Journal of Black Studies

The physical appearance of Ati, the co-ruling woman of Punt, often referred to as “the Queen of Punt,” as depicted in the pharaoh Hatshepsut’s “Voyage to Punt” has been subject to scholarly attention in the European academy. However, in this scholarship her appearance is disparaged as humorous or pathological which is reminiscent of the racist characterizations of Ssehura of the Khoi-Khoi people as the “Hottentot Venus.” This problem is termed as the “European Hottentot Complex” in this study. Recovering Ati from the European Hottentot Complex, this study provides an Afronography on the Kemetiu (ancient Egyptian) aesthetic perspective by examining the primary sources from a Jamaican cultural perspective through language. Subsequently, this study shows the transgenerational dimension of the Afrikan aesthetic norm that is expressed in the Jamaican notion of tiknis. Ultimately, this study locates the Kemetiu perspective on Ati of Punt within the context of tiknis.

The access, control, and ownership of land and the means of production is an enduring frontier of conflict in post colonial settler states. Whilst racially tinged, colonialism created “structures of feeling” that sanctioned epistemic violence and created an economy of entitlement and belonging that sustained imperial designs. Zimbabwe’s independence meant the redistribution and proprietorship of land became a central leitmotif of cadastral politics. The article explores the interplay of the contested tropes of race, entitlement, and indigeneity as they informed the highly polarized land redistribution discourse. The discussion takes stock of the dominant narratives of post-colonial state predations, patronage, populism, and megalomania in contradistinction to the various ways in which whiteness and its prejudices and stereotypes nurtured some hubris of entitlement and belonging that retrogressively not only perpetuated colonial settler values and identities but also entrenched racial distance and indifference. The polarized contestations on land redistribution discourse coalesce around concepts such as restitution, indigeneity, nativity, patriotism, race, and class. Therefore while critiquing state excesses that have masked the honorable intentions of land redistribution, the article underscores the complex ways in which white Zimbabweans contributed to the enduring crisis by obdurately fixating their energies on colonial settler entitlements, values, and identities.

The purpose of this paper is to bring together some discourses from the authors of the books that made their marks in their days and from which we can learn more about the ongoing debate on decolonization and Africanization. Taking the historical perspective, first the paper builds its argument by showing how the current social science is still run according to the vestiges of orthodoxy. This is followed by a brief history of decolonial thoughts in Africa while the third point describes the challenges found in the recent debate on decolonization and leads to the conclusion that while the impact of this debate has been well documented, its discourses need to be retouched and supplemented before we could see its much bigger impact in Africa.

Productive dialogue with white people for anti-racist purposes is precluded by the political limits prescribed by the “principle of interest convergence,” occluded by the epistemological conditions of “white ignorance,” and disincentivized by the psychological burdens of “racial battle fatigue” borne by You and me, the Black would-be interlocutors. Nevertheless, much popular effort is spent—dare I say wasted—in attempts to talk white people out of their racism; or as I will define them in this paper, following James Baldwin, “those-who-think-of-themselves-as-white.” Consequently, I propose that we stop “talking” to those-who-think-of-themselves-as-white about racism, or at least adopt an attitude of extreme wariness.