A Sense of Urban Africa

Mali and West Africa. Map design by Philip Schwartzberg

The Introduction presents theoretical perspectives on the concepts of “morality,” “ethics,” and “Afropolitanism.” In working towards an understanding of an “Afropolitan ethics,” this chapter situates the ethico-moral personhood of artists like Sidiki Diabaté within a locally rooted and globally routed urban African context.

KEY TERMS

• Afropolis: the lived, conceived, perceived, historically layered, and dynamically emergent social space of urban Africa
  
• Afropolitan: an urban African perspective on and mode of being in the world 
  
• ethics: the existential project of giving purposeful shape to social actions by making claims on and contributions to the human world
  
• moralities: the social positions and modes of being in the world from which ethical projects emerge

WHO's WHO

• Achille Mbembe: cultural theorist, postcolonial critic, and African historian; one of the first to embrace, employ, and define the term “Afropolitanism”
• Sidiki Diabaté: hip-hop producer and kora player; part of a renowned family of traditional griots (jeliw) and professional artists in Bamako, Mali
• Simone de Beauvoir: French existential philosopher and writer whose understanding of “ethics” situates individual agency within social action, emphasizing the ambiguous “projects” of human social life. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What is the relationship of place across various scales (local, national, continental, diasporic, etc.) to moral positions and ethical projects?  
   
2. What role does expressive culture (and music in particular) play in orienting oneself within a multiply moral world? How might music produce and reproduce modes of identification that are both coherent and dynamic?
   
3. What is “Afropolitanism?” Consider recent debates about the term, its meaning, and use value. To what extent does “Afropolitanism” productively elucidate contemporary African identities, social movements, and creative practices? Or, do the term’s difficulties outweigh its virtues?

FURTHER READING & DISCUSSION

• “An Afropolitan Muse” by Ryan T. Skinner:   https://www.academia.edu/11510670/An_Afropolitan_Muse
• “Afropolitanisme” (in French) by Achille Mbembe:  http://www.afrik.com/article12599.html
• “Afropolitan” by Aaron Bady:  http://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/afropolitan
• “Bye-Bye Barbar” by Taiye Selasi:  http://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/?p=76.
• “The Afropolitan Must Go” by Marta Tveit:  http://africasacountry.com/the-afropolitan-must-go/