Reparations, Knowledge and the Decolonial University1
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CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 43
Reparations,
Knowledge and the Decolonial University1
I
n the introduction to can’t breathe’ suffocations ended
Decolonising the Academy up having symbolic resonances
(2003), an intellectual project Carole Boyce Davies* and multiplicative effect, as we saw
developed to place African Cornell University during the killing of George Floyd
Diaspora Studies as one of the USA in May 2020 and the activism that
major vectors of the unfinished followed.
decolonising process, I asserted
that the academy, the university and In this context we can indicate
the larger knowledge production Unbearable Wrongness of Being, of relatedly as well the caution
apparatus is perhaps one of the Desêtre: Black Studies Toward the offered by Walter Rodney, that
most colonised of spaces. In every Human Project’, Wynter saw the the academics in the neocolonial
discipline, one is confronted with current iteration of Black Studies or postcolonial context are the
a production of knowledge that as having lost its way. She recalls ones often creating the limits. For
assumes European epistemologies, some of those aesthetic and political Rodney, the caution had to do with
ideas, timelines, as the defining movements that actually wanted a the fact that:
frameworks for intellectual work. ‘whole new system of ideas’ and Black people are here in these
This thereby creates a hierarchy concludes that, instead, we never institutions as part of the
of knowledge in which African arrived at the ‘new territory’ and development of Black struggle,
peoples’ experiences still remain remained without the connection but only as a concession
at the bottom or outside of from the ‘map’ to this new place designed to incorporate us
consideration, in the same measure (Wynter 2005). within the structure … I am
as are Black Lives still today. thinking also of the books,
Never fully arriving at that the references, the theoretical
A few other related and relevant territory or place where we could assumptions, and the entire
texts must be indicated here. Sylvia claim to rewrite the script of anti- ideological underpinnings of
Wynter advanced an ideological Blackness, we ended up still being what we is taught and studied
position that arose through her work re-territorialised under whiteness in every single discipline.
at the Institute of the Black World in in the Euro-American model of (Rodney 1990: 112–113)
the 1970s, along with her generation the university with its assumption We can conclude, therefore, that the
of scholars, including Sterling of the control of knowledge. This ideas of a certain acceptance of the
Stuckey, Howard Dodson, Vincent status remains particularly salient status quo are built into the academic
Harding, Walter Rodney. The larger when the university is often enterprise if these ideas are not
context was an understanding of that assemblage of theoretical challenged. For example, Africana
Black Studies as an insurgent field positions that inform and cohere Studies as a field has not extended
organised to provide the knowledge state practices. Thus, in my view, to match the current scholarship
component of the various political is enacted a continued violence at and knowledge in African Diaspora
and social movements demanding the epistemological level, which Studies. Its geographical reach
correction at the epistemological or also leaves a variety of subjects contains only partial coverage of
knowledge-production level. Thus, defined as non-conforming to the the United States and perhaps a
in succeeding years, best described ‘mythical norm’ (Lorde 1984) little or no African history. There
in her chapter, ‘On How we unable to breathe, i.e. to live is miniscule Caribbean coverage
Mistook the Map for the Territory fully in the world. The graphic except in relation to larger topics,
and Reimprisoned Ourselves in Our representations of the visual ‘I but without really accessing the
CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 44
full range and breadth of Caribbean having evolved. In other words, have tended to be linked to the
Studies as representing not just the an innovative field is no longer to advancement, maintenance and
archipelagic islands but also the innovate again or move out of a acceptance of the culture of the
circum-Caribbean and the Caribbean colonised status in the academy. British Empire and are thereby
diaspora (Boyce-Davies 2013). Afro- among those institutions complicit
Latin America is often not included So how do we repair this continuing in maintaining dominant structural
in the frameworks of the larger damage that accepts limitations inequities by the very nature of
understanding of what is African and begin again to reclaim some their naming and orientations
American in hemispherical context. of the lost direction, i.e. to go in terms of what they teach and
back to our map as it were? First how they teach that literature.
