18 Round Table: Decolonising African Media Studies

Chair: Christine Vogt-William (Round Table moderation)

The relatively new field of Media Studies is to be understood as a changing engagement with media (in plural) that we approach in terms of ‘mediality’, as ‘mediations’, ‘intermediaries’ to lived experiences – both in terms of praxis and scholarly aspiration – rather than as a pre-determined discipline of a monolithic ‘the media’ (Mitchell and Hansen, 2010). However, not enough media or communications theory that speaks to the lived realities of Africa and its diasporas has been developed (Mano and Milton, 2021). Indeed, as Wunpini Mohammed notes, African media scholars find themselves erased from the “family photo” - they do not recognise themselves in mainstream media studies discourses and are faced with numerous structural and institutional barriers to academic progress (2021). Thus, the current conscious definition of a field of African Media Studies (AMS) is highly salient to the conversation.

Historically, a narrative of “naturally superior” Western knowledge systems has upheld the patriarchal white, male, heteronormative centre (Mano and Milton, 2021). Decolonizing media studies occurs against the background of broader transdisciplinary waves and discourses with interconnected aims such as Pan-Africanism, the Civil Rights Movement and Black studies, African and Black Feminist studies as well as postcolonial studies. At the heart of these seismic shifts is the task of self-reflective theorising from the margins to draw the centre outwards, unsettle it into a multiplicity of centres that better reflect the lived realities of the formally colonized and enslaved, while actively accessing and deploying their knowledge archives. Decolonizing scholarship must involve more than theorising about the margins (Mohammed, 2021). Specifically, decolonizing AMS needs to revisit, rethink, re-envision and initiate new academic practice pertinent to the following parameters:

the scholarly canon (who are considered the ‘expert’ voices to reference; whose work is published and cited);  methodologies (whose epistemology is mobilised to set up research agendas, whose work is being cited);  content (which phenomena and theorisations are considered research-worthy);  form (whose standards of academic excellence and expression are favoured); and reach (who has access to academic resources and career growth; who benefits from the knowledge produced; who is mentoring whom)

In thinking about mediality as “the general presupposition or condition under which cultural, economic and social production is able to take shape at all” (see conference description), one pertinent question addressed by this Round Table is: What knowledge might arise from Afro- Feminist intersectional, critical diversity and decolonial interrogations of Canadian media philosopher Marshal McLuhan’s concept of ‘media as the extensions of man’ (1964/2003)? Thus, the Round Table explores the potential contributions of decolonising AMS to reconfiguring African Studies as a whole, when indigenous and other marginalised knowledge systems are given their due as forms of media knowledge and meaning-making. It also entails a will to reflect on relationalities, as in the points of difference within lived ‘Blackness’ (see Mohammed on African experiences with both whiteness and Black African American lived realities, 2021). Building on the idea that Black bodies have functioned, and continue to function as extensions of whiteness, the panel will consider how those within and outside academic contexts have mediated Blackness and the materiality of Black Bodies and cultures (see also Towns, 2022 and Hooks, 1992).

Each participant will present a 5-7 minute statement which will be open to discussion, using the following questions as guides to their thought impulses: How have these medialities shaped academic and non-academic knowledge production and where are the opportunities and ruptures, specifically within AMS? What might such new considerations do for decolonial endeavours in the field? How can African knowledge systems like Afrokology meaningfully engage with other oppositional theorisations like Black media philosophy and global epistemologies? What inroads have African feminist and intersectional scholarship made in transforming the field and what further gains can they envisage?

In doing so, the conversation foregrounds the need for a decolonial refocusing on media as form and technology as well as the media’s impact, where content (as representation) has tended to be the mainstay of oppositional media studies analyses (see Towns, 2022).

Referenceshooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation, 1992.Mano, Winston and Viola c. Milton. Decoloniality and the push for African media and communication studies: An introduction. In Mano, Winston and Viola c. Milton, eds. Routledge Handbook of African Media and Communication Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2021.McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Critical ed. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003 [1964].Mitchell, W.J.T. and Mark B.N. Hansen. “Introduction.” Critical Terms for Media Studies. W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, eds. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2010.Mohammed, Wunpini Fatimata. Decolonizing African Media Studies. Howard Journal of Communications, 2021.Ndlela, Martin Nkosi. “African Media Research in the Era of Globalization.” Journal of African Media Studies 1, no. 1, 2009: 55-68.Olawuyi, Ebenezer A. “Setting the Agenda for Decolonizing African Media Systems.” In Nicholas M. Creary, ed. African Intellectuals and Decolonization. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012. 112-116.Towns, Armond R. On Black Media Philosophy. University of California Press, 2022.

Round Table Participants:• Dr. Winston Mano: Westminster School of Media and Communication, UK • Dr. Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed: College of Journalism & Mass Communication, Entertainment & Media Studies, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA• Dr. Sharon Omotoso, Senior Researcher Feminist Philosopher, Media Ethics, Gender Studies and Political Communication in Africa, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Cluster Fellow) (online)• Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, JRG Leader (“African Knowledges and the History Publication since the 1970s”), Africa Multiple Cluster, UBT• Prof. Henriette Gunkel: professor for the transformation of audiovisual media, University of Bochum, Germany (Cluster Fellow)• Prof. Christine Hanke: Chair of Media Studies, AMC, UBT• Dr. des. Linda Besigiroha (PostDoc in African Media Studies - also member of the Cluster GDO crew)