Identity and Knowledge Production in the 4th Generation

This paper examines the linked themes of identity and knowledge production embedded within the notion of insider scholarship. Insider scholarship can be simplistically defined as producing knowledge about and within a group with which one identifies as a member. However, how groups are delineated and what constitutes membership are not so simply determined. Rather, the concept of insider scholarship immediately evokes a series of questions about who produces what knowledge, about whom and for whom. In the context of scholarship about the continent, insider scholarship has most often been used in reference to racial, national or cultural identity. However, the idea of legitimising scholarship on the basis of these contested notions is what continues to be debated. In this paper, I explore the dimensions of the debate on location, identity and representation. The major ideas raised in the paper are as follows. First, I underscore that this topic, though long debated, has renewed relevance. Earlier generations of African scholars, in an effort to reclaim representations of Africa and Africans, might sometimes have based scholarly legitimacy on essentialising notions of race and territory. From that historical point, we have come to a situation where ideas about 'cosmopolitanism' and 'universalism' appear to have gained ascendancy. As the fourth generation of scholars comes into its own, one of its defining tasks will be to negotiate this contested terrain. This paper represents such an attempt. I argue, on the one hand, that the concept of insider scholarship cannot simply be discarded as irrelevant. To do so would constitute an ill-advised neglect or woeful ignorance of the politics of representation about Africa, and of the power differentials in different spaces within the field of African studies. However, I acknowledge that there are multiple grounds for claiming ‘insiderness’, and that defining it by narrow parameters is not helpful. In light of this, I present 'shared struggle' as a strategic basis for insider scholarship. The paper concludes with an examination of the implication of this conceptual shift. Introduction In this paper, I explore the dimensions of the debate on location, identity and representation. The paper essentially asks the question, "What is African in African Studies" or, phrased differently, "Where is the African in the study of Africa?" What is the link – or should there be a link? – between location and scholarship, between belonging and knowledge production, between identity and representation? This is a question that has been a sub-theme in the study of Africa over the course of time, and it is not one that has been settled definitively. And yet neither is it an issue that we can afford to dismiss as we look back over the state of knowledge production about Africa, in order that we may map out new directions for ourselves. Why is this an issue for the 4th generation? Why is identity and knowledge production an issue for a new generation of African scholars? Obviously not because it is a novel question, but because it is a perpetual one. Every generation has to map out its response to its peculiar circumstances, and in light of previous understandings. Mkandawire (1995) suggests a typology of generations of African scholars; he talks about the tasks that each generation sets for itself, influenced both by what has been done/said before, and also by its place in a new world order. To speak about the fourth generation, it is perhaps necessary to reference the generation immediately ahead of it. According to Mkandawire, this third generation, primarily home-grown, does not have the impulse of its ascendants to ‘speak back’, or to defend its identity and scholarship to non-African arbiters. This was perhaps a necessary move away from the kind of scholarship that was so tied to the West as to be only oppositional, or sadly irrelevant to the African condition. The question then for the fourth generation is to ask whether this response is consistent with our situation. Let me refer an incident at another CODESRIA workshop I attended. After a paper presentation on the politics of who represents Africa in the U.S. academia, a participant called into question the relevance of what goes on in the United States to the scholarship produced on the continent. The questioner (a third generation-er, perhaps?) suggested that this was a preoccupation that we could well do without. It is quite true that the issues raised by the conference paper in question may present a more immediate concern for those located in institutional spaces outside of the continent. However, in a more global sense, these concerns reflect the state of African studies as an international field that is impacted by ‘extraneous’ factors. On the social and political fronts, the increasingly intimate nature of the global society demands an attention to This paper has been developed through discussions with colleagues in the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University. I am especially indebted to Henry Kwame Dougan, Mshai Mwangola, Godwin Murunga, and David Donkor for their generous investment in this paper. Identity and Knowledge Production Nana Akua Anyidoho Page 2 events on one side of the world that might have a ripple effect on the other. The events of the past three years alone have proven that we cannot afford to think of the global village as merely a cliché. Again, as bilateral and multilateral agencies move away from an obviously coercive mode of structural adjustment programs to more subtle but perhaps even more effective control strategies, the local is becoming even more integrated into the global. Along side these movements are new theoretical