Book Reviews

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Thoughts on Intellectual and Institutional Links Between African and Black Studies

Black identity and nationalism in the civil rights era were forged through trans- Atlantic and Pan-African solidarity. Both African and African-American intellectuals and institutions played key roles in Pan-African nationalism and the sustenance of civil rights struggles across the Atlantic. However, in the 1970s onwards, these Pan-African links were subverted by vertical dialogues between western, especially white, ‘experts’ of Africa and Africans; a dialogue that was skewed in favour of Africanist paradigms and knowledge because of the obviousunequal distribution of intellectual resources in favour of white researchers in the global North. This shift was also matched by the preponderance of negative themes about Africa, an increasing amount of ignorance in the west of the realities in Africa and the treatment of Africa as a mere object of curiosity and theory testing. This paper locates the growing ‘ignorance’ of African realities among African-Americans in the rise and dominance of Africanist Africa, itsdisengagement from Black Studies, the marginalisation of African-American and African scholarship (conducted by black scholars) in Euro-American scholarship and the de-emphasis of radical and Black intellectual traditions in the mainstream study of Africans. The paper proposes the enhancement of direct horizontal dialogue between Africans and African-Americans instead of the vertical dialogue between Africans and Africanists which has failed to provide an objective presentation of Africa’s achievements and failures, gains and losses

Introduction

This introductory article explains the origins of this special issue initiative in the work of a select number of African graduate students in the US. It locates the different articles included in the volume in the general framework of debates about the imbalances in knowledge production on Africa between the global North and South. It highlights the issue of the role which the fourth generation of African scholars is to play in these politics. It concludes by summarising the contributions to this topic of the various articles included in this special issue

Satire and the Politics of Corruption in Kenya

Corruption in Kenya has been a matter of intense concern for foreign donors and the international financial institutions. External efforts to change the ‘governance culture’ in this regard are not simply instrumental, composed of material restrictions and incentives. They are also inherently rhetorical, seeking to establish the plausibility of a set of values rooted in political economy. This paper examines two widely reported speeches of a former British High Commissioner that can be read together as a highly figurative satire on political standards in Kenya. Having developed a reading of anti-corruption governance as satire, we extend it to the role of the legal profession in the illegal and irregular allocation of public land. We argue that, as well as demonstrating an application of the rhetorical analysis of neo-liberal governance, the case of land grabbing in Kenya also highlights the instability of many of the key binary oppositions underpinning dominant anti-corruption strategies. This instability can be understood in rhetorical terms by drawing on the work of post-colonial writers and critics on the category of excremental satire. Rather than a clear binary opposition, these suggest the interrelation, or more precisely the mutual contamination, of corruption and normal capitalist accumulation

RNA viruses and autoimmunity: A short overview

RNA viruses are a large group of widespread and extremely prevalent pathogens capable of eliciting a broad spectrum of innate and adaptive immune responses. Additionally, persistent infection by some RNA viruses can induce or enhance accelerated immune activation. The hypothesis that molecular mimicry is implicated in autoimmunity was first proposed in 1987. Since then, a growing evidence from medical literature of a possible role for viral infection in autoimmunity has risen. In particular, enteroviruses have been investigated as possible causes of type 1 diabetes. Some hypotheses have put forward the possible implication of hepatitis A virus in autoimmune phenomena. The two most prevalent RNA viruses causing chronic infection, hepatitis C virus and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), are both associated with autoimmune disorders. HCV can trigger and sustain a clonal B-cell expansion which causes a wide spectrum of autoimmune/lymphoproliferative disorders, through a multistep process. Similarly, HIV is responsible for derangement of the immune regulation and is associated with some autoimmune disorders, such as autoimmune thrombocytopenia. Nevertheless, a formal scientific demonstration of an etiological relationship between any RNA virus and a major autoimmune disease has not yet been obtained