Textual Life - Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities



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English | 2025 | ISBN: 0231210701 | 305 Pages | PDF | 1.57 MB

Textual Life is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa.

The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state.