Baba Jallow | La Salle University (original) (raw)
Papers by Baba Jallow
The American Historical Review, 2008
College Literature, 2012
MacPhee, Graham. 2011. Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh ... more MacPhee, Graham. 2011. Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 100.00hc.100.00 hc. 100.00hc.32.00 sc. xviii + 180pp.I remember meeting veteran radical intellectual and activist Stanley Aronowitz on the street during one of the massive anti-war marches that preceded the invasion of Iraq. Introduced by a friend as a colleague at the City University of New York, Aronowitz asked about my area of specialization. When I replied that I worked on postcolonial studies, Aronowitz barked back, "What's that? Aren't we in the middle of an imperial onslaught?" I mumbled something about how I hadn't chosen this disciplinary designation, before Aronowitz was diverted by a group of women sporting large missiles between their legs.My uncomfortable exchange raises a variety of issues germane to Graham MacPhee's recent Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Aside from sticky disciplinary questions, the appellation 'postcolonial' denotes a particular temporal trajectory that, as scholars such as Anne McClintock have noted, hardly characterizes most nations in the global South accurately, given the fresh waves of economic and military control to which such states have been subjected since winning independence. The falseness of this designation is equally true of a former imperial metropole such as Great Britain, which, although it has 'lost' almost all of its colonies, continues to play an important role in the global economy through the good offices of the City-based financial industry, and which, as a member of coalitions such as NATO, also continues to project military force around the globe. How then are we to theorize literary production in a nation such as Britain, which repeatedly seems to fall into the grip of imperial nostalgia, and yet whose embassies in countries like Iran and Afghanistan continue to be assaulted by angry demonstrations against imperialism? This is precisely the complex terrain that MacPhee's book surveys.Central to MacPhee's intervention is his reconciliation of two important, apparently contradictory scholarly analyses of postwar British literary production. In the case of Jed Esty, author of A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England (2003), Britain's withdrawal from empire following the Second World War brought with it a celebration of narrowly defined English national culture-the sort of thing celebrated by T.S. Eliot in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), when he discussed English national character as constituted by enthusiasm for everything from "Derby Day and Henley Regatta" to "the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, and Wensleydale cheese" (quoted in MacPhee 2011, 85). By contrast, John Marx's The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Empire (2005) argues that, as decolonization took place and the UK lost its dominant international position, British culture was integrated into a new global system centered on the economic and cultural hegemony of the United States. MacPhee's book finds a way to integrate these apparently paradoxical positions by arguing that Cold War discourse relied on both a "new doctrine of strategic defense" that depended on "a spatially discrete nation as the homeland in relation to which strategic resources or territories would be mapped," and an "abstract freedom" that "enjoys an unbounded and delocalized scope" (26). In other words, territorializing and deterritorializing logics overlapped with one another during the Cold War, leading to literary production that emphasized both national retrenchment and participation in US global hegemony.MacPhee supports this subtle analysis of the integration of Britain into what Peter Gowan calls the US-centered hub-and-spokes system of the Cold War era with astute readings of a variety of texts, from Graham Greene's The Quiet American to essays and speeches by Winston Churchill, George Orwell, and T. …
Leadership in Colonial Africa
The Ghana Catholic Church’s advocacy for social justice predated Vatican II thanks to her early e... more The Ghana Catholic Church’s advocacy for social justice predated Vatican II thanks to her early encounter with independence in 1957. Throughout 1958, the Church in Ghana engaged the government of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah in a robust dialogue on social justice. Through The Standard, her National Catholic weekly, the Church directed a steady stream of communication to the state on issues of social justice that approximate key lessons of Catholic Social Teaching on respect for human dignity and concern for truth and justice. The Ghana Church’s advocacy for justice was a sign of the times that reflected the mind of Pope John XXIII and what happened at the Second Vatican Council.
Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2011
Klare Scarborough, Ed, Border Crossings: Immigration in Contemporary Prints, pp. 115 - 118. Philadelphia, PA: La Salle University Art Museum, 2016
As I watched Yahya Jammeh get off of Gambian soil and step into the plane that carried him into e... more As I watched Yahya Jammeh get off of Gambian soil and step into the plane that carried him into exile, I felt heaviness in my chest and tears pouring uncontrollably down my face.
