Review essay on “Dialogues on African Literature, Film and Theatre”. LIFT – The Journal of Literature and Performing Arts, n° 1 (2019). Eldoret: Moi University Press.

Abstract

In a recent essay “Against collaboration – or the native who wanders off” (2019) literary scholar Grace Musila presents a lucid, Africa-centred critique of the homogenisation of knowledge production in the so-called international academia as a result of the concentration of power and resources in Northern-based institutions. As she writes: “With the knowledge productioninfrastructure and resources – research funding, research time, mobility, libraries, academic journals, academic book publishers – all heavily skewed in favour of Northern academics; and with Africa-based academics under pressure to publish in so-called international journals, the academy’s mono-literacy and preference for largely homogenised modes of thought has created mono-epistemic publishing infrastructures into which African scholars must either fit or perish.” (Musila 2019: 3) One recent initiative to counter this trend to academic monoculture and to take ownership of the knowledge produced in the field of African literatures and cultures comes from Musila’s alma mater, the Department of Literature at Moi University in Western Kenya. In 2019 the editorial team around Tobias Otieno Odongo, Hellen Roselyne Shigali and Peter Simatei launched the first issue of LIFT – The Journal of Literature and the Performing Arts, a new journal taking on dialogues on African literature, film and theatre.