Nostr notes by Prof Foluke Adebisi

I continue to be amazed by the number of people who think that ...

2026-10-23T08:39:28Z

I continue to be amazed by the number of people who think that writing an academic book is directly financially lucrative. Someone said something to the effect that when my book is published, I should treat myself to a car... A CAR!!! The book sold relatively well. So I can buy more than one coffee.

Academics: What are you buying with your royalties?

A large proportion of claims to study or analyse the African ...

2026-10-15T11:12:13Z

A large proportion of claims to study or analyse the African continent focus only on the failures of African states without confronting the violence, dispossession and colonial histories that produced them. They do not study Africa at all. They study symptoms.
https://folukeafrica.com/how-we-study-africa/

This essay is about trauma, survival, friendship, death, and the ...

2026-10-14T11:05:32Z

This essay is about trauma, survival, friendship, death, and the lessons that remained long after I left Ife. About what we endured, what we lost, and how we learned to keep going. Life has no duplicate. Decades later, I am still sitting with the experiences, losses, fears, and resilience that shaped us. I am still shaped by Death and the King's University. https://folukeafrica.com/death-and-the-kings-university/

Conventional "failed state" narratives are an easy answer ...

2026-09-25T11:20:34Z

Conventional "failed state" narratives are an easy answer to state instability on the African continent. But they do not challenge the assumptions underlying statehood, especially the colonial foundations of African statehood, so they end up protecting states rather than human lives. https://folukeafrica.com/the-fallacy-of-african-statehoods/

This essay reflects on hope, perspective, and why academics must ...

2026-09-16T11:02:46Z

This essay reflects on hope, perspective, and why academics must resist despair in a post-truth age – not because it is all good, but because this is now looking like the very bad place and critical knowledge is desperately needed if we are to survive at all.

https://folukeafrica.com/academics-as-optimistic-shoe-salespeople/

“In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will ...

2026-09-07T13:37:48Z

“In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.” Bertolt Brecht
Through the documentary, Amandla! I reflect here on music as jurisprudence, memory, resistance, and liberation to show how song can communicate experiences that law has no language for.
https://folukeafrica.com/amandla-a-revolution-in-4-part-harmony/

On International Slavery Remembrance Day, I reshare this piece I ...

2026-08-23T13:19:45Z

On International Slavery Remembrance Day, I reshare this piece I wrote reflecting on the layered human cost of racialized enslavement - names, stories, cultures, relationships, and futures disappeared beneath the waves - and its impact that still resonates today.
https://folukeafrica.com/the-middle-passage-or-what-we-lost-to-the-waters/

Welcome to Lagos (2010) is a three-part BBC documentary ...

2026-08-20T10:50:26Z

Welcome to Lagos (2010) is a three-part BBC documentary miniseries that won a BAFTA award. Narrated by David Harewood, it depicts the daily lives, toughness, and hard work of people living in Lagos's poorest areas.
https://youtu.be/B_HGHj5kTM4?si=I9JT7tTuePs6pQfc

I ask here what neutrality and objectivity really mean when one ...

2026-08-19T11:13:33Z

I ask here what neutrality and objectivity really mean when one side is arguing against another person's humanity, safety, and dignity. Why are we constantly asked to compromise with racism, violence, exclusion, and the destruction of the planet?

https://folukeafrica.com/a-portrait-of-the-writers-life-negotiating-with-injustice/

In this essay, I reflect on hope, racial injustice, legal ...

2026-07-09T11:26:26Z

In this essay, I reflect on hope, racial injustice, legal education, and the emotional costs of being asked to perform optimism in the neoliberal university. I argue that we should first sit with the despair. Listen to it. Learn from it. Only then can we change it.

"For me, hope is the action. Hope is not benign, passive wishful thinking, but radical action grounded in an acknowledgement that for many the world is unlivable and something must be done about that. We who believe in freedom cannot rest; we must act on what we hope for."

https://folukeafrica.com/what-is-the-use-of-hoping-while-grieving-teaching-and-researching-racial-injustice-in-the-neoliberal-university/

Kofi Awoonor's "The Weaver Bird" captures the ...

2026-07-06T12:06:08Z

Kofi Awoonor's "The Weaver Bird" captures the violence of dispossession, cultural domination, and the destruction of indigenous ways of being. The poem's closing lines invite us to answer the enduring question: How do we build "new homes" in the ruins of colonialism?
https://folukeafrica.com/the-weaver-bird-by-kofi-awoonor-as-postcolonial-commentary-on-loss-of-home/

Each time a list comes out, I reshare this: "World university ...

