The academic game
African Studies scholars write for the gate-keepers, to prove our own legitimacy, for the stimulation of conferences and the relief of rising recognition by algorithms.
Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash
Writing from the perspective of an island, continents are vast entities with enough space for loneliness and separation.
The world has been mapped such that the journeys between continents are almost ignored—more so the spaces within the oceans of rest, recuperation, and succor.
But currents still link the continents, and the islands between them are critical beads on the chains that bind us. Long distance transportation of goods, ideas, people, and even rats requires knowing islands, and working with/on/against/in/through them. Shipping highways marked onto the sea by traces of oil left in passing wakes.
The industrial machine has been laid upon oceanic surfaces. Vast worlds beneath an echo, sonar, imagination. Internet cables below, marine peons on tight delivery schedules above.
How do we reflect “Africa” from here? Mirror, mirage, line on a map, that which is below Mauritius on the Tables of Bureaucratic Development. Point of Departure for some. Point of Arrival for all. Slavery. Indenture. Tax Haven.
“Academic study is like adding one grain of knowledge-rice to the meal of human reference.” I repeat received wisdom sagely to a graduating student. “The bowl is all wrong” was the dry response. She left my office and went to lead a Fridays for the Future march—islands are vulnerable to climate change, and so is Africa.