Cornell University’s Africana of all, every discipline in the The faculty responses were
Studies, for example, the founding current university context needs overwhelmingly favourable and we
unit in the field, is emblematic of minimally a counter-discourse were pleased that, in a department
the inability of the field to move (internal and external) represented which included a vibrant body of
outside of the reductions into within its curricular and research subjects of inquiry not captured
which the academy has placed frameworks. Anthropology, for by the current naming, a series of
this unit. Illustrative of this is the example, cannot continue to deny discussions to challenge ourselves
rejection of a Caribbean Students its gendered colonialist beginnings and our contexts resulted in a
Association request for a minor but should also include the work of document that our colleagues
(Stamm 2020). In this writer’s Black women anthropologists like affirmed, by their signatures, as
view, this rejection comes across Zora Neale Hurston, who still has demonstrating precisely this need
then as amazingly short-sighted no real place in the discipline. One to create a ‘more just and equitable
in a field which was founded can say the same for History and department’. We asserted then
by student demands for studies Political Science and the range of that a move to a Department of
that challenged the Eurocentric fields in Arts and Sciences. Literatures in English would do the
education that was then and still following:
is dominant in the academy. Thus, In this regard, in the wake
the current chair’s assertion, even of the Black Lives Matter • Present a more accurate description
as he has written articles about activism following the killing of the wide range of literatures that
‘global Africa’ (Taiwo 2015) in the of George Floyd, calls from we teach and study already;
past, that the Africana model has students to #DoBetterCornell • Open the Department to a wider
‘worked for the last fifty years, it led Martha Pollack, president of pool of students who see English
has continued to inspire others both Cornell University, to welcome as limiting their study with us (it
within the country and in other institutional anti-racist projects. As leaves us always explaining that
parts of the world’ (Stamm 2020), members of one of the departments an English Department actually
that historically maintained an does literary studies);
leaves no room for innovation or
extension or elaboration. Indeed, entrenched British imperial white • Move beyond the privileging of
in the current version of Africana supremacist framing, faculty ‘English’ rather than ‘Literatures’
of colour proposed a change of as the primary descriptor.
Studies at Cornell, administratively
managed by continental African the name of Cornell’s English
We saw this move, while being
scholars, the rejection of a Department to the Department
first among the major universities
Caribbean Studies minor indicates of Literatures in English. With
in the United States and Europe,
a certain myopia, perhaps along that change was also assumed
as also following similar moves at
with a conservative political a redistribution of its curricular
the University of the West Indies,
orientation or, more generously, representations, so that medieval
which created a Department
a limited understanding of the and pre-eighteenth-century
of Literatures in English, and
breadth of the African diaspora, or England would not be the dominant
other universities like University
global Africa as it is called in the required mandate for students who
of Brasilia, which created a
Social Sciences. The importance were majoring in English. My
Department of Literary Theory
of a field organised then to create colleague Mukoma wa Ngugi and
and Literatures, both in the early
an intellectual paradigm that I argued then, following Ngugi wa
1990s. This formal change to being
challenges Eurocentric knowledge Thiong’o et al, ‘On the Abolition
named Department of Literatures
dominance comes across as not of the English Department’
in English was fully approved
(1968), that English DepartmentsCODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 45
by all levels of the university in The CARICOM Ten Point The forced separation of Africans
February 2021, though we learned Reparations Plan is listed as from their homeland has resulted
subsequently that Bryn Mawr follows: in cultural and social alienation
College had approved a similar from identity and existential
1. Full Formal Apology belonging. Denied the right in
name change in November 2020,
2. Repatriation law to life, and divorced by space
influenced by the Cornell move
3. Indigenous Peoples Development from the source of historic self,
but actually formally occurring in
Program Africans have craved the right
advance of our final approval. They to return and knowledge of the
describe the basis of their change 4. Cultural Institutions
route to roots.
as also wanting to demonstrate 5. Public Health Crisis
A program of action is required
their ‘commitment to de-colonial 6. Illiteracy Eradication to build ‘bridges of belonging’.
