We are all strangers to knowing Africa: African diaspora scholars and the usefulness of intellectual remittances

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Thurseday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Sustainable development and knowledge production

Proposal

The term ‘intellectual remittances’ has recently emerged in the literature that advocates Diaspora´s academic engagement with the African continent (Zeleza et al. 2017). This paper critically reviews the context and lineaments of the term in African Diaspora studies and its possible implications if drawn upon by other scholars. We elaborate the conceptual underpinnings of the notion, outlining its heuristic possibilities to make Africa intelligible in the relationship between African Diaspora scholars and the continent. The paper proposes a way to deploy the term in future scholarly work. At its core is avoiding the giver vs. receiver perspective in the case, and understanding, of economic remittances, which implies unequal footing. We argue that African-based and African Diaspora scholars grapple with the intellectual challenge of comprehending Africa regardless of their geographical location, and, once in that process, unable to accrue transferable knowledge prior or external to the intuitive thinking about Africa. In this sense, knowledge about Africa is constituted in the very process of critically engaging from within or from the Diaspora. When it comes to intellectual engagement with Africa, we are all strangers (Diaspora). Grasping a notion of Africa with its comprehensiveness occurs through reciprocal intellectual work between insiders and outsiders.

Authors

• Patricio V. Langa, Eduardo Mondlane University & University of the Western Cape

• Leonie Schoelen, University of Mainz, Germany; Paris Descartes University, France