The Internet is Afropolitan
Achille Mbembe discusses the history and horizon of digital communication and identity in the African continent with Bregtje van der Haak. Mbembe suggests that what some regard as the explosion of the Internet is really just the continuation of the age old cultures in the new age of the Afropolitan. Bregtje van der Haak: The […]
Yambo Ouloguem: Postcolonial Writer, Anti-Wahhabist Militant
Christopher Wise recalls conversations and texts of the Malian author, whose deep Sahelian articulations of Islam have earned him the ire of Wahhabi Muslims and the respect of many who reject the Western imperialist militarisation and reactionary Arabist tendencies that ignore pre-Islamic Africa’s history. Nearly two decades have passed since I interviewed Yambo Ouologuem at […]
How Close Are You To This Place?
by Karen Press. Where is the heart of darkness? We think we know. It’s the impenetrably savage jungle of ‘the Congo’. It’s the depraved misery of Mr Kurtz. It’s the sweating, terrifying bulk of Marlon Brando. But for Marlow, Joseph Conrad’s faux-naif narrator, darkness begins on a boat moored in the Thames, surrounded by mists that render the city beyond the vessel […]
What Follows? The State of Black Collectivity in the Year of the Sheep
Continuing to sing a vital and urgent message of black collectivity, Harmony Holiday writes from New York critiquing the state of things now and the shape of jazz to come. Here we are at the start of the Year of the Sheep, and may we no longer be martyrs to our own following. In 1977, filmmaker Charles Burnett, wrote and directed […]
The African Renaissance Hoer-o-scope for Politicians
by Zebulon Dread ARIES Your best bet at survival is not a crash course in intelligence, because frankly, you weren’t born with it, but rather a quiet visit to the sangomas where you must plead forgiveness from the ancestors for being so stupid and pledge to sacrifice – no! not a cow, you idiot, they are worshipped by […]