NAB XVIII 2019

Current Affairs
“Change in the making”
As envisaged in its concept, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence
has established a Gender and Diversity Office (GDO). In the interview
with NAB, the GDO’s Director, Christine Vogt-William, talks about the
Cluster’s goals and how her work commits to achieving these.
Interview led by SABINE GREINER
You joined the Cluster of Excellence in
April 2019 – what made you want to be
a part of this research organisation?
One appealing aspect is that the Cluster
actually values multiple perspectives,
in research projects,
scholarly interests and politics
of African Studies. I find this
quite a novel approach to African
Studies, which indeed
requires the kind of reconfiguration
that the Cluster pursues.
This is extremely important for
me as an educator and researcher of colour,
active in fields of diaspora and postcolonial
studies, given the current political
context. The GDO position itself is a
wonderfully hybrid pragmatic interface
with research agendas, as laid out in the
Cluster proposal. Advocating a reconfiguration
of African Studies entails interrogating
the ways in which the field
has been shaped by Euro-American and
African knowledge perspectives, politics
and productions.
So would you say this was an agenda
close to your heart?
Indeed, as an active educator and researcher
of colour, I firmly believe this
The Cluster’s agenda requires reflexive
work while we build strong relations with
our colleagues on the African continent
and diverse diasporic African contexts.
We need to reflect on our approaches to
the field from our different disciplinary
trajectories.
“I firmly believe this particular Cluster provides a
fabulously mobile concept, where you see change
in the making.”
“The GDO position is a wonderfully hybrid
pragmatic interface of research and
admistrative responsibilities.”
“Reconfiguration”, as I see it, means moving
towards transformation. The Cluster’s
approach is highly proactive and aims
to scrutinise our own research practices.
Subsequently, we do not necessarily
subscribe to some kind of singular linear
progress narrative that merely allows for
producing more textual and cultural output,
but rather, we actually want to reflect
on how we do the research that produces
knowledge: Are these forms of research
empowering, and if so, who are they empowering?
of research and administrative responsibilities
that suits my scholarly and political
interests.
When I say “politics”, I reference the palette
of political and theorising activities
based, not only on the experiences of
sociopolitical injustice shared by marginalised
groups, but also the kinds of
political activity and policy-making undertaken
by hegemonic positions. One
such example in African Studies concerns
Global North and Global South
epistemological positions in knowledge
production, e.g. in citation practices.
Hence, I detect an immensely promising
investment in bringing together the
respective political positionalities along
20
particular Cluster provides a fabulously
mobile concept, where you see change
in the making. What I found particularly
interesting is how vocal the Cluster
is in its proposal to achieve its goal in
the process of developing new innovative
interdisciplinary strategies in order
to work with African scholars from the
continent and diasporic contexts. We address
the idea of equal participation and
academic freedom against this canvas –
and this is something that always needs
to be critically interrogated in the course
of achieving our goal of reconfiguring
African Studies.
What are the biggest challenges in trying
to achieve the Cluster’s goals?
How can these multiple perspectives be
considered effectively?
The central principles of the Cluster are
reflexivity, relationality and multiplicity.
We need to reflect on our own positionalities:
how do I want to engage with multiplicity
on a conceptual and a practical
level? How did I come to African Studies
– e.g. as a Black European woman, a
white European man, as a Black European
man, an African woman, an African
man, an Asian woman, an Asian man,
as a white European woman etc.? We are
situated beings, with our knowledges, our
histories, our imaginaries, our politics.
And yet, we are dynamic creatures. Situated
knowledges do not anchor and fix us
in just one general fossilized idea of what