Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities

by Kwesi Yankah

Overview

Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities by Kwesi Yankah is the first title in the newly established African Humanities Association (AHA) publication series. By integrating his own biography into a critique of the global politics of knowledge production, Yankah, through a collection of essays, interrogates critical issues confronting the Humanities that spawn intellectual hegemonies and muffle African voices. Using the example of Ghana, he brings under scrutiny, amongst others, endemic issues of academic freedom, gender inequities, the unequal global academic order, and linguistic imperialism in language policies in governance. In the face of these challenges, the author deftly navigates the complex terrain of indigenous knowledge and language in the context of democratic politics, demonstrating that agency can be liberatory when emphasising indigenous knowledge, especially expressed through the idiom of local languages and symbols, including Ananse, the protean spider, folk hero in Ghana and most parts of the pan-African world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781920033828
Publisher:	NISC (Pty) Ltd
Publication date:	10/28/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	340
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Kwesi Yankah is the author of two award winning books: Speaking for the Chief, which won the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences Gold Book award and The Proverb in the Context of Akan Rhetoric, winner of the Ghana Book Award. The latter was based on his award-winning doctoral dissertation at Indiana University, USA, 1985. He also co-edited African Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Yankah has held fellowships at several universities including, Stanford, Northwestern, Michigan, Berkley, Pennsylvania and Birmingham. He was from 2009 to 2017 an Associate Director of the African Humanities Program, established by the American Council of Learned Societies. Between 2017 and 2021 he was Ghana's Minister of State in Charge of Tertiary Education. Yankah is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Folklore Society.

Table of Contents

Prologue 

SECTION 1: DEFINING MOMENTS 

Chapter 1: Rising with the African Humanities 

Chapter 2: Science speaks, the Humanities answer 

Chapter 3: Arts and the African identity 

SECTION 2: TOWARDS ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE 

Chapter 4: The quest for a new world academic order 

Chapter 5: The drumbeat of academic freedom 

Chapter 6: Towards gender parity in higher education 

SECTION 3: LANGUAGE IN GOVERNANCE 

Chapter 7: Language and the dilemma in public policy 

Chapter 8: Kwame Nkrumah's Verandah Boys 

Chapter 9: Language, education, and electoral choices 

SECTION 4: RHETORIC AND SOCIAL POWER 

Chapter 10: Proverbs, presidents and the politics of expediency 

Chapter 11: The making and breaking of Kwame Nkrumah 

Chapter 12: Tweaa: Meaning and the social power of little words 

Chapter 13: The folktale as a political transcript 

SECTION 5: OUTSTANDING HUMANISTS 

Chapter 14: J. H. Kwabena Nketia: 1921-2019 

Chapter 15: Efua Sutherland: 1924-1996 

Chapter 16: Agya Koo Nimo 

Epilogue 

Index