Response | Amina Mama
Reading Paul Zeleza's odyssey was a gratifying experience. In turning to autobiography, Zeleza the historian has done us the service of beginning to reflect on the intellectual traditions of a rather poorly documented generation of African scholars - that of the first generation to emerge, not out of colonialism, but to have been educated in the postcolonial era. He aptly characterizes us as ‘the beneficiaries of Africa's decolonization...educated during the golden years of African universities', thus reminding us of the historical significance of this cohort. We make up a cohort, if not an intellectual community that is thus profoundly different from those who relied on the colonial tutelage, and the capacity to rebel against it, which Ki Zerbo, the late Burkinabe historian so cogently argues was "not a matter of choice" (Ki Zerbo 2005: 81). The postcolonial generation has been faced with choices as well as with profound challenges. We thus exhibit a variety of intellectual proclivities, and a full range of intellectual politics too. Africa's academics have not always pursued their work in a manner that is fully consistent with the pan-African and nationalist dreams of those who were compelled to rebel, although many have relied on these for their intellectual motivation and survival. Furthermore, whereas the colonial generation that comprised independent Africa's academic community returned home from overseas study to take up jobs and possibilities that emanated from the nation state and the Africanization policies, their successors graduate - at home or abroad to face greater challenges on the job market, and have found themselves globally dispersed. Zeleza invokes a postcolonial childhood - those critical formative years - spent in intellectually and ideologically intoxicating times. Speaking in a time of globalization, economic cynicism, and militaristic pessimism, of which he is fully aware, Zeleza finds the wherewithal to remind us of the optimistic grounding in the revolutionary and socialist traditions of thought that inspired many of us to pursue activist careers in academia, politics, and policy-making, and a variety of other spheres across the wide spectrum of society-building possibilities that we saw ahead of us.
As it turns out, the early childhood idyll of new nations foreshadowed several decades of despotism, civil strife, underdevelopment, and unfavourable global policy dictates that ultimately ran African universities down, undermined academic freedom, and led Zeleza - and many more since - to migrate.
He proceeds to discuss his disaporized intellectual development as an African academic residing in Britain, Canada, the Caribbean, and finally the United States where he has held a number of positions, culminating in his current appointment as Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UIC. His geographic migrations are reflected in his trajectory of increasingly transdisciplinary and transnational projects that begin with Economic History and English, and culminate in diaspora studies. His energetic career, and his numerous publications confirm him as one of the most prolific and wide ranging scholars of our times, and one who has never ‘lost' his connectedness to his continent, or indeed to his own earlier incarnations. The likelihood of Zeleza returning to the historical archives may be slim, but his active role as a public intellectual and commentator roundly challenge the adage that serious scholars have to specialize and privilege depth over breadth. The question is whether serious intellectuals face such a simple choice, as we seem to be compelled not so much to rebel, as to navigate our way through a complex world of continuously deepening interconnectedness and collaboration. What this suggests is that retaining a social justice agenda presents new challenges. These days critical social analysis has to be profoundly well informed if it is to be credible. The pursuit of social justice is not always considered to be the business of academics. Yet governments (African as much as Western) have often gone out of their way to contract academics to justify their strategic and policy agendas constraining intellectual freedom in old and new ways, presenting postcolonial academics with new challenges to intellectual integrity.
The instrumentalization of African academics often works to hinder theoretical development and sophistication. Zeleza has insistently kept abreast of emerging trends in critical social theory and engaged constructively with the radical ideas of postcolonial and feminist thought, something that many of his colleagues have either shied away from or echoed in fashionably depoliticized posturings. He has resisted the individualism of academic tradition, choosing to work far more with teams than in isolation, hence the volumes off collected works, mostly published by African publishers.
The diasporic journeys of scholars have given rise to identities and ideas far more complex than those our nationalist fore-parents might ever have imagined. The present generation of scholars is intrinsically transnationalized. Zeleza renders his own migrations largely in positive terms. He says less about the unspoken intellectual alienations and contradictions that have affected those who've remained ‘ at home', or perhaps returned or even returned repeatedly to the frustrations that have dogged African academic institutions. Ongoing struggles that have arisen within the academic institutions of the nation state, and these have both scarred and inspired the academic cadre working in African universities today.
An inaugural lecture presented to a US audience is perhaps not the place to reflect critically on the African continental experience, or to discuss the unpooled talent scattered across small colleges all over the Western world, but that conversation will undoubtedly be pursued elsewhere, along with the urgent imperative of regrouping and sustaining an African intellectual community that can collectively engage with and pursue African interests and African scholarship.
Ahead of his cohort, Paul Zeleza is indeed worthy of his new title as a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and we watch for him to redefine the meaning of diaspora in and beyond the USA, and imbue it with the profound understanding that his postcolonial, pro-feminist, and African perspective lend to his thinking. We wish you well!