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In this article, I propose the possibility of alternative ways of narrating African histories through art objects as allusive openings inciting a change in Western ways of perceiving the African continent. Based on my experience of visiting the Benin pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024, I will explore the role of artistic ways of alluding to Benin’s past and present by way of seemingly cancelling its colonial past through its topographical displacement to the historic Kingdom of Dahomey, a West African kingdom which existed between 1600 and 1904 within the territory of the present-day Republic of Benin. The artists’ conflation of Benin with Dahomey will be read as a historical and topographical displacement, which the artworks displayed in the Benin pavilion used as a background for artistic projections of the future, envisioning the necessity of empowering women by way of alluding to the Yoruba tradition of Gèlèdè as a dialogical space of rematriation. In this article, I treat the artistic allusive history as a necessary supplement to official histories, which, along with traditional museal practices, constitute what Arjun Appadurai calls “testaments of fixity” – a category which may be held responsible for demoting Africa to the provinces of anthropological and development studies. The return of cultural artefacts looted by colonisers to Benin, alluded to in the exhibition, will be read in the light of Graham Harman’s notion of “allure” as an illusion of the possibility of a return to the once lost state of completeness. This impossibility will be brought in through the exhibition’s allusion to the ecological threat brought to Benin by traffickers of petrol from Nigeria. The article also brings in a brief analysis of two recent films which I find significant for broadening its perspective: Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King (2022) and Mati Diop’s Dahomey (2024).

Decoloniality emerged in the last two decades as a new mode of critique against colonialism and coloniality. While its insights are inspired by dependency and postcolonial theories, decoloniality challenges them both, particularly their inability to depart with modern Western epistemology. Written in response to Arjun Appadurai's recent critique of On Decoloniality by Catherine E. Walsh and Walter D. Mignolo, this article attempts to articulate decoloniality's approach to epistemology and discourse analysis. Whereas Appadurai describes Walsh and Mignolo's position as an anachronistic attempt to \"return to the precolonial past,\" this article underlines his inability to transcend the modern linear order of time.

Taylor discusses the several writings by Arjun Appadurai which have been quite influential in the music fields. Appadurai's formulation was useful in focusing the conversation on how people and things move in what was seen as an increasingly globalizing world, but, over time, it has proven to be something of a blunt instrument and has largely outlived its usefulness, as many have argued. The idea of \"flows\" and \"-scapes\" can imply a kind of uniform movement of money, ideologies, and more, but it is quite clear, of course, that there is nothing uniform about such movements, especially, perhaps, of capital; Anna Tsing (2005) argued some years ago for an understanding of just how messy and unpredictable global capitalism and its flows are. Cultural goods such as music don't circulate equally either, with some musical sounds and styles finding new roots in some places and not in others.

Autor podejmuje kwestię mrocznej strony mobilności i ruchów migracyjnych, zwracając uwagę na zjawisko handlu ludźmi (human trafficking). Wychodząc od teoretycznych propozycji Arjuna Appaduraia, Loska przyjmuje założenie, że film jako nośnik etnoobrazów jest tekstem kultury odzwierciedlającym zachodzące przemiany i zdolnym do przedstawienia problemów społecznych. Nie znaczy to, że fikcja artystyczna jest „niewinna” ideologicznie, bowiem większość filmów analizowanych przez autora korzysta ze schematów gatunkowych kina popularnego. W imieniu pokrzywdzonych przemawiają reprezentanci kultury zachodniej (jako wytwórcy tekstów i ich bohaterowie). Większość przywoływanych przez Loskę przykładów potwierdza tezę Gayatri Spivak, że „podporządkowani” są pozbawieni głosu. Nie są też odbiorcami filmowych opowieści, gdyż te skierowano do dominującej większości pragnącej katharsis. Nie znaczy to bynajmniej, że należy porzucić tę perspektywę jako uwikłaną w (neo)kolonialną ideologię, ale raczej ze świadomością jej ograniczeń wydobyć z teksów należących do kultury popularnej to, co pozwala na przedstawienie rzeczywistych zagrożeń – problemu handlu kobietami i zmuszania ich do prostytucji.

Thejali--a member of a hereditary group of Mandinka professional performers--is a charismatic but contradictory figure. He is at once the repository of his people's history, the voice of contemporary political authority, the inspiration for African American dreams of an African homeland, and the chief entertainment for the burgeoning transnational tourist industry. Numerous journalists, scholars, politicians, and culture aficionados have tried to pin him down. This book shows how the jali's talents at performance make him a genius at representation--the ideal figure to tell us about the \"Africa\" that the world imagines, which is always a thing of illusion, magic, and contradiction. Africa often enters the global imagination through news accounts of ethnic war, famine, and despotic political regimes. Those interested in countering such dystopic images--be they cultural nationalists in the African diaspora or connoisseurs of \"global culture\"--often found their representations of an emancipatory Africa on an enthusiasm for West African popular culture and performance arts. Based on extensive field research in The Gambia and focusing on the figure of the jali, Performing Africa interrogates these representations together with their cultural and political implications. It explores how Africa is produced, circulated, and consumed through performance and how encounters through performance create the place of Africa in the world. Innovative and discerning, Performing Africa is a provocative contribution to debates over cultural nationalism and the construction of identity and history in Africa and elsewhere.

As ações do governo federal no âmbito da política indigenista, no governo de Jair Bolsonaro, têm sido caracterizadas por um forte antagonismo aos direitos territoriais indígenas, consagrados na Constituição de 1988, e às políticas públicas de atenção a essas populações estabelecidas ao longo dos governos civis nas últimas três décadas. Este artigo discute as principais ações da política indigenista do governo Bolsonaro, como também as suas relações com o tema da diferença, a partir do trabalho de Arjun Appadurai, Fear of small number, publicado originalmente em 2006.

(1949–) Indian-born, US-based cultural anthropologist and co-founder of the important *postcolonial theory journal Public Culture. Born and educated in Mumbai, Appadurai moved to the US in ...