approaches to literary studies’. 7. African Knowledge Program Such projects as school
8. Psychological Rehabilitation exchanges and culture tours,
Reparative justice, then, becomes a
community artistic and perform-
major and substantial point as we 9. Technology Transfer
ance programs, entrepreneurial
think of an imagined decolonial 10. Debt Cancellation and religious engagements, as
university. The CARICOM well as political interaction, are
Reparations Commission created The claim specific to this required in order to neutralise
a plan, which represents a discussion of reparative justice is the void created by slave
renewed aspect of an ongoing Number 7, an African Knowledge voyages.
historical conversation about what programme. Yet, we hasten to assert Such actions will serve to build
is still owed to Black people, right away that a reconfiguration knowledge networks that
approachable from a variety of of ‘African Knowledge’ is one are necessary for community
viewpoints, from the demands among the group of reparative rehabilitation.
of the enslaved for reparations items that conscious academics
and return to the continent, to in the various iterations of Black Doing quick cultural analysis as we
Rastafari’s continued articulations Studies can do themselves. While do, some items jump out right away,
of the need for those reparations we recognise that several of these as indicated in bold font above:
and returns, to those of the National reparative justice claims, like debt cultural and social alienation from
Coalition of Blacks for Reparations cancellation, require government identity and existential belonging;
in America (N’COBRA) and the intervention, reparations clearly knowledge of the route to roots;
current CARICOM reparative cannot assume that it is only a building ‘bridges of belonging’ and
justice claims. In fact, if we use government-to-people process or neutralising ‘the void created by
the lens of the Black Lives Matter the stereotypical handout. Instead, slave voyages’. Cumulatively, then,
movements, we can assert that all a series of reparative steps to building ‘knowledge networks
these continuing claims carry at reverse the conditions in which that are necessary for community
their core the argument that Black African peoples globally still rehabilitation’ is paramount.
lives are often without value in the find themselves must come from
How does all of this matter in
scheme of national projects and are multiple directions, including the
the current university, a site
therefore simultaneously subject to academy or educational complexes.
for colonised identities as we
police brutality on the streets and Though often still a site of already know? The decolonial
subordination in the academy, and necessary contestation in the university is clearly an imagined
these two sometimes converge. institutional academic context university, an im/possibility in
The normalising of Black in which we work, what is under that larger meaning, aspirational
abjection, then, always has to be our control, is the knowledge- nonetheless and therefore possible.
challenged and a new reclaimed production area, the epistemic, A very detailed lecture by Rinaldo
humanity put back on the table, it therefore. I want to linger on Walcott, ‘After Equity: “Another
seems historically. Thus, it is worth knowledge here as it is the centre University Now”’, offers a range
recalling Frantz Fanon (1963) on of what this discussion asserts. of possibilities (Walcott 2021).
this point: ‘Each generation must,
out of relative obscurity, discover Under the category of African As we consider a range of
its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.’ Knowledge, this is what subjects for a larger advancing
CARICOM states (my emphasis): of knowledge, there remains anCODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 46
incomplete knowledge acquisition • Rewriting the script of Haiti and range of intellectual interests in
process—that continued epistemic by extension Black subjectivity the broadest movement of that
violence on our students in the in the Americas in general. term but always with an eye to
form of missing areas of study, i.e. • Providing ways to examine advancing the interests of local
the what is left out. First of all, the contemporary health, food, Black and indigenous populations
distribution of knowledge should environmental and wellbeing in their orbit.
ensure an equality of exchange vulnerabilities of African peoples
whereby the scholarship, thinkers globally, using models such As we move beyond the settler-
and ideas from the global south are
as those of the Cuban medical colonial university, including the
system, which has global impact. University of the West Indies, we
more readily available or sourced
in the United States and Europe can begin to imagine and create the
Caribbean Studies is often a drop
rather than the exportation of decolonial university. We navigate
in the academic ocean and rejected
knowledge products in the North always between, on the one hand,
even by the leading Africana
to South direction only. a past of dignity and legendary
Studies department. As we have
greatness, and on the other, the
indicated above, the knowledge
My range of suggested reparative starkness of the initial history
generated in Caribbean Studies
possibilities include: of dispossession and economic
should be one of the key themes
difficulty, brought on sometimes
• Going back in history to reclaim or concentrations of Black Studies
by horrendous leadership, often in
an originary impetus, by units anywhere, particularly given
examining the Black experience
collusion with external actors—
the mobile nature of the Caribbean
throughout the last century, from environment, climate, location.