2026-06-19T11:43:39Z

Each time a list comes out, I reshare this: "World university rankings... consider whether universities in the global South are as good as those in the global North but never look the other way. They do not rank how good students are at surviving without toilets."
https://folukeafrica.com/global-university-rankings-toilets/

I make 2 arguments in this essay. Firstly, the absence of proper ...

2026-06-18T11:39:59Z

I make 2 arguments in this essay. Firstly, the absence of proper engagement with Africa in global curricula is an affront to knowledge. Secondly, African Studies does not resolve this, and the decolonisation of a colonial discipline may not be the answer either.

Scholars "pretend that Africa blinked into existence at the start of the infernal trade of kidnapped Africans for the sole purpose of the infernal trade in kidnapped Africans. And even this enterprise and the subsequent colonisation project have had a profound effect on the shape of the world today."

"African studies has not been able to escape its anthropological roots and its voyeuristic practices. The contributions [of the few African scholars] are often considered to be subjective, emotional, not sufficiently grounded in scholarship from the Global North, and a threat to the status quo."

"If humanity carries on as it is, our story will eventually become a ghost story only, as there will be no one left on earth to haunt. Only history’s ghosts haunting a desolate landscape. The African non-scholar is already disappearing under the weight of the silence..."

"An Africa-based African Studies scholar journeys to Global North conferences with great difficulty, jumping over the barbed wire fence of the visa process, often coming to grief on its metal spikes. Funders' interests become a hurricane that bears the African scholar out of the field."

"We must not forget that decolonisation is a political project that seeks to end untenable conditions of global life. Anything else is merely fairy-tale, delusion and self-deception. For African scholars, the future of African studies cannot be more important than the future of African people."

https://folukeafrica.com/africa-missing-from-our-curricula-and-the-failed-promise-of-african-studies-to-locate-her/

Universities' insipid and self-serving adoption and ...

2026-05-21T11:04:49Z

Universities' insipid and self-serving adoption and abandonment of decolonisation illustrates the futility of using the logics we are trying to dismantle to dismantle the logics we are trying to dismantle. Racialised students did the work and did not reap any benefit.
https://folukeafrica.com/why-i-say-decolonisation-is-impossible/

In this post, through my recollection of a very funny event in a ...

2026-05-19T11:25:32Z

In this post, through my recollection of a very funny event in a Nigerian court, I explore how language use and language dominance carry more than syntax in them. Power, justice and history converge in the colonial court, and justice loses.

https://folukeafrica.com/an-anticolonial-lawyer-in-a-colonial-court/

On #StephenLawrenceDay, a reminder that racism is not a ...

2026-04-22T12:23:18Z

On #StephenLawrenceDay, a reminder that racism is not a disagreement in politics.
Racism is a thief. Of breath. Of peace. Of time.
Time that could be spent... Dancing. Living.
Lives that are never to be lived. Dreams stolen before they are birthed.
Thief.
https://folukeafrica.com/we-were-witness-to-an-execution/

One of the reasons I started writing a blog was to address my ...

2026-04-02T11:03:53Z

One of the reasons I started writing a blog was to address my deep dissatisfaction with the way Africa is studied or talked about outside the continent, especially. This is mostly marked by absence. But when it is not, most interlocutors ignore the impact of external interference.
https://folukeafrica.com/how-we-study-africa/

This is an essay I wrote as a reflection of the demands of ...

2026-04-01T11:38:05Z

This is an essay I wrote as a reflection of the demands of resilience placed on students in Nigerian universities. The events that inspired the essay happened 25 years ago. As far as I know, things have only gotten worse in Nigerian universities.

https://folukeafrica.com/death-and-the-kings-university/

I remember a professor who read some of my writing on West Africa ...

2026-03-13T12:33:38Z

I remember a professor who read some of my writing on West Africa was quite shocked to discover that Timbuktu exists...
Sankoré, the famous mediaeval mosque-university at Timbuktu (in present-day Mali), was set up around the twelfth century.

https://folukeafrica.com/timbuktu-site-of-1st-african-university/

"What role should academics play in a world that is falling ...

