Rarely have African communication scholarship paid adequate attention to deconstruction of the tropes which constitute what Prof Edward Said calls ‘imaginative geographies’ and by which hegemony over Africa is subtly enacted. Now, that is about to change at the impending Prof Cecil Blake @ 80 symposium.
The symposium in honour of Sierra Leonean Professor, Cecil Blake @ 80 is threatening to stage an interrogation of the phenomenon of extraversion, particularly the tropological warfare assumed to create and reinforce the ‘African condition’. If that happens, 2025 may be starting on a note of contestation of the world as it is from a usually not too radical quarters: the African communication sphere.
Although it is not clear to Intervention why the words ‘critical’ and ‘foundational’ are following each other in the thematic focus of the symposium, that might precisely be the source of a possible shocker from the online event coming up early in the new year.
The event which the flyer is already labelling as ground breaking is scheduled to take place on January 2nd, 2025 with known names in the African communication space such as Nigeria’s Prof Umar Pate, VC of Federal University, Kashere, serving as symposium Chairman; Battiloi Warritay of Sierra Leone’s Independent Media Commission as speaker and Beryl Ehondor, a communications consultant, as symposium coordinator, amongst others.
At 80, with little else to fear, Prof Blake is in a position to lead the battle. The symposium may therefore be the event to watch out for. The details for connection are laid out in the flyer serving as cover picture.