Things fall apart on two levels in Chinua Achebe's classic novel of the same name. As the narrati... more Things fall apart on two levels in Chinua Achebe's classic novel of the same name. As the narrative unfolds, things progressively fall apart for Okonkwo, whose fatal flaw is that he is afraid of being thought weak like his father Unoka; and things progressively fall apart for the Igbo as they are confronted and befuddled by their encounter first with European missionaries and then by the emergent colonial state. The two narratives are closely intertwined, but they are clearly distinct. Through Okonkwo's tragic story, Achebe tells the story of what Igbo society was like at the moment of the colonial encounter and how the intrusion of a foreign religious and political culture hastened a process of social change that was already underway, but that took unexpectedly drastic turns.
Regular cartoons reflect a degree of public anger or a spirit of activism against any number of p... more Regular cartoons reflect a degree of public anger or a spirit of activism against any number of perceived social ills. They are a form of angry laughter indulged at the expense of the perceived perpetrators of these "social ills." They are often on the side of the underdog and could be potentially subversive of authority, secular, religious or otherwise. They feed on the art of gross exaggeration and deliver their punches by a gross magnification of the realities they comment upon. Often, taken together over a period of time, cartoons evolve into sophisticated narratives on historical events and representations of historical personalities. Ghana's first prime minister and president
How have historians explained the interactions between Europeans and Africans during the colonial... more How have historians explained the interactions between Europeans and Africans during the colonial period? Did European colonialists' initial success in conquering African territories and imposing their rule over African societies automatically translate into an ability to impose their will or have their way with the colonized peoples? This paper argues that while European colonialism was often aided and abetted by African collaborators, it was nonetheless faced with constant resistance and contestation by African peoples and traditions. However, relationships between Europeans and Africans during the colonial period cannot satisfactorily be explained by the binary categories of collaboration and resistance. The nature of the African universe born of the encounter and interpenetration between Europeans and Africansbetween their ideological, sociocultural, political, and economic belief systems and practicesis better conceptualized through "the vernacular of colonial rule." 1 European colonizers came to Africa with preconceived notions, age-old presumptions, and utterly inaccurate knowledge about the continent and its peoples upon which they attempted to build their hegemony. What Europeans saw as a dark, backward, "uncivilized", prehistoric continent was in fact a land of diverse, vibrant peoples and cultures engaged in complicated, historically situated, and dynamic socio-economic and political processes of evolution and change. Colonial regimes tried to impose themselves on societies that were already "engaged in struggles over power and the terms on which it was exercised." 2 They tried to construct alien structures of governance and control over complex and constantly shifting social realities. European "efforts to build colonialism on indigenous authority and tradition confronted processes of change and conflict" that led to significant compromises and the vernacularization of some colonial structures, traditions and processes in the interest of order and manageability. Modes of collaboration with, and resistance to colonial rule were both varied and ubiquitous in African societies. Europeans' preconceived notions of the docile and feminized colonial Other were soon displaced by the reality of strong challenges to their intelligence and authority, while their assumptions of cultural superiority were debunked by the specter of ethnic, cultural, and religious traditions inserting themselves into dominant colonial ideologies and discourses. Open and violent revolts against colonial rule occurred alongside subtle forms of resistance deployed behind façades of loyalty, compliance, and collaboration. Where Africans felt too weak to openly resist superior colonial firepower and/or that of their local collaborators, they either revolted with their feet through migration and desertion, incited defiance within the community, engaged in work stoppages and slowdowns, vandalized colonial property, feigned compliance, or composed satirical songs, poems, and proverbs as a way of expressing their discontent.