2026-03-05T12:07:07Z

"What role should academics play in a world that is falling apart?" Creative thinking. Truth. Hope. Academics have a vital task in the building of new and better human worlds. We must not betray it, despite attacks on every side. We must work while the light lasts.

https://folukeafrica.com/academics-as-optimistic-shoe-salespeople/

Do you still use 'Sub-Saharan Africa' as a descriptor in ...

2026-02-25T12:00:23Z

Do you still use 'Sub-Saharan Africa' as a descriptor in your academic work? Here, I argue that "Sub-Saharan Africa" may not be an academically sound geographical inscription. It cannot truly divorce itself from its derogatory origins & may be in need of retirement.

https://folukeafrica.com/we-should-stop-researching-sub-saharan-africa/

"these rules become even more important. Without them, we ...

2026-02-04T12:29:41Z

"these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together."

This poem is a direct response to this statement, explaining why that is not where the risk comes from...
https://folukeafrica.com/still-a-one-way-street-of-strangers/

In this essay, I examine the origins and meanings of the word ...

2026-02-02T12:04:16Z

In this essay, I examine the origins and meanings of the word "decolonisation." It is often thrown about with the presumption that we all agree on its meaning, despite strong contrary evidence. But where did the word come from? What has it been used to mean? What could it mean?

https://folukeafrica.com/the-trouble-with-defining-decolonisation-a-table-analogy-and-some-reading/

Check out our website for the Critical Legal Pedagogies of Race ...

2026-01-28T15:46:57Z

Check out our website for the Critical Legal Pedagogies of Race and Empire research network! The network brings together a wide range of scholars engaged in the praxis of embedding the teaching of race, colonialism, and empire into their work.
https://sites.google.com/view/criticaldecoloniallawteachers/home

Through the lens of a host of speculative fiction, like Supacell, ...

2026-01-28T12:05:38Z

Through the lens of a host of speculative fiction, like Supacell, Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmọlẹ̀, Kindred, Lagoon, & Dr Who, I ask what can be done about the incommensurability of racial justice within the terms of Euro-modern law. Can we, through it, imagine the end of racial injustice?

https://folukeafrica.com/law-racial-justice-black-centred-sci-fi-imagining-an-antiracist-future/

#Newblogpost In this essay that [very randomly] uses a soap as a ...

2026-01-26T14:28:16Z

#Newblogpost In this essay that [very randomly] uses a soap as a lens, I ask the following questions: What should it mean to love a country? How can you love a country if you cannot love another person? What type of love makes people put their bodies on the gears?
https://folukeafrica.com/lessons-on-love-patriotism-and-revolution-from-vatanim-sensin/

Those who have tasted the terror and shock of war Will spend all ...

2026-01-06T10:01:10Z

Those who have tasted the terror and shock of war
Will spend all their might to trouble it no more
While those who have never tasted its terrible night
Will crown themselves its lord and issue it a warm invite.

The execution of Patrice Lumumba of Congo in January 1961 was ...

2025-09-09T11:07:32Z

The execution of Patrice Lumumba of Congo in January 1961 was described as the most significant assassination of the 20th century. Who was he? Why was he killed? I wrote about this and the global participation in his horrific execution.

https://folukeafrica.com/patrice-lumumba-may-africa-breathe-the-air-of-freedom/

In this very personal essay, I explore how being African and my ...

2025-07-02T11:57:22Z

In this very personal essay, I explore how being African and my African experiences have shaped how I view myself and how I move through the world. I also reflect on how early in life, racially minoritised children experience racism.

https://folukeafrica.com/finding-my-africa-finding-myself/

Sankoré, the famous medieval mosque-university at Timbuktu (in ...

2025-06-23T10:49:21Z

Sankoré, the famous medieval mosque-university at Timbuktu (in present-day Mali), was set up around the 12th century and is proof that Africans have always pursued knowledge.
(I remember a senior professor who was quite shocked to discover that Timbuktu exists...)

https://folukeafrica.com/timbuktu-site-of-1st-african-university/

I wrote this Antiracism Reading List back when I really believed ...

2025-02-26T11:45:47Z

I wrote this Antiracism Reading List back when I really believed we would want to read ourselves out of perdition. (insert ancestral sigh). Which is why I never completed the decolonisation list. I may return to it in due course. As always, suggestions are very welcome.

https://folukeafrica.com/an-anti-racism-reading-list/