Ongoing Debates
Re-imagining Diaspora and Pan-Africanism: Black Internationalism in a Globalizing and Complex World
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tunde Adeleke
Scholars of Black Nationalism have long theorized the “Diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism” as theoretical frameworks for study and analysis of the relationship of Africa, and her expanding and increasingly complex African diaspora world. Even as diaspora Africans in their distant and disparate locations encounter and are transformed by experiences and challenges that fundamentally complicate the traditional “Pan-African” and “Diaspora” paradigms, some scholars insist on prioritizing homogenizing and conflating ethos while ignoring or downplaying the complexities and divergences. For much of the twentieth century, the appeal of the “Pan-African” and “Diaspora” paradigms remained strong, even as the “Black Internationalist” world grew complex and complicated; and blacks in different locations encountered experiences that fundamentally transformed them culturally while also complicating their identities. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, however, there emerged dissenting voices and concerns about the relevance of homogenizing racial/cultural essentialist constructs. Many scholars are calling for re-conceptualizing, perhaps even jettisoning, such conflating paradigms as “diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism”. Have these concepts become truly obsolete and anachronistic, as some scholars suggest? What are the alternative paradigms or approaches to studying this phenomenon that would embody shared heritage and experiences as well as differences and divergences? This paper is an attempt to answer these questions by foregrounding the complementary and yet conflicting viewpoints of two twentieth century individuals whose ideas and struggles helped shape the “Diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism” as identitarian and counter-hegemonic paradigms (Stokely Carmichael and Walter Rodney).
Plus ça Change: Sidney’s Hook’s Heresy Yes—Conspiracy No and Ongoing Debates About Liberal Tolerance View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dennis Arjo
In many ways we are living through a re-enactment of Cold War battles that pervaded higher education in the mid 20th century. This essay explores a small part of that history by way of an exploration of Sidney Hook’s 1953 Heresy Yes—Conspiracy No. In this work, Hook weaves a path between the excesses of McCarthyism and American liberals’ naive indifference to the real dangers of Soviet communism. I argue the book is an insightful exploration of the limits of tolerance and the paradoxes of the liberal impulse to embrace illiberal beliefs. Hook focuses on the confusions prevalent among those he calls Cultural Vigilantes and Ritual Liberals, and he explores their roles in enflaming and perpetuating exaggerated scares about Communism and indifference to its actual dangers. This essay begins with a careful reconstruction of Hook’s arguments in their historical setting. It then argues the Cultural Vigilante and Ritual Liberal are still with us and readily visible in today’s debates about Critical Race Theory, Transgenderism, and Cancel Culture. The degree to which current polemics recall some of the least edifying behavior of politicians and academics at the height of the Red Scare and McCarthy era of American politics is almost eerie. The paper ends with the suggestion that one unique feature of contemporary debates is the open willingness of some on the left to see conspiracy at work when confronted with mere heresy.
