Africa
África, o berço da modernidade: por uma visão pós-colonial da modernidade e do território
Abstract:
In África, o berço da modernidade: por uma visão pós-colonial da modernidade e do território. In Territórios, cidades e identidades africanas em movimento, the author starts by taking a brief look at what is conventionally called modernity and what constitutes the substratum on which the “West” anchors itself for a triumphant and universalist autonarrative. Various authors, mainly from the mid-eighties onwards, have sought to demystify the origins of Western civilisation and modernity, most notably the three volumes of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987/1991/2006), by Martin Gardiner Bernal.2 Other authors have followed in Bernal’s footsteps to some extent, one of them being the philosopher and historian Enrique Dussel with his work Política de La Liberación: Historia Mundial y Crítica [Liberation Policy: World History and Critique] (2007): World History and Critique] (2007), in which, situated in the field of postcolonial theory, he argues that Hellenocentrism is the father of Eurocentrism and that, given that the so-called “Greek miracle” by the German Romantics of the eighteenth century does not exist, this means having to start “anew” the history of political philosophy. To this end, he considers it essential to redefine the beginning of modernity. It is worth pointing out that it is “postmodernity” – called the historical period that seeks to overcome, or surpasses, modernity – that will give rise, in Western academia and its satellites, not only to a debate about the “postmodern condition” – or about its being the “cultural logic of late capitalism” – but also about the “vision” of modernity itself. Although many prefer expressions other than “postmodern”, or change their preference -such as Zygmunt Bauman, who starts talking about “liquid modernity”, or Gilles Lipovetsky, who prefers the term “hypermodernity”, or others who talk about “incomplete modernity”, or “late modernity” or “alternative modernities”-, in essence they do not put the emphasis on a critical analysis of the hegemonic Anglo-Saxon periodisation of modernity.
Quotation:
Barros-Varela, O. (2022). África, o berço da modernidade: por uma visão pós-colonial da modernidade e do território. In Territórios, cidades e identidades africanas em movimento. Andréia Moassab, Marina Berthet (Orgs.), 11-31. Foz do Iguaçu: EDUNILA, 2022. ISBN: 978-65-86342-32-1
Working Paper 189/2023: Fragilities and shocks effects on households and communities in West Africa
Abstract:
Shocks are drivers of fragility yet most works on fragility in Africa use the tag “fragile state(s)” with less focus on the drivers of fragility in its institutions, states, and economies. Shocks are cardinal to the entrenchment or stability of any system. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how fragile the world is including the “developed” or “advanced” systems. Today, households, businesses, and communities in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa suffer the effects of a triple whammy (climate change, the pandemic and Russia/Ukraine War) including effects of history and an unfavourable global system all of which leaves them in hunger, poverty and vulnerable conditions. Fragilities and Shocks Effects on Households and Communities in West Africa used secondary sources to revisit the effects of these shocks on households, and communities in West Africa through the lens of common resources. The recent shocks effects prevalent in all these countries is higher than reported and would affect West Africa´s growing population in the foreseeable future with the absence of safety nets or effective interventions. The absence of shocks preparation in the subregion is not sustainable and adds up to the sustenance of the revolving circle of fragility in the subregion.
Quotation:
Agulonye, U.V.P. 2023. “Fragilities and Shocks Effects on Households and Communities in West Africa“. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 189/2023
De escravos a indígenas: O longo processo de instrumentalização dos africanos (séculos XV-XX)
Abstract:
De Escravos a Indígenas: o Longo Processo de Instrumentalização dos Africanos (Séculos XV-XX), which brings together a set of texts written over forty years and dispersed in publications of diverse nature, not always easily accessible, aims to contribute to a renewal of historiography on the relations between Portugal and Africa, in the specific field of the forms of instrumentalisation of Africans carried out by the Portuguese for almost five centuries. A long process, whose internal nature proved capable of metamorphosis and reconversion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ensuring the continuity of the violent ‘use’ of African populations, resorting to a new classificatory apparatus – savages, indigenous, assimilated – aimed at keeping Africans within the sphere of Portuguese domination, contributing to legitimising their enslavement and fixing distorting interpretations of History.
If a first line of study aims to review the history of slavery and slave trafficking and their ideologies in spaces of Portuguese ‘occupation’ like Angola, a second line of study privileges iconographic documents as historical sources, emphasizing their historical and informative dimension. Finally, the third line of this study seeks to highlight the evolution of the process of Portuguese instrumentalisation of Africans, which resorts to unprecedented classificatory categories – savage, indigenous, assimilated – and to practices that emerge from the slave labour of the past to ensure the colonial exploitation of African populations.
Value judgments, commodification, objectification, exploitation, ridiculing of African men fabricated Portuguese imaginaries that reduced the black/African to slavery, the savage/indigenous to lazy, thieving and drunk, the assimilated/’civilised’ to a ridiculous and negative copy of the white/Portuguese, enshrining the inferiorization of Africans, and in the same movement, glorifying the Portuguese ‘race’, hierarchizing the humanities and valuing the dimension and nature of the Portuguese actions, first slave-owning and then colonialist, that have left their mark on Portuguese society to this day.
