Reading the Idea of Nation, Pan-Africanism and Globalization in the Thought of Dr. Silas Modiri Molema - Research

This paper focuses on the reading of early Pan-Africanism, the idea of a nation, and the globalization movement in the 21st century, in relation to the intellectual work of the Africanist communitarian, Dr. Silas Modiri Molema. The main argument I shall be making in this article is that the early thinking of South African intellectuals like Molema was part of the global effort to seek for a modern political subjectivity, in a way that refuses to be mimetic of the West. I shall show that the political questions for the generation of Molema's time were: What does it mean to be modern in a distinctively African way? Can Africans become modern without being westernized? The paper also attempts to show the need to understand ideas produced within concrete political situations. The need to question the historical, contextual, cultural, and economic milieus within which the ideas about pan-Africanism, nation and globalization are produced. I will show that the works of early intellectuals were embedded in concrete political situations and that the early instantiations on pan-Africanism and globalization were based on the critique of westernization, liberalism and empire, and capitalist political economy.