ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Airwaves of Dissent: Pluralizing Knowledge on West African Radio, 1955–1962

• In Event: Pluralism and the Human Sciences in Imperial and Postcolonial Contexts

English Abstract

In the late French empire, the boundaries of legitimate knowledge were intensely contested. A key reference in these debates was the cultural theorist and future Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor, whose model of complementary European and African epistemologies informed early decolonization policies. While influential, Senghor’s framework was soon criticized for its essentialism and political conservatism, provoking broader disputes over cultural identity and over whether distinct knowledge worlds should be cultivated or transcended.
This paper explores how these controversies materialized within the Société de radiodiffusion de la France d’outre-mer (SORAFOM), founded in 1955 to expand broadcasting across French Africa. Centrally directed from Paris but rapidly developing into a transregional West African network, SORAFOM linked existing colonial radio stations with new local ones. It was envisioned as a “university without territory,” raying French educational and scientific programming while also encouraging broadcasts in African languages to support oral knowledge traditions and regionally grounded intellectual inquiry. Meeting this dual mandate required significant technological experimentation, as engineers adapted transmission standards, equipment, and production practices to specific environmental and linguistic conditions. By tracing these technical and programmatic choices, the paper shows how West African radio during the last years of French rule became a crucial arena for negotiating cultural plurality and epistemic authority.

Author

• Viktoria Tkaczyk, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin