ON AFRICAN HISTORY, THE IMPORTANCE OF THEORY, AND HISTORICAL EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
Ewa Domańska in conversation with Olufunke Adeboye
EWA DOMAŃSKA
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Ewa Domańska is Professor of Human Sciences at the Faculty of History at Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań, Poland) and a recurrent visiting professor at Stanford University. She is a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS). Domańska’s teaching and research interests include history and the theory of historiography, environmental humanities, and ecocide and genocide studies. Her most recent publications include A História para além do humano [History beyond the Human], transl. Taynna Marino and Hugo Merlo (forthcoming) and “Prefigurative Humanities,” History and Theory 60, no. 4 (2021), 141–58.
Olufunke Adeboye is Professor of Social History at the University of Lagos (Nigeria). Her research interests include gender in Africa, African historiography, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nigerian history, and Pentecostalism in West Africa. Her recent publications include Nigerian Women in Politics: Essays in Honour of Nina Emma Mba (Lagos: Ben and Nina Mba Foundation, 2022), which she coedited with Bolanle Awe, and Fighting in God’s Name: Religion and Conflict in Local-Global Perspectives (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020), which she coedited with Afe Adogame and Corey L. Williams. She is the current Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lagos.
Cite this post: Ewa Domańska and Olufunke Adeboye, “On African History, the Importance of History, and Historical Education in Nigeria,” One More Thing… (blog), History and Theory, October 2023, https://historyandtheory.org/omt-poznan/domanska-adeboye.
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Ewa Domańska: Let me begin with the question, how you would define the status of historiography inside and outside academia? Are historians in Nigeria—or, to your knowledge, in other African countries—interested in history of historiography? What is the relationship between historiography that is practiced in academia and outside academia? I am thinking about, for example, public history and the impact of memory politics on historical writing.
Olufunke Adeboye: Let me start with the relationship between academic historiography and popular or nonacademic historiography. The relationship is cordial, culminating in honorary fellowship recognition within our professional historical associations for nonacademic historians. Practitioners of history outside academia have published a lot of books, some of which are called “chronicles” by academics. These are very useful for academic historians as primary sources for our own research. These “Chroniclers” document oral traditions, as it was handed over to the authors. This documentation is very important to those authors and their public consumers especially when you talk about identity politics, memory politics, and the role of different communities in the wider scheme of regional and national politics. One of my doctoral students, Adepeju Ilupeju, is presently studying memory in selected local chronicles in Yorubaland and investigating how much of collective memory has been captured in those publications. How selective are such local documentations? What type of memory do they try to document in those chronicles? These are a few of the questions that academic historians pose. We find a very good nexus between the concerns of academic and nonacademic historians. These local Chroniclers are well recognized; they are celebrated by academic historians and also within their local communities. In recent times, you have a lot of these nonacademic publications coming up because many of the elderly people see it as a sacred communal duty to document their collective history for the coming generation. Let me go back to the first part of your question on the status of historiography inside academia. If historiography is taken as the history of historical writing, historical theory, the study of major trends in historical practice, and methodological issues, then we can say that historiography enjoys a prominent position in academia. Courses on historiography at both undergraduate and graduate levels are compulsory and seen as central to the training of historians not only in the universities but also in the history departments of teacher training colleges. However, we do not yet have national associations dedicated to the theory and practice of historiography. These are still in the offing.
ED: What are the threats, but also what are the opportunities, of the field of theory of history that you see as a person coming from outside Europe? How can African scholars contribute to global discussions in theory of history? Are there any specific discussions going on that might somehow enrich discussions generated in the frame of the Anglo-Saxon tradition?
