Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b6zl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-25T18:43:24.223Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Africa-Diaspora Orbit: Anani Dzidzienyo’s Contributions to African/Black Studies and Black Liberation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2022

Bright Gyamfi Open the ORCID record for Bright Gyamfi [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing on interviews and archival and published materials, Gyamfi reinterprets Anani Dzidzienyo’s significance as a Black Studies scholar and activist. Dzidzienyo was a pioneer in academic African diaspora studies who institutionalized the inclusion of Africa and Brazil. For fifty years, Dzidzienyo created Black Studies and Afro-Latin American programs, designed Afro-Brazilian courses that expanded Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, and supported freedom struggles in Africa and Brazil. In so doing, he built a transnational network of scholar-activists and institutions. Yet, for all this, scholars have mostly neglected Dzidzienyo’s work and wide influence on multiple fields of study and liberation movements.

Résumé

Résumé

S’appuyant sur des interviews et des documents d’archives et publiés, Gyamfi réinterprète l’importance d’Anani Dzidzienyo en tant que chercheur et activiste des Black Studies. Dzidzienyo a été un pionnier des études universitaires de la diaspora africaine qui a institutionnalisé l’inclusion de l’Afrique et du Brésil. Pendant cinquante ans, Dzidzienyo a créé des programmes d’études noires et afro-latino-américaines, conçu des cours afro-brésiliens qui ont élargi les études portugaises et brésiliennes et soutenu les luttes pour la liberté en Afrique et au Brésil. Ce faisant, il a construit un réseau transnational d’universitaires-activistes et d’institutions. Pourtant, malgré tout cela, les chercheurs ont, en grande majorité, négligé le travail de Dzidzienyo et sa large influence sur de multiples domaines d’étude et mouvements de libération.

Resumo

Resumo

Com base em entrevistas, em materiais de arquivo e em publicações, Gyamfi reinterpreta a importância de Anani Dzidzienyo como académico dos Estudos Negros e como ativista. Dzidzienyo foi uma figura pioneira nos estudos académicos sobre a diáspora africana, graças a quem a integração de África e do Brasil se institucionalizou. Ao longo de 50 anos, Dzidzienyo criou os currículos norte-americanos dos Estudos Negros e dos Estudos Latino-Africanos, concebeu cursos afro-brasileiros que alargaram o âmbito dos Estudos Portugueses e Brasileiros, e apoiou as lutas de libertação em África e no Brasil. Ao fazê-lo, desenvolveu uma rede transnacional de instituições e ativistas académicos. No entanto, e apesar de tudo isto, o trabalho de Dzidzienyo tem sido largamente ignorado, bem como a sua vasta influência em diversas áreas de estudo e em vários movimentos de libertação.

Keywords

Pan-AfricanismBlack StudiesLatin American StudiesAfro-BraziliansAfrican DiasporaAnani Dzidzienyo
Type
Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , June 2023 , pp. 464 - 489
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the African Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Selected works by Anani Dzidzienyo

1971. The Position of Blacks in Brazilian Society. London: Minority Rights Group.Google Scholar
1978. “Activity and Inactivity in the Politics of Afro-Latin America.” SECOLAS Annals 9: 48–61.Google Scholar
1985. “The African Connection and the Afro-Brazilian Condition.” In Race, Class and Power in Brazil, edited by Fontaine, Pierre-Michel, 135–53. Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
1995. “Conclusions.” In No Longer Invisible: Afro Latin Americans Today, 345–58. London: Minority Rights Group Pub.Google Scholar
1997. “Brazilian Race Relations at the End of the 20th Century.” In Race, Ethnicity and Gender: A Global Perspective, ed. Oliner, S.P. and Gay, Philip T.. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt.Google Scholar
1999. Africa-Brazil: “Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi?” In Black Brazil: Culture, Identity, and Social Mobilization, ed. Crook, Larry and Johnson, Randal. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.Google Scholar
2002. “Triangular Mirrors and Moving Colonialisms. Etnográfica 6 (1): 127–40.Google Scholar
2005. “The Changing World of Brazilian Race Relations?” In Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latins, ed. Dzidzienyo, Anani and Oboler, Suzanne, 137–56. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2007. “Africana Studies: The International Context and Boundaries.” In A Companion to African-American Studies, ed. Gordon, L.R., and Gordon, J.A.. Oxford: Blackwell Pub. Ltd.Google Scholar
2011. “A Legacy to Brazil and the World: Remembering Abdias do Nascimento.” Callalloo 34 (3): 677–81.Google Scholar
with Turner, M.J.: 1981. “African-Brazilian Relations: A Reconsideration.” Brazil in the International System: The Rise of a Middle Power, ed. Selcher, W.A.. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar

