Rejecting Eurocentric Exclusivity to Modern Thoughts: Kelani’s Ayinla
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
In discourses of Modernism and other global ideological debates that have framed the 21st century, African thoughts have been systematically marginalized and excluded. Much of this colonial power-play is rooted in the unfounded Eurocentric articulation of the African thoughts as absent of logic. Recent attempts to decolonize enduring colonial perceptions of Africa include assertions of the African agency and vitality in areas of epistemology, philosophy and culture. How does film, and particularly the African film, participate in the decolonial project of challenging Eurocentric exclusivity to scientific knowledge and modern thoughts? Tunde Kelani’s Ayinla (2021) pushes back on the colonial assertion that Africa is a benefactor of modern knowledge production, while incapable of contributing to it. Ayinla explores the notion of an indigenous form of Socialism, that, though correlative, signals no connection with European socialist thoughts. Much as films are widely noted for their penchant for taking liberties with their telling of history, we have also seen how films have not only ‘legitimized’, but helped create national myths that later become national realities. There is the implication that modern socialist thoughts are products of highly educated, critical minds, who see beneath the surface of Capitalism and its allures, and identify its failings, limitations, and unrealizable promises. If nothing else, Ayinla encourages a further examination of a potentially present African socialism that, nonetheless, exists outside Western formal education. The key theme of this presentation is to explore how Ayinla suggests the participation of Africa in global and Western-dominated discourses around Socialism.
