An Abrasion of Accents at the Crossroads of Discourse: Minding the Gaps with Tejumola Olaniyan

• In Event: Ghost Rivers of Global Black Studies: African Intellectual Ancestors from Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa

Abstract

When commenting on the frictions that often abrade the category of common Blackness and make productive transcultural alliance between Africans and African Americans sometimes quite fraught, Olaniyan contrasted two contending paradigms for navigating this interstice: Black nationalism vs. postmodernism, adding: “For me, it is impossible to pick one or the other of these positions, for they are both simultaneously right and wrong,” which is a very Esu-like thing to say (Esu being the Yoruba trickster). Olaniyan continued, “I think we can borrow from these two paradigms and do better.” He went on to describe just how this “doing better” might be forged, which was a very Olaniyan-like thing to do. This presentation arises from research on the life and life’s work of Tejumola Olaniyan, a distinguished scholar of Africa and its diaspora whose scholarly oeuvre framed Blackness in ways both radically global and transdisciplinary. During his career–which spanned over 35 years and two continents (half in Nigeria, half in the USA)—he often characterized disparate positions as “accents.” Himself highly fluent in the many accents of contemporary scholarship, Olaniyan did not spend much time announcing, branding, or promoting “his” accent. He performed as a linguist, occupying the crossroads of cultures and ideas, advocating passionately that there are—and should be—many accents of global Black cultural studies. The problem is that they are not valued equally. “Equality is the indispensable first condition for the productive mutual abrasion of accents,” Olaniyan said, adding, “I am sure we can and will get to that point; I just do not know when." This paper asks: Are we there yet?

Author

• Catherine Cole, University of Washington