Rethinking African culture and identity: the Afropolitan model

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War and, in particular, the demise of apartheid in South Africa, there has been a sustained debate about African identity. There seems to be a consensus among scholars of African culture that the conventional notion of African identity that was conceived in opposition to the West is anachronistic. But what then constitutes the new African? Scholars have suggested concepts such as contamination, cultural hybridity, cultural mutt, conviviality, and most recently Afropolitanism, as means to understand the complex modern African identity. This article takes a critical examination of Afropolitanism and argues that it is an enunciation of the ideas of contamination, hybridity, hyperculturality and other postmodernist terms that disrupt essentialist and oppositional notions of African culture and identity. I hope to achieve two things in this article: situate Afropolitanism within a larger philosophical tradition of cosmopolitanism and examine the moral implications of expanding the notion of African identity beyond the oppositional model.

Beyond Sovereign Reason: Issues and Contestations in Contemporary African Identity

“…Our proposal is to disrupt the embedded residual binary of identity construction that has percolated throughout colonial history. Chielozona Eze () has made a case for this in Rethinking African Culture and Identity: The Afropolitan model . To do this demands a rethinking of identity formation in Africa that moves beyond imposed political identity categories, that negotiates and accommodates different layers of identity as grounded in history and yet not anachronist to our immediate sociopolitical experiences.…”

“…We then discuss the nature and aftermaths of inherited colonial identities, focusing on two processes: the struggle for new national memories in era of independence, and the emergence of pan‐African and regional identities in the continent. Finally, we discuss Afropolitanism as an alternative to these forms of postcolonial collective identities, arguing that it can function as an integrative mechanism for regional and international cooperation (see also Eze, ).…”

Transcultural affinity: thoughts on the emergent cosmopolitan imagination in South Africa

“…I have discussed cosmopolitan imagination elsewhere (Eze 2014). To contextualize my uses of the concept here, I will emphasize the definitions offered by Delanty (2006) and Nussbaum (1996).…”

Representations of Africans in Popular Video Games in the U.S

“…In this paper, we adopt an Afropolitan perspective of African identity and limit the meaning of African to nationality. Even though discussions on African identity has engaged researchers since colonization, in recent years, being an African has moved beyond, geographical location, skin color, and ancestry (e.g., genetics), to embrace the complexity and diversity of Africa (Eze, 2014). From an Afropolitan perspective, an African is one who is "both rooted in specific local geographies but also transcendental of them" (Gikandi, 2010, p.9).…”