Ghosts of African Education: Mass Hysteria and Embodied Resistance within Postcolonial Senegalese Schools and Atlantic Migrations

Abstract

This article works toward conceptualizing frictions between colonial education and non-Western traditions of African education in the modern African state. Signaling manifestations of educational friction or disequilibrium, we apply the concept of haunting to uncover ways the legacy of colonial education is reproduced through Western modernity as a form of disembodied educational practice, conflicting with the ghostly presence of collective African educational traditions. More specifically, we offer a conceptual inquiry into the phenomena of Jinne Maimouna, what has been called a mysterious “mass hysteria” within Senegalese schools. In doing so, we work toward a rethinking of education in relation with the transatlantic Black Radical Tradition and links to haunted forms of Atlantic migrations by Senegalese youth. The article gestures toward the power within the deeply rooted knowledge systems and practices emanating from Africa that return in the present and future. We suggest that practices of deciphering and rethinking the embodiment of traditions of African education might offer methods that break from colonizing episteme toward longer temporal educational liberation.