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In what seemed an endless health catastrophe all over the world, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 has imposed a global stillness and rethinking of the ethics of sharing the common world in an era of violence and racial reckoning, neoliberal extractive capitalism, climate vulnerability, mass refugees and migrants’ movements.
Throughout the COVID 19 pandemic to the present, the continent of Africa is still decrying vaccine inequity in the face of global north vaccine nationalism. However, since the outbreak, Africans are actively contributing to scientific and artistic innovations that need global highlighting against the under-reporting by hegemonic global north media broadcasting networks and significant contributions to the process of decolonizing fields of knowledge and their practical applications.
To further discuss this impact and change, The Africa Institute invited special guest Professor Ousseina D. Alidou, theoretical linguist, gender, and cultural critic to present her work as part of the Faculty Seminar Series on Wednesday, September 28, 2022.
The session was moderated by Jean Allman, Professor of History, The Africa Institute who opened the seminar appreciating how artists and creative people have helped us survive and thrive through the pandemic and the humble honor of hosting Professor Alidou at our enterprise to discuss African artists’ solidarity and creative output through it all.
Professor Alidou, Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick specialises in the study of Muslim women in Africa.
Her talk titled, “Pandemics, Epistemic Communities and African Futures in the World: Decolonizing the Disciplines,” examined the ways in which global local African artists mobilize non-hegemonic epistemological reasonings to shape a poetics of care and musical performances disseminated through digital mobile phones and other social media platforms during the COVID 19 pandemic period. The art produced speaks to marginalized rural and urban populations living in precarious material conditions because of the imposition of destructive neoliberal economic policies enabled by political elites.
“Their poetic narratives and performances are framed within an ethics of life affirmation that center on life saving messages that put into dialogue the biomedical, cosmological, and affective. By appropriating digital media space and radio and television broadcasting platforms and using dialogic multilingualism –inclusive of African languages and scripts — and code-switching as a lingua franca in their musical performances, the African global local artists once again contribute not only to the fight against a biomedical pandemic, but also to the struggle against other global pandemics of dispossession affecting African societies,” said Professor Alidou who serves as the President of African Studies Association (ASA).
In addition to her multiple roles, she is also a Senior Faculty Advisor to UNESCO BREDA’s Gender and Transformative Leadership Curriculum Design for African Universities and Civil Society and in the context of her talk, Professor Alidou appreciated UNESCO’s efforts and partnership with African Hip Hop Artists.
She further shared that through critical literacy and artistic performances building on intercultural translations, the African global local artists are contributing to decolonizing the (public) health disciplines and media studies in their representation of Africa’s epistemic contributions to the epidemiological challenges faced by humanity in the 21st century.
With references to the work of late Nigerian author Tejumola Olaniyan and using data from popular culture including African cartoons that delve into themes of politics, satire and culture and youth artistic performances in Niger, Northern Nigeria, and the African Diasporas, Professor Alidou concluded her talk by examining the discursive alterity to and actions against neoliberal solutions to both the biomedical and social pandemics that African youth artists offer.
In what seemed an endless health catastrophe all over the world, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 has imposed a global stillness and rethinking of the ethics of sharing the common world in an era of violence and racial reckoning, neoliberal extractive capitalism, climate vulnerability, mass refugees and migrants’ movements.
In what seemed an endless health catastrophe all over the world, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 has imposed a global stillness and rethinking of the ethics of sharing the common world in an era of violence and racial reckoning, neoliberal extractive capitalism, climate vulnerability, mass refugees and migrants’ movements.
Throughout the COVID 19 pandemic to the present, the continent of Africa is still decrying vaccine inequity in the face of global north vaccine nationalism. However, since the outbreak, Africans are actively contributing to scientific and artistic innovations that need global highlighting against the under-reporting by hegemonic global north media broadcasting networks and significant contributions to the process of decolonizing fields of knowledge and their practical applications.
To further discuss this impact and change, The Africa Institute invited special guest Professor Ousseina D. Alidou, theoretical linguist, gender, and cultural critic to present her work as part of the Faculty Seminar Series on Wednesday, September 28, 2022.
The session was moderated by Jean Allman, Professor of History, The Africa Institute who opened the seminar appreciating how artists and creative people have helped us survive and thrive through the pandemic and the humble honor of hosting Professor Alidou at our enterprise to discuss African artists’ solidarity and creative output through it all.
Professor Alidou, Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick specialises in the study of Muslim women in Africa.
Her talk titled, “Pandemics, Epistemic Communities and African Futures in the World: Decolonizing the Disciplines,” examined the ways in which global local African artists mobilize non-hegemonic epistemological reasonings to shape a poetics of care and musical performances disseminated through digital mobile phones and other social media platforms during the COVID 19 pandemic period. The art produced speaks to marginalized rural and urban populations living in precarious material conditions because of the imposition of destructive neoliberal economic policies enabled by political elites.
“Their poetic narratives and performances are framed within an ethics of life affirmation that center on life saving messages that put into dialogue the biomedical, cosmological, and affective. By appropriating digital media space and radio and television broadcasting platforms and using dialogic multilingualism –inclusive of African languages and scripts — and code-switching as a lingua franca in their musical performances, the African global local artists once again contribute not only to the fight against a biomedical pandemic, but also to the struggle against other global pandemics of dispossession affecting African societies,” said Professor Alidou who serves as the President of African Studies Association (ASA).
In addition to her multiple roles, she is also a Senior Faculty Advisor to UNESCO BREDA’s Gender and Transformative Leadership Curriculum Design for African Universities and Civil Society and in the context of her talk, Professor Alidou appreciated UNESCO’s efforts and partnership with African Hip Hop Artists.
She further shared that through critical literacy and artistic performances building on intercultural translations, the African global local artists are contributing to decolonizing the (public) health disciplines and media studies in their representation of Africa’s epistemic contributions to the epidemiological challenges faced by humanity in the 21st century.
With references to the work of late Nigerian author Tejumola Olaniyan and using data from popular culture including African cartoons that delve into themes of politics, satire and culture and youth artistic performances in Niger, Northern Nigeria, and the African Diasporas, Professor Alidou concluded her talk by examining the discursive alterity to and actions against neoliberal solutions to both the biomedical and social pandemics that African youth artists offer.
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