CALL FOR PAPERS: Politics, Religion and Personality Cult in Postcolonial Africa

CALL FOR PAPERS

Politics, Religion and Personality Cult in Postcolonial Africa

Personality Cult refers to a situation in which a public figure (such as a political or charismatic leader) is deliberately seen as an idealized, heroic, at times worshipful image of a leader worthy of admiration and veneration. In Africa, as in most other parts of the world, politics and religion are two areas where the personality cult syndrome has found fecundity. Personality cult operates on a dialectic basis, either occasioned by the deployment of propaganda by its own subject, that is the leader or personality around whom it is built, or generated by the people through excessive hero worship. In modern Africa, the media has become, among others, one of the major tools for the invention, sustenance and celebration of the personality cult. Today personality cult is sustained in the mill of the travestied democracies and religious movements that define Africa.

In Africa, politics is a complex phenomenon, largely driven by the sensitivities of ethnicity and ethnocentrism manifested in cases of ethnic domination and cleansing, migration and re-settlements, minority issues, resource-control controversies, political exclusion and marginalization, ethnic conflicts, terrorism, gender inequality, sit-tight-syndrome, corruption and leadership ineptitude, etc.  The quagmire is vividly complemented by the complexities and contradictions harboured in contemporary religions/religious movements, especially Pentecostalism with its propensity for nescience, nihilism, extremis and intersectional intolerance within and across countries in the continent. The situation is further compounded by the intermingling of the religion and politics in neo-colonial Africa as the two realms increasingly become instruments of aggression and impoverishment against the masses. When religion trespasses into realms (such as education and politics) not traditionally its own, as Jonathan Sacks suggests in hisPolitics of Hope, the results can be very catastrophic.

With the enthronement of religion and politics as the most fundamental means to heroic materialism and crude power in contemporary Africa, there is not only a scramble by people to become pastors and politicians, but to amass wealth and wield enormous power thereof and to use these as instruments of control on the people. In a continent where hunger and poverty have taken the front seat in many nations, political and religious leaders quickly become agencies for bread and butter and are easily confused with the offices and interests they should ordinarily represent. It is in this socio-political, religious and economic context that personality cult thrives in the continent and is beamed onto the landscape as a legitimate phenomenon. Against this background, we would like to invite papers for the anthology “Politics, Religion and Personality Cult in Postcolonial Africa”,with a view to tracing the history and social dynamics and dimensions of personality cult as it manifests and operates within the realms of religion and politics in postcolonial Africa, using the following subthemes and other related issues as possible spin-offs:

·         The Concept of Personality Cult

·         History of Personality Cult in Africa

·         Politics, Personality Cult  and the Media in Africa

·         Interface of Politics and Religion and the Power Struggle in Neo-Colonial Africa

·         Personality Cult and the Media in Africa

·         Religions and Personality Cult in Africa

·         Personality Cult and Economic Development/Survival in Africa

·         Personality Cult, Ethnicity, Religion and Politics

·         Extremis, Apocalypse and the Personality Cult Syndrome in Pentecostalism

·         Personality Cult and Violence in Democracy in Postcolonial Africa

·         Personality Cult as a Cultural Residuum in Africa

·         Personality Cult and Social Conflicts

·         History, Culture and the Politics of Language in Africa

·         Personality Cult  as Resource in Arts and Literature in Africa

Contributors to the book should send an abstract of not more than 250 words to the editors via the email addresses:krydz.ikwuemesi@unn.edu.ng,nche.george@unn.edu.ng, andmichael.ugwueze@unn.edu.ng, for consideration before July 30, 2018. Abstracts should be submitted with the following information and in this order: (a) title of paper, (b) author(s), (c) affiliation, (d) email address, (e) phone number(s), and (f) 5 keywords of your proposed paper. Full papers based on selected abstracted are to be submitted by November 30, 2018. The edited anthology will be published in April 2019.

EDITORS:

Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi

Department of Fine and Applied Arts,

University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Email: krydz.ikwuemesi@unn.edu.ng                                            

Tel: +234803744485

 

George C. Nche

Department of Religion and Cultural Studies

University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Email: nche.george@unn.edu.ng

Tel: +2348063732241

 

 

Michael I. Ugwueze, Ph.D

Department of Political Science

University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Email: michael.ugwueze@unn.edu.ng

Tel: +2348061145510

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Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, MFA, PhD

Painter, Art Critic, Ethno-Aesthetician, Writer and Culture Entrepreneur;

Associate Professor of Fine Art, University of Nigeria, Nsukka;

International Secretary, The Pan-African Circle of Artists;

Emeritus President, The Art Republic;

Editor: Letter from Afrika, The Art Republik;

Ag. Director, Anambra Book and Creativity Festival;

Coordinator: Death Studies Association of Nigeria;

Japan Foundation Fellow, Hokkaido (2009; 

ACLS-AHP Doctoral Fellow (2012);

Leventis Fellow, SOAS (2017)

Tel: 234-8037244485

We thank Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi for the information.

bets wishes

Prof Obinna Onwujekwe

Chairman: Senate Research Grants Committee