10 OF THE BEST FROM PROFESSOR ALI MAZRUI

Oct 16, 2014 Editor Kisumu News Life Style, News 0

The untimely death of renowned author, academic professor, and scholar Professor Ali Mazrui is a big blow to the Kenyan academic and intellectual scene, since we have a lost a great man, a good teacher. Professor Ali Mazrui is known for his literature. His work has inspired millions of people world wide and will continue to be missed by most. Professor Ali Mazrui, lives on in his writings and below are 10 of the best from Professor Ali Mazrui:

1. Africa Since 1935, Volume 8: UNESSCO General View of Africa

Africa Since 1935 is the result of years of work by scholars from all over the world, The UNESCO General History of Africa reflects how the different peoples of Africa view their civilizations and shows the historical relationships between the various parts of the continent. Historical connections with other continents demonstrate Africa’s contribution to the development of human civilization. Each volume is lavishly illustrated and contains a comprehensive bibliography.

This final volume of the acclaimed series of African history by African scholars takes on the complex political, economic, and cultural challenges the continent has faced—and still faces—in shaking off the legacy of colonialism. The book begins with Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and continues on through the struggle for independence in the years following World War II. The glittering but uncertain dawn of independence that began in the 1960s has resulted in a quest for development that continues today.

Editor A. A. Mazrui and his contributors address the impact of these challenges for the present and future. In his concluding chapter, Mazrui suggests that Africa still awaits two great revolutions—a sexual revolution in the roles of men and women and a scientific revolution in the skills of its people.

2. Africa Redefined, Volume 1

Africanity Redefined: Collected Essays of Ali A. Mazrui, Volume I is the first of three volumes of Ali A. Mazrui’s most important essays. The eventual three-volume work will provide readers with a broad spectrum of Professor Mazrui’s writings during his four decades as a scholar and public intellectual. This first volume redefines the meaning of Africanity across geographical spaces, time, and cultures.

The resulting definition is dynamic. It forces us to reject neo-imperialist paradigms and ontologies of what it means to be African. By encouraging us to think about Africanity as an idea rather than as point of origin, the ideas contained in these essays force us to reposition ourselves in the debate of our place in global cultures and civilizations, and they prepare us to take a more active role in social and political affairs.

3. Africa and Other Civilizations, Volume 2: Conquest and Counter-Conquest

This second volume of The Collected Works of Ali A. Mazrui will provide readers with a broad spectrum of Ali A. Mazui’s scholarly writings. With a special emphasis on the inextricability of conquest and counter-conquest, it considers Africa’s interaction with other civilizations from historical, sociological, philosophical and political perspectives. By engaging a refreshing approach to such seminal themes as culture, civilization, universalism and modernization, these essays address the complex economic, religious, ideological, and artistic interactions between Africa and other civilizations throughout history. Timely and illuminating, this volume contributes to our understanding of current world events, especially in relation to Africa and the Third World after the Cold War and the emerging international order Mazrui calls Global Apartheid.

4. Power, Politics and the African Condition, Volume 3

Power, Politics, and the African Condition is the third volume of The Collected Essays of Ali A. Mazrui, which will provide readers with a broad spectrum of Ali. A. Mazrui, which will provide readers with a broad spectrum of Ali. A. Mazrui’s scholarly writings. The third volume is centered on issues of power and politics at the nexus of Africa’s domestic affairs and its international concepts about the disequilibrium of power in the international system and the problems that Africa has confronted globally because of it. Mazrui focuses the reader’s attention on the impact that the colonial legacy and African tradition had on state formation, leadership, Africa’s political economy, violence, and conflict resolution while presenting some of his most interesting and even controversial ideas for building Pax Africana. Spanning nearly forty years, Mazrui’s essays are classic and contemporary statements on the diagnosis and treatment of what he called The African Tradition.

5. The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience

Linguists estimate that there are currently nearly 2,000 languages in Africa, a staggering figure that is belied by the relatively few national languages. While African national politics, economics, and law are all conducted primarily in the colonial languages, the cultural life of the majority of citizens is conducted in a bewildering Babel of local and regional dialects, making language itself the center of debates over multiculturalism, gender studies, and social theory. In The Power of Babel, the noted Africanist scholar Ali Mazrui and linguist Alamin Mazrui explore this vast territory of African language.

