Historical Writing Summary: Africa Before Western Hegemony
SSR 7204: Africa Before Western Hegemony
Response Paper: Week One
Samuel Emaha Tsegai
The different trajectory African historiography has followed is an illuminating example of how historical writing cannot be divorced from power-relations and political developments. The positivist notion of history as dispassionate and objective recounting of the past as is does not really stand to the fact of history writing shaped by political vicissitudes and the imperatives of power. Despite the claim to scientific objectivity, history-writing is not an innocuous endeavor. African historiography bears this fact clearly. Research method, theoretical framework, sources selection and interpretative modalities are not arrived unmediated by ideological orientation, …show more content…
The best source that we have and that have been employed in critiquing the Eurocentric view that it is not plausible to speak of African history before European colonialism is the Arabic sources. Our knowledge of medieval complex West African states is entirely based on these sources. However, the Arabic sources also suffers from some problems. They depended on contemporary ethnographic data. This dependence on ethnographic material collapses the present and the past and fails to show the historical dynamism over the temporal continuum. Since the Arabic writings obtained their information by chance or through hearsay they were haphazard and presented a static picture of society, without any attempt to map out patterns and hazard …show more content…
This new trend was predominantly Marxist. The Marxist school focused on colonial rather that precolonial history. This trend accented on economic and social aspects of African history. Despite its success in bring new methodological and theoretical framework to the study of African history, the Marxist school had some limitations. First, while it illuminates widespread patterns, it obscured specific and concrete historical situations and failed to account for the wide range of varieties in African social and economic formations. Second, its sweeping generalization led it to ignore or even deny the relevance of African cultural makeup in the formation of their class and historical
Response Paper: Week One
Samuel Emaha Tsegai
The different trajectory African historiography has followed is an illuminating example of how historical writing cannot be divorced from power-relations and political developments. The positivist notion of history as dispassionate and objective recounting of the past as is does not really stand to the fact of history writing shaped by political vicissitudes and the imperatives of power. Despite the claim to scientific objectivity, history-writing is not an innocuous endeavor. African historiography bears this fact clearly. Research method, theoretical framework, sources selection and interpretative modalities are not arrived unmediated by ideological orientation, …show more content…
The best source that we have and that have been employed in critiquing the Eurocentric view that it is not plausible to speak of African history before European colonialism is the Arabic sources. Our knowledge of medieval complex West African states is entirely based on these sources. However, the Arabic sources also suffers from some problems. They depended on contemporary ethnographic data. This dependence on ethnographic material collapses the present and the past and fails to show the historical dynamism over the temporal continuum. Since the Arabic writings obtained their information by chance or through hearsay they were haphazard and presented a static picture of society, without any attempt to map out patterns and hazard …show more content…
This new trend was predominantly Marxist. The Marxist school focused on colonial rather that precolonial history. This trend accented on economic and social aspects of African history. Despite its success in bring new methodological and theoretical framework to the study of African history, the Marxist school had some limitations. First, while it illuminates widespread patterns, it obscured specific and concrete historical situations and failed to account for the wide range of varieties in African social and economic formations. Second, its sweeping generalization led it to ignore or even deny the relevance of African cultural makeup in the formation of their class and historical