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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:African Renaissance: A Quest for (Un)Attainable Past
Author:Boloka, Gibson M.ISNI
Year:1999
Periodical:Critical Arts: A Journal of Media Studies
Volume:13
Issue:2
Pages:91-102
Language:English
Geographic terms:Subsaharan Africa
South Africa
Africa
Subjects:cultural history
African identity
Ethnic and Race Relations
Architecture and the Arts
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02560049985310151
Abstract:The major pitfall of the African Renaissance discourse, as advocated since 1997 by its pioneer, Thabo Mbeki, is its interest in genealogy without offering a clear-cut direction into the future. African Renaissance in the strict sense is just a farfetched dream, a myth, an illusion, a quest for an unattainable past. The identity for which people are searching is like history, ever-changing and dynamic. What matters is no longer identity but 'identification'. Moreover, the totalizing and universalizing tendency of the African Renaissance concept is perilously dangerous. Like the rainbow concept, coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1994, which has been put 'under erasure', the notion of African Renaissance will gradually disappear under the rubric of globalism. Within the South African discourse, the African Renaissance requires immediate reconceptualization. Bibliogr., note, sum.
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