Ideas
Essays & notes
Short-form thinking on religion, heritage, institutions and Africa's futures.
No. 07
Before the Comparison, the Comparer: Comparativity Complex Theory, Its Propositions, Method and Stakes
Comparison is never the first act. Before anyone places two heritages side by side, a history of power has already made them comparable. Comparativity Complex Theory makes that prior history its object.
No. 06
Diaspora as Summons: Africa, Return, and the Comparativity of Belonging
Diaspora is not a place Africa sent people to. It is a comparativity Africa is continually made to answer to: who counts as African, who may authorize return, and who profits when enslaved heritage is remembered, sold, and made sacred.
No. 05
Where Power Lives: Scripturalization, the Invention of \"Religion,\" and the African Burden of Comparison
Africa did not ask to be compared. This essay argues that \"religion\" was made to carry that burden, and that power in African religious life lives less in belief than in scripturalization: who makes a text sacred, and who is written out.
No. 04
Whoever Writes the Code Writes the Canon: Technology, Scripturalization, and the African Question of Authorship
From the stone tablet to the smartphone timeline, every new medium has made some people authors and everyone else readers. For Africa, the digital question is not access. It is authorship.
No. 03
Returning the Bronze, Keeping the Key: Heritage as Power and the Comparativity of Restitution
Restitution has become the conscience of the Western museum. This essay argues that it returns objects while keeping the categories that made them objects, and that heritage security begins where the museum's comparativity ends.
No. 02
Mining Scriptures: Religion, Heritage, Technology, Geopolitics, and the African World as One Field of Force
Religion, heritage, technology, geopolitics, and Africa and its diasporas are not five subjects that occasionally meet. Read from the creeks of the Niger Delta, they are one field of force, and the partition that separates them is itself a colonial inheritance.
No. 01
In the Name of God Almighty: Scripture, Heritage, and the Authorship of Africa from Berlin to the New Scramble
The General Act of Berlin opened with a prayer and protected missionaries by treaty. This essay argues that African geopolitics has been fought in the grammar of scripture and heritage ever since, and that today's rival powers compete to author Africa's comparativity.