Panel: Africanness on the periphery: Perspectives from the Indian Ocean islands

Convenors: Daniela Waldburger (University of Vienna); Iain Walker (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

Abstract: Africanness comes in many forms. In many respects the islands of the African periphery “belong” to Africa: Zanzibar is part of Tanzania while others, from Seychelles to Madagascar, belong to the African Union.

However, islanders trace their heritage not only to Africa, but to Europe and Asia too; and despite an apparent cosmopolitanism, African heritage is often viewed with ambivalence since many Africans arrived in the islands enslaved and thus of low status. Nevertheless, in Mauritius and Réunion African origins are increasingly valorised as the trauma of slavery is confronted, processes of reconciliation are engaged and African culture celebrated. In Madagascar and the Comoros, however, invocations of slave origins are frequently silenced, even as they continue to be relevant in structuring social relations, and local hierarchies remain resilient.

This panel calls for contributions from a variety of disciplines – anthropology, history, linguistics, literary studies – that consider questions of identity and of (non)belonging in the African periphery, interrogating expressions and discourses of Africanness – and non-Africanness. How are African origins expressed or concealed, valorised or denigrated, publicly or privately? How do African origins construct and shape, explicitly or implicitly, social structures, cultural practices and political positionings? How are African identities articulated in dialogue with European, Arab or South Asian identities in islands where all are ultimately of immigrant origin? What sorts of interactions play out between the periphery and the continent, socially, culturally and politically, and how do continental Africans view their islander neighbours?

Please submit your proposals through the VAD2024 website (https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/vad2024/p/13787) before the deadline, 31 January 2024.