The De-Africanization of African Art

Book excerpt: This book argues for a radical new approach to thinking about art and creativity in Africa, challenging outdated normative discourses about Africa’s creative heritage. Africanism, which is driven by a traumatic response to colonialism in Africa, has an almost unshakable stranglehold on the content, stylistics, and meaning of art in Africa. Post-African aesthetics insists on the need to move beyond this counter-colonial self-consciousness and considerably change, re-work and enlarge the ground, principles and mission of artistic imagination and creativity in Africa. This book critiques and dismantles the tropes of Africanism and Afrocentrism, providing the criteria and methodology for a Post-African art theory or Post-African aesthetics. Grounded initially in essays by Denis Ekpo, the father of Post-Africanism, the book then explores a range of applications and interpretations of Post-African theory to the art forms and creative practices in Africa. With particular reference to South Africa, this book will be of interest to researchers across the disciplines of Art, Literature, Media Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and African Studies.