Decolonial Dilemmas: The Deception of a “Global Knowledge Commonwealth” and the Tragedian Entrapment of an African Scholar
- Yusuf Serunkuma, K U Leuven
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This webinar explores the impact of multiple initiatives and efforts to grant African scholars “global visibility” as part of the decolonisation agenda. These efforts have included aiding and enabling African scholars to publish in journals of international renown, speaking or curating courses at Ivy League universities, and being experts on issues about Africa in international media. Other efforts include collaborations and citations in discourses about Africa. While these efforts and opportunities are intellectually and practically irresistible to a scholar from the subaltern world – as they are to those offering and facilitating them – they are actually counterproductive to a decolonisation project. The positive energy they generate obscures the histories and power dynamics that govern so-called global spaces and audiences of knowledge production. Problematically presented as benign and benevolent spaces for participation in the “global knowledge commonwealth,” from which mutual understanding grows, and racism and exploitation could be ended, global spaces/audiences, rather grow out, and are core parts of the revolving doors and constantly mutating infrastructures of colonialist hegemony and control.
(We apologise for the poor video quality in this recording, which was due to low bandwidth.)
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Yusuf Serunkuma is an anthropologist, essayist and playwright, (The Snake Farmers, 2014; The Meat Festivals forthcoming, 2025), both with Fountain Publishers. Yusuf is a columnist with The Observer newspaper in Uganda, and regular contributor with Review of African Political Economy (Roape.net), and Pan-African Review based in Kigali.
With Dr Eria Serwajja, Yusuf co-edited ‘Before the First Drop: Oil, Capitalists and Wretcheds of Western Uganda’ (Editor House Facility, 2022). He is author of ‘Non-Essential Humans: Essays on governance, ruin and survival in Covid-19 Uganda’ (Editor House Facility, 2022).
His doctoral research focused on the mobilisation of nationalist sentiments in secessionist contexts, and uses Somaliland/Somalia as a case study to theorise secessionist nationalism as a form of nationalism that is different from earlier articulations of nationalism. He has held posts at the Max Planck institute in Halle, and Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg where he worked on a project, ‘African Studies in Germany through the lens of Critical Race Theory.’ His current project at KU Leuven is entitled ‘Breaking Bureaucracies’ and focuses on the liberating/resistance potential of forgery and counterfeit in postcolonial Africa. Yusuf continues to be closely engaged in a range of projects in Kampala. His forthcoming book is provisionally titled ‘Surrounded: Democracy, Free Markets and Other Entrapments of New Colonialism’ is coming out in December with Editor House Facility in Kampala.