CFP-Engaging Decolonisation through Chinweizu
ugwuanyi Lawrence
Call for Papers
Engaging Decolonisation through Chinweizu
Issues, Options and Challenges
Decolonisation as a topic in the humanities is achieving solid global attention among the descendants of the colonised and descendants of the coloniser. For the citizens of colonised nations this is an option to recover one’s humanity; to become human again in its proper form. For the citizens of colonising nations, this is about rethinking oneself through the other- to align with a wave of history that appeals to justice in many domains of life-politics, knowledge, culture, economy etc. It is like saying our forefathers did this thing called colonialism- we think differently about it.
Decolonisation has many forms. For some, it is a form of pluriversalism – opening up a space for the de-othered other to enter and belong. For others, it is about de-Superiorization of superiority complex/actions inherent in colonisation. For others still, it is about the negation of the entire products and outcomes of colonisation in favour of a fresh new products of human interaction and humanity. Each of this option has its strength, weakness and challenge. For instance, if it is granted that the entire project of colonialism were a product of human beings who framed others in derogatory ways in order to undo their humanity, it should also be granted that the same inhumanity involved in doing has to be avoided in order not to endorse it. If people found it right to degrade others and their institutions as colonialism did, a superior humanity must emerge by not repeating same as a response to colonialism. But,what if, it is the case, that the issue at stake is about the challenge of how to be equal with other people (races) which could be absent in cultures and structures of thought involved colonialism-how may decolonisation address this? And what if colonialism is implicated in various literature of western enlightment period(Serequeberhan 1998); how may decolonisation deal with the literature that prepared the ground for colonialism still circulating in various libraries of the world capable of (re)generating colonial options?
It is with this in mind that this call for paper is conceived. The aim of the work is to advance thoughts on decolonisation by engaging the works of Chinweizu. In more than four publications including The West and the Rest of Us (1975); Decolonising the African Mind (1987), Towards Decolonisation of African Literature (1980), Ubuntology: Groundwork for the Intellectual Autonomy of the Black World(2004) and through scores of academic works, Chinweizu has published works that address the need for decolonisation and proffered options of how this could be achieved. Many of these works harp on the need for a form of Pan-blackism as a desirable option for decolonisation among the black world, among other dimensions and options. But recent evolutions of what has now been called Afrophobia among the black world tend to question the ideology of blackism and its potentials. What are the strength of his ideas and the views implicated?
How can the subtle but deep entanglement between the coloniser and the colonised including: psychology, concepts, ideas, theories, power, politics and economy, culture and structure etc implicated in the ideology of colonialism be read through Chinweizu? What are the desirable outcome of decolonisation as can be read through these works and what are the potentials and possible outcomes of these options? Interested scholars are hereby invited to contribute a chapter on any of the following topics:
1. Distilling the Options for Decolonising the Mind through Chinweizu
2. Chinweizu and the idea of Pan-blackism
3. Chinweizu on Black Colonialists
4. Black as an Ideology; The Fact, the Faction and the Fiction: Critiquing Chinweizu
5. Interrogating Black Humanism and the Question of Human Nature through Chinweizu
6. Modernity and the Challenges of Sub-Saharan Africanism in the Ideas of Chinweizu
7. Chinweizu and the Proposal for Afrocentric Psychology.
8. Between Colonialism and Modernity: Distilling the Difference through Chinweizu
9.Colonial Modernity and the Project of Re-Africanisatiion
10. The Future of Decolonisation and the Decolonisation of the Future
11 Widening the Search for Models of Decolonisation through Chinweizu.
Contributors could go beyond these topics to an engagement with specific works of Chinweizu that discuss the project of Decolonisation.
Timeline August 30,2026: Abstract submission deadline (300–400 words) and short author biography (max. 100 words)
September 15,2026:Notification of abstract acceptance Full chapter submission (5,000–8,000 words including references) Submission Guidelines Abstracts should be 300–400 words and clearly articulate the argument or central claim of the proposed chapter, theoretical, or methodological approach, and the contribution to the volume's themes. Please include a short author biography of no more than 100 words.
November,15 2026:Full chapters should be 5,000–8,000 words, including references, submitted in Word format (.docx), using a standard citation style (APA, Chicago, or Harvard) applied consistently throughout. Please send abstracts and author biographies to: lawrence...@uniabuja.edu.ng and/or oatcon...@gmail.com. This edited volume is being prepared for submission to a globally reputable academic publisher.