Research in African Literatures 

About: Research in African Literatures is an academic journal published by Indiana University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Narrative & Poetry. It has an ISSN identifier of 0034-5210. Over the lifetime, 2039 publications have been published receiving 15087 citations. The journal is also known as: Research in African Literature.

The Re-invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond

Abstract: Edward W. Said and V. Y. Mudimbe are both whistleblowers against ideolo- gies of Otherness, which Mudimbe calls "alterity" and Said has made famous as "Orientalism." Said traces "the invention of the Orient" back to the West- ern quest for "the Other" while Mudimbe traces "the invention of Africa" back to similar Western explorations. In reality Africa has been re-invented in different stages. The fi rst stage saw North Africa as part of the classical Mediterranean world; the second concerned Africa's interaction with Semitic peoples; the third was stimulated by the birth of Islam and its expansion both north and south of the Sahara; the fourth came with the impact of European capitalist penetration and subsequent colonization; and the fi nal phase was its globalization. In the fi nal analysis, the essay reaffirms that Edward W. Said and V. Y. Mudimbe are bulwarks against the exotic "Orientalization of Africa." They have sought to contain the forces of "Otherization" in North- South relations.

Scientific dependence in Africa today

Abstract: In the African universities where I was trained, there was a scientific teaching quite valid in the subject matters I had to learn, but it taught dependence rather than real science. I mean that, for three years I was told how biology had developed through experiments that necessitated the use of facilities unavailable on the spot. Therefore in order to do biology, students had to go abroad. Such and such scientific results were pubiished in such and such journals, but these journals were European or American, and one had to read them abroad. In short, during three years, thanks to teachers who were good ones and of whom up to sixty percent were African, I received good teaching and learned, at the same time? but for me, this was, of course, not as serious as it was for my fellow students who did not return to France?I learned that, in the end, all I could do as a biologist in the future would have to be done under the control of American centers, American periodicals, with European facilities, and that all I could ever do at the University of Dakar was to duplicate European experiments, or to conduct minor experiments that would have to be submitted, for publication, to European journals. All this apparently