The African studies community is currently grappling with a contentious issue, as calls to retract or attack a recent article by two white Africanists who promote "self-ethnography" have emerged. The article in question advocates for an investigation methodology that incorporates personal experiences themselves, an approach that has been deemed irresponsible and inappropriate by many scholars.In an open letter to the magazine, written by seven scholars of African heritage and signed by approximately 1,000 supporters, mainly academics, the authors express their amazement at the document. They argue that it is written for a global northern audience while deleting and appropriating African erudition and reduces African peoples to native informants. The article has been criticized for propagating odious tropes that have affected the field of African studies both through methodology and pedagogy, including the 'Savior del Blanco' and 'borderism.'
The letter writers are calling for the retraction of the article, but they are also demanding answers as to why the article was approved by the editorial and peer review process and published in the first place. The controversy has sparked a wider debate about the role of self-ethnography in research and the importance of decolonization in academic fields that deal with non-Western subjects.
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