Volume 1

Miracles, for the most part, fall outside the purview of academics' intellectual consideration. In fact, the miraculous is by definition disruptive of and anathema to reasonable, rational, and coherent systems of thought. True miracles can be neither anticipated nor predicted; their probability is incalculable and their occurrences are, by most philosophical measures, either mistaken or inexplicable. And, yet, but... the etymology of the word "miracle" suggests, interestingly, that miracles should be the primary interest of philosophers. The English word "miracle" derives from the Latin miraculum ("object of wonder"), from mirari ("to wonder at"), which ought to remind us of the words Plato so carefully placed in Socrates' mouth in the Theaetetus: "...wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." The Greek words rendered as "miracle" in the English Christian Bibles were semeion ("sign"), teras ("wonder"), and dynamis ("power")-in Vulgate translated respectively as signum, prodigum, and virtus. That is to say, the miraculous, the wondrous, the powerful signs-whether rooted in God, in Nature, in human being or in human making-have been, for ages in the "West," the recognized stimuli for intellectual inquiry.

Introit: Cosmopolitan Rootedness

An E-Symposium on Paul Tiyambe Zeleza's Inaugural Lecture of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professorship, University of Illinois at Chicago, January 30, 2008

Welcome to the first e-symposium of The Zeleza Post, a new feature aimed at reinforcing the site's mission as a bazaar of Africanist, pan-Africanist, and Black Diasporic intellection. As occasion demands, The Zeleza Post will convene discussions in this special e-format on issues germane to the politics and production of knowledge in/on Africa and its polymorphous diasporic unfoldings. I am particularly pleased and honored to convene this inaugural edition dedicated, most auspiciously, to an engagement of the spectacular intellectual/scholarly trajectory and monumental oeuvre of one of the most humble African polymaths I ever been privileged to encounter, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza.

Two months after senator Barack Obama effectively secured the Democratic Party nomination for president  of the United States, it is gratifying to note that the pan-Africanist intellectual world has not for the most part, been lulled to sleep by the Obama "moment."  Instead, as demonstrated by most contributors on this eSymposium, serious guestions are being raised as to the meaning of this "moment" and whether we are about to enter a new phase of politics in the United States, and how developments in the United States will impact the broader pan- African world, and  especially US policy towards Africa.

The discussions provided in this eSymposium range from the importance of recognizing the symbolic importance of the "moment" especially in the critical fact that for the first time in US history, a black man stands a better that even chance to become president of the United States, to the skepticism that a US president, let alone a black one, would fundamentally change the thrust of US policy towards Africa and the pan-African world.  In other words, Barack Obama, with all of his goodwill and determination, is effectively a prisoner of the structural realities of the American political economy.  As the US tries to weave its way through the challenges of globalization, and the indeterminate nature of what it may mean to be the lone super-power, any US president will be under tremendous pressure from domestic constituencies to be narrowly focused on "American national interests." 

Amina Mama

Reading Paul Zeleza's odyssey was a gratifying experience. In turning to autobiography, Zeleza the historian has done us the service of beginning to reflect on the intellectual traditions of a rather poorly documented generation of African scholars - that of the first generation to emerge, not out of colonialism, but to have been educated in the postcolonial era. He aptly characterizes us as ‘the beneficiaries of Africa's decolonization...educated during the golden years of African universities', thus reminding us of the historical significance of this cohort. We make up a cohort, if not an intellectual community that is thus profoundly different from those who relied on the colonial tutelage, and the capacity to rebel against it, which Ki Zerbo, the late Burkinabe historian so cogently argues was "not a matter of choice" (Ki Zerbo 2005: 81). The postcolonial generation has been faced with choices as well as with profound challenges. We thus exhibit a variety of intellectual proclivities, and a full range of intellectual politics too. Africa's academics have not always pursued their work in a manner that is fully consistent with the pan-African and nationalist dreams of those who were compelled to rebel, although many have relied on these for their intellectual motivation and survival.

I was in Santiago, Chile when Senator Barack Obama won enough delegates to become the presumptive presidential nomination for the Democratic Party and several of my hosts and other members of the group were interested in discussing the implications of this for the country, African Americans, and the global community. His presumptive nomination means that for the first time in the United States' history, a major political party has the opportunity to nominate a person of color or an African American for president.  This serves as a history-making event on many levels.

Many African Americans never thought they would live to see the day that someone like Obama would win enough primaries and the corresponding delegates to secure the nomination from either the Democratic or Republican Party.  There are several reasons why this mind-set was hard to break.  First, African American males received the right to vote in 1870 and this was achieved by adding an amendment to the constitution.  They were citizens and should have been entitled to vote for that mere fact, but to wrestle this political right from state and local officials, especially in southern states, an amendment was necessary.  Moreover, for the majority of African American males, especially those who lived in southern states and most of them did at this time, the ability to exercise their right to vote was simply too costly in terms of the physical dangers (lynching in particular) it posed and it literally cost money in the form of poll taxes.  In 1920, when women were granted the right to vote, it obviously meant white women or women who did not live in southern states because African American women still could not exercise their right to vote unless they lived outside the south.

