Presented By: Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
DAAS Africa Workshop
with Elleni Zeleke (Columbia)
Ethiopia in Theory, Theory as Memoir, Elleni Centime Zeleke
In the Invention of Africa, Valentine Mudimbe argues that when the social scientist asks about the local in Africa she inevitably ends up situating Africa as a sign of something other than itself. For Mudimbe, the social sciences are a paradigmatic cultural model that leaves the African social scientist with limited choices. Alternatively, Mudimbe advises that if we document the invention of this cultural model we can demonstrate the limits of social studies in Africa as a mode of knowledge production.
In my talk, I try to show how the commitment to science limited the capacity of the Ethiopian student movement of the 1960s and 1970s to describe what Mudimbe calls the ‘chose du texte’ of living and breathing Africans. By highlighting a link between the writings of the Ethiopian student movement and the social conditions of knowledge production I then try to connect the history of the west in Africa to the limitations in the writings of the student movement. This has provided me with a path towards a ‘recit pour soi’ – an account of myself as a path towards personal survival.
Centime Zeleke received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at York University (Toronto) in 2016. Her research interests include student movements in the Horn of Africa, 20th-century state formation in Africa, as well as comparative social and political theory.
Elleni’s forthcoming book is titled Ethiopia In Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production,1964-2016. The hardcover will be published by the Historical-Materialism Book Series at Brill in the fall of 2019. A paperback version will also be published by Haymarket Books in 2020. Ethiopia In Theory asks: what does it mean to write today about the appropriation and indigenisation of Marxist and mainstream social science ideas in an Ethiopian and African context; and, importantly, what does the archive of revolutionary thought in Africa teach us about the practice of critical theory more generally?
Elleni’s work has also appeared in the Journal of NorthEast African Studies and Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters.
Elleni teaches courses on the Horn of Africa, African Political Thought, Critical Theory, and Histories of Capitalism.
Zeleke teaches courses on African Political Thought, Critical Theory, and Histories of Capitalism.
In the Invention of Africa, Valentine Mudimbe argues that when the social scientist asks about the local in Africa she inevitably ends up situating Africa as a sign of something other than itself. For Mudimbe, the social sciences are a paradigmatic cultural model that leaves the African social scientist with limited choices. Alternatively, Mudimbe advises that if we document the invention of this cultural model we can demonstrate the limits of social studies in Africa as a mode of knowledge production.
In my talk, I try to show how the commitment to science limited the capacity of the Ethiopian student movement of the 1960s and 1970s to describe what Mudimbe calls the ‘chose du texte’ of living and breathing Africans. By highlighting a link between the writings of the Ethiopian student movement and the social conditions of knowledge production I then try to connect the history of the west in Africa to the limitations in the writings of the student movement. This has provided me with a path towards a ‘recit pour soi’ – an account of myself as a path towards personal survival.
Centime Zeleke received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at York University (Toronto) in 2016. Her research interests include student movements in the Horn of Africa, 20th-century state formation in Africa, as well as comparative social and political theory.
Elleni’s forthcoming book is titled Ethiopia In Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production,1964-2016. The hardcover will be published by the Historical-Materialism Book Series at Brill in the fall of 2019. A paperback version will also be published by Haymarket Books in 2020. Ethiopia In Theory asks: what does it mean to write today about the appropriation and indigenisation of Marxist and mainstream social science ideas in an Ethiopian and African context; and, importantly, what does the archive of revolutionary thought in Africa teach us about the practice of critical theory more generally?
Elleni’s work has also appeared in the Journal of NorthEast African Studies and Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters.
Elleni teaches courses on the Horn of Africa, African Political Thought, Critical Theory, and Histories of Capitalism.
Zeleke teaches courses on African Political Thought, Critical Theory, and Histories of Capitalism.
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