"This book offers an incisively critical interrogation of the often understated centrality and excesses of psychology as a discipline, practice and technology in the sins of inequality, unequal encounters, conquest, domination, violence and violation; while simultaneously pointing the reader to emergent promising alternative perspectives for the edification of the ideals of pan-Africanism and the elusive quest for an inclusive humanity." -Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa "A necessary corrective to the persisting obfuscation of coloniality and scientific racism in mainstream psychology, this book is highly commended for picking up the unresolved questions of psychology and bringing disparate sources together with a view to catalyzing the transforming of a discipline that has proved recalcitrant. This book is rich with possibilities that if pursued, may contribute productively to the myriad challenges of decolonial times." -Professor Amina Mama, Kwame Nkrumah Chair: University of Ghana, Institute of African Studies, Professor in Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies: University of California, Davis. USA This book explores the potential of Pan-African thought in contributing to advancing psychological research, theory and practice. Euro/American mainstream psychology has historically served the interests of a dominant western paradigm. Contemporary trends in psychological work have emerged as a direct result of the impact of violent histories of slavery, genocide and colonisation. Hence, this book proposes that psychology, particularly in its social forms, as a discipline centered on the relationship between mind and society, is well-placed to produce the critical knowledge and tools for imagining and promoting a just and equitable world. Shose Kessi is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town Floretta Boonzaier is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town and co-director of the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa Babette Stephanie Gekeler is Lecturer at the International Psychoanalytic University of Berlin.
FROM UCT NEWS:
The Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa recently launched their book, Pan-Africanism and Psychology in Decolonial Times, by Shose Kessi, Floretta Boonzaier and Babette Stephanie Gekeler. The launch took place on 4 August at the Department of Psychology on the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) upper campus
“For me, not only does this book offer a much-needed exploration of the contribution that Pan-African thought, politics and cultural movements can make to psychology, the book is also a site of radical healing,” said Skye Chirape, a PhD in psychology candidate. “It is an offering of all sorts. It is a concoction of nurturance, of guidance, of navigation, of knowledge, of decolonial love and of a departure from a mainstream psychology that is evidently disordered.”
Boonzaier shared the following: “Over twenty years of
work on violence has … helped me to think more carefully about knowledge production, both inside and outside of psychology. It has helped me to critically reflect on knowledge production and the violence it reinforces and perpetuates – how we contribute to our own annihilation if we don’t challenge the knowledge production machinery in academia and how academic knowledge continues to be a form of settler colonial knowledges – that domesticates, denies and dominates other forms of knowledge as Tuck and Yang has argued.”
She added: “Constantly seeing work that continues to produce images of black men as inherently violent and black women as disposable has forced me to step back and ask critical questions about knowledge production on gendered and sexual violence and to think carefully about ongoing forms of epistemic, structural and symbolic violence.”
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