Centre for Asian Studies
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://197.255.125.131:4000/handle/123456789/28007
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Item Power-with and Power-to and Building Asian Studies in Africa: Insights from the Field(African and Asian Studies, 2021) Amoah, L.G.A.; Quame, N.Taking seriously Chinweizu’s (2004) call for Asian Studies in Africa this article examines how African Asianist scholars with their partners elsewhere decided to take counterhegemonic action, and how their approach differs from the status quo as a prefigurative politics of power with society they seek. This work explores the establishment of Centres for Asian Studies in Africa as institutional actors in the counter-hegemonic project of decolonization. The processes that led to the setting up of the Centre for Asian Studies (the first in Black Africa except South Africa) at the University of Ghana serve as a case study. The article utilizes information gathered through the authors’ ongoing participation over the last eight years in the ideational, organizational, logistical, financial and institution-building moves that are aiding the establishment of an ultimately emancipatory Asian Studies in Africa research framework. To establish the contextual challenge, the article engages discursively with how hegemony (power-over) functions within Global North/Western/modern research agendas, funding, and institutions; and explains how and why its colonial project is most evident in Area Studies in particular. The work concludes with pointers on how these moves for building Centres for Asian studies in Africa may be useful for other institutional intellectual decolonial efforts.Item Chinweizu, Asia’s Rise and Disentangling Africa’s Strategic Incoherence for Africa’s Future(African and Asian Studies, 2021) Amoah, L.G.A.Chinweizu’s wide-ranging and copious intellectual output persistently brings into sharp focus penetrating analysis of Asia’s contemporary rise (read in Chinweizuan terms as autonomous modernization and industrialization) in juxtaposition to Africa’s de-industrialization and with it her firm rootedness at the periphery of global power. “Africa’s Staticity-Asia’s Rise” is a binary that bothers Chinweizu to no end. In two key works presented in Accra and Abuja respectively (Chinweizu, 2010a; 2010b) he tries to find answers. The two papers throw up in my view, a few strategic questions: i. how should Africa relate to a rising Asia in contemporary times? ii. What will it take in real terms for Chinweizu’s Black Superpower to emerge if the Asian example is a compelling one? iii. Is industrialization an existential necessity for Africa? iv. What kind of political, economic, and social structures are required for a Black Superpower to emerge to command the respect of the world like Japan, Korea, or China? This article will critically engage with these two works to attempt to respond to these strategic questions in the hope that it will aid in sharpening the theoretical underpinnings and practical processes for building the Chinweizuan Black Superpower.