perspectives that laud the fusion of ideas and cultures. With these political, social, economic and ideological forces amassing, it is imperative that we display self-awareness of our situation, and create a plan of action accordingly. From where do we speak? Questions of location and positionality The idea of identity at the heart of the paper references the related concepts of location and positionality. I use the term positionality to mean the identities of the researcher in relation to the 'researched' (Wolf 1996). In other words, positionality refers to contextualised and relational locations such as nationality, ethnicity, race, class, education, religion, marital status, and non-demographic characteristics such as ideological leanings, epistemological perspectives, philosophical orientations, and so on. Positionality is contextual because it takes account of the circumstances in which knowledge is produced, and relational because it concerns both the subjectivity of the researcher and the subjectivities of others (such as others in the research situation and the audience of the research). Positionality is an important concept because it has implications for the nature of the knowledge produced, and how that knowledge is received. This is a truth that has been painfully self-evident in African studies. Positioning themselves as missionaries and scholars, non-Africans have long produced knowledge about Africa. That is to say, representations were made about Africa from particular locations of authority, and without the input of Africans. Those representations were validated by non-African audiences (and even by African readers privy to these works) because there were supposedly from 'enlightened' sources speaking on behalf of those unable to speak for themselves. One reaction of African scholars was to claim that we could produce similarly 'worthwhile' scholarship despite the fact that we were Africans. A second was to attempt to reclaim representations of ourselves by saying that our scholarship was legitimate precisely because we were African. It is clear that in the study of African, positionality is recognized as one aspect of the power relations inherent in the process of knowledge production and dissemination. Insider scholarship, illustrated in the second instance, has been one method of choice to negotiate this political terrain. The limits and possibilities of insider scholarship Insider research could be defined rather simplistically as doing research within a group with which one self-identifies as a member. However, this definition would belie the many meanings that are brought to bear on the term, as I will discuss. While not in any way a new idea or practice, the valuing of insider scholarship has grown with the mainstreaming of theoretical movements, such as post-modernism, that insistently problematise identity and representation. As terms such as location, subjectivity, power, voice and authority have become more familiar in the academic vocabulary, the point has been increasingly brought home that all representations are, to an extent, interpretations. On the one hand, this perspective is powerful because space is immediately created for multiple representations. Feminists and post-colonialists, for instance, can then juxtapose old representations with new ones from the margins (Gandhi 1998). In this way, insider scholarship has been used strategically as a tool to counter colonising representations of non-Western subjects (Narayan 1997), which are often the basis for political and economic exploitation. Insider scholarship can thus be situated within the larger socio-political project of decolonisation and self-determination. However, for those who engage in this admittedly political project, the aim is not to amass representations, but to replace 'harmful' representations with more realistic, more ‘authentic’ accounts from the ‘inside’. And yet the very paradigm that makes room for different representations is cited as an obstacle to this political end. If representation is mere interpretation, as some would contend, then can one be more 'right', or more 'true' than another? This theoretical debate is concretised in the history of scholarship on Africa. In the post-independence years, and removed from the moorings of direct colonial domination, the opportunity for self-definition for a deliberate construction and dissemination of self-representations was joyously present. Identity became an oft-visited site of analysis and debate by writers, political and social commentators, nationalist leaders and scholars, whose goal was to either fashion out new identities, or to reclaim a pre-existing ones, in the hegemonic presence of the 'European' image. 2 It is an important point to note that the identity of the scholar is informed not only by her own choices of self-identification but also by the identities imposed on her by the circumstances of, and the people involved in, the process of knowledge production. For the purposes of this particular discussion, I choose to foreground that aspect of positionality that is somewhat within the conscious decision-making of the scholar. 