The Ghana Catholic Church'
The American Historical Review, 2008
College Literature, 2012
MacPhee, Graham. 2011. Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh ... more MacPhee, Graham. 2011. Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 100.00hc.100.00 hc. 100.00hc.32.00 sc. xviii + 180pp.I remember meeting veteran radical intellectual and activist Stanley Aronowitz on the street during one of the massive anti-war marches that preceded the invasion of Iraq. Introduced by a friend as a colleague at the City University of New York, Aronowitz asked about my area of specialization. When I replied that I worked on postcolonial studies, Aronowitz barked back, "What's that? Aren't we in the middle of an imperial onslaught?" I mumbled something about how I hadn't chosen this disciplinary designation, before Aronowitz was diverted by a group of women sporting large missiles between their legs.My uncomfortable exchange raises a variety of issues germane to Graham MacPhee's recent Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Aside from sticky disciplinary questions, the appellation 'postcolonial' denotes a particular temporal trajectory that, as scholars such as Anne McClintock have noted, hardly characterizes most nations in the global South accurately, given the fresh waves of economic and military control to which such states have been subjected since winning independence. The falseness of this designation is equally true of a former imperial metropole such as Great Britain, which, although it has 'lost' almost all of its colonies, continues to play an important role in the global economy through the good offices of the City-based financial industry, and which, as a member of coalitions such as NATO, also continues to project military force around the globe. How then are we to theorize literary production in a nation such as Britain, which repeatedly seems to fall into the grip of imperial nostalgia, and yet whose embassies in countries like Iran and Afghanistan continue to be assaulted by angry demonstrations against imperialism? This is precisely the complex terrain that MacPhee's book surveys.Central to MacPhee's intervention is his reconciliation of two important, apparently contradictory scholarly analyses of postwar British literary production. In the case of Jed Esty, author of A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England (2003), Britain's withdrawal from empire following the Second World War brought with it a celebration of narrowly defined English national culture-the sort of thing celebrated by T.S. Eliot in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), when he discussed English national character as constituted by enthusiasm for everything from "Derby Day and Henley Regatta" to "the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, and Wensleydale cheese" (quoted in MacPhee 2011, 85). By contrast, John Marx's The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Empire (2005) argues that, as decolonization took place and the UK lost its dominant international position, British culture was integrated into a new global system centered on the economic and cultural hegemony of the United States. MacPhee's book finds a way to integrate these apparently paradoxical positions by arguing that Cold War discourse relied on both a "new doctrine of strategic defense" that depended on "a spatially discrete nation as the homeland in relation to which strategic resources or territories would be mapped," and an "abstract freedom" that "enjoys an unbounded and delocalized scope" (26). In other words, territorializing and deterritorializing logics overlapped with one another during the Cold War, leading to literary production that emphasized both national retrenchment and participation in US global hegemony.MacPhee supports this subtle analysis of the integration of Britain into what Peter Gowan calls the US-centered hub-and-spokes system of the Cold War era with astute readings of a variety of texts, from Graham Greene's The Quiet American to essays and speeches by Winston Churchill, George Orwell, and T. …
Leadership in Colonial Africa
The Ghana Catholic Church’s advocacy for social justice predated Vatican II thanks to her early e... more The Ghana Catholic Church’s advocacy for social justice predated Vatican II thanks to her early encounter with independence in 1957. Throughout 1958, the Church in Ghana engaged the government of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah in a robust dialogue on social justice. Through The Standard, her National Catholic weekly, the Church directed a steady stream of communication to the state on issues of social justice that approximate key lessons of Catholic Social Teaching on respect for human dignity and concern for truth and justice. The Ghana Church’s advocacy for justice was a sign of the times that reflected the mind of Pope John XXIII and what happened at the Second Vatican Council.
Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2011
Klare Scarborough, Ed, Border Crossings: Immigration in Contemporary Prints, pp. 115 - 118. Philadelphia, PA: La Salle University Art Museum, 2016
As I watched Yahya Jammeh get off of Gambian soil and step into the plane that carried him into e... more As I watched Yahya Jammeh get off of Gambian soil and step into the plane that carried him into exile, I felt heaviness in my chest and tears pouring uncontrollably down my face.
Things fall apart on two levels in Chinua Achebe's classic novel of the same name. As the narrati... more Things fall apart on two levels in Chinua Achebe's classic novel of the same name. As the narrative unfolds, things progressively fall apart for Okonkwo, whose fatal flaw is that he is afraid of being thought weak like his father Unoka; and things progressively fall apart for the Igbo as they are confronted and befuddled by their encounter first with European missionaries and then by the emergent colonial state. The two narratives are closely intertwined, but they are clearly distinct. Through Okonkwo's tragic story, Achebe tells the story of what Igbo society was like at the moment of the colonial encounter and how the intrusion of a foreign religious and political culture hastened a process of social change that was already underway, but that took unexpectedly drastic turns.
