Title Epistemologies of African conflicts : violence, evolutionism, and the war in Sierra Leone / Zubairu Wai

Published New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Click on the following:
Springer eBooks
Springer Political & International Studies eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource Contents Sierra Leone, Conflict and the Will to Truth -- Evolutionism and the Africanist Project -- The Idea of Sierra Leone -- Sierra Leone: A Decade of War -- The Conflict of Interpretations -- Sierra Leone Inflections and Amplifications -- Coda: Africanism, Conflicts and the Will to Truth Introduction : Sierra Leone, conflict and the will to truth -- Evolutionism and the Africanist project -- The idea of Sierra Leone -- Sierra Leone : a decade of war -- The conflict of interpretations -- Sierra Leone inflections and amplifications -- Coda : Africanism, conflicts and the will to truth Summary This book offers a bold, ground-breaking epistemological critique of the dominant discourses on contemporary African conflicts. Based on a detailed and painstaking examination of the dominant ways in which the Sierra Leone civil war has been interpreted, theorized, and understood, author Zubairu Wai considers how Africa is constructed as a site of knowledge and the power political implications that this construction has for the continent and its people. Wai situates the current discourses on contemporary African conflicts within the centuries-long Eurocentric conceptions of Africa conceived of and conveyed through various systems of knowledge, socio-historical and political processes, and practices of representation. He also investigates the historical linkages between Africanism and a Western will to power that since the fifteenth century has also perfectly espoused and necessitated an Africanist will to truth. Identifying evolutionism as a major condition of Africanist knowledge linked to systems of power, this book ultimately argues that the scripts of these conflicts are always already written long before the first shots are fired. Thus, the predicament of Africanist discourses emanates not only from the conceptual limitations of the "colonial library" and evolutionist epistemology, but also these discourses' devotion to the power and knowledge regimes of the Western will to power that makes them possible Notes Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--York University, Toronto, 2010, originally presented under the title: Interpretations of African conflicts : power, knowledge and the discourse of violence on the Sierra Leone civil wars Bibliography Includes bibliographical references Notes English Print version record Subject Civil war -- Africa -- Historiography Violence -- Africa -- Historiography Research -- Political aspects -- Africa Africanists -- Attitudes -- Political aspects Eurocentrism. Political science & theory -- Africa. Armed conflict -- Africa. HISTORY -- Historiography. Politics and Government. Eurocentrism Historiography Research -- Political aspects Violence -- Historiography SUBJECT Sierra Leone -- History -- Civil War, 1991-2002 -- Historiography Africa -- Historiography Subject Africa Sierra Leone Genre/Form History Form Electronic book Author Wai, Zubairu, 1973- Interpretations of African conflicts ISBN 9781137280800 1137280808 1283947595 9781283947596 9781349447879 1349447870

  Permalink