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From: "Kammie" <>
Subject: [SoAfricaHistory] Annual Lecture on Africa, IDOGA 2003 : Terence Ranger
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 00:59:29 +0200

Hi List participants,
FYI : IDOGA Distinguished Lecture on Africa 2003: Terence Ranger
This is a X-posting on H-SAFRICA messageboard on H-Net.


Recommended website :
http://africana.rug.ac.be

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> Date: 11 March 2003
> From: Geert Castryck
> <>
>
> IDOGA
>
> The Annual Distinguished Lecture on Africa 2003
>
> [Wednesday, 26 March, 16.30h; Academieraadzaal,
> Volderstraat, Gent]
>
>
> Prof. Dr. Terence Ranger
>
> Defending the Nation against the Local and the Global:
> 'Patriotic History' in Zimbabwe
>
>
> Abstract
>
> Recent analysts of the dilemma of South African
> historiography agree that there is intense invention,
> imagination and enactment of history at a local level
> in South Africa simultaneously with falling History
> enrolments and reduced History Departments in South
> African universities and declining readership of
> academic works on history. Local 'historians' readily
> make contact with global tourism through 'heritage'
> projects which highlight the 'exotic'. Chiefs and kings
> have stolen the idea of the 'African Renaissance' and
> used it to validate a traditional revival. Meanwhile
> the South African state - though turning Robben Island
> and Mandela into heritage sites - gains its legitimacy
> not so much from history as from management efficiency.
> Academic historians scramble to find a role while all
> around them there is an efflorescence of history.
>
> The Zimbabwean case seems the exact opposite. History
> enrolments are high in Zimbabwean universities; the
> government insists on History teaching in every school;
> historical monographs command a good readership. But
> there is a dilemma for academic historians in Zimbabwe
> too. What is effectively happening is that the Zimbabwe
> state is seeking to repudiate both local and global
> histories and to insist on a revived and narrowed
> version of the validating 'liberation' history of the
> nation. Zimbabwean state intellectuals attack 'bogus
> universalism' and also 'tribal ideology'. Courses in
> 'patriotic history' have been offered to youths
> training as militia and are spreading to teacher
> training colleges and elsewhere. It has been announced
> that courses in 'patriotic history' will be mandatory
> at all universities. Zimbabwe TV offers programme after
> programme presenting a version of the nation's past. In
> all this Zimbabwean university historians play no role
> and cannot find an entry point into the debate.
>
>
> Terence Ranger
>
> Terence Ranger was born in 1929 and took his first
> degree and doctorate at the University of Oxford. He
> went to the University College of Rhodesia (later
> Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (later Malawi) in 1957 as
> Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History. Very
> soon, he became involved in the human rights struggle
> and turned himself into a historian of Africa.
>
> Prof. Dr. Terence Ranger was deported from Rhodesia in
> 1963 and thereafter held Chairs at the Universities of
> Dar es Salaam, UCLA, Manchester and Oxford. On retiring
> from Oxford where he held the Rhodes Chair of Race
> Relations until 1997, he went to the University of
> Zimbabwe as Visiting Professor and taught there for
> four academic years.
>
> Terence Ranger has published and edited dozens of
> books, and published some 150 articles and book
> chapters. In his work, Ranger contributed substantially
> to the historiography of East Africa in general and
> Zimbabwe in particular. He is equally renowned for the
> continuous methodological renewal of African
> historiography over the last decades.
>
> The publication that brought Terence Ranger fame also
> in non-Africanist circles, was The Invention of
> Tradition (Cambridge, 1983) co-edited with Eric
> Hobsbawm. This collection of essays demonstrates the
> complex interaction of past and present. The 'use of
> the past', and more particularly, the use of
> historiography in contemporary society and politics is
> a theme that Terence Ranger also addresses in his most
> recent work on Zimbabwe. Over the last years, Ranger
> observes how national (patriotic) history is being
> promulgated by the Mugabe regime in an attempt to
> reclaim the revolutionary past that unites the
> sovereign nation against the perceived tribalist and
> neo-colonial forces. This is the subject which Terence
> Ranger will deal with in the 2003 edition of the Annual
> Distinguished Lecture on Africa.
>
>
> IDOGA
>
> The Annual Distinguished Lecture on Africa (ADLA) is
> organised by IDOGA (Interdisciplinary Research Group on
> Africa), a network of Africa-minded departments at
> Ghent University.
>
> For further info on IDOGA and previous editions of the
> ADLA see our website: http://africana.rug.ac.be/idoga.
>
> For further info about this year's ADLA, please
> contact:
> --

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