THE WAY I SEE IT – National Heroes Acre I
Bongani Kona Who or what haunts you? Do recurrences draw you back in time? Are you nostalgic for lost futures? Does the present seem ghostly? These questions appear in a recent issue of the PEN America journal on the subject of hauntings, a subject I’d like to turn to in this brief reflection, because, lately […]
IN THE DEN OF THE ALCHEMIST
Cheikh Anta Diop spent much of his life in academic exile pitted against his political detractors and consequently persecuted by the academy. ‘Exit the pharaoh’ to the Centre of Low Nuclear Energies of the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN), better known as the Laboratory of Carbon 14—no ordinary laboratory—the ‘demiurge’ for a new world view, […]
‘GO TO THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE!’ MURIDISM IN THE LIFE OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP
While French colonialism was at its zenith, the first quarter of the twentieth century in Senegal saw the emergence of charismatic Sufi leaders. Among them, one in particular, Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, made a profound impact on Senegalese culture. Founder of the Murid Tariqa (Murid spiritual path) and of the holy city of Touba, he dominates […]
CHEIKH ANTA DIOP – AN AWAKENING
Ayesha Harruna Attah recounts a voyage of discovery that begins from a point of ‘cultural envy’ – a realisation of how little African writers know of their myths, the rich archive of knowledge of the continental pantheon – and ends in an understanding of a ‘shared continuity’ over millennia of African cultures, histories and philosophies. […]
BAHUJANAFRIQUE – A PLAUSIBLE FUTURE
Sumesh Sharma traces the circuitous roots of Afro-Asiatic history, from the world’s first civilisations in Eygpt to Dravidian civilisations of southern India. Through the exhibition of the work of two radical artists, the Senegalese Issa Samb and the Indian Krishna Reddy, and the writings of the radical philosopher and physicist, Cheikh Anta Diop, he introduces […]