Unshared Identity

Unshared Identity employs the practice
of posthumous paternity in Ilupeju-Ekiti, a Yoruba-speaking community
in Nigeria, to explore endogenous African ways of being and
meaning-making that are believed to have declined when the Yoruba and
other groups constituting present-day Nigeria were preyed upon by
European colonialism and Westernisation. However, the author’s fieldwork
for this book uncovered evidence of the resilience of Africa’s
endogenous epistemologies.

Drawing on a range of disciplines, from
anthropology to literature, the author lays bare the hypocrisy
underlying the ways in which dominant Western ideals of being and
belonging are globalised or proliferated, while those that are
unorthodox or non-Western (Yoruba and African in this case) are
pathologised, subordinated and perceived as repugnant.  At a time when
the issues of decolonisation and African epistemologies are topical
across the African continent, this book is a timely contribution to the
potential revival of those values and practices that make Africans
African.