Abstract
For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Africans and Diaspora blacks struggled to create a Pan-African consciousness of “nationhood” defined by shared ancestry, ethnic and racialized experiences of subordination and marginalization associated with the historical encounters with slavery, segregation, colonialism, and neocolonialism. Advocates considered such supra-nationalism embodiment of shared challenges, and critical to survival and eventual triumph. Though relatively successful in the past, this supra-nationalistic approach has become complicated with globalization. Racial, ethnic, and other primordial identities are becoming complicated and perhaps even obsolete. Cosmopolitanism and hybridization problematize the construction of racial or ethnic derived supra (Pan-African) identity. Identity is a complex process of becoming; a very fluid process that entails experiences of hybridity and in-betweenness. It is therefore difficult to justify a monolithic experience of “Blackness” or “Africanness”. Yet, many critics continue to invoke the old Pan-African supra-nationalism as the most effective strategy of resistance in the 21st century. This paper examines and analyses the challenges of continuing invocation of Pan-African nationalism even as globalization shrinks and erodes the boundaries of race and ethnicity on which such supra-nationalism had thrived in the past. Perhaps for Africans and Diaspora blacks, the solution lies in theorizing a neo-Pan-African nationalism which takes into consideration the growing, problematic, complex, and complicated character of racial and ethnic affiliations and experiences in a globalizing world.
Presenters
Tunde AdelekeProfessor and Director, History/African and African American Studies, Iowa State University, Iowa, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—The World on the Move: Understanding Migration in a New Global Age
KEYWORDS
NATIONALISM, PAN-AFRICANISM, DIASPORA, COLONIALISM, NEOCOLONIALISM