The Power of Babel is one of the first comprehensive studies of the complex linguistic constellations of Africa. It draws on Ali Mazrui’s earlier work in its examination of the “triple heritage” of African culture, in which indigenous, Islamic, and Western traditions compete for influence. In bringing the idea of the triple heritage to language, the Mazruis unravel issues of power, culture, and modernity as they are embedded in African linguistic life.

The first section of the book takes a global perspective, exploring such issues as the Eurocentrism of much linguistic scholarship on Africa; part two takes an African perspective on a variety of issues f
rom the linguistically disadvantaged position of women in Africa to the relation of language policy and democratic development; the third section presents a set of regional studies, centering on the Swahili language’s exemplification of the triple heritage.The Power of Babel unites empirical information with theories of nationalism and pluralism—among others—to offer the richest contextual account of African languages to date.

6. A Tale of Two Africas: Nigeria and South Africa as Contrasting Visions

Nigeria and South Africa provide the socioeconomic and political contrasts in the African condition. Some of these contrasts can be demonstrated in the following dialectics: Nigeria is the Africa of human resources, South Africa is a land of mineral resources; Nigeria is repellant to European settlement; South Africa is a magnet for such settlement; Nigeria is a mono-racial society, South Africa is a multiracial society; Nigeria is grappling with the politics of religion, South Africa’s is pre-occupied with the politics of secularism; Nigeria is Africa’s largest exporter of oil, South Africa is Africa’s largest consumer of oil; Nigeria is a paradigm of indigenization, South Africa is a paragon of Westernization. Building on these contrasts, Professor Ali Mazrui, master of the dialectical approach to socio-political analysis, demonstrates how the two most influential countries between the Niger and the Cape of Good Hope are alternative faces of Africa. Professor Ali Mazrui needs no introduction to any student of African politics. Recently nominated as one of the 100 greatest living public intellectuals in the world by the Washington-based journal, Foreign Policy, Professor Mazrui is the author of more than twenty books and hundreds of articles published all over the world. He was the author and narrator of the highly regarded television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage (BBC/PBS, 1986).

7. Cultural Forces in World Politics

Ali Mazrui makes us reconsider the realities of power in world politics. He argues that the emphasis continues to be on arms, on resources, and on strategic calculations and that the importance of culture has been grossly underestimated.

Mazrui’s own mind is a cultural crossroads; he can give Islamic insights to Western audiences about The Satanic Verses; he relates the Beijing Spring to the Palestinian Intifada; he compares the effects of Zionism and Apartheid; he puts together Muhammad, Marx, and market forces; he tells the Americans that their attitude to the Third World is a “dialogue of the deaf.”

The three sections of his masterful book are entitled The Cultural Sweep of History, Ideology and Power, and In Search of Change.

8. The African Predicament and the American Experience: A Tale of Two Edens

Mazrui examines the importance of Africa–historically, culturally, and economically – in the development of the West, particularly the United States. And he contrasts this demonstrable importance with the combination of neglect and malice directed at Africa and those of African descent by the West and by the United States in particular.

As Mazrui illustrates throughout, this is a tale of two Edens: Africa as the Eden of Lost Innocence and America as the Eden of Current Power and Future Fulfillment. People of African ancestry have been part of the vanguard for the Edenization of America. But America is also influencing the first Eden: Africa. America is a major force in the liberalization of black people in Africa; and black people are a major force in the democratization of all people in America.

9. The Politics of Genger and the Culture of Sexuality: Western, Islamic and African Perspectives

The Politics of Gender and the Culture of Sexuality outlines theories of gender within the intellectual paradigm of the triple heritage: Islam, Africanity, and the West. This book describes the impact of individual contexts and politics on meanings attributed to the human body. The Politics of Gender and the Culture of Sexuality explores how men and women relate to each other in monogamous and polygamous marriage, race rivalries, slavery, miscegenation, cultures of procreation, family planning, and the Islamic view of women’s dignity vis-à-vis the Western view of women’s liberty. In doing so, the author and editor present a multifaceted and dynamic theoretical discourse of gender.

10. The Africans: A Reader

Contemporary Africa is the product of three major influences – an indigenous heritage, Western culture, and Islamic culture. The Africans looks at these legacies, how they co-exist, and their impact on the continent and the people who are called African. This reader, a supplement to the telecourse, provides an introduction to a variety of historical and contemporary writings on Africa.

You can read more on The Life of Professor Ali Mazrui: 13 Things You didn’t know by Evelyne Musambi the Web Reporter Nation.co.ke