“Decolonizing Africa: Nigeria’s Film Studies as Knowledge Creation that Works”
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
It is the widely-accepted assumption that research-based knowledge creation in Africa/by Africans is an indicator, on the one hand, of a continent reclaiming itself and narrative from the harrowing trauma instituted by colonialism. On the other, hand, this same assumption also leads us to imagine a future Africa where, with the help of indigenously produced research-based knowledge, Africa comes into its own –a truly decolonized and independent continent. However, a historical look at the wealth of scholarship produced by Africans, for Africa, have not quite borne out these assumptions sixty years after direct colonial rule. Questions continue to abound as to how Africa can make its ways of knowing work for Africa. To contribute to this dialogue, I will use Nollywood and Nigeria’s film studies pedagogy as a case-study to present my observation: local, indigenous practices produce relevant, local and indigenous modes of knowledge making, which in turn, generate decolonizing, indigenous theory-based research. I will present that producing indigenous research for Africa is insufficient in itself; instead, effective knowledge creation must arise from an interaction with practice, and this particular kind of practice must implicate the idea of ‘place’, and all it stands for. It is my aim that this presentation helps take discourse past matters of decolonization in African-produced research, to the decolonization of the epistemological structures upon which Africa-related research is conducted.
