Mamadou Diouf unearths the intellectual and cultural traditions that have long defined Africa, proving that history was never just written about Africa, but also by it.

For too long, Africa has been framed as an afterthought in world history—a continent written into the margins of time. In Africa in the World’s Time, renowned historian Mamadou Diouf dismantles these colonial narratives and reclaims Africa’s rightful place at the center of global historical thought. Moving beyond Western frameworks, Diouf examines the continent’s intellectual traditions and demonstrates how African artists and historians have shaped and reshaped how we understand the past.

Tracing central debates from the independence era to today, Diouf examines figures like Cheikh Anta Diop and Samir Amin, as well as the vital role of literature and film in contesting predominant histories. He challenges the linear, Eurocentric timelines that have long governed historical discourse, and puts forward a vision of Africa as a force that has always been influencing and reimagining the world.
 

The magnitude of the legal violence exercised by the French to colonize and occupy Algeria (1830–1962) is such that only aesthetic works have been able to register its enduring effects. In Decolonizing Memory Jill Jarvis examines the power of literature to provide what demographic data, historical facts, and legal trials have not in terms of attesting to and accounting for this destruction. Taking up the unfinished work of decolonization since 1962, Algerian writers have played a crucial role in forging historical memory and nurturing political resistance—their work helps to make possible what state violence has rendered almost unthinkable. Drawing together readings of multilingual texts by Yamina Mechakra, Waciny Laredj, Zahia Rahmani, Fadhma Aïth Mansour Amrouche, Assia Djebar, and Samira Negrouche alongside theoretical, juridical, visual, and activist texts from both Algeria’s national liberation war (1954–1962) and war on civilians (1988–1999), this book challenges temporal and geographical frameworks that have implicitly organized studies of cultural memory around Euro-American reference points. Jarvis shows how this literature rewrites history, disputes state authority to arbitrate justice, and cultivates a multilingual archive for imagining decolonized futures.