Academic Fakes

In this contribution to the special issue on Fakery in Africa, I catalogue some examples of academic fakes. I show that our fields are shot through with fakery, and ask what is at stake in holding these fakes up not only as real, but as what we value most highly. Fakes and fakery, I suggest, are not exceptional and deviant forms, but are in fact endemic to academia, and in particular to African Studies scholarship. Acknowledging that much around us in academia is fake, and admitting that many practices are fakery, I argue, will allow us to talk more openly about the hierarchies and inequalities of power and resources that shape knowledge production.