José Donadoni MANGA KALNIGA

Lamidalisme as a Category of Analysis Anchored in the Historicity of African Societies: For a Critical (Re)Reading of Violations of Freedom of Thought in the Academic Environment in Cameroon

José Donaldoni Manga Kalniga draws a parallel between lamidality, a feudal governance system in Cameroon's history, and the contemporary Cameroonian university milieu, revealing striking similarities.

This project supports the idea that it is possible to use lamidalisme as a category of analysis anchored in the historicity of African societies to provide a critical reading of the attacks on generative capacity and epistemological fertility in the African context. The observation is that African knowledge and knowledge about Africa are, for the most part, activist and weakly grounded in the analytical materials anchored in African societies. Drawing inspiration from the lamidat, a feudal, total institution and product of the historicity of northern Cameroon, this project shows that the scientific space constitutes a framework for observing the interdependence and circulation of degrading constraints on young and accomplished researchers. Access to scientific communities, career advancement, and obtaining distinctions follow the logics of reverence, allegiance, and subjection. As it functions, the scientific field becomes a repressive space for freedom of thought and captive to the researchers’ ability to generate epistemic knowledge.