Entry Two - Why I am studying at Makerere

After four years enrolled as an African history major, I concluded that I should conduct at least some of my studies in Africa. (I apologize if the following few paragraphs seem pretentious and uninformed, but they do provide a brief explanation of why I am studying in Uganda.) Although "field experience" is important, that was not the primary reason for my decision to study here. Certainly anyone studying events or phenomena in Africa would benefit greatly from a visit to somewhere on the continent. However, this would qualify the majority of academics, since most of them study universal phenomena that will be found in equal measure in Africa as in Asia, North America, Europe, etc. If the object of one's research is a specific region or events confined to a specific region, a visit to that region is essential. However, most academics are concerned directly or indirectly with more universal ideas than their titles allow. "Africanist" scholars do still recount what-happened and who-did/is-doing-what like glorified journalists, but this is generally not the value of academic work. Africanists study issues such as identity, leadership, power, and so on that are applicable anywhere.

With colonial rule defeated and economic, social and political problems still in full force, academics found it difficult to speak about 'Africa' as a category of analysis. What exactly is it? A geographical area (James Coleman)? (Then why not some other arbitrarily carved out area?) The home of black people (Marcus Garvey)? (Tens of millions of 'black people' do not live in Africa. And there is nothing except the superficiality of racism that marks out black, white or any-other-colour people as a distinct entity.) A cultural zone (Cheikh Anta Diop)? (Cultural practices, beliefs and ways of life differ vastly within countries, and there are as many differences between Sudan and South Africa, for instance, as there are between Sudan and Australia - not to mention that Sudan shares more similarities with many countries of the mid-east than say its southern neighbour, Uganda.) An area with a common historical experience, i.e. colonialism (Frantz Fanon)? (Colonialism, which was an extremely uneven endeavour, existed outside of Africa as well, and history did not start in the 1880s and end in the 1960s.) [There is a far more fundamental problem with the idea of 'Africa', connected with its historical evolution as a concept. But that can wait…] As a result, many academics concluded that Africa was not a neutral (nor a real or very useful) object of study.

Their preoccupations shifted from 'Africa' an object to 'Africa' an idea. Thus the phenomena they studied became much more universal and less area-specific. They could study the effects of geographical conditions on human societies (Jared Diamond). They could examine the history of racism(s) and the way in which racist ideology influenced peoples' social and political (as well as economic and social) behaviours (David Goldberg). They could look at similar political and social ideologies that led to the 'invention' of the idea of Africa as a unit of study, as well as an object of pride or hatred (V.Y. Mudimbe). They could speculate about the effects of historical experiences (and about the effects of certain historical narratives of those experiences) on certain regions (Jean-François Bayart). But these issues are largely theoretical and not geographically constrained.

If such issues are one's topic of study, then one should logically study where the best resources are, not in a region just for the sake of being there. That said, my reasons for being where I am are slightly different. There are three main centres of the study of Africa. One is among 'Africanist' scholars at North American and European universities. Another is within the African Diaspora, primarily in the United States at black colleges and universities (though also in the Caribbean and elsewhere). The third centre is on the continent itself at African universities and research institutes. Although I will likely have access to many primary resources that I may have otherwise lacked, the main advantage of studying at Makerere is exposure to the theoretical preoccupations of this third "school of thought" about Africa. I am here because this is where these scholars happen to be. As an added bonus, I get to live in Kampala and experience what it, Uganda and East Africa in general have to offer.