OA: Theories are very important to history. They constitute the backbone to the history we reconstruct and help us understand why things occurred the way they did. Institutionally, theory of history is not yet seen as an independent discipline, but it straddles a few departments. In our history department, we teach it as part of the historiography requirement for undergraduate students. At the master’s level, we also have a course titled Theories and Concepts in History, which explores theoretical underpinnings for different genres of history. In most philosophy departments, they also teach “philosophy of history.” In my generation, it is not commonplace to find scholars whose only expertise is theory of history. But there are many scholars who have “historiography” or “theory of history” as one of their numerous fields of interest. However, there is a new generation of historians with relatively fresh PhDs focused on nothing else but “historiography” or “theory of history.” Meanwhile, there is a contemporary trend now that we have in Africa [and that] is the concern of many scholars—to reconfigure African studies. And for the historian, the primary challenge is to decolonize African history. This is so pertinent because, from time to time, we still uncover some subtle, imperialist nuances in historical texts [that] we had previously taken as neutral. These are not so glaring like what you had in the works of Hegel and others in his generation but are very subtle and equally condescending. The challenge now is to conclude the liberation of African history from its colonial frames and referents. This movement was initially championed by nationalist historians in the 1950s but [is] now revisited by modern scholars wary of the insidious persistence of the colonial frames for interpreting African history. I believe that, as this is going on, it could also help us to rethink some of the extant theories of history and thus provide significant revisions or novel applications as part of African contributions to the global discourse on theories.
ED: What do you think about the future of historical theory?
OA: Yes, the future of historical theory is promising because we cannot just specialize in historical narratives all the time. At some point, we need some theory that will hold together all these narratives and help us to make sense of our various reconstructions. As I said earlier, we now have a new crop of historians majoring in historical theory and other philosophical debates.
ED: Do you see in your country, and in Africa in general, theories created by African historians that might somehow enrich the debates that are going on in academia now? We see more and more scholars coming from Latin America, from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico. . . . They are contributing to the field; they are becoming more and more visible while the historians (and theories of history) from Africa are not so present. The 23rd International Congress of Historical Sciences in Poznań is also an opportunity to meet editors of the main journals in our field, such as, for example, Rethinking History and Storia della Storiografia, which are interested in publishing works by scholars from different, non-Western-European regions. Do you see scholars who should be somehow promoted because they have original ideas and might contribute to global discussions in the field of theory and history of historiography?
OA: A few of the first generation of African historians at the peak of their careers took time to interrogate theoretical issues. But this was not a widespread preoccupation. Adiele Afigbo lamented the theoretical poverty of African historiography in his times. [1] The general trend among nationalist historians at that time was to first establish historical narratives heavily substantiated by empirical evidence through rigorous reconstruction before identifying general patterns. [2] Do note that many of the essays in these twenty-first-century anthologies had been published first in the 1970s and 1980s or even earlier. Many of these ideas explore uniquely African interpretations of history. Successive generations of African historians have also continued this engagement with historical theories. [3] Even though their primary focus may not be on the theory of history, they have devoted significant attention to historiographical issues in several of their publications. There are numerous upcoming scholars that are fully dedicated to the field too. In spite of all these, there still remains among the contemporary generation of historians a sense of theoretical deficit in African historiography that has to be addressed. Again, we need to strengthen our national and continental associations of historians. These are the platforms on which networking to promote historiography and historical theory can be anchored.
ED: Do you see any problems or difficulties related to the field of theory and history of historiography in your country? In Europe, we are discussing memory politics. This is something that we find dangerous because history is overused for political purposes. Do you have similar problems in Africa?
OA: Yes, we do. The situation differs from one country to another. In Nigeria, for instance, there was a time that history was taken out of the curriculum of secondary school students and replaced with another subject called “government” in the 1980s. This new subject documented different types of governments of the world: democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, et cetera, with a very light curriculum, which students loved because they did not have to read as vast as they would have done in history as traditionally taught. But, over time, we discovered [that] the huge damage done to the products of that educational dispensation was that they had no sense of history. Politicians could just tell them anything and then they would believe it. They also tended to swallow whatever they found on social media hook, line, and sinker. Older and concerned historians were the ones writing rejoinders on the pages of newspapers to set the facts straight. After a while, it was believed that the decision to take history out of the school curriculum might have had some political impetus not unrelated to memory politics. But fortunately, the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN) [4] took the frontstage to lobby for the return of history to the high school curriculum. After all the petitions and public campaigns by the Historical Society, the Ministry of Education in 2018 eventually directed that history should be brought back to the senior secondary schools on the condition that academic historians should produce the textbooks that will be used. Of course, the textbooks were promptly published. The new challenge now is to get students interested, because they still have the option to choose either government or history. So, educators now have to make the history curriculum less cumbersome and more attractive to high school students. Another dimension of memory politics is that sometimes there are past events that are considered traumatic within certain communities: government may not want it to be spoken about so that you do not ruffle people’s feathers and recreate past anguish. Yes, that happens from time to time, but what historians have been doing is to produce their own formal, academic versions. The challenge now is for historians to make their publications accessible for public consumption because if historians are the only ones that read the knowledge produced by other historians, it will not make much impact on the wider population. Emphasis is also now on public history: How do we bring history into the public sphere, reconstruct the past of public institutions and authorities, and make such histories understandable and comprehensible to the wider public?