Regular cartoons reflect a degree of public anger or a spirit of activism against any number of p... more Regular cartoons reflect a degree of public anger or a spirit of activism against any number of perceived social ills. They are a form of angry laughter indulged at the expense of the perceived perpetrators of these "social ills." They are often on the side of the underdog and could be potentially subversive of authority, secular, religious or otherwise. They feed on the art of gross exaggeration and deliver their punches by a gross magnification of the realities they comment upon. Often, taken together over a period of time, cartoons evolve into sophisticated narratives on historical events and representations of historical personalities. Ghana's first prime minister and president
How have historians explained the interactions between Europeans and Africans during the colonial... more How have historians explained the interactions between Europeans and Africans during the colonial period? Did European colonialists' initial success in conquering African territories and imposing their rule over African societies automatically translate into an ability to impose their will or have their way with the colonized peoples? This paper argues that while European colonialism was often aided and abetted by African collaborators, it was nonetheless faced with constant resistance and contestation by African peoples and traditions. However, relationships between Europeans and Africans during the colonial period cannot satisfactorily be explained by the binary categories of collaboration and resistance. The nature of the African universe born of the encounter and interpenetration between Europeans and Africansbetween their ideological, sociocultural, political, and economic belief systems and practicesis better conceptualized through "the vernacular of colonial rule." 1 European colonizers came to Africa with preconceived notions, age-old presumptions, and utterly inaccurate knowledge about the continent and its peoples upon which they attempted to build their hegemony. What Europeans saw as a dark, backward, "uncivilized", prehistoric continent was in fact a land of diverse, vibrant peoples and cultures engaged in complicated, historically situated, and dynamic socio-economic and political processes of evolution and change. Colonial regimes tried to impose themselves on societies that were already "engaged in struggles over power and the terms on which it was exercised." 2 They tried to construct alien structures of governance and control over complex and constantly shifting social realities. European "efforts to build colonialism on indigenous authority and tradition confronted processes of change and conflict" that led to significant compromises and the vernacularization of some colonial structures, traditions and processes in the interest of order and manageability. Modes of collaboration with, and resistance to colonial rule were both varied and ubiquitous in African societies. Europeans' preconceived notions of the docile and feminized colonial Other were soon displaced by the reality of strong challenges to their intelligence and authority, while their assumptions of cultural superiority were debunked by the specter of ethnic, cultural, and religious traditions inserting themselves into dominant colonial ideologies and discourses. Open and violent revolts against colonial rule occurred alongside subtle forms of resistance deployed behind façades of loyalty, compliance, and collaboration. Where Africans felt too weak to openly resist superior colonial firepower and/or that of their local collaborators, they either revolted with their feet through migration and desertion, incited defiance within the community, engaged in work stoppages and slowdowns, vandalized colonial property, feigned compliance, or composed satirical songs, poems, and proverbs as a way of expressing their discontent.
The Ghana Catholic Church'
Most world-historical studies and world-systems analyses discuss the global periphery from the ou... more Most world-historical studies and world-systems analyses discuss the global periphery from the outsidein. Wright's unique perspective in this book is that he studies world-historical processes from the insideout. Rather than merely narrate how small societies were affected by the global capitalist political economy and other globalization processes, Wright gives expressive agency to the ordinary people of Niumi and shows us a view of world-historical processes from the perspectives of the affected people themselves.
For the uninitiated viewer, Sembene Ousmane's Xala is a simple and straightforward story of a ric... more For the uninitiated viewer, Sembene Ousmane's Xala is a simple and straightforward story of a rich man who, having married a young third wife, finds that he is unable to consummate the marriage because someone has cast an evil spell on him and rendered him impotent. The man, El Hadj Abdou Kader Beye, spends the rest of the movie searching for a cure and in the process, getting bankrupt. He is unable to pay a marabout who cures him momentarily, gets the xala back, his second and third wives leave him, and he ends up having to submit to being spat upon by a crowd of beggars as a punishment for past crimes and a precondition to get his manhood back.
In "Dancing Women and Colonial Men", Misty Bastian argues that the Ibgo women's dance of 1925 was... more In "Dancing Women and Colonial Men", Misty Bastian argues that the Ibgo women's dance of 1925 was in fact a protest over the disruption of gendered space that colonial rule, mission Christianity, and the economics of empire brought to Igboland in the early twentieth century.