experience and the circulation of its
the 1900 Pan-African conference But through it all there remains
ideas, which impact on the global
in London and subsequent an amazing resistance of its
Black condition. But what about
Pan-African conferences to people matched by an outstanding
Afro-Asia or Afro-indigeneity
the range of forums, meetings, creativity. We live with a series
in a remodelled reparative
organisation’s resolutions and of conflicting representations,
principles and conferences on
knowledge framework? For
but above all a definition of an
Black Culture in Paris, Rome, example, the misguided, limited
unrelenting humanity for African
Senegal, Nigeria. All of these and distorted understandings of
people, from what it takes to
included resolutions for the ‘caste’ in recent publications that
survive in the harshest conditions
amelioration of the cultural and deliberately ignored the work
to how one begins again after
social alienation indicated in of Oliver Cromwell Cox, whose
everything falls apart, to how
the wake of enslavement and Caste, Class and Race is still one
colonialism. one lives a life of beauty and
of the most advanced analyses of
joy in spite of institutional and
• Studying and offering means of these interconnecting systems of
state-level attempts at continued
transforming knowledge from oppression, has to be challenged.
many different fields and angles subordination.
In the United States context,
that include full representations African-American Studies should * Carole Boyce-Davies is the H.T.
of all contributors from different be available in all its historical Rhodes Professor of Humane
geographies. and socio-economic and cultural Letters and Professor of Africana
• Reclaiming the initial impetus relations but with a knowledge Studies and English at Cornell
of Black Studies centres, that there is also another available University. She is the author of
programmes, departments and African-American (or Afro-Latin the prize-wining Left of Karl
institutes, many of which remain Marx. The Political Life of
American) community in South
captured by sometimes very Black Communist Claudia Jones
specific interests, still battling
and Central America.
(2008); the classic Black Women,
for space in that same university Perhaps the language of Trans- Writing and Identity: Migrations
hierarchy. America, as with Trans-Africa, of the Subject (1994); Caribbean
• Creating new paradigms that go should be similarly argued. Spaces. Escape Routes from
beyond the received nation-state Twilight Zones (2013) and a bi-
Finally, how does a university
formations that dominate now in lingual children’s story, Walking/
respond to its local community’s An Avan (2016/2017) in Haitian
which primacy is given to each
needs? In any given community, Kreyol and English. In addition to
country as opposed to studying
these relationally.
the university of necessity has an over a hundred essays, articles and
obligation to represent the largest book chapters, Dr Boyce-DaviesCODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 47
has also published thirteen critical guest-room-re-africana-department- Rodney, W., 1990, Walter Rod-
editions on African, African refuses-to-support-creating- ney Speaks: The Making of an
Diaspora and Caribbean literature caribbean-studies-minor/. Accessed African Intellectual, Trenton, NJ:
and culture, such as the two- 3 June 2021. Africa World Press.
volume collection of critical and Boyce Davies, C. and Gadsby, M., Stamm, K., 2020, Africana Depart-
creative writing, Moving Beyond Peterson, C. and Williams, H., eds, ment Refuses to Support Creat-
Boundaries (1995): International 2003, Introduction, ‘Advancing ing Caribbean Studies Minor,
Dimensions of Black Women’s the Process’, Decolonising the The Cornell Daily Sun, 2 Novem-
Writing (volume 1), Black Academy: African Diaspora ber. Available online at https://
Women’s Diasporas (volume 2); Studies, Trenton, NJ: Africa cornellsun.com/2020/11/02/
the three-volume Encyclopedia World Press, pp. ix–xvi. africana-department-refuses-to-
of the African Diaspora (Oxford: support-creating-caribbean-stud-
CARICOM Reparations Commission
ABC-CLIO, 2008) and Claudia ies-minor/.
