Revolutionary Pan-Africanism and Black Internationalism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Session Submission Type: Panel

Description for Program

Revolutionary Pan-Africanism and Black Internationalism are integrally linked but distinct political objectives, praxes, conceptual frameworks, and analytics that center the liberation and self-determination of Africa and its diaspora. While scholars like Hakim Adi have argued that "Black internationalism" is little more than a concept invented by (U.S.) academics to evade Pan-Africanism, others argue that the former is a historically identifiable praxis of Black/African peoples adjacent to and in solidarity with international communist movements. Likewise, there is debate about whether "Pan-Africanism" is objectively revolutionary or an ideologically diverse phenomenon. These unsettled positions undergird the focus of this panel. The first paper examines political imaginaries of Pan-Africanism and whether or not revolutionary praxis is essential to Pan-African politics. Next, we'll take up Kwame Nkrumah's war language of zonal analysis and how we might update it for a 21st century Pan-Africanism. Then, we turn to an assessment of Azanian nationalism as a function of Black internationalism, anticolonial insurgency, and anti-apartheid struggle. The final paper explores how the tenure of the Burkinabe Prime Minister Thomas Sankara laid the political, economic, and ideological foundation for the Alliance of Sahel States four decades later.

Sub Unit

• ASWAD

Chair

• Benjamin Talton

Individual Presentations

• Is it Pan-Africanism if it’s not Revolutionary? - Layla Brown, Northeastern University

• Nkrumah’s Zonal Analysis and the Pan-African Intelligentsia: Contemporary Exigencies - D. Zizwe Poe, Lincoln University

• Azania: South Africa's Radical Alternative - Amanda Joyce Hall, UC Santa Barbara

• From Sankarism to the AES: Revolutionary Pan-Africanism and the Changing Global Order - Navid Farnia, Wayne State University

Discussant

• Charisse Burden-Stelly, Wayne State University