An Africanist's Query



Isolmo's Barbershop. Photograph by the author

The Conclusion locates the book’s study of Bamako’s musical art world within a broader set of debates and discussions about continental and diasporic identities and social movements in African Studies. It positions the concept of “Afropolitanism” in critical relation to the universalism and essentialism of narrowly defined cosmopolitan and African worldviews to embraces a dynamic understanding of the Afropolitan, as rooted in multiple moralities as it is routed through ambiguous ethics. In this way, the Conclusion encourages the comparative study of Afropolitan music cultures and the ethics they resound.

KEY TERMS

• Afropositivism: the sustained, dialogic, ethically interested, and radically empirical engagement with African societies, privileging the voices, experiences, and perspectives of Africans themselves
  
• Afropolitanism: the cultural and conceptual imperative to live and think the world from the vantage of an increasingly urban, demographically young, internally diverse, widely dispersed, highly productive, intensely creative, and always already modern Africa. 
  

WHO'S WHO

• Salah Hassan: distinguished Africanist and art historian who gave the Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola Lecture at the 2013 annual meeting of the African Studies Assocation, titled “Rethinking Cosmopolitanism: Is Afropolitanism the Answer?”
  

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. How does the concept of “Afropolitanism” proposed in the book and elaborated in the conclusion critically relate to popular understandings of “cosmopolitanism” and ideas of “Africa?” 
   
2. What are the possibilities and constraints of thinking about and with contemporary African subjects and social movements as “Afropolitan?”
   
3. How does Afropolitanism sound? What are the music styles, vocal practices, percussive gestures, soundscapes, and cacophonies that give resonant substance to the Afropolitan signifier?
   

FURTHER READING & DISCUSSION

• “Afropolitanism and Identity Politics” by MsAfropolitan: http://www.msafropolitan.com/2015/04/afropolitanism-identity-politics.html 
  
• “Afropolitanism: Global Citizenship with African Routes” by Alpha Abebe:       http://blog.qeh.ox.ac.uk/?p=910
  
• Africa is a Country’s review of Afripedia, “a visual guide to contemporary urban culture on the continent”: http://africasacountry.com/we-review-afripedia-a-visual-guide-to-contemporary-urban-culture-on-the-continent/