Postcolonial Identities in Africa

'The end of Apartheid', 'the decay of the state', the escape of refugees', 'the increasing fatalities from AIDS' - from crisis to catastrophe, Africa has come to be globalized for media consumption, grossly misrepresented and, above all, marginalised.In this book, distinguished anthropologists, political scientists and social historians from Africa, Europe and America make a radical break with much conventional wisdom in postcolonial discourse to explore contemporary African identities in transition. They look at the colonial legacy and how colonial identities are being reconstructed in the face of deepening social inequality across the continent. They ask how the postcolonial imagination as a highly specific, locally created and historical force reconfigures personal knowledge and how that reconfiguration shapes the moral and religious realities around the uses and abuses of postcolonial power.Using case-studies, the book explores why postcolonial studies has to enunciate and interpret the distinctive languages of identity politics in all the cultural richness of their specific metaphors. It asks whether the very idea of the postcolonial conceals the continued dependence of African countries? Is the postcolonial thus merely a neo-colonial mystification, a Eurocentric product of Western scholarship in collusion with Western imperialism?