Pinning down Pan-Africanism: Exploring the Definition(s), Utility, and Durability of an Ideology and the Movements It Engendered

Abstract

Pinning down Pan-Africanism: Exploring the Definition(s), Utility, and Durability of an Ideology and the Movements It Engendered Kenja McCray Adi, Hakim–Pan-Africanism: A History. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. 297 p. Rabaka, Reiland, ed.–Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism. London: Routledge, 2021. 548 p. People are likely to provide a myriad of responses if asked to describe Pan-Africanism. This diversity of perceptions reflects the enduring challenge of defining and discussing the topic. Hakim Adi begins Pan-Africanism: A History by employing a broad understanding of the term as an ideology and the movements it catalyzed. He writes that Pan-Africanism is “the striving for the unity and liberation of Africa and Africans” (p. 221). According to Adi, a single, universally accepted definition has never existed. He goes further, determining that the hazards of pinning some authors down to a definitive meaning stem from the reality that Pan-Africanism has assumed so many different forms over time and space (p. 2). Adi’s conception of its protean and enduring nature dovetails with the central framing of the Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism, which is edited by University of Colorado, Boulder Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies, Reiland Rabaka, and contains multiple, adaptable meanings. Both books address the critical need to formulate a clear, concise definition of Pan-Africanism. They also wrestle with conceptions like Ashley D. Farmer’s. A specialist in Black women’s intellectual history, Farmer writes, “the destruction of racism, capitalism, sexism, and homophobia will not come from a uniform idea but rather from the recognition and implementation of the array of political imaginings that those fighting oppression develop.”1 Adi and Rabaka deliberate on several interrelated issues in delineating Pan-Africanism. They examine its durability and [End Page 177] critique its pragmatic expressions from two different but equally useful entry points: a single-authored survey and a multi-authored compilation of essays. Undergraduate professors and scholars of Black liberation movements will appreciate Adi’s Pan-Africanism for its concise survey of a central topic in African and diasporic history, which he covers with appropriate depth. The book emerged from Adi’s experiences as a Professor of History at the University of Chichester in the United Kingdom. Few suitable, up-to-date texts existed for instructors such as himself to assign to undergraduate students. Adi’s interests include the African continent and diaspora, with an emphasis on twentieth-century Britain. His specialization in Africa and the diaspora in Britain gives the book a particular focus on aspects of Pan-African history occurring outside the United States. He decentres both the United States and Whiteness, for example, when discussing the formation of the diaspora (p. 2). In contrast to Adi’s succinct survey, the term “handbook” is a misnomer for Rabaka’s hefty tome of detailed essays. With 36 chapters, it could be more precisely identified as a compendium on Pan-Africanism. A strength of this approach is that, like Adi’s survey, it generally avoids a longstanding tendency within the literature on Pan-Africanism to emphasize diasporic countries (especially the United States) and metropolitan cities in the West instead of centring continental African locales and Global South perspectives. The Handbook sidesteps this pitfall, in part, by showcasing diverse voices hailing from Kampala to Mexico City. When read together, these two books cover a breadth of subjects at the intersections of Pan-Africanism, race, class, gender, sexuality, politics, economics, and culture. Adi delineates Pan-Africanism by outlining two major phases. The first era began during the transatlantic trade with the concerted endeavours of eighteenth-century African-descended activists in the diaspora to either end the trafficking and enslavement of Africans or to emigrate to the continent. This initial period ended with the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress (PAC). Adi identifies the second phase as one during which “Pan-Africanism returns home” to the continent (p. 129). It emerged from anti-colonial struggles, beginning with the post-Second World War period, and ended with the establishment of the African Union (AU) and the reparations movement during the last years of the twentieth century. The way Adi organizes his chapters reveals a shorter, thematically driven periodization...