Quotation:
Henriques, Isabel C., De Escravos a Indígenas: o Longo Processo de Instrumentalização dos Africanos (Séculos XV-XX), Lisboa, Ed. Caleidoscópio, 2019.
Navigating ontological (in)security in EU–Africa relations
Abstract:
When the first six members of the European Economic Community (EEC) took that initial step towards deeper integration that has culminated in what is now the European Union (EU), they also agreed “to associate with … the non-European countries and territories which have special relations with Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom”. Six decades on and several attempts to re-set EU-Africa relations, it is appropriate to take stock of the relationship especially in light of changes in both continents since 2000. This article draws on the idea of ontological security to understand the nature of changes and continuities in the EU’s engagement with Africa. It argues that EU-Africa relations that have relied on a coloniality of power have also been crucial to the EU’s ontological security. However, increasing African agency and new external actors like China in Africa are challenging this security. While challenges to the EU’s ontological security have been viewed as primarily internally constituted, external challenges within a specific context provides the opportunity to rethink what ontological security demands. Importantly, Navigating ontological (in)security in EU–Africa relations highlights why a partnership of equals is an urgent imperative for the future of EU-Africa relations, although it remains elusive.
Quotation:
Toni Haastrup, Niall Duggan & Luis Mah (2021) Navigating ontological (in)security in EU–Africa relations, Global Affairs, 7:4, 541-557, DOI: 10.1080/23340460.2021.1981144
Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures
Abstract:
In the last two decades, Portuguese-speaking African literature, as a field of critical inquiry and object of academic study,1 has been undergoing a great expansion, with numerous dissertations, monographs, conference proceedings, special issues of journals, and articles produced in several countries. The article Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures traces the evolution of the national perspective in the studies of Lusophone African Literatures from the 1980s to the present. Based on a selection of collective and individual publications, as well as highlighting impor tant academic events for the area, the article seeks to identify lines of continuity and moments of rupture in the approach of these literatures based on the idea of Nation as a critical category and unity of analysis, from the consolidation of the link between literature and national independence affirmed after decolonization until the reception of post-colonial theories which occurred in the mid-1990s. Also, the article looks at the theoretical and disciplinary articulations between African Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Indian Ocean Studies and Comparative Litera tures, to provide a possible mapping of the most recent approaches that seek to build new critical cartographies for the studies of these literatures.
Quotation:
Falconi, J. (2021). Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures. Abriu: Estudos De Textualidade Do Brasil, Galicia E Portugal, (10), 9–38. https://doi.org/10.1344/abriu2021.10.1
História de São Tomé e Príncipe: da descoberta a meados do século XIX
Abstract:
In História de São Tomé e Príncipe: da descoberta a meados do século XIX, the author explains how the Portuguese navigators arrived on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe in the third quarter of the fifteenth century and transformed them into a social context for their development, but in which human and institutional relations were complex and even unbearable for the most disadvantaged, particularly on the island of São Tomé. Conflicts of all kinds worsened, particularly after the transition from a residential to a plantation society, with the intensification of the slave trade and the production and export of sugar. The long distance of the islands from the central power, located in Lisbon, constituted an ingredient that favoured the fomentation of conflicts in which the disrespect for the established rules was permanent and maintained during the period of domination of the native elite since the 17th century, marked around the main families that disputed access to power and control of wealth. The author shows that, despite its harshness, the colonial slave model had dynamics of social mobility that allowed some enslaved people to become free and others to become powerful in economic and political terms, even during the 16th century, becoming dominant until the mid-19th century.
Quotation:
Espírito Santo, A. (2021). História de São Tomé e Príncipe: da descoberta a meados do século XIX. Lisboa: Edições Colibri.
Historical Guide to an African Lisbon
Abstract:
Lisbon, a city of as many valleys and hills as there are myths surrounding its history and the people who invented it, stretches along the Tagus, where the river ends its course through Iberian land and plunges into the Atlantic Ocean. Lisbon was born on the hill of São Jorge Castle, where a Bronze Age settlement left its traces, which crossed with many other marks engraved by Greeks, Phoenicians, Lusitanians, Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, Jews and Christians. A long road of people and cultures, of stories and legends, of gods and heroes who, like Ulysses the mythical founder of the city – Olisipo – which owes its name to him, built and rebuilt this urban space. The aim of Historical Guide to an African Lisbon, XV-XXI Century is to show Lisbon’s Africanness, dispersed in a plurality of memories and immaterial and invisible traces in the days in which we live. History tells us about the settlement and life of thousands of Africans who for centuries took part in the process of building the Portuguese national fact. Travelling through the city, armed with historical knowledge, we are surprised by the vigorous African presence that invaded all spaces of Lisbon society, we reconstruct a hidden Lisbon, submerged by a centuries-old prejudice that still dominates our collective imagination and we understand, with greater clarity, not only behaviours, values, practices that remain in urban daily life, but also the constant reinventions of Portuguese and African identities, present in the country.
Quotation:
Castro Henriques, I. (2021). « Historical Guide to an African Lisbon, XV-XXI Century», versão revista e actualizada, Lisboa, Edições Colibri, 2021.