ED: Thank you. Next question: Which of the recent historical readings, especially in the field of theory and history of historiography, do you find the most inspiring or interesting?
OA: We have Hayden White, Georg Iggers, Alan Munslow, and Keith Jenkins. From the gender perspective, there is Joan Scott. If you want me to pick one, it is difficult, but maybe Keith Jenkins.
ED: You have mentioned that, in Nigeria, there is a criticism of Hayden White and Keith Jenkins, so I wonder what kind of criticism is specific for your colleagues, students, and yourself? What are the problems that they have with these scholars?
OA: You see, some of the things we have observed in these theories are that, if you pursue them to their logical conclusion, in the long run, there will not be any history again. If history is seen as an enterprise that is structured and produced by different historians in different contexts, with the pursuit for truth and objectivity marginalized, and the emphasis is more on language (linguistic issues) and how value-laden language could be, the issue is that, at the end of the day, can you write any history without these linguistic concerns? Can you write any history without any of these identified subjectivities? It is very difficult. If you pursue these arguments to a logical conclusion, it will be that all history would be suspect and then none would stand the test of these rigors. So, that has been our criticism. So, instead of throwing the baby away with the bathwater, we ask ourselves, how do we minimize some of these challenges that have been raised in the production of history?
ED: What kind of contemporary trends in historical research that are popular in Europe and in the United States—such as, for example, animal history, environmental history, and the history of material culture—are also popular in Nigeria, in Africa?
OA: Yes, in fact, I recently read the blurb of a new book written by a young African scholar, Saheed Aderinto, titled Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa. [5] Other examples include Toyin Falola and Nic Hamel’s Disability in Africa [6] or Ayodeji Olukoju, who specializes in maritime history. Due to the vastness of his research on maritime history, he is sometimes invited as an expert witness in seemingly intractable court cases. [7] In 2020, Akinwumi Ogundiran published a book titled The Yorùbá: A New History, which spanned 300 BC to 1840 using archaeological sources. [8] Other examples are The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa [9] and, recently, Larger than Life: Popular Icons and Villains in Yoruba Thought and Society. [10]
ED: I would like to ask about your own work. You are working on the history of the Yoruba society, precolonial and contemporary history of Africa, gender history, and the history of the Pentecostal movement. What kind of theories and approaches do you use in your own research?
OA: There are different applications of theories of history: as specific historical theories for relevant themes or as a grand theory for the practice of history. I have utilized specific theories for historical analysis. I have also utilized theories and concepts from other cognate disciplines to elucidate my ideas. For these, let me cite just two examples. The ideas of José Casanova in Public Religions in the Modern World [11] and Setha M. Low in Spatializing Culture [12] helped me to properly conceptualize public space in my research on “Pentecostal appropriation of public space in Nigeria.” [13] Another example was my research on the representation of female leadership in Yorubaland, which culminated in the publication titled “Framing Female Leadership on Stage and Screen in Yorubaland: Efunsetan Aniwura Revisited.” [14] The ideas and theories of framing articulated by Judith Butler, Hayden White, and Robert Rosenstone were particularly helpful. Judith Butler’s Frames of War [15] presented frames as politically saturated and as operations of power. Hayden White’s concept of “historiophoty” [16] captures the representation of history in visual images and filmic discourse. It underscores how “readings” of history in historical films and visual texts have the potential to unearth new meanings about the past that may have eluded historiography or written history. The ideas of Robert Rosenstone on historical film [17] are also closely related to these. All these helped me understand that the key issue for the historian is to approach films and other dramatic presentations on their own terms. The concern of the historian is not really about the historical (in)accuracy of films, because films are differently oriented than written history. So, these are a few examples of how I mix various theories and approaches in my own research.
