Abstract

Abstract Addressing the implications of the introduction of the concept of religion to Africa in the colonial era, this essay approaches religion from a relational angle that takes into account the connections between Africa and Europe. Much can be learned about the complexity and power dynamics of these connections by studying religion not simply in but also from Africa. Referring to historical and current materials from my research in Ghana by way of example, my concern is to show how a focus on religion can serve as a productive entry point into the longstanding relational dynamics through which Africa and Europe are entangled. This is a necessary step in decolonizing scholarly knowledge production about religion in Africa, and in religious studies at large.

Highlights

  • Sixty years after many countries in sub-Saharan Africa gained independence from European colonialism, there is still an urgent need to acknowledge and identify the resilience of what Valentine Mudimbe aptly calls ‘epistemological ethnocentrism’ (1988, 28)

  • His book Invention of Africa appeared more than thirty years ago, but even though the need to ‘provincialize Europe’ (Chakrabarty 2001) is often emphasized in academic knowledge production about other parts of the world

  • I use the term ‘entanglement’ to refer to a hyperconnectivity in which historically constituted relations between Africa and Europe—and other regions—intersect and criss-cross each other on many levels, making it impossible to take a sharp distinction between these regions as an imagined starting point

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Summary

Introduction

Sixty years after many countries in sub-Saharan Africa gained independence from European colonialism, there is still an urgent need to acknowledge and identify the resilience of what Valentine Mudimbe aptly calls ‘epistemological ethnocentrism’ (1988, 28).

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