References

Adi, Hakim. 2018. Pan-Africanism: A History. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Alberto, Paulina. 2011. Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.10.5149/9780807877715_albertoCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Carol. 2015. Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Angelo, Anne-Marie. 2009. “The Black Panthers in London, 1967–1972: A Diasporic Struggle Navigates the Black Atlantic.” Radical History Review 103: 17–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashon, Enimil. 2012. “Nana Kobina Nketsia IV: The only paramount chief who became a prison graduate.” Daily Graphic. November 24.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, Kabria. 2016. “‘Be Your Own Man’: Student Activism and the Birth of Black Studies at Amherst College, 1965–1972.” The New England Quarterly 89 (2): 286–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bedasse, Monique, Butler, Kim, Fernandes, Carlos, Laumann, Dennis, Nagaraja, Tejasvi, Talton, Benjamin, and Thurman, Kira. 2020. “AHR Conversation: Black Internationalism.” The American Historical Review 125 (5): 1699–1739.10.1093/ahr/rhaa513CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biondi, Martha. 2014. The Black Revolution on Campus. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Boahen, Adu. 1996. Mfantsipim and the Making of Ghana. Accra: Sankofa Educational Publishers.Google Scholar
Clarke, Henrik John. 1976. “The African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA): Some Notes on the Conflict with the African Studies Association (ASA) and the Fight to Reclaim African History.” A Journal of Opinion 6 (2/3): 5–11.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 1996. Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511584091CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dávila, Jerry and Lesser, Jeffrey. 2019. “A letter to the Members of the BRASA Lifetime Contribution Award Committee,” October 15, 2019.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ira. 2017. Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.10.5149/northcarolina/9781469632711.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Brent. 2003. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Frazier, E. Franklin. 1942. “The Negro Family in Bahia, Brazil.” American Sociological Review 7 (4): 465–78.10.2307/2085040CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaines, Kevin. 2006. American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.10.5149/uncp/9780807830086CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gyamfi, Bright. 2021. “From Nkrumah’s Black Star to the African Diaspora: Ghanaian Intellectual Activists and the Development of Black Studies in the Americas.” Journal of African American History 106 (4): 682–705.10.1086/716492CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernández, Katerí Tanya. 2013. Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hernández, Katerí Tanya. 2015. “Anani Dzidzienyo: the Embodiment of African/African-diaspora Anti-Colonial Activist Scholar.” Paper presented at the Post/Colonialism and the Pursuit of Freedom in the Black Atlantic, University of Pittsburgh, November 1–9.Google Scholar
Hernández, Katerí Tanya. 2021. “In Remembrance of Anani Dzidzienyo (1941–2020).” Latino Studies, 19: 1–3.10.1057/s41276-021-00308-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoefferle, Caroline. 2013. British Student Activism in the Long Sixties. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jeffries, Richard. 1978. Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana: The Railwaymen of Sekondi. London: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Rhett. 2006. “Dreams, Nightmares, and Realities: Afro-American Studies at Brown University, 1969–1986.” In A Companion to African-American Studies, edited by Gordon, Lewis R. and Gordon, Jane Anna, 33–50. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.10.1002/9780470996645.ch3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Robin. 2012. Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674065246CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendi, X. Ibram. 2012. The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.10.1057/9781137016508CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin, and Carpenter, Nathan. 2018. Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lusk, Jon. 2009. “Kofi Ghanaba: Drummer who pioneered Afro-Jazz.” The Independent, March 9.Google Scholar
Nkrumah, Kwame. 1970. Class Struggle in Africa. London: Panaf Books.Google Scholar
Odamtten, Harry. 2019. Edward W. Blyden’s Intellectual Transformations: Afropublicanism, Pan-Africanism, Islam, and the Indigenous West African Church. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.10.14321/j.ctvg253jzCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plageman, Nate. 2020. “Recomposing the Colonial City: Music, Space, and Middle-Class City Building in Sekondi, Gold Coast c. 1900–1920.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 22 (8): 1013–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sekyi, Kobina. 1997. The Blinkards. England: Heinemann Educational Publishers.Google Scholar
Talton, Benjamin. 2019. In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Tenkorang, S. 1974. “The Founding of Mfantsipim 1905–1908.” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 15 (2): 165–75.Google Scholar
Twinam, Ann. 2015. Purchasing Whiteness: Pardos, Mulattos, and the Quest for Social Mobility in the Spanish Indies. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Ann Joy. 2013. Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965–1975. Champagne: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Zachernuk, Philip. 2000. Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar