Bringing African scholarship back in: Lessons from the Pan-African political project

Abstract

The chapter explores the value of previously marginalized narratives to discussions in international relations. In particular it focuses on the potential contributions of Léopold Sédar Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, and Julius Nyerere to contemporary discussions of citizenship beyond the bounded understanding associated with the nation-state. Through a questioning of the Négritude movement and the pan-African project, the chapter suggests that lessons can be learnt for both contemporary cosmopolitanism and citizenship studies through a re-reading of the narratives of scholars that have been previously excluded or written out of international relations theory.