Читать книгу In Search of Africa(s) - Souleymane Bachir Diagne - Страница 6

Let us warn the reader right away: while browsing the pages of these discussions, he or she will often see double, and for many reasons. Firstly, the two interlocutors, Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Jean-Loup Amselle, often look at the issues they are addressing from different angles, and are not always concerned to reach complete agreement; secondly, they frequently take up views that they have developed elsewhere, in their previous books and articles; and, finally, their discussions regularly juxtapose and assess two theoretical and critical currents – postcolonial studies and decolonial thinking – whose outlines, and, above all, concrete differences, are sometimes difficult to discern.

The preliminary remarks in my foreword are not an attempt to replace this ‘seeing double’ with a synthetic image, nor do they aim to show how, as they put forward their arguments, our two authors often glance sideways towards other points of view. I will merely note the framework in which postcolonial and/or decolonial studies have grown and developed, and explain that, while they follow their own paths, Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Jean-Loup Amselle are ultimately quite close to such studies; this will make it easier to see what brings them closer to each other, and this book of discussions may help the reader to develop not an overview of all the questions tackled here, but simply a nuanced point of view that goes beyond traditional black and white distinctions.