In this book, distinguished anthropologists, political scientists and social historians from Africa, Europe and America make a radical break with much conventional wisdom in postcolonial discourse to explore contemporary African identities in transition.

Addressing fundamental issues of political violence, the negation of authority in public life, and peaceful change to multi-party politics, their analyses distinguish the varied impact of generational struggles, ethnicity and nationalism. Throughout, they shed new light on images, emblems of identity, social landscapes and boundaries of belonging.

The book theorises the salience of the postmodern for the postcolonial and the postapartheid; and with actual case studies, explores why postcolonial studies has to enunciate and interpret the distinctive languages of identity politics in all the cultural richness of their specific metaphors. It asks whether the very idea of the postcolonial conceals the continued dependence of African countries.

Is the postcolonial thus merely a neo-colonial mystification, a Eurocentric product of Western scholarship in collusion with Western imperialism?