To interpret Paul Zeleza's personal and intellectual trajectory as representative of the African scholar's condition would be to retreat behind a comforting but ultimately sterile cliché. For the account he gives of his life and work is much more than that. In part it tells of contexts and factors that he could not have chosen, yet in others the exercise of extraordinary enlightenment in what we all must acknowledge to be an exemplary career.

There is great celebration about Senator Obama becoming the Presidential candidate for the Democrats in next November elections in the US. The excitement is such that one would be forgiven to think that Obama was about to be sworn in soon. The enthusiasm ignores the fact that he is yet to be formally adopted and still has an election to fight against the Republicans. No where is this excitement more infectious than in Kenya, the homeland of Obama's father. Even Kenyans who in the closely fought Presidential elections of last year swore that Raila would never be president , not because of anything other than being Luo, without any sense of irony, are part of the Obamamania. A 100% Luo is not good enough for them as President of Kenya but they are supporting a 5O% Luo to be president of the USA!

Kenyans are not alone in these contradictory responses. I am not sure how many of the millions of Africans now jubilating about Obama's possible victory will be that enthusiastic were Obama to be standing for office in their countries. Can you imagine an Obama as a presidential candidate in Ivory Coast? Would he not be reminded that he is not African enough? How could he pass the ‘ivoirite' test when even a former Prime Minister of the country, born in the country was disqualified? If Obama had stood in a Nigerian election would he have generated the same mass adulation?

The Zelezean trajectory, from a Malawian boy, to youthful university student and writer, to a cosmopolitan scholar writing about a diaspora encompassing all of world history and geography, is marked by a dazzling array of publications. I see so clearly that path he traces from the 70s when dictatorial rule was establishing itself across the continent, to the present, when we look at the continent from a perspective ranging from visions of China, both in the present and two thousand years ago, to Europe, a shrinking donkey skin of an empire. The Zeleza markers take us from the years of enthusiasm with Frantz Fanon to postcolonialism and globalization, and we relive those decades through the accounts of his fantastically burgeoning oeuvre.

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza's biographical and intellectual itinerary has been most interesting for one central reason: it subverts the myth concerning the African continent as an irredeemable ghetto. It also deftly bypasses a common assumption regarding Africa and the African as being inextricably tied to death, disease, decay and even madness. My brief intervention dwells on how Zeleza addresses the deterritorialization as well as the re-affirmation of the politics of identity. In other words, I am interested in the transnationalization of cultural subjectivity. My submission also addresses the connections- contained in Zeleza's project- between the imperatives of diasporan existence and continental Africa in a way that brings to the fore, a new socio-cultural symbiosis, a new configuration of cultural synergies.

Barrack Obama. The name is synonymous with an African renaissance. African, I insist. Not least because Obama's father was an African ­ a Kenyan. But the issue is much more than biological connection. After all, it was only later that Obama was to attempt a sociological understanding of his father. Obama represents what was, for a long time, suppressed in black Africans. He represents the liberating of a spirit locked in for centuries, not through the fault of Africans but through the conditions under which they were permitted to live. I use the term ‘permitted' deliberately, for black Africans ­ and that would include black Americans ­ have generally lived their lives at the beck and call of the ‘other'.

But I would be naïve, not to say unfaithful to Obama, if I went on ranting along these racial trajectories. For he would be the first one to stop me. And therein lies the enigma that Obama seems to present to many of us in Africa. Of course, Obama would say that we should not make light of the question of race in America. But he would be quicker, I believe, to outline the need for the unity of races, and that is not a bad thing. His whole campaign is based upon the theme of unity.

Reading the commentaries above made me realize that one of the few but crucial benefits of a life of intellectual cosmopolitanism has been the incredible opportunity to meet and become friends with distinguished scholars and writers from around the Pan-African world. I first met Pius at Penn State where we fast became close, personally and professionally, in an environment that was otherwise indifferent to African studies and things African. I can only try to reciprocate his generosity in his introduction to this symposium, the first of what will become regular symposia on this site. He is the one who inspired the idea, who asked me to provide my public lecture delivered on the occasion of being named the first Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Pius is simply one of the most gifted and energetic scholars that I have been privileged to know in recent years, whose critical love for Africa is as palpable as it is incisive.

The new world in the Americas has largely been formed by the collision of three great cultures - native American, European and African. The third African leg of this tripod has to date been like the proverbial iceberg, mostly hidden and subterranean. Cloaked in invisibility as Ralph Ellison noted, nevertheless the narrative and culture of the African in America has been the anvil on which the new civilisation was hammered out and largely defined.

The African arrived in humiliation, shackled to the hold of a ship, before disappearing under a series of shadow names - Negro, Coloured, Omni-American, and Black. Towards the end of the 20th century, two attempts (one cultural, the other political) would be made to publicly reassert the African, both would only partially succeed. Alex Haley's reimagination of the arrival of the African would end in law suits and a little disgrace, whilst Jesse Jackson would relaunch the African in America as part of a failed Rainbow nation.