Manuel Viegas Guerreiro: «Ovakwankala (Bochimanes) e Ovakwanyama (Bantos): aspectos do seu convívio». Uma interpretação histórica.
Abstract:
The research and study of hunter-gatherer societies developed significantly within the framework of a mainly neo-evolutionist social and cultural anthropology, particularly Anglo-American, in the 1950s and 1960s. Africa constituted a privileged space for this type of study which sought to highlight the intimate relations of these populations with the environment in which they lived and on which they depended, but also the consequences, on their evolution, of the development and consolidation of the European colonial systems, which forced changes in their territorial framework of circulation, leading them to situations at the limits of survival. In a more precise manner, in the intellectual context of the time, linked to values and principles which marked the valorisation of nature, knowledge of ecosystems, the advance of ecology – in particular American cultural-ecology or ecological anthropology – as a way of thinking about the world and humanity’s relations with the surrounding spaces, there was also a multiplication of studies seeking to underline the virtues and benefits of these societies, which were called the first societies of abundance (Marshall Sahlins, 1968). But the history of these societies always remained silent, the written documents were fragile and knowledge of these human groups was based on the idea of a long, multi-secular path marked by the constancy of their acts, their practices and their lives. This absence of movement was incompatible with the notion of change, which is indispensable to the evolution – and therefore the history – of societies. The very notion of “society of abundance” referred to the recognition of a supposed “wealth” of hunter-gatherers, who found in the surrounding nature everything they needed to live in a comfortable situation, which solved their food needs, dispensed with relations with other peoples, and guaranteed free time and rest, which easily allowed them to carry out their social and religious practices. This was an idyllic vision that referred back to previous historical times, almost without movement, and to the absence of significant transformation and change processes in their historical situation. In Manuel Viegas Guerreiro: «Ovakwankala (Bochimanes) e Ovakwanyama (Bantos): aspectos do seu convívio». Uma interpretação histórica. Isabel Castro Henriques comments on the homonymous study conducted by Manuel Viegas Guerreiro.
Quotation:
“Castro Henriques, I. (2021). «Manuel Viegas Guerreiro – Ovakwankala (Bochimanes) e Ovakwanyama (Bantos): aspectos do seu convívio. Uma interpretação histórica. Lisbon, Newsletter Fundação Manuel Viegas Guerreiro, no 27, julho-setembro 2021, pp. 10-16.”
The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations
Abstract:
This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the changing dynamics in the relationship between the African continent and the EU, provided by leading experts in the field. Structured into five parts, the book provides an incisive look at the past, present and potential futures of EU-Africa relations. The cutting-edge chapters cover themes like multilateralism, development assistance, institutions, gender equality and science and technology, among others. Thoroughly researched, this book provides original reflections from a diversity of conceptual and theoretical perspectives, from experts in Africa, Europe and beyond. The handbook thus offers rich and comprehensive analyses of contemporary global politics as manifested in Africa and Europe. This handbook will be an essential reference for scholars, students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners interested and working in a range of fields within the (sub)disciplines of African and EU studies, European politics and international studies. The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations, by Luís Mah (researcher for the Centre for African and Development Studies), Nial Duggan and Toni Haastrup is part of the mini-series Europe in the World Handbooks examining EU-regional relations and established by Professor Wei Shen.
Quotation:
Mah, Luís, Duggan, Nial & Haastrup, Toni (2021). The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations. Routledge. ISBN 9781315170916.
Jovens, processos identitários e sociedades em movimento
Abstract:
The Republic of Cape Verde gained independence in 1975 and embraced liberal democracy in 1991, which was regarded as an example in Africa of democracy and good governance. Still, taking advantage of the post-2008 global winds of protest, various types of public protests began to emerge in the country’s capital, with urban youth as the main protagonists. These protests coincided with a set of situations denounced by various reports and academic studies: situations of strangulation of civil society resulting from the bi-partisanship of social life; perception of urban insecurity and a generalized wave of corruption; citizens’ distrust of public and political institutions; commercialization of the vote; ambiguous relationship between political party activists and armed youth groups during elections; accusations of funding of political parties by national drug trafficking factions, etc. Jovens, processos identitários e sociedades em movimento: um olhar alternativo sobre os movimentos sociais urbanos emergentes na cidade da Praia – Cabo Verde, based on a set of ethnographic works developed since 2008 in the urban youth context of Praia, intends to analyse the context of the emergence of these new types of social and political protests organized in youth groups who call themselves sons and grandsons of Amílcar Cabral, supported by counter-colonial discourses, calling for a second liberation and (re)Africanization of the spirit and minds.
Quotation:
Lima, R.W. (2020). “Jovens, processos identitários e sociedades em movimento: um olhar alternativo sobre os movimentos sociais urbanos emergentes na cidade da Praia – Cabo Verde”. In: Jesus, L.S.B.; Barros, M.; Filice, R.C.G. (Orgs.), Tecendo redes antirracistas II: contracolonização e soberania intelectual. Fortaleza: Imprensa Universitária, p. 116-136.