Notes
[1] Adiele Afigbo, The Poverty of African Historiography (Nsukka: Afrografika, 1977).
[2] See, for example, Adiele Afigbo, Myth, History and Society: The Collected Works of Adiele Afigbo, ed. Toyin Falola (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006); Obaro Ikime, History, the Historian and the Nation: The Voice of a Nigerian Historian (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 2006); Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, The Practice of History in Africa: A History of African Historiography (Port Harcourt: Onyoma Research Publications, 2006); Bethwell Allan Ogot, The Challenges of History and Leadership in Africa: The Essays of Bethwell Allan Ogot, ed. Toyin Falola and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo (Trenton: African World Press, 2002); and Adu Boahen, Africa in the Twentieth Century: The Adu Boahen Reader, ed. Toyin Falola (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004). [Footnote by Olufunke Adeboye.]
[3] See, for example, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza’s books and articles: Manufacturing African Studies and Crises (Dakar: Codesria, 1997); “The Challenges of Writing African Economic History,” in Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories: Contemporary Africa in Focus, ed. George Clement Bond and Nigel C. Gibson (London: Routledge, 2002), 59–84; “Gender Biases in African Historiography,” in African Gender Studies: A Reader, ed. Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 207–32; and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, ed., The Study of Africa, vol. 1, Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters (Dakar: Codesria, 2006). From Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, we also have “The African Voice in African Studies Today,” in Reclaiming the Human Sciences through African Perspectives, vol. 2, ed. Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2012), 982–89. Other examples include Lily Mafela, “Historical Knowledge, the Historian and the History Teacher: A Troubled Tripartite?,” Boleswa Journal of Theology, Religion and Philosophy 4, no. 2, (2014), 90–113; Toyin Falola, ed., African Historiography: Essays in Honour of Jacob Ade Ajayi (Harlow: Longman, 1993); Toyin Falola and Adam Paddock, eds., Emergent Themes and Methods in African Studies: Essays in Honor of Adiele E. Afigbo (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2009); C. B. N. Ogbogbo, Recalibrating the Study of History in Nigeria (Abuja: Department of History and Diplomatic Studies, University of Abuja, 2016); and Philip Afaha, ed., Advocacy for History: A Festschrift in Honour of Prof. CBN Ogbogbo (Abuja: Command Publishers, 2018). [Footnote by Olufunke Adeboye.]
[4] HSN was established in 1955 at the University College Ibadan. For more information, please visit the organization’s official website: https://www.historicalsocietynigeria.org.ng.
[5] Saheed Aderinto, Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2022). See also Sara Katz’s interview with Saheed Aderinto at: https://newbooksnetwork.com/animality-and-colonial-subjecthood-in-africa.
[6] Toyin Falola and Nic Hamel, eds., Disability in Africa: Inclusion, Care, and the Ethics of Humanity (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2021).
[7] He recently published African Seaports and Maritime Economics in Historical Perspective (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), which he coedited with Daniel Castillo Hidalgo.
[8] Akinwumi Ogundiran, The Yorùbá: A New History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020).
[9] Emmanuel Akyeampong, Allan G. Hill, and Arthur Kleinman, eds., The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015).
[10] Rufus T. Akinyele and Olutayo C. Adesina, eds., Larger than Life: Popular Icons and Villains in Yoruba Thought and Society (Glassboro: Goldline & Jacobs Publishing, 2023).
[11] José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
[12] Setha M. Low, Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place (New York: Routledge, 2016).
[13] Olufunke Adeboye, “‘A Church in a Cinema Hall?’: Pentecostal Appropriation of Public Space in Nigeria,” Journal of Religion in Africa 42, no. 2 (2012), 145–71.
[14] Olufunke Adeboye, “Framing Female Leadership on Stage and Screen in Yorubaland: Efunsetan Aniwura Revisited,” Gender and History 30, no. 3 (2018), 666–81.
[15] Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009).
[16] Hayden White, “Historiography and Historiophoty,” The American Historical Review 93, no. 5 (1988), 1193–99.
[17] Robert A. Rosenstone, “The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age,” in The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, ed. Marcia Landy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 50–66.
