Hassan Yosimbom: Researching decoloniality and Africanising postcolonial research in Africa. Opportunities and challenges

HUMA Doctoral Seminar Series

Speaker: Hassan Yosimbom (University of the Cape Town, South Africa)

In this presentation, I argue that even though the trends, tempos and textures of responses and resistances to Eurocentric knowledges differ from country to country, there seems to be a continental consensus that dismantling Eurocentrism necessitates both researching decoloniality and Africanising postcolonial research by excavating the struggles over the who, what, when, where, and whys of African knowledges/Africanness. In response to the diversity of both resilient colonialism and responses to it, my argument for a propagation and practice of diverse decoloniality among African thinkers is framed by drawing on the Ezeulu and Nwaka argument on what constitutes proper resistance to the white man’s encroachment on Igboland in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God. I further argue that an Africanisation of postcolonial research that seeks to liberate African knowledges must begin by understanding the variety, development and intersections of Africa’s multiple libraries; it must go beyond Afrocentric injunctions of proclaiming Africa’s eternal difference and recognise the enduring and complex conversations of cultures and ideas within Africa itself and between the continent’s societies and civilisations and those of other continents. My presentation garners its relevance from the decolonial argument that a proper understanding of the world exceeds the European understanding of the world. 

About the speaker: Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom holds a BA in English and Linguistics, an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Buea, Cameroon, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education and a PhD in African Literature from the University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon. He has previously held postdoctoral positions at the Centre for Urban Management Studies (CUMS), University of Ghana, Legon (2019) and the Centre for African Studies (CAS), University of Cape Town (2021). He is currently an African Intellectual Biographies Fellow at HUMA – the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town.