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Communication in Africa and its Influence

Africa And Its Influence

Through the various modes of communication identified above, ideas have been and continue to be transmitted within, from, and into Africa—ideas about religion, culture, politics, and the arts, as well as ideologies, iconographies, and images, not to mention academic theories, concepts, and methodologies. Discourses on African influences tend to be dominated by the tropes of origination, contestation, recipiency, hybridity, and agency. Origination emphasizes Africa's authenticity and as the source of Western civilization associated with the work of Cheikh Anta Diop and the Afrocentricists. Contestation refers to Ali Mazrui's notion of counterpenetration or counterconquest, celebrating Africa's capacities to contest other civilizations at home and abroad (2002).

Recipiency portrays Africa largely as a recipient of external influences, whether negatively, as in Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, or positively as in the numerous works that discuss the benefits of external interventions for Africa from colonialism and Christianity to foreign aid and globalization. Hybridity is inspired by postcolonial theory and, as in Kwame Anthony Appiah's In My Father's House, dismisses any African essence and sees Africa as a constellation of hybrid cultures and identities. The agency paradigm is beloved by nationalist and radical historians who seek to show how Africans have actively fashioned their material, mental, and moral lives from the complex ebbs and flows of internal and external forces and influences.

In reality, Africa has not been constituted only from within but also from without. Indeed, it is fair to say that Africa has been constituted by the world as much as it has constituted the world in all its ramifications—historical, demographic, cultural, economic, political, and discursive.

See also African-American Ideas; Afrocentricity; Arts: Africa; Colonialism: Africa; Diasporas: African Diaspora; Diffusion, Cultural; Humanism: Africa; Humanity: African Thought; Literature: African Literature; Modernity: Africa; Mysticism: Mysticism in African Thought; Negritude; Orientalism: African and Black Orientalism; Pan-Africanism; Personhood in African Thought; Philosophies: African; Philosophy, Moral: Africa; Realism, Africa; Sociability in African Thought; University: Postcolonial; Westernization: Africa; Women's History: Africa.

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Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Additional topics

Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Cluster compound to ConcupiscenceCommunication in Africa and its Influence - Orality And Performance, Written Communication, The Development Of Modern Media, Africa And Its Influence