Crossroads and the Representation of Africa in Globalized Cultural Studies

Illustrative of this is the fact that, unlike other national associations of cultural studies (e.g. the Canadian Association for Cultural Studies, the Australian Association for Cultural Studies), the US association named itself Cultural Studies Association (the nation supposedly assumed, with no need to name it nor to consciously self-identify in distinction from other national associations).

It is tempting to dismiss these assertions as rather unlikely but one need only peruse the call for papers for the 13th Crossroads (Lisbon, 2020), for quite recent evidence of both the attempted erasure of the Finnish origins of Crossroads and its replacement with and endorsement of the US/British hegemony: “The Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference has played an important role in fostering the global exchange of Cultural Studies scholarship. It has become a major international conference where scholars from all five continents gather regularly to share their research, critical views, and scholarly insights. Organized by ACS, the Crossroads conference is held every other year in different parts of the world. Previous conferences have taken place in Birmingham (UK), Urbana-Champaign (USA), Istanbul (Turkey), Kingston (Jamaica), Hong Kong (China), Paris (France), Tampere (Finland), Sydney (Australia) and Shanghai (China).” This is a rather odd historicizing of both the ACS and Crossroads. The actual sequence of Crossroads conferences (Tampere, Tampere, Birmingham, Tampere, Urbana, etc.) has been erased and replaced with a list that rearranges the order of things to read Birmingham, Urbana-Champaign, Istanbul…with Tampere buried seventh on a list of nine international locations, a re-ordering that clearly reflects and underscores the British and US hegemony and buries the conference’s Finnish roots. Furthermore, the relationship between the Association for Cultural Studies and the Crossroads in Cultural Studies has been reversed such that the fact that the ACS emerged from discussions at 2000 Crossroads and was officially launched at the 2002 Crossroads has been erased in favour of a narrative that suggests that the ACS was formed first and the conference arose out of the association.”

Examples of sessions I have organized include a double session on Contemporary Africans and the Question of Identity (2000 Crossroads); co-organized session with Keyan Tomaselli on African Cultural Studies in a Global World (2004 Crossroads); Spotlight session on African Cultural Studies and/in Global Cultural Studies: Local, Diasporic, (Outer)Continental (2014 Crossroads); Spotlight session on The Utility of African Cultural Studies: National and Global Formation and Intervention (2018 Crossroads).