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Arabica Robusta

Francis Nyamnjoh: Francis Nyamnjoh: Rhodes Fell Because of an Illusion - 0 views

www.nyamnjoh.com/...ll-because-of-an-illusion.html

africa development nyamnjoh conviviality

shared by Arabica Robusta on 22 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Nyamnjoh based his talk on his essay with the same title published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies in which he argues for conviviality as a currency for frontier Africans by using a literary example, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the late Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola.
  • The skull represents the quest to become the “complete gentleman”, and when Africans are on such a quest to adapt to a Western style zero sum logic, “we lose out”, Nyamnjoh argued.
  • Nyamnjoh says Africans are “frontier beings”, which he defined as people who question institutionalised ideas and practices of being, becoming and belonging.
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  • “They are interested in conversations, not conversions. They find abstract distinctions between nature and culture sterile. They would rather try to understand what cities have in common with towns and villages and bushes and forests, or what interconnections there are between concepts such as ‘civilised’ and ‘primitive’, Europe and Africa, the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.
  • Nyamnjoh contrasted “completeness” with “conviviality”, defining the latter as recognition and provision for the reality of being incomplete.
  • “It challenges us to be open-minded and open-ended in how we speak and how we identify ourselves. It encourages us to reach out, encounter and explore ways of enhancing or complementing ourselves with the added possibilities of potency brought our way by the incompleteness of others.”
  • Nyamnjoh argued that ideas of completeness are an extravagant illusion and it therefore makes more sense to speak about incompleteness and to invest in the sort of interdependence that can enhance us to be more efficacious in our actions.
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