The Humanities in Africa by Toyin Falola (review)

Toyin Falola’s The Humanities in Africa mainly provides an enlightened discussion of issues relevant to the humanities: the main reference is to the academy’s methodologies and epistemologies. The book consists of nine essays, “written at different times in the last five years” (preface, p. ix).

As Falola, a distinguished history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, expatiates, the essays cumulatively “reflect the role of the various disciplines, the activities of scholars, and the mission of the universities” (p. ix). In his opinion, the fundamental argument should be the diversity of the experiences of African scholars, manifested in the diversity of their epistemologies and methodologies.

Falola boldly asserts that “the teaching of history at both the elementary and high school levels is dead in Nigeria. And it has been dead for over twenty years” (p. ix). He explains that the death of history began with modifications of the curriculum that lumped history with social sciences, “basically killing it before students arrive at the college level” (p. ix). Because of this, Falola asserts, “the pool of graduates from which history departments recruit [graduate students] has shrunk” (p. ix).

In his acknowledgments, Falola is not at all pessimistic about the scholars with whom he collaborates. He therefore writes that he doubts if any scholar is “more privileged than I am in terms of access to talented scholars and public figures, who give me extensive comments on anything I write” (p. xiii). He names several such helping hands, whose advice he very much values.

The essays are made up of his discussion of encounters and otherness, touching on Africa and the meaning of blackness (chapter one); Steve Biko of South Africa, activism, and knowledge production (chapter two); the politics of development and globalization (chapter three); the humanities compared with humanism (chapter four); traditions in practice, with reference to health, life, and death (chapter five); how education is at a crossroads (chapter six); education and new paths to a new beginning (chapter seven); literary imaginations and nation building, with Nigeria since 1914 as an example (chapter eight); and a discussion of pluriversalism (chapter nine).

Most certainly, this book will benefit scholars of the humanities and social sciences and their students. It is highly recommended.