Abstract:
The tenn "crisis" is much beloved in African studies, smearing all it
touches, including its object of study, Afiica, and its own epistemological
standing and future. And so we hear that African studies, like aU area
studies programs in the United States, are in a terminal state of crisis. The
crisis is seen as something new, spawned by the ideological ramifications
of
the end of the Cold War and the intellectual ravages of globalization.
A powerful narrative no doubt, but one that falsifies and simplifies the past
as much as it forecloses the unpredictable possibilities of the future. Is
there, indeed, a crisis for Afiican studies and other area studies programs
in the United States? Or is it a stonn in a teacup, as Michael Watts1
believes; a peculiarly American debate of no priority for Africans, as
Michael Chegel contends; one inspired, according to Zeleza, by America's
"channel-surting intellectualism in which the temptation to reinvent
newness is always great?"• Will we, a decade from now, as Julius
Nyang'oro re-assures us. "realize that the current debate was not about
the viability of area studies as such, but rather a nervousness brought
about by the fear of shrinking resources in the academy generally?"' But
if
in
fact there is a crisis, whose crisis is it and what is its trajectory?
