Jamie Monson.

The Cosmopolitan Origins of African Studies: Back to the Future? In 1997, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza wrote as president of the African Studies Association that the field of African studies had been plagued by perpetual crisis since its institutionalization in the 1950s. The crisis had its roots in deeply embedded historical structures of race and hierarchy, on the one hand, and institutional power over the production of knowledge on the other. He wrote that scholars in the field were working in “unyielding solitudes” and “bitter contestations” that divided African American from European American and from African scholars. Until these solitudes could be transcended, the field would continue to founder. He went further in his challenge: he suggested that the crisis of the 1990s could lead African studies “back to the future,” as cold war–era strategic concerns declined and a return could take place to transcontinental scholarship that was both intellectually rigorous and socially responsible.1 Sandra E. Greene, speaking as president of the African Studies Association the following year, made a similar argument, stating that the crisis in the field would continue so long as Africanist scholarship from the North continued to play a gatekeeping role and remained detached from African realities. Greene stated that the time had come for a strong bridge between Africanist and African scholars, as a necessary precondition for the field to flourish, stating that it was imperative that African studies address its uncompleted agendas and unacknowledged concerns.2 William Martin and Michael West wrote hopefully, in an article titled “A Future with a Past,” echoing Zeleza, that African studies during this time of crisis was moving into a post-Africanist era. While powerful institutions may have been seeing their demise in the post–cold war world order, Martin and West were optimistic about the possibilities for an African studies centered in Africa and untethered from military funding and developmentalist paradigms. They anticipated that the field would diverge productively from “One Africa” to “Many Africas” without a single hegemonic paradigm.3