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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel takes as its metaphorical starting point the notion of “ghost rivers” in the intellectual formation of Black Studies. Ghost rivers are buried streams, creeks, and waterways that were once above ground but, with development, became submerged. Such waterways are still there–-still flowing, coursing, murmuring, swelling, and surging at the subterranean level. At times (and this panel is one of those times) these tributaries erupt on the surface. Presentations will bring to light African intellectual streams that have flowed into Black Studies from modern Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. Nikki Yeboah reveals how Ghanaian writer, educator, storyteller, and dramatist Efua Sutherland anticipated in the Sixties performance praxes that only recently became "de rigueur" in US-based Performance Studies. Sikose Mjali’s work excavates the African National Congress’s underground literature to reveal the linguistic and discursive strategies used by anti-apartheid activists to connect South Africa’s liberation struggle to global Black intellectual movements. Catherine Cole brings to light the generative hermeneutic practices of Nigerian scholar Tejumola Olaniyan who forged in the early 1990s a distinct–-and distinctly playful–-way of moving across the gaps between Black Studies, African American Studies, African Studies, and Diaspora Studies. Panelists will center African intellectual genealogies that have been there all along, hiding in plain sight.

Sub Unit

• Humanities & Cultural Research

Chair

• Catherine Cole, University of Washington

Discussant

• Adeleke Adeeko, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Individual Presentations

• This Is Your Mother's Performance Studies: How Efua Sutherland Gave Birth to a Field - Nikki Yeboah, University of Washington

• Unsilenced: Unearthing the African National Congress Underground Literature - Sikose Mjali, University of Washington

• An Abrasion of Accents at the Crossroads of Discourse: Minding the Gaps with Tejumola Olaniyan - Catherine Cole, University of Washington