Guidelines for Reading Responses
- Write down your full name and UID
- Each reading response should be a short essay of approximately 500 words, typewritten double-spaced, 2 pages (i.e. both sides of one piece of paper) in length. Make sure to make clear paragraphs.
You should make full sentences and your text should be written in a language that respects proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Your text should have a short introduction, a development and a brief conclusion.
- Your essay shoulddraw on the relevant reading assignment. In general, you are expected to explain or discuss the important arguments in the reading.
- A brief summary of the main argument or topic (1-3 sentences).
If you can sum up the main argument in a succinct way, then you likely will remember it.
It is very important to deal with what the author says about the question, and not simply what you think. (However, you may contrast your own opinion with the author’s, offer a critique of his/her argument, etc. But this requires that you start by setting out the author’s position.)
- Even though you frequently will be dealing with the author’s view about the question, you need to express it in your own words.
Extended quotations of the text are inappropriate in an assignment of this length, and even short quotations require your analysis (e.g., you will need to explain what the sentence you have quoted means, how it bears on the question, etc.).
- An evaluation of the ideas in the reading from your perspective.
Some ways to evaluate an article:
How does the author’s points relate to other topics we’ve covered in class? (You might consider the time period/date in which the author was writing, for example)
Reading Response: “Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean World”
Edward A. Alpers
This piece of reading shines light on the Indian Ocean paradigm of African history that is not widely known or discovered by researchers, or generally people outside the continent. The perspective it takes shifts the reader’s focus from the generally euro-centric African paradigm of the diaspora in the Atlantic Ocean – to equally important diaspora of Africans in the Indian Ocean paradigm. It should not come as surprising since E. Alpers does acknowledge the fact that there existed an immense challenge in the historical reconstruction of diaspora experiences in the Indian Ocean with the lack of literary tradition, or western-educated class, which hindered the preservation of it. Hence, it justifies the struggle of people outside the continent, or on the other side of it, to understand the retention and transformation of Africans in this paradigm in a more systematically documented way.
- Alpers uses slave trade as the theme to explain the diaspora in the Indian Ocean and how the host societies that they inhabited in had influenced the documentation of their history. I do agree with the point suggested by Edward describing the displaced Africans as the community “actively silenced” in their respective host societies. Countries bordering the Indian Ocean such as India, Madagascar, or Islamic countries such as Oman indeed have traits of strong ties with their own culture and hierarchal system, which explains the production of scholarly knowledge that overshadowed the African slaves’ history through cultural domination. It can be commonly witnessed by the influence that these host societies had on those Africans in terms of religious beliefs such as Islam in the Arab peninsula, Hinduism in Gujarat, India and Christianity in Mascarene Islands where it had European cultural context.
Nonetheless, although African’s cultural identity and memories were not documented and articulated in an academic platform, Edward suggests that a far more powerful way had, instead, allowed it to be preserved till date in various forms through popular culture. African culture and tradition in the forms of music, dancing, folkways, popular religion and healing arts have left traces embedded in these culturally dominated host societies that allows people that came after them – people who truly wanted to discover African history, to be able to discover, recognize or perhaps, revitalize the African history in these areas again. For instance, the existence of Afro-Oman arts which included Omani drum msondo which was directly transcribed from Swahili; and tenbura orchestras being played and danced on in Arab city, Mecca; or performing of African dances at Islamic festival ‘Id al-Fitr. This also shows as evidence that some Africans in the paradigm actually integrated with the local community. Other evidences were illustrated through their names and their acknowledgment of their ethnic groups along with linguistic influences on Mascarene languages.
It can be interpreted that the author’s effort in this piece of writing, and the general African Studies, brings out several important misconceptions and misrepresentation about the African continent. One of it is the fact that African history cannot be fully comprehended or generalized by a single (usually dominated) paradigm. In my opinion, it, in fact, requires the combination of all paradigms that has ever influenced it. It justifies the struggle of researcher per se since such paradigms date back to one of the longest histories in the world – as it is for Africa. Hence, it is also the reason why Africa can be easily misrepresented since it is equally-sensed difficult to trace back and document to take account of its long history.