(CRC), 2014, CARICOM Ten
Jones Beyond Containment:
Point Plan for Reparations Táíwò, Olúfé ṃ i, 2015, Looking
Autobiographical Reflections,
Justice. Available online at https:// Back, Facing Forward: (Re)-
Poetry, Essays (2011). A member
caricom.org/caricom-ten-point- Imagining a Global Africa, The
of the scientific committee for
plan-for-reparatory-justice/. Black Scholar, Vol. 45, No. 1,
UNESCO’s updated General
Cox, O. C., 1948, Caste, Class and pp. 50–68.
History of Africa, she edited
the epistemological forum Race. A Study in Social Dynam- Walcott, R., 2021, After Equity: ‘An-
on Global Blackness for the ics, New York: Doubleday. other University Now’, talk given
African Diaspora volume. Fanon, F., 1963, On National Cul- at Kansas University Department
Her forthcoming contracted ture, in The Wretched of the of African and African-American
monograph is titled Alternative Earth, Paris: Présence Africaine, Studies speaker series, Diversity:
Presidents. Black Women’s Right pp. 206–248. Its History & Purpose Speaker
to Political Leadership. Series, 4 March. Available on-
Flaherty, C., 2021, Not the Queen’s
line at https://www.youtube.com/
English Department, Inside High-
Note watch?v=-1Zv1OHKpkA.
erEd, 15 February 2021. Avail-
able online at https://www.inside- Wynter, S., 2005, On How we Mis-
1. A preliminary version of took the Map for the Territory and
this paper titled Towards a highered.com/news/2021/02/15/
english-departments-rethink- Reimprisoned Ourselves in Our
Decolonial University, which Unbearable Wrongness of Being,
included the place of Haiti in what-call-themselves. Accessed
3 July 2021. of Desêtre: Black Studies Toward
academic frameworks, was the Human Project, in Gordon,
presented at the inauguration Lorde, A., 1984, Age, Race, Class, and
L. R. and Gordon J. A., eds, Not
of the Haitian Studies Institute Sex: Women Redefining Differ-
Only the Master’s Tools: African
at Brooklyn College in 2016, ence, in Sister Outsider: Essays
American Studies in Theory and
and the current version which and Speeches of Audre Lorde,
Practice, New York: Routledge,
linked it to reparative justice at Berkeley, CA: The Crossing
Press, pp. 114–123. pp. 107–169.
the The University in an Age of
Activism forum, organised by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Lo Liyong, T.
the University of the West Indies, and Owuor-Anyumba, H., 1968,
December 2020. On the Abolition of the English
Department, Internal Memo,
Bibliography University of Nairobi, 24 Octo-
ber 1968, and in Ngugi, J., 1972,
Boyce Davies, C., 2020, Response to
Homecoming: Essays on African
‘Africana Department Refuses to
and Caribbean Literature, Cul-
Support Creating Caribbean Studies
ture and Politics, London, UK:
Minor’, The Cornell Daily Sun,
Heinemann, pp. 145–50.
13 November. Available online at
https://cornellsun.com/2020/11/13/FORTHCOMING / À PARAÎTRE The central idea of this book is that African children are future-makers. The book explores the connections between changing childhoods and versions of African futures to develop insights into how children are living embodiments of history and prospective agents of social change. Drawing on research in diverse cultural ecologies, the authors of ten chapters discuss findings linked to appren- ticeship, learning, work, rights, schools, peace, education, aspirations, conflicts and refugee inte- gration—and how these are encountered by children in everyday life. They describe studies in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The book moves beyond hegemonic notions on African children, affording them the capacity to aspire, widening their creative imaginations in ways that deepen our knowledge of past and present childhoods. While tracing the problems of childhood in the exigencies of society, children are conceptualised neither as victims nor heroes. Instead, they are social participants whose experiences, values, desires, practices and hopes create a fertile analytical ground from which we may theorise the future and temporality more fully.
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