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It never existed: The idea of ‘precolonial Africa’ is vacuous and wrong (aeon.co)

submitted 10 months ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/humanities@beehaw.org

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[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 23 points 10 months ago

Absolutely. The author is WAY too hung up on the phrase as some kind of holdover from colonial-era European writers using it as a pejorative to mean "uncivilized", when now almost anyone you'd ask would interpret "pre-colonial" as meaning, "before the racist, white supremacist European assholes invaded".

If someone is actively using the phrase to homogenize African cultures or treat pre-colonial Africa as a monolith, call them out for the homogenization; people do that with "post-colonial" Africa too.