Imagining Vernacular Histories : Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola

This volume critiques postcolonial African historiography, certain misconceptions about vernacular epistemologies including gender and sexuality and the making of the historical archive.

This volume brings together indigenous interpretations and subterranean dialogues that encapsulate the interlocking dimensions of postcoloniality, African historiography, African feminist epistemologies and the African conception of the historical archive.

The essays in the volume engage with local and global histories providing a shared intellectual space and creating new ideas which will meet diverse audiences. Topics include current debates in African historiography that promises to radically transform contemporary understandings of the subject. Through the interdisciplinary engagements of the contributors, this volume broadens the frontiers of historical imagination.

Toyin Falola’s historical scholarship and his memoirs become the center of this volume for various reasons. Falola’s scholarship is characterized by multiple modes of historical investigation, which offers complexities to the conventional models of “Afrocentric” histories. This volume reflects on key aspects of Falola’s scholarship.

The book is an inclusive re-appropriation of history making processes with every chapter constituting the efforts of new scholars attempting to redefine the field. Each chapter in this book is a distinct historiographical essay, which explores multiple perspectives on the diverse historiographical issues.