3 A complimentary strategy was to stake out new or sub-fields of endeavour as being African both in terms of content and of control. Identity and Knowledge Production Nana Akua Anyidoho Page 3 One example, perhaps overused because of its salience, is that of Negritude. While the movement had a number of interpretations, fundamentally it sought to affirm a distinctive African way of being – an African identity that, in many ways, was set up in opposition to the (perception) of the European's. Its aim was to replace one set of representations from one location with another from a more 'authentic' location. Over time, there have emerged other orientations in African scholarship that proclaim that there is no best location to produce knowledge, and that rather there exists multiple, equally viable locations; that there is no one identity on which to base scholarship, but shifting and complex sets of identities. Theoretical and ideological perspectives such as universalism, cosmopolitanism, and Créolité in African studies have been proposed as more useful and accessible metaphors for identity, and more encompassing of the contradictions of contemporary life in, and especially outside of, the continent. These approaches do not attempt to tie self to race, or ethnicity, language, or culture. Rather than opposing tradition to modernity, the urban to the rural, and the African to the European, these perspectives proclaim that "identity is destabilised and de-essentialised and rendered heterogeneous, plural and uncertain" (Lewis 1998). From these and similar perspectives, the first objection to the idea of insider scholarship is that it denotes a totalising conception of identity. A related argument is that scholarship based on race, geography, nationality, ethnicity, gender, and so on, is essentialist and essentialising. Thirdly, insider scholarship is also opposed on the grounds that it gives credence to the very Self-Other distinctions that it tries to question. I will respond to these objections briefly here, and then more fully in the next section where I argue for a reorientation to insider scholarship. However, it is important to say at the onset that this debate is not mere abstraction, or simply an opportunity to score academic points. It is fundamentally a political question, as Narayan (1997) asserts when she observes that discussions about identity and representation can be wielded strategically to either empower or disempower scholarship. Such an understanding should guide our discussions. Increasingly, there is the realisation that scholars negotiate positionalities as insiders and outsiders. Consequently the insider-outsider dichotomy is de-emphasised in favour of an understanding that every researcher is simultaneously an insider and an outsider in any research situation (Zavella 1996). The claim of insiderness must, therefore, be indexed for context to prevent it becoming totalising. Accordingly, it can be used as a marker of one’s preferred location in a carefully delineated research situation. The second critique suggests that the very idea of formulating an insider identity with respect to a societal, nation, cultural or other grouping runs the risk of essentialising that group. However, this is not necessarily problematic if one maintains an awareness that all social categories we may appeal to will be essentialist in the sense of being social and historical constructions (Fuss 1989). The real question is not the nature of these categories but the ends to which they are put. Along the same lines, Fabien Boulaga proffers that “race is not a logical or scientific problem, but a political problem in search of an absolute, metaphysical justification" (cited by Mafeje, in press). We can add that geography, nationality, gender, and ethnicity are similarly political, and can be selectively retained for their political utility. Finally, the charge that insider scholarship reinforces homogeneous stereotypes of the native, the indigene and the Other/Object (Lal 1996) is perhaps the most damning criticism for African scholars who would envisage their work as a way of deconstructing colonial images of their people. I view a quick dismissal of insider research on this basis alone as either a facile denial of differences in location, or a wilful ignorance of the politics of the production and use of knowledge. If applying to an insider status is reminiscent of colonial notions of Self and Other, it is because those distinctions do exist, have been perpetuated, and would continue to operate even if African researchers decided to ignore them. A more practical response would be to strategically occupy those locations, expand them, and use them for one’s own defined political purposes (which could very well include demonstrating their limitations). I would add that the objections to insider research derive from the meanings given this somewhat ambiguous term. Insider scholarship is most commonly associated with Western-dominated academic spaces, into which the insider forces her way or is allowed in to represent her people. Such a strong link is assumed between the scholar and ‘her’ grouping that she is seen as speaking for others. In such a case, the question is not how good her representations are, but how good a representative she is. Accordingly, a specific national/cultural/ethnic/gendered identity may be highlighted whichever is seen as defining of her group, and is likely to give the greatest credence to her representations. Under these circumstances, the critiques of insider scholarship appear to have merit. Insider scholarship does become totalising, essentialist and stereotypical in assuming a unitary location for the scholar, and a uni-dimensional representation of others. Again, in a paradoxical way, the insider is privileged as the voice of many Others, and at the same time, marginalised by having her scholarship constrained to the local and the specific, sometimes being less valued for that reason. As a result, some African scholars might resist the label of insiderness, repudiating all systematic ties so that they are seen as being qualified to speak more ‘universal truths’. Lewis was speaking in specific reference to Créolité but his statement holds true for similar orientations to the question of identity, that oppose what they would perceive as the essentialisation of identity and, by extension, the production of knowledge on such