Post African futures: positioning the globalized digital within contemporary African cultural and decolonizing practices
Tegan Bristow · Critical African Studies · 2017
This paper is an exploration of research around and on the presentation of the Post African Futures exhibition. The exhibition, held at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg in South Africa in 2015, acted to challenge the understanding of contemporary digital and communications technologies in relation to contemporary African cultures. Through this the paper explores scholarship around African positions and philosophies of technology, both the paucity of theoretical engagement in this area and the development of new approaches. In extension, two primary frameworks are explored. The first addresses the importance of unpacking regional cultures of technology. The second is the conceptual framing and locating of concerns around historical and contemporary cultures of technology in Africa under the notion ‘Post Africa Futures’, which puts particular emphasis on a relationship to the global information economy.