Past imperfect : time and African decolonization, 1945-1960 /

"This book proposes to examine French and Francophone intellectual history in the period leading to the decolonization of sub-Saharan Africa (1945-1960). The analysis favours the epistemological links between ethnology, museology, sociology, and (art) history. In this discussion, a specific foc...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Fraiture, Pierre-Philippe (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2021.
Series:Contemporary French and francophone cultures ; 74.
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Online Access:Connect to this title online (unlimited users allowed)
Description
Summary:"This book proposes to examine French and Francophone intellectual history in the period leading to the decolonization of sub-Saharan Africa (1945-1960). The analysis favours the epistemological links between ethnology, museology, sociology, and (art) history. In this discussion, a specific focus is placed on temporality and the role ascribed by these different disciplines to African pasts, presents, and futures. It is argued here that the post-war context, characterized, inter alia, by the creation of UNESCO, the birth of Présence Africaine and the prevalence of existentialism, bore witness to the development of new regimes of historicity and to the partial refutation of a progress-based modernity. This investigation is predicated on case studies from West and Central Africa (AOF, AEF and Belgian Congo) and, whilst adopting a postcolonial methodology, it explores African and French authors such as Georges Balandier, Cheikh Anta Diop, Frantz Fanon, Chris Marker, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Alain Resnais, Jean-Paul Sartre and Placide Tempels. This study explores the intellectual legacy of the 'long nineteenth century' and the difficulty encountered by these authors to articulate their anti-colonial agenda away from the modern methodologies of the 'colonial library'. By focussing on issues of intellectual alienation, this book also demonstrates that the post-WW2 period foreshadowed twenty-first century debates on extroversion, racial inequalities, the decolonization of history, and cultural (mis)appropriation."--
Physical Description:1 online resource (viii, 320 pages).
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781800345461
1800345461