There’s a big move against the concept of the “classic” in international political theory. The protagonists want to unravel what makes one text a classic but not another text since every categorisation is a pragmatic or disciplinary rather than an objective move.
The world has to wait what progress the criticism makes to know how it affects the status of Walter Rodney’s intervention in the conflictual relationship between Europe and Africa. 50 years down the line, the book – How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – has remained the overarching contention in that relationship. Even more interesting is its reinforcement by other scholars of note in the West such as the entire team in “dissidence International Relations” and critical geopolitics, the battalion in decoloniality; elders such as Robert Vitalis in the US and, of course, John Hobson in the UK. So, Rodney’s book is still climbing.
That’s the news in Nigeria’s Bingham University setting aside a day to mark the 50th anniversary of its publication. Bingham University is one of Nigeria’s leading faith-based universities. Its alertness to the 50th anniversary of the book suggests that, as dispiriting as the academic atmosphere is across Nigeria, some of the universities are still able to operate beyond ‘the rule of the thumb’ scholarship that defines the university system in the public sphere.
The notice of the symposium set for July 19th, 2024, indicates that Prof Okello Oculi, formerly of the Department of Political Science, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria will deliver the Keynote Address. It is a